Poster #137 - Non-verbal Communication, Attention Patterns and Speech Acts addressed at Hadza Hunter-Gatherer Infants in Tanzania

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

This study investigates the communication development of Hadza hunter-gatherer infants in Tanzania.
Early communication development and language socialization have rarely been studied among hunter-gatherer communities. Hunter-gatherer communities are quickly disappearing due to changing political and environmental conditions, therefore affording few opportunities for future studies. From an evolutionary point of view, studying the early communication development and language socialization of hunter-gatherers could provide crucial insights into interactional settings that may have been similar for our ancestors (Marlowe, 2010). While hunter-gatherers are generally perceived as egalitarian, the Hadza in particular have been characterized as a community with few tools and rituals, even when compared to other hunter-gatherer societies (Marlowe, 2010).
While children in small-scale societies seem to acquire referential gestures at approximately the same time as children in other societies (Liszkowski et al., 2012), cultural communities have been shown to differ in the number and types of communicative acts and attention patterns infants experience and produce (Salomo & Liszkowski, 2013; Brown, 2011). What this means for hunter-gatherers is not clear.
The egalitarian culture of hunter-gatherer societies (Marlowe, 2010) may influence the type of speech acts caregivers address to infants in unexpected ways. For example, it has been reported that hunter-gatherer infants receive few direct instructions, which could affect the amount of imperatives addressed to infants (Hewlett & Roulette, 2016).

26 infants between approximately 6 and 27 months were studied between September and November 2016 in nine camps. 25 infants were observed for an average of 378 observation intervals using spot-observational methods focused on the infants’ communication experiences (types and numbers of gestures, intervals in which infants were addressed verbally) and attention patterns (attentional focus of the child and shared focus of interaction partners). Additionally, there are almost 2 hours of video recordings of 25 children’s normal daily interactions which were transcribed, translated and coded in terms of speech acts (Rabain Jamin & Sabeau-Jouannet, 1997). Additional data were assessed but will not be included in this presentation.

Results suggest that infants and caregivers use gestures in their daily lives most frequently (cf. figure 1) that have also been prominently reported in the literature on other cultural communities. Among them are the referential gestures pointing, showing and requesting and dyadic gestures such as “pick me up” on the infants’ side and “come here” on the interactional partners’. The frequencies are adapted to whether or not the infants show signs of distress. Infants show frequent interest in objects which is shared by their interactional partners approximately half of the time.
Speech acts addressed at infants show unexpected high frequencies of imperatives when compared to other cultural communities (cf. figure 2).
Indications that cultural change may have changed Hadza interaction patterns to the ones that are reported here are discussed. This is strengthened by the observation that although classes of interactional partners show little variation in their interactional patterns, there are large differences when camps are clustered by livelihood (more traditiona, in transition and through tourism).

Authors

• Monika Abels, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway
  Presenting Author

• Paul Vogt, Tilburg University
  Non-Presenting Author