Cognitive Psychology Chapter 9: Language

Koko (Patterson)

(ア) Patterson (prime example of a crazy animal linguistic researcher) (イ) Koko was the first gorilla to study language development. She was able to learn ASL as well. (ウ) 1000 sign language (エ) Had a kitten, Oddball, and was very protective and took care of it until it passed (She understood what happened T_T) (オ) How much is there language and communication

Universal versus Hierarchical

(ア) Universal: every human being have them (イ) Hierarchical: deep structures

Sarah (Premak)

(イ) First ape to show correct sentences using plastic symbols (ウ) Telegraphic (エ) Reward giving

Gua (The Kellogs)

(イ) First study of a chimp (ウ) Children and chimps raised in the same environment; raising the chimp as a human to "make her human" (エ) Same language stimulation (オ) Treated like siblings (Donald and Gua) (カ) At first, Gua learned faster than Donald. However, Donald started to develop language and Gua could not (キ) When Kellogg saw that Gua was not producing words, they got rid of her. (also because Donald was imitating her)

Washoe (Gardener's)

(イ) Gardener: 1st psychological researcher to discover that Chimps did not have vocal chords. (ウ) Washoe was taught ASL (American Sign Language). She was very successful with her language development. Once they taught one chimp to communicate with ASL other chimps learned to communicate with her as well. (エ) 100 ASL (オ) Arbitrary and productive (カ) Problems with teaching sign language because of the big fat fingers (read to read it) and researchers would have to guess (キ) All simulation response

Nim Chimpsky (Terrece)

(イ) Named after Chomsky because Terrece didn't like Chomsky (ウ) Same criticism (reward giving, using only telegraphic, and accidentally giving cues)

Chantek (Miles)

(イ) Retired at ATL zoo (ウ) He knew over 800 sign languages

Vicki (The Hayes)

(イ) Similar study to Gua but with language (ウ) By the age of 7, Vicki was supposedly able to say a few words (mama, papa, cup, up) (エ) Apes physically can't do speech (phonemes) based on the anatomy

Human Language vs. Animal Language

- Human languages have infinite creativity, while animal languages have a finite number of calls/sounds. For example, animals cannot create new calls or combine their original calls to create new meanings. Humans, on the other hand, can produce and comprehend utterances never heard before. They can combine different words from different sounds, and different sentences from different words. - Human language is digital, animal language is analog - Human language is compositional, animal language is random - Human language uses displacement, whereas animal language focuses on the here and now (chimpanzees brains is 98.6% similar to human brains) We can speak (to communicate faster; more efficient) but we could also choke and die. Apes can eat/drink while breathing through their noses (babies had the ability to do this until they started to develop; the anatomy changes throughout development stage). Unlike humans, apes lack the anatomical pre-requisites for verbal language production. The organs within the vocal tract, such as larynx muscles and vocal cords, cannot be moved as freely and coordinated as in humans, especially not at a comparable speed. Great apes can learn language in their limited ability According to Pinker, humans are the only ones with language

Ways in which chimpanzees fail to understand language

- Show little creativity - Their utterances are imitative and cued by certain things - They do not grasp syntax

The 4 design features of language

1) Semanticity 2) Arbitrariness/Symbolic 3) Displacement 4) Productivity

Chomsky's two tier model

1. Deep structures: underlying innate (brain) knowledge; the underlying meaning of an utterance 2. Surface structures: that we produce (actual structure of the sentences); Form of a sentence that is spoken or written

Language Teaching Studies and Great Apes

1. Gua (The Kellogs) 2. Vicki (The Hayes) 3. Washoe (Gardener's) 4. Sarah (Premak) 5. Nim Chimpsky (Terrece) 6. Koko (Patterson) 7. Chantek(Miles)

Transformational rules

A mental process which transforms the deep structures of a language into surface structures

Mental Lexicon

A mental store of all the words a person knows Aka: Mental dictionary

Two levels of linguistic processing (Chomsky)

Adults use two levels of linguistic processing (ア) Universal: the actual spoken sentence (イ) Hierarchical: deep structures; underlying meaning of the sentence

