Are problem solving and languages related

Rosborne, that was an amazing article and an excellent example of problem solving.

What distinguished the sign language from everyday problem solving was that, as the article stated, language must surely have started with children.

It made me think of evolution and the spread of language. The article said that as children got older, they retained the sign language, but that the younger children continued to develp more original signs, making it difficult for the older children to understand what they were saying.

This is the kind of story that has infinite possibilities for discussion, from problem solving, evolution, the place children held in society and their ability to enrich their world.

Well when you think about it, speaking is solving a problem. You have an idea you want to communicate, and you have to find the correct words to communicate it, and then you speak/write it. Deaf people still have ideas, and probably a need to communicate them, so they create a series of signals which indicate ideas and/or obects not unlike a system of equations. So I'd say yah, thoughts are the problem, and language is the solution.

I read that article last week and found it very interesting. Along the same lines, there was an article a month or so ago about a tribe in Brazil that lacked the ability to learn arithmatic and that was also deemed to be related to their language. I will dig up the link.

Here's one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3582794.stm

But a search on google turns up many regarding the study. I thought it was fascinating.

I've often thought that children should be brought into the work environment somehow (not as child labor). I think adults and children are losing out on the natural interaction across generations which is blocked by current work day restrictions in society (western primarily). I've just never been sure of an efficient way to do it and still get daily activity accomplished and children educated at the same time. Many jobs require too much concentration to allow for distractions (air traffic control for example).

A child's mind don't suffer from the rigidity and conditioning of learned adults and hence can invent the most original approaches to the problems. Adult mindset, on the other hand can be disciplined in applying and refining. Most workplace cultures go for the safety of discipline and experience, but it would be great if they can mix it.

One way could be to introduce absolute novices into a team. eg include few security guards in say marketing team. They are equivalent of the deaf children as far as marketing lingo is concerned, but they may come up with some strange out of the box solutions. Or they may just stand there and do nothing.

Yes, rosborne, it would be wonderful to go back to a tribe environment with involvement between children and adults.

Perhaps if parents simply talked to their children more and included them in adult discussions, both children and parents would benefit tremendously.

Grammar seems to be an innate ability of children: A pidgin is a new language which develops in situations where speakers of different languages need to communicate but don't share a common language. Adults who learn the pidgin usually speak it for the rest of their lives, but do not develop grammar. When the next generation of children learn it as their native language, they develop a grammatical structure with their peers and the new language becomes a creole.

I don't know whether this ability is related to tool making or evolved concurrently. Perhaps studies of which parts of the brain are activated while making tools compared to the parts used during language acquisition could tell us.

Terry, your post made me wonder about tool making and problem solving and whether these functions can be learned as easily as an adult as they can be learned as a child?

Language is clearly easier for a child--their brains are still flexible enough to learn several languages without much effort. After about age 8, that ease of learning starts to wane.

Tool making certainly leads to problem solving or vice versa. Would those skills develop the brain's ability to form language or do you think there is a relationship?