Comparison with relevant English and Polish studie--论文代写范文精选

她调查了盲童的理解概念，从以下组:颜色、纹理、材料、自然对象,视觉特征等，要求参与者执行三种类型的任务,找到概念之间的异同。概念的基础上选择可视化组件。结果表明,盲童们可能会采用多种感官。下面的essay代写范文进行叙述。

Conceptual structure of blind and severely visually impaired participants has been studied by both Polish, and international researchers. The tendency is for these types of studies to have a practical focus because of the ethical considerations described in the previous sections of this chapter. Although there are few comparable studies concerning blind persons use of gesture and conceptualisation, methodological approaches vary significantly. From research on visually impaired people's use of gestures in monologues (Blass et al. 1974; Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 2001), in conversations with experimenters (McGinnis 1981) to studies on the use gestures in social conversation with one another (Sharkey et al. 2000). 

Blind children's language and conceptual development was tested in longitudinal studies (Dunlea 1989) as well as case studies (Jaworska-Biskup 2009). Language learning is another topic of particular interest with Polish researcher Bogusław Marek paving the way for both research and innovative teaching practice (Marek 1999, 2000). Perhaps the most interesting from the point of view of Objectification Theory is a series of studies conducted by Jaworska-Biskup, who focused on conceptualisation 152 and its effect on language learning of Polish blind and visually impaired children (Jaworska-Biskup 2009, 2010b, 2011). She investigated blind children's understanding of concepts from the following groups: colours, textures, materials, natural objects, visual traits, and living organisms by asking the participants to perform three types of tasks: listing associations with a concept, defining concepts, and finding similarities and differences between concepts (Jaworska-Biskup 2009). 

The concepts were chosen on the basis of having a visual component, or being normally acquired through vision. The results show that blind children are likely to employ a variety of sensory modalities in their descriptions while seeing children depend more on language. What is more, studies show that blind children who are native speakers of Polish or English differ greatly in terms of language competence, and may display surprising gaps in conceptual knowledge (Marek 2000, 1997). The results of the present study are in line with these findings. Most of the blind respondents failed to define at least one concept because they were unfamiliar with its meaning – something that occurred in the control group only twice. This conceptual competence may have had an influence on the performance of the younger group of participants, who gestured significantly less for abstract concepts most likely because they failed to understand them.

Individual variation 
As was the case in our study, most research involving blind and visually impaired participants finds a great individual variation between the respondents both in terms of knowledge and behaviour. Clearly, cognitive strategies employed by participants with a visual impairment vary to a great extent, as do their learning preferences. In her study on concept understanding of blind primary school children, Jaworska-Biskup noted that individual variation was much greater among the visually impaired than the sighted group (2009). 

She attributed those differences to the disparities in the level of education and sensorimotor stimulation these children received from a very young age. Similarly, studies on the conceptual development of blind children note that individual differences can be significant, and often cite parental behaviour as the reason for delays in concep- 153 tual development (Hermelin and O’Connor 1971; Millar 1988; Dunlea 1989 and others). Individual differences were also clearly visible in the results of the present study, where the highest gesture per response ratio in the blind group was 5.45 (in the monologue condition) and the lowest was 0 (also in monologue). A summary table of these results can be found in the Appendix.

Importance of gesture and language for conceptual development of blind children The relation between conceptual development, language and gesture has been a recurring topic throughout this thesis. This notion is a particularly important one in the education of blind and seeing impaired children because for them language performs an additional compensatory function. Language learning prevents blind persons from being deprived of social, economic and learning opportunities (Krzeszowski 1993). As shown in neurolinguistic studies, language is the main way through which neurotypical persons acquire knowledge about abstract concepts. This relation strengthens in blindness, where language becomes a supplementary source of information for visually based concepts such as colours, on intangible phenomena such as dust. Blind children constantly as questions that test and adjust their understanding of such concepts, for instance, “what is rust”, “what is the difference between wrinkles and spots”, “what do I look like” etc. 

Research on concept acquisition and its consequences for language learning is particularly important for this group because second language learning is an opportunity to broaden the blind student's knowledge. Studies show that gestures can be indicative of language competence. Children who are first to combine a single word and a single gesture (for instance saying “mommy” and pointing at a hat) to make sentences are likely to be the first of their peers to use two word combinations such as “mommy hat” produced when they see their mother putting on a hat (Goldin-Meadow and Butcher 2003). In the present study both the qualitative and quantitative analyses of data demonstrate that participants who used more referential gestures spoke more fluently and had a greater understanding of 154 presented concepts. However, it is necessary to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Language, gesture and conceptual competence may be interdependent, but more research is needed on this topic before drawing any conclusions.

Cognitive role of gesture in blindness
The present study focused on exploring the role of gesture in describing abstract and concrete concepts. Quantitative analysis showed some differences regarding the number of gestures produced per response for these two concept types, and qualitative evaluation of the data revealed a number of interesting phenomena. Both gesture and language clearly demonstrate the importance of touch for conceptualisation, supporting Szwedek's ultimate source domain hypothesis (2011). Furthermore, both the presence of metaphorical gesture and the fact that it frequently possessed a tactile component does not permit to reject the hypothesis posed by Objectification Theory, namely that abstract concepts are understood through a basic ontological metaphorisation process from abstract to concrete domains. On the other hand, the sense of hearing appears to rival touch in importance, with sound prominently featured in language and gesture while other sensory domains are represented marginally. Perhaps the object concept is established on a complex multi-sensory basis rather than on tangibility alone. Furthermore, blind children reliably used simulations in their descriptions, confirming the egocentrism view of language and extending it to gesture. Together with the prevalence of self-adaptors in gesture, this observation may lead us to believe that blind children's reference point in space is indeed an object – in the form of their own body. The use of analogy and object-based metaphor in the descriptions of abstract concepts, and a lesser reliance on these strategies for concrete objects provides support for Objectification Theory. Nevertheless, further research is needed to show whether these findings are systematic and generalisable, something that cannot be ensured for the present study due to a limited sample size and interpersonal differences.

Conclusion
One of the key points in the discussion on Lakoff and Johnson’s Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff 1993) later amended to Neural Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff 2008) was whether or not metaphoric thought postulated within its framework requires premetaphoric conceptual structure. In fact, two types of questions are commonly asked within cognitive linguistics studies: is there intra-conceptual structure shared by all abstract and concrete concepts, and whether there exists an inter-conceptual structure that governs inferencing. Postulating the existence of a hierarchical metaphorical conceptualisation mechanism and proposing a developmental model of inter-conceptual network structures for metaphorical and metonymic reasoning is an approach to bridging the gap between concrete and abstract concepts. Objectification Theory promises to do precisely that by making it possible to incorporate findings from a variety of empirically minded into one coherent framework. 

Theories of cognition, including those that originated in cognitive linguistics require empirical backing. It is no longer enough for a logically skilled armchair linguist to develop an elaborate account of cognition from the comfort of his or her own chair, nor is introspective data considered enough to support such a theory. A well developed account of cognition requires empirical evidence to support it, meaning that increasingly such theories need to yield to empirical testing. In Gibbs' words: an acceptable theory needs to be “good psychology” (Gibbs 2000). There are several requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for an account to qualify as good enough. Fulfilling most of the conditions identified by Gibbs (2000) would certainly yield credibility to Objectification Theory as a relatively new account of meaning.（essay代写)

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