African Grey parrots (Alex; Irene Pepperberg

Alex, an African grey parrot was trained by Irene Pepperberg. Alex could answer spoken questions with spoken words and identify and categorize objects by color, shape, and material. Alex suddenly died in 2007 after over 30 years of research. It's arbitrary, symbolic, displacement, productive Can't answer "how many green blocks?" Limited language

Language in Animals

Animals Can clearly communicate Can imitate speech Can be taught sign language But animal communication doesn't exhibit all of the features of human language In order for it to be a language, it got to be symbolic, arbitrary, and productive The acquisition of human language by animals is limited

Noam Chomsky

Book Syntactic Structures (1957) Believes language is innate; influential figure of language development; all about rules, grammars, and syntax. -Two levels of linguistic processing (Universal and Hierarchical) -Two-tier model You can never study the deep structures, but can on the surface structures; Problem-claims it is innate, but don't have actual proof; He studied adults but never children (didn't think it was important); He didn't study the language development, only making assumptions on how language works

Cognition depends on language (Sapir-Worf)

Can't think about something without the use of language; the word snow, we have just one word, for the Eskimos, they have many terms for snow because it is important to them; language influence on what we think about the world; labeling-we tend to make up a label for it

Cognition and language are independent (Chomsky)

Cognition is separate from language (William syndrome [language deficiencies]; SLI children [specific language impairment-difficulties with oral languages])

Syntax versus Semantics

Collectively refer to the rules used for combining words into meaningful sentences. Syntax: Process of words combined into sentences Semantics: Relationship between words and meanings Semantics can overpower syntax 1. We read or hear what we expect 2. Making educated guesses on what happens next

Language vs. Communication

Communication is the process of sharing or giving information, feelings, and attitudes [general] Language is a code with structural properties characterized by a set of rules for producing and comprehending utterances [rules]

Arcuate fasciculus

Connections between the Broca's area and Wernicke's area (subcortical fibers [below the cortex]); damage to it causes Conductive aphasia (Associate aphasia); stroke, brain trauma or tumors Conductive aphasia: Fluent in speech, but have difficulties in naming and unable to repeat

Dolphins (Lori Herman)

Demonstrated linguistic ability like a 2 year old ③ Not language but arbitrary, can adapt to sign language, have displacement, is productive, uses telegraphic speech (can't understand complex sentences or morphemes) ④ Limited language ⑤ Video-gestures (words)

Semantics: Types of Meaning

Denotative meaning Connotative meaning Literal meaning Figurative meaning

Language depends on cognition (Piaget)

He came up with the first form of cognition and actually studied children (language was not special it's a symbolic skill that little kids develop) Piaget believed that cognition develops as a result of the child's nonlinguistic interactions with the world. His ideas fit the framework that thought is entirely independent of language

Linguistic Competence

In phonologies, syntax, and grammars Is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a language system is used in communication.

Wernicke's area

Language comprehension A region of the brain concerned with the comprehension of language, located in the posterior left temporal lobe (temporal lobe) by the auditory cortex. Damage in this area causes Wernicke's aphasia, characterized by fluent speech, grammatical speech but an inability to use or understand more than the most basic nouns and verbs (poor comprehension) and neologisms (made up words); (stroke) Made up hand movements in sign language; can't communicate with others; high rate of suicides; commonly mistaken as Schizophrenic and would be throw into psych wards

Relationship Between Cognition and Language (4 theories)

Language depends on cognition (Piaget) Cognition depends on language (Sapir-Worf) Cognition and language are independent (Chomsky) Language and cognition interact (Vygotsky, Bates)

What is the relationship between cognition and language?

Language is the way we communicate with each other using words, sentences, grammar and syntax. It has to do with words. Cognition is how we think, what we think, and why we think. It has to do with our thoughts. When we create our thoughts inside our heads (so to speak) we do so using words. (Before we learned words as infants, we still had thoughts...just not words.) Cognition precedes language.

