Psych 101 Week 13

Paul Broca

-Paul Broca reported on the postmortem examination of Leborge and another patient who both suffered from aphasia in 1861. -Aphasia is a deficit in language production and/or comprehension. -LeBorgne had a deficit in language production: he was only capable of producing one syllable following his brain injury: 'Tan

Phonology

-Phonology is the study of the system of sounds within a particular language, and is interested in the set of sounds (phonemes) used in a language (e.g., /b/ vs. /d/). -There are phonological rules for how sounds can be combined in your language to make words

Semantics

-Process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words -Meaning of words -Homonyms (e.g. "bank") should be really difficult to understand but they often aren't -The context helps bias the meaning we accept (e.g., if by a river, much more likely to think of a "river bank") -We process all of the contextual information available to us so as to bias our interpretations of words

Communication

-Process of conveying information that both the sender and receiver can understand

Does language shape thoughts and actions or do thoughts and beliefs shape language?

-Sapir and Whorf proposed that language determines thought, suggesting, for example, that a person whose community language did not have past-tense verbs would be challenged to think about the past -This idea is too absolute and lack empiricism

Morphology

-Morphology is the study of the words in a particular language, how those words are formed and their relationship to other words in the language.

"Unbreakable" morphemes

-"un-" is a prefix that is a bound morpheme referring to cannot -"break" is a word that is a free morpheme -"-able" is being used as a suffix so it is a bound morpheme here

What did Broca conclude that language production was mediated by?

-After examining a total of 9 aphasic patients, Broca concluded that language production was mediated by the left inferior frontal lobe. This brain area became known as Broca's area

Babbling stage

-After the first few months of life, babies enter what is known as the babbling stage, during which time they tend to produce single syllables that are repeated over and over. -As time passes, more variations appear in the syllables that they produce. -During this time, it is unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers. -Interestingly, babies who are raised inenvironments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage

Stage 1 of language development

-Age 0-3 months -Reflexive communication

Stage 4 of language development

-Age 12-18 months -First words

Stage 5 of language development

-Age 18-24 months -Simple sentences of 2 words

Stage 6 of language development

-Age 2-3 years -Sentences of three or more words

Stage 7 of language development

-Age 3-5 years -Complex sentences;has conversations

Stage 2 of language development

-Age 3-8 months -Reflexive communication; interest in others

Stage 3 of language development

-Age 8-13 months -Intentional communication; sociability

Overgeneralization in language development

-As a child's lexicon grows, she begins to utter simple sentences and to acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace. -In addition, children begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s). -Even the mistakes that children sometimes make provide evidence of just how much they understand about those rules. -This is sometimes seen in the form of overgeneralization -Overgeneralization refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. -For example, in English, it is usually the case that an "s" is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. -For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. -Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the "add an s to the end of the word" rule and say things like "those two gooses" or "three mouses." Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned.

Behaviourist view of language development

-B.F Skinner believed that language is learned through reinforcement -The behaviourists thought that language development occurs via reinforcement and punishment from parents and other caregivers -Problem: Children will seemingly create new sentences/ideas despite not having heard them

Carl Wernicke found that what other area in the left temporal lobe is a language are?

-On the basis of 10 clinical case studies, in 1874 Carl Wernicke concluded that there is another language area in the left temporal lobe. -This second language area, which Wernicke concluded was involved in language comprehension, became known as Wernicke's area.

Development of language in babies

-Children begin to learn about language at a very early age -It appears that this occurs before birth -Newborns show preference for their mother's voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages -Babies are also attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language vs. videos that do not synchronize with the audio -Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the "s" in vision and the "ss" in fission); early on, they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments. -However, by the time that they are about 1 year old, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments

Chomsky and language acquisition

-Chomsky asserted instead of reinforcement, the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined -The use of language develops in the absence of formal instruction and follows a similar pattern in children from vastly different cultures and backgrounds -WE are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language (we are born with a language acquisition device) to learn language quickly and easily, so long as we are adequately exposed to it -It appears that there is a critical period of language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes

Language

-Communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another -System of communication employing signals that convey meaning, which are combined according to grammatical rules -Language is a form of communication but not all communication is language -Species can communicate through one another via postures, movements, odours, or vocalizations which is crucial for species that need to interact and develop relationships

English speakers vs. Dani people of Papua New Guinea

-Dani has 2 words for colour: one word for LIGHT and one word for DARK -The English language has 11 colour words -Researchers hypothesized that the number of color terms could limit the ways that the Dani people conceptualized color. -However, the Dani were able to distinguish colors with the same ability as English speakers, despite having fewer words at their disposal. -A recent review of research aimed at determining how language might affect something like color perception suggests that language can influence perceptual phenomena, especially in the left hemisphere of the brain. -You may recall from earlier chapters that the left hemisphere is associated with language for most people. -However, the right (less linguistic hemisphere) of the brain is less affected by linguistic influences on perception (Regier & Kay, 2009)

"one word" stage of language

-Generally, a child's first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will remain in the "one word" stage of language development. -During this time, children know a number of words, but they only produce one-word utterances. -The child's early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. -Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning. -So, for example, a child saying "cookie" could be identifying a cookie or asking for a cookie.

