Faculty of Science Assignment Cover Sheet

The Faculty of Science adheres to the University Policy on Academic Dishonesty which constitutes misconduct and is dealt with under the University's Statute 17 (http://calendar.publishing.uwa.edu.au/latest/partc/stat17).

These guidelines make reference to the following:

Cheating in tests or examinations, e.g., copying from another student, or taking unauthorized materials into the test or examination room.

Plagiarism, i.e., presenting another's work as though it were one's own, for instance quoting or paraphrasing someone else's opinions, arguments or research findings, whether published or unpublished (e.g., from a book or article, an internet site, or another student's assignment), without clear acknowledgement of the source. You may quote material from another source, but if you do so, the quotation must be word perfect and, in addition to citing the source reference in the usual manner, the beginning and end of the quotation must be clearly indicated by quotation marks. E.g. “quotation”

Falsifying results of experiments or research studies.

Collusion, e.g., writing an assignment jointly and submitting it as the work of one individual. Although discussion and co-operation are valuable in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, any work submitted for assessment must be the individual's own work unless it is clearly designated a group project.

Helping someone else to commit any dishonest act such as those listed above. The consequences for misconduct can be severe, including exclusion from the university. All students are expected to make themselves aware of the definitions and policies relating to academic misconduct, (http://www.teachingandlearning.uwa.edu.au/staff/policies/conduct), and with any additional requirements or stipulations that may be provided by individual unit co-ordinators.

Abstract

The correlational relationship between language and communication was investigated and examined in this study. 644 PSYC1102 students from the University of Western Australia participated in two computer tasks that tested language and communication abilities. The first task was a word relation exercise and the second task was a tangram description and identification exercise. The correlations found between language and communication ability, and communication ability and interpretation accuracy were found to be statistically significant. Literature on the topic is reviewed and suggestions for further research are discussed, for example the need for a more diverse sample group.

Do people need language to communicate? Oxford English Dictionary (2018) defines language as the method of human communication which is written or spoken, comprised of words in a formed and established way. Language consists of a range of aspects including sounds, grammar rules, symbols and speech. Communication is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2018) as the exchanging of information through various mediums and categories. Language and communication are key aspects of human behaviour and thus it is theorized that language is essential for communication as this relationship influences the passing on of information from one individual to a second. Other studies have been completed on interpreting the relationship between language and communication, highlighting the importance of the relationship between language and communication, specifically how this relationship develops in childhood. Bishop and Adams (1991) examined the association between language and communication abilities of 54 specific language impaired (SLI) children compared to a control group of children considered language able. Participants completed a description task where the children described visual stimuli to a listener. The experimenters found no relationship between communication abilities and conversational capability. The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2018) issued a study directed by Yamashiro and Vouloumanos where they analyzed the relationship between communication and language between infants and adults. They conducted an experiment that examined the means in which one-year old infants without spoken language ability communicated. The study examined eye movements of infants and adults as they witnessed a subject communicate with a series of objects around them. If the subject was unable to contact the object, they would use vocabulary or sounds to a second subject who would communicate with the object. They found that both infants and adults were attracted to spoken language rather than sounds.

The study by Ricks and Wing (1975) analyzed characteristics of language and ways of communication in autistic children compared to neurotypical children through a series of description and listening activities. They found that abnormalities of language can be detected in early childhood and thus children with autism can be diagnosed relatively early. Our experiment was accompanied by two aims. The first aim was to test if individuals who are high in language ability are more effective communicators. The second aim was to test if individuals who are high in language ability are more effective interpreters. There were two hypotheses. It was hypothesized that there would be a positive correlation between producer language ability and communication effectiveness and it was hypothesized that there would be a positive correlation between receiver language ability and interpretation accuracy.

Method Participants The participants were 644 PSYC1102 students from the University of Western Australia. 403 were female, 240 were male and 1 was listed as other. The ages of participants ranged from 15-55, the mean age was 21.30 and the standard deviation was 6.30. Participation was part of the course requirements; however, participation was voluntary. Materials Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, 2nd edition (CASL-2). Constructed by Rehfeld and Padgett in 2018, this computer task tested participants language abilities. The task consisted of four test categories with 128 items in total. The four categories were lexical/semantic category; synonyms subscale with 35 items, synaptic category; grammatical morphemes subscale with 29 items, supralinguistic category; non-literal language subscale with 29 items and pragmatic category; pragmatic language subscale with 32 items.

Non-interactive communication task. The tangram game developed by Rogers, Fay and Maybery in 2013 was utilised for this activity which consisted of two tasks, a receiver and producer task. Producers were subjected to a tangram, an abstract, geometric shape, where they described the shape. Receivers would read the description and attempt to identify the shape. Procedure Participants completed the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language first. All participants completed the source language assessment. The comprehensive assessment of spoken language required participants to respond to questions in each of the four categories by typing their answer in the textbox, for example “He is to him as they is to _ (them)”. Participants were scored on each subscale. These scores were then combined to create an overall language ability score on a range of 0-128. Participants then completed the second computer task, the non-interactive communication task. Participants were randomly distributed among the two tasks, the producer task and the receiver task. Participants who completed the producer task were instructed to write short descriptions of the tangrams shown. There were 18 items in total. These descriptions were then provided to the receiver participants who used these descriptions to identify shapes by clicking on the shape they felt the description matched out of the 18 items presented. This was done for 54 item descriptions. Producers were given a communication effectiveness score which scored how useful their descriptions were based on the accuracy of receivers identifying shapes (% correct out of 54). Results Descriptive techniques outlining producer and receiver language ability are presented in table