Global aphasia

Large infarct (tissues; blockage of oxygen, blood; clogs, bleeding) to the left hemisphere Problems with: 1. Repeating 2. Naming 3. Comprehending speech 4. Production of speech 5. Language is pretty much wiped out; the difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected. Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language

Broca's area

Most strongly related to language production A region of the brain concerned with the production of speech, located in the inferior frontal gyrus (frontal lobe area) next to the motor cortex; left hemisphere. Damage in this area causes Broca's aphasia, characterized by difficulties with pronunciation and little grammatical structure, telegraphic speech (nouns and vocabs), naming difficulties, but good comprehension; (stroke) Speech is an output motor; written language/sign language mostly light up the Broca's area Can say oh my, oh no, no good; it is attached to emotional words which comes from the right hemisphere; Know what they want to say but can't say it or write it (same thing with sign language)

Categorical Perception

Occurs when items that range along a continuum are perceived as being either more or less similar to each other than they really are because of the way they are categorized. For example, if items falling within a certain range along that continuum belong to a single category, they will be perceived as being more similar to each other than items outside of that range. Categorical perception helps us to detect the differences between things when we need to be able to, and it masks the differences when we need to treat things as the same. The Japanese language doesn't differentiate between the /l/ and /r/ sounds, so through categorical perception, the brains of native Japanese speakers have learned to treat the two sounds as the same by actually hearing the same sound when each is spoken. Problem of invariance: words are pronounce different between speakers-Happy Halloween; perceptions and predictions

(Child) language acquisition

Psychologists have different theories on language acquisition, or the process by which we learn to speak, write, or even use sign language in meaningful ways to communicate. Innate (brain) and species specific (humans are the only ones that have language) Language Acquisition Device (LAD): In the brain, the environment triggers it, and boom! You are learning! (it is a hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for children's innate predisposition for language acquisition. First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language)

Semantics

Relationship between words and meanings The study of the linguist meaning of words, phrases, and sentences

Syntax

Rules that governs language The arrangements of words to show their relationship to one another in a sentence. Process of words combined into sentences ① Word order (different between oral and written language) ② Phrase order ③ Number agreement (influence comphrehensive of what you are trying to say)

Language

Set of symbols and rules for combining those symbols that allows for communication and comprehension Phonology Semantics Mental Lexicon Grammar (morphology and syntax) Pragmatics

Whale/dolphin songs

Signature whisper; communication The mechanisms used to produce sound vary from one family of cetaceans to another. Marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are much more dependent on sound for communication and sensation than are land mammals, because other senses are of limited effectiveness in water It is symbolic and arbitrary but not productive

Communicative Competence

Social situation Is a term in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.

Psycholinguistics

Study of Psychological processes involved in using language; Focus on linguistic performance Linguistics: Study of rules that define language; Focus is on lingusuistic competence

Coarticulation

The joint articulation of adjacent phonemes can affect the sound of each phoneme. the way the brain organizes sequences of vowels and consonants, interweaving the individual movements necessary for each into one smooth whole. In fact, the process applies to all body movement, not just speech, and is part of how homo sapiens works.

Figurative meaning

The metaphorical, idiomatic, or ironic sense of a word or expression, in contrast to its literal meaning

Arbitrariness/Symbolic

The relationship between speech sounds (form) and their meanings (concepts) they represent is arbitrary - We name things in an arbitrary way The relationship between the symbol and its meaning is arbitrary, language is tremendously flexible. The symbols do not represent the concepts to which they refer; they (typically) in no way represent the concepts to which they refer.