Case of Genie

-Genie was considered mentally impaired by her abusive father, and she was banished to her basement for the first 13 years of her life. -She was beaten for making any sounds, and never learned language. -Genie learned some aspects of language well such as words but struggled to be generative with her language -The case of Genie suggested that there is a sensitive period for language development -If language is not acquired by puberty (or earlier??) one may never learn a language properly

Damage to Wernicke's area may cause what?

-He further suggested that damage the Wernicke's area produces an aphasia (termed Wernicke's aphasia) that is primarily receptive: poor language/ speech comprehension but normal sounding speech production.

Marc Dax

-In 1836, Marc Dax, a relatively unknown rural doctor, presented a report at a scientific meeting. Dax noted that of the more than 40 brain-damaged patients with speech problems that he had seen in his career, not one of them had damage restricted to the right hemisphere. -His report was ignored, in large part because his contemporaries did not believe that functions were localized within the brain -His findings anticipated one of the biggest areas of modern neuropsychological research

Features of Language

-Language can be decomposed into various features and the features vary from language to language (e.g., sounds used, grammar rules, etc.)

Displacement

-Language includes displacement: You can still communicate about something even in its absence e.g. explain a trip to Hawaii without actually going there

Linguistic determinism

-Language influencing the way we think e.g. English and Mandarin Chinese speakers talk and think about time differently. English speakers think about time using terms that describe changes along a horizontal dimension. For example, saying something like "I'm running behind schedule" or "Don't get ahead of yourself". Chinese speakers also describe time in horizontal terms but also vertical arrangement. Past may be "up" to them and future may be "down" for them -Differences in language translate into differences in performance on cognitive tests designed to measure how quickly an individual can recognize temproal relationships -Specifically, when given a series of tasks with vertical priming, Mandarin Chinese speakers were faster at recognizing temporal relationships between months. -Boroditsky (2001) sees these results as suggesting that "habits in language encourage habits in thought

Which hemisphere is dominant for language?

-Left

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Wada Test

-Sedate half of the brain with an anesthetic to the left or right carotid artery, and then examine language functioning. -If the left hemisphere (LH) is "asleep" and language function is arrested, that person's LH is involved in language processing. If the LH is "asleep" and language function persists, that person's right hemisphere is involved in language processing -For almost all right-handed people, and most left-handed people, arresting the LH impairs language functioning-- confirming the lateralization of language function to the LH

What do we use to construct language?

-Semantics and syntax

Parsing

-Separating a complex stream of speech into discrete words = parsing -Part of language acquisition device may involve the ability to use statistical regularities to help parse speech effectively

Grammer

-Set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon

Morphemes

-Smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning (e.g., "I" is both a phoneme and a morpheme) -Phoneme can be combined to form morphemes -Morphemes are said to either be bound (cannot stand alone) or free (can stand alone). -Bound = multi -Zoo = free -The word "bananas" is made up of 1 bound and 1 free morphemes

Components of language

-Spoken, signed, or written language has specific components : Lexicon and grammar

Pragmatics

-Study of how language is used and the relevance of context for understanding language

Surface vs. Deep Structure

-The message = deep structure -Arrangement of words/variety of ways in which you could express an idea linguistically = surface structure -We can have a different surface structure and same deep structure

Arbitrariness of language

-The relationship between sounds and meanings are arbitrarily associated

Syntax

-The way words are organized into sentences in a particular language -The rules differ from language to language

Learnability of Language

-We can learn any dialect of a human language and even multiple languages

What did Wernicke suggest damage to Broca's area produce?

-Wernicke suggested that damage to Broca's area produces an aphasia (termed Broca's aphasia) that is primarily expressive: normal language comprehension, but poor speech production.

Sarcasm

-When the literal (semantic) meaning sends one message and the pragmatic meaning sends another

Metaphor

-When there is a deeper meaning than what appears on the surface

Phenome

-Words are formed by combining the various phonemes that make up a language -A phoneme (the sounds "ah" vs . "eh") is a basic sound unit of a given language, and different languages have different sets of phonemes -Phonemes are combined to form morphemes -Phonemes can show considerable variability from language to language (e.g., click sounds in Bantu languages). -Presence or absence of certain sounds in your language can make it more challenging to learn certain other languages. e.g. the phonological part of a message could be /b/, the first sound produced when saying "beautiful"

Lexicon

-Words of a given language -A language's vocabulary

Productivity of Language

-You can flexibly create new words, phrases, and sentences -When small children utter words and sentences that they have never heard before