An Underwhelming Kind of Day!

Today was the big day ... presentation at the IASCL conference.

It was rather anti-climactic, I have to say. And, I won't have any photos because our camera isn't talking to the dock any more -hopefully we can remedy this tomorrow but until then ... no pictures. :( Trust me, I am wicked disappointed since that is usually my job for the blog anyway! (Edit: Remedied! Pictures added 7/30, thanks to a card reader for £10!) Also, today was our first day with crappy weather, which was oddly beautiful but it was SO COLD and MISTING. As one site described it: Mr Heat and Miss Rain get together, they love each other very much and they have a little baby Mist…

Uh huh ... and then Mr. Heat runs off to some other lover, I guess because he's not here now!

Not a great example, but gives you a sense of it!

So, I woke up bright and early (6:30), had my light Scottish breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, toast with jam, fried potatoes and a piece of fruit -

This is actually my plate from 2 days ago, but it's the same every day aside from apple/banana!

That's one way to get your day started, eh? And I'm staying away from the really scary stuff like fish and haggis. I digress ...

Wandered (yeah, that's the right word alright!) over to the area the conference was to be held in, got lost for a good 20 minutes within yards of the building but couldn't get there due to construction and faulty maps. Registered. Went to the opening talk in the beautiful McEwan Hall. Here are my pictures but ... well try this link for more info.

It was funded by Sir William McEwan of the brewing company so they encouraged us to use this history as our excuse for any imbibing we might do!

The plenary speaker today was Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington. You might recognize him from a PBS show with Alan Alda if you ever took a class at Boston University or in any language program I'd guess (I've seen it at least 4 times before today). He spoke about “Social cognition and early language development in infancy.” He was very funny and a great way to kick of the conference. Take home points for those interested:
-babies imitate others innately - even as young as 42 minutes old!
-14 month olds have a strong recall memory and can recall an action seen a week before
-18 month olds understand intentions and react differently if they think the adult has made a mistake - does not react the same way if a machine malfunctions
-toddlers partake in "emotional eavesdropping" - this video was adorable. Basically a little girl watched adult 1 use a tool to make a noise. Adult 2 complains that it is annoying. When given a chance to use the tool, baby holds it but doesn't make the noise - she simply stairs at Adult 2. However, if adult 2 praises the noise initially the baby will make the noise. Not surprising. If, however, adult 2 complains but then turns her back 90 degrees to face away from the baby, the baby WILL make the noise! Doesn't realize that the person can still perceive the sound - not yet mature but shows developing emotional history (and very beginnings of Theory of Mind).
-Autistic children were the only children in a study who preferred non-speech sounds to child-directed speech - may offer an early diagnostic tool as it is studied more in the future (wasn't really what they were looking for originially)
-evidence shows that the critical period "window" for maintaining a second language begins to close at 8 MONTHS OLD as we narrow our language perceptions to our own language.
-Exposure to language, even in small periods worked to improve (in this case) speech perception of the second language.
-However, JUST AUDIO or AUDIO/VISUAL stimuli don't work - must come from live people.
-This lead to the recent debacle with Baby Einstein videos almost a year ago which resulted in Disney dropping claims that the videos were educational.

So, yeah (maybe I am matching Dave!). Then I went to a symposium session on screening for language delay in preschool children. Very interesting, good speakers. I won't bore you with the details but I took about 10 pages of notes if you are interested, hehe.

Then it was lunch and POSTER TIME. I set up my poster next to 2 women from Gallaudet - one a professor of linguistics and one an SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) who just finished a year at Arkansas School for the Deaf. They were really nice - they had done a study on CODA (children of deaf adults) children as bimodal bilinguals. Didn't really get a chance to read their poster but they promised to send it to me. They were kind enough to document my achievement with a picture for your viewing pleasure:

Only a few people stopped by my poster - there were about 5 rooms and ours was through a bunch of doors - I'm surprised anyone found us. Then, we were in a room with 3 sign language posters and 3 gesture posters. The room next door had 4 posters on deaf children with Cochlear Implants ... I'm going to suggest that we at least be put with other research related to DEAF children next time as signed language is distinct from gesture. It irked me to say the least.

I had mostly bright, interested people come up to me (several of whom sent their regards to Bob, of course - Bob, I'll send you an email with more details later!). One was doing a longitudinal study with a set of twins of Deaf parents - one twin is hearing, one Deaf. I thought that sounded so interesting. She too promised me more info.

Everything is kind of a blur but I had some good questions and people who did stop by seemed interested - but there was a lot of down time. It is just not as sign-language-friendly as the other conferences I've been to. First, no Deaf people at all which is REALLY disappointing me. Then only 3 signed language posters so there weren't enough abstracts accepted to form a symposium so not a lot of exposure. There is a symposium on cochlear implants on Thursday - send me some good questions!!

My favorite was the German guy who was trying to have a serious conversation with me about my methods but clearly couldn't understand that 1) signed language is not gesture, 2)signed language is NOT related to the spoken language of the country 3) these are not poor hearing impaired children 4) what antonyms are. So despite my efforts to explain those things to him, he insisted on discussing totally abstract linguistic principles with me and kept asking if I'd ever thought of studying other languages where the signed language correlates to the spoken language like how German sign language and German are the same but with gestures. Sorry everyone, I had to give up on this one. He wouldn't even listen to me. It was comical, really.

So, with that finished, and with about 280 of my 300 posters handouts dumped in a recycling bin I was DONE! (If I didn't tell that story already, I asked for 150 copies made at school - apparently 2 people saw my note though so I ended up with 300!! Jeez, I thought 150 was ambitious of me!)

So that's that ... the rest of the day was spent eating dinner at Native State, which was fine, having my first European Guinness which was also anticlimactic. Then we came home, wrestled with technology, called Moms (Love you guys!) and then came over to the bar to get on here and update. Enjoy all the reading! LOL. See you all soon!!

Updated tonight: Aside from this post, I added pictures to the Edinburgh Scene I, Act II Post, and there is a LENGTHY but totally worthwhile post on St. Andrew's. One of the most memorable days we've had for sure ... it will be hard to top! So, keep scrolling!! :)