Pragmatics

The social use of language Effects of context on language processing 1. Linguistic Competence 2. Communicative Competence

Phonology

The sound system of a language The study of speech sounds and sound patterns and how they function in the language system There are approximately 3000 languages in the world The study of basic speech sounds Phones (smallest speech unit that can be identified doesn't necessarily affect meaning; ex, the /o/ in boat spoken by a Minnesotan is physically different from the /o/ in boat spoken by a New Yorker) and Phoneme (Smallest speech unit that distinguishes meaning; ex, boat has three phonemes: /b/, /o/, and /t/) All three thousand languages use 50 or fewer sounds that the vocal mechanism can produce called phonemes

Clever Hans (William Von Osten)

The story of Clever Hans, the mathematical horse (the owner William Von Osten) The horse paid attention to small unconscious gestures/facial expressions of the people asking him questions/observers. Looking down at the hooves signaled him to start. If they expected him to say yes they would slightly nod. Pfungst discovered this when blinding the horse or no one in the audience knew the answer nonverbal cues; operate conditioning (Skinner

Morphology

The study of the structure and content of words (Morpheme)

Productivity

The symbols can be combined to create an infinite number of new combinations The potential number of utterances, as well as the number of words and meanings in human languages is practically infinite. Humans can come up with terms such as myspace codes or property in Cyprus and the number of these terms has no possible limits. In animal communication every signal has a fixed reference which means that it can only refer to one idea and its meaning cannot be broadened. In addition, it seems that animals cannot invent new signals in order to describe new ideas.

Language and cognition interact (Vygotsky, Bates)

They develop independently, but throughout development, they intertwine

Displacement

This feature of languages refers to the ability to speak not only about what is happening at the time and place of talking. but also about other situation, future and past., real or unreal. As far as we know, the majority of animals cannot do that, nonetheless as the research suggest the bee can direct other bees to a food source. This might mean that the bees' communication system also possesses this feature, although in some limited fashon.

Second Generation Language Studies

Was designed to overturn the criticisms; taught chimps to use computers Rumbaughs (ア) LANA (イ) Sherman & Austin (ウ) Kanzi

Free vs. Bound Morphemes

Word morphemes are free because they occur independently, but prefix or suffix morphemes are bound because they must attach to a free morpheme Ex. Cat (one meaning), Cats (carries meaning but cannot exist by itself) Ex. Un/dead, how many morphemes? 2 (1 free and 1 bound); un/play/ed, how many morphemes? 3 (1 free and 2 bound)

Code switching

You could adjust your speech based on your social environments (Ex. Friends, family, work, etc.); you speak differently from slang to formal (appropriate contexts) (Hello everyone-coworkers versus hey bitches-friends)

Bee "dancing" (Karl von Frisch)

ethologist A dance used by honeybees to communicate Not language; not productive, not arbitrary, but is symbolic

Bird songs/calls (Konrad Lorenz)

ethologist; famous for imprinting baby ducks-socially bonded; instinctive bonding Not productive, not generative

Communication

is the process of sharing or giving information, feelings, and attitudes [general]

Literal meaning

literally that what it means; is the most obvious or non-figurative sense of a word or words--language that's not perceived as metaphorical (figure of speech), ironic, hyperbolic, or sarcastic

Denotative meaning

no emotional contexts; Denotation refers to the direct or dictionary meaning of a word, in contrast to its figurative or associated meanings (connotations)

Grammar

rules that govern how words can be combined

Morpheme

smallest unit of language and content of words

Polysemy

the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Dominate vs. subordinate meanings (ア) Can change depending on life experiences, influences (イ) Secondary importance

Semanticity

the symbols of language refer to meaningful aspects of the real world

Connotative meaning

there is emotional contexts; Connotation refers to the emotional implications and associations that a word may carry, in contrast to its denotative (or literal) meanings

LANA (Rumbaughs)

② Chimpanzee ③ Lexigram (arbitrary, symbolic) touching these symbols on the computer screen ④ First to recognized symbols ⑤ Didn't get rewarded for correct response

Sherman & Austin (Rumbaughs)

② Chimpanzees ③ First non-human primates to use the linguistic system to communicate with each other ④ Used the symbolic system to communicate with each other using the lexigram system to solve problems

Kanzi (Rumbaughs)

② Try to teach he the lexigram system (been taught for a year and failed) ③ One day, he started using it, emerged into a linguistic environment and started to learn ④ Not telegraphic (complex sentences) ⑤ Have a little problem with morphemes ⑥ Learned language by demonstrating spoken language; can understand us when we talk so we don't need a lexigram