Hey guys.
Great to be back.
I know I'm kinda behind so just bear with me.
When I decided to leave class and travel this great country, we were finishing up developmental psychology. I was very interested in the different types of studies done by developmental psychologists, especially longitudinal studies. These types of studies follow people throughout their lives so they take decades before you can actually see some results. Obviously the time needed for these types of studies make them inconvenient but when used, psychologists are able to learn new and interesting things about people. When researching some longitudinal studies, I came across one that I found interesting. It has to do with the correlation between children's early language skills and their psychosocial outcomes when they get older.
6,941 men and women took part in this study. Their language was assessed when they were 5 and they were tested again at age 34 to assess their psychosocial outcomes as well as their mental health. Other factors were looked into like their family life and social adaptation as they transitioned into their adult lives. What they discovered was that those with poor language skills as children suffered more psychosocial problems as they transitioned into adulthood and were found to have lower levels of mental health than those with normal language skills as children. Those conducting the study concluded that early language skills have a great impact on adult mental health and psychosocial adjustments during childhood and when transitioning into adulthood.
What do you guys think about the study?
From what we've learned about language and social development, I don't see how these two have any effect on each other. According to Erikson's psychosocial conflicts/stages of social development, if the person did not resolve a conflict during the designated stage in his life, that could lead to psychosocial problems later on. That has nothing to do with whether or not they could speak well when they were little. Whorf said that linguistics determine thought so maybe the longer it takes for you to master language, the less you can think clearly?
It doesn't make much sense to me, but it is an interesting conclusion. Of course there can be hundreds of confounding variables that mess up the results but they did test a whole bunch of people. I guess this just means that I'll have to make sure my kids learn to speak well when they are little--just in case.
This study is certainly interesting. It seems evident that a lack of language acquisition would affect mental health and psychosocial development later on in life, considering that our main form of communication includes speaking. Not being able to do so can be detrimental or a severe impediment when placed in a social situation/environment, which is where most of us spend the majority of our days. Out of curiosity, when was the this study conducted/when did they begin? Recently? I wonder if the same results would apply if they used signing in Deaf culture instead of speaking...
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty cool study - it's interesting that language can affect our mental health and development later in life. But like Noga said, language is our form of communication and if we don't communicate with others it can definitely affect our mental health.
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