PSYC 190 - Learning Language

What is a representation?

A way of displaying or depicting something, often used to convey complex ideas or concepts through models, symbols, or other visual means.

we can think of the brain as a representational system, it tries to make shrunken idealized copies of things, places and experiences that capture just the information that the learned finds important

what is one old view on learning?

researchers believed that when babies are born their mind is like an empty sponge, ready to soak up whatever information and experiences it’s exposed to

What is tabula rasa?

a term originally described by ancient greek philosopher Aristote, meaning a blank slate or chalkboard upon which all that we know is written by experience in the world

What did the Little Albert Experiment attempt to prove?

conducted by John B. Watson

tried to prove that babies could learn just about anything including the fear of furry rabbits and Santa Clause

What was the Little Albert Experiment?

the infant was presented with a white lab rat and standing behind the infant was Watson who banged a steel bar with a hammer causing him to cry in fear

after repeating the sequence several times, Watson then presented Albert with only the rat and found that he cried and crawled away even though there was no loud noise

Albert also became distressed when presented with things that looked like a rat including a bunny or a Santa Clause mask

What are the ethics consideration in studies?

ethics boards review all proposed studies and rule out any study that’s judged to be cruel or potentially of harm to participants

Who was Ivan Pavlov?

Ivan Pavlov and his study with dogs

Pavlov showed that if a gong was struck each time before a dog received food, merely striking the gong would eventually cause the dog to salivate, even when no meat was present

How does Classical Condition work?

Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response. Over time, the neutral stimulus alone can trigger the same response as the unconditioned stimulus.

What is unconditioned stimuli?

there are certain stimuli in the world that babies, and dogs respond to automatically without previously learning, innately as it were → these stimuli are called unconditioned stimuli since no learning or conditioning is required too get response from them (unconditioned responses)

(ex: in Pavlov’s study the meat is the unconditioned stimulus and drooling is the unconditioned response

What is the conditioned stimulus?

when some stimulus becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus

Why is classical conditioning important?

it’s one of the mechanisms that allows us to predict what’s likely to happen next in our environment and thus make us better able to navigate life

What is critical to our survival?

the ability to associate earlier events with later outcomes is critical (ex: where there’s smoke there’s fire)

what is the problem with classical conditioning?

in its pure form, its limited to describing how stimuli become associated with unconditioned innate responses

Are all capable behaviors of humans, reflexes?

no, we engage in many complex multi-step goal directed behaviors like solving a puzzle or a math problem

how might we learn behaviors that aren’t reflexes?

B.F Skinner suggested that operant conditioning might allow such learning

What is extinction?

the ending of behaviors by continuous non-reinforcement

the reduction of a behavior when a previous reward is withdrawn

what is an example of operant conditioning in the wild?

imagine a 6-month-old baby in their crib, looking up at a mobile. Initially the baby may randomly move her limbs around and accidentally hit the mobile, noticing that this makes it move and maybe make a sound then they may repeat the action which is no longer random but goal directed

what is operant conditioning?

a learning process through which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment.

What is positive reinforcement?

rewarding a behavior to encourage its repetition (e.g., praise, dessert)

what is negative reinforcement?

Encouraging a behavior by the removal of a negative consequence (e.g., rewarding the use of the toilet by letting a child go without diapers)

what is positive punishment?

Punishing a behavior to discourage its repetitions with an aversive stimulus (e.g scolding)

what is a negative punishment?

removing a reward to discourage the repetition of a behavior (e.g, grounding, removal of privileges)

Breakdown of the types of punishment

positive - adding stimuli

negative- removing stimuli

reinforcement- keep behavior

punishment - discourage behavior

Are punishments and rewards effective?

Different things works for different behaviors, it matters a lot how rewards and punishments are dolled out

associations with reward and punishment

we can shape their behavior with punishment short term, but we also risk instilling other feelings/emotions (eg., fear and anxiety)

what is a variable reinforcement?

It is a schedule of reinforcement that provides rewards after a varying number of responses or a varying amount of time, leading to a stronger and more persistent behavior.

(think of vegas and a slot machine)

what is continuous reinforcement?

encourage a behavior is to reward it every time it occurs, to be consistent

what is a problem with continuous reinforcement?

Children may come to see a behavior as only worthwhile if it’s rewarded

what is a possible solution to the problem with continuous reinforcement?

most experts recommend setting up rewards that you view as good in. and of themselves (ex: rewarding a kid for reading with special alone time for kids like one-on-one trips to the library or bookstore, or making a plan to watch popular movies like the Harry Potter series, only after the child has read the books)

What is fixed reinforcement?

where rewards occur either after a fixed amount of time (fixed interval) or after a fixed number of repetitions of the behavior, (fixed ratio)

Whining and reinforcement

most parents know that if you give into whining it will only become more frequent in the future but possible they very worst of all is to only give in sometimes, to resist 80% of the time but then in a moment of weakness to give the child they want. Worst of all is to first resist whining, then give in if it goes on and on, effectively teaching your child that only extremely persistent whining is effective. The best best is extinction, being as close to 100% consistent in not rewarding whining and teaching kids to replace whining with other modes of request

What did Noam Chomsky and other linguist argue about language?

argued that infants must have a special learning mechanism that is devoted specifically to learning language and that whatever this mechanism is, it must be unique to humans

What did Skinner think about language?

he thought that language was a straightforward case of reinforcement learning, where correct uses of sounds are reinforced either directly by approval or perhaps more implicitly, by people simple understanding you

what is the difference between babies and adults in regards to language?

babies are better than adults at hearing differences in sounds and can tell any distinction made by any of the world’s languages

Besides sounds, what do infants also need to learn about language?

they need to learn the structure of their language [subject, verb, object]

What was the study on language by Johnson and Newport?

they asked adults who had immigrated from China and South Korea to rate sentences. What they found is that performance was perfect among immigrants who had arrived before the age of seven but significantly worse in people who arrived between ages 8-10

What was the Nicaragua language study/findings?

In 1980s schools for deaf children were created but they didn’t teach kids and establish sign language and instead tried to teach spanish using lip reading and finger spelling without a whole lot of success.

what did have success was what happened at recess when kids were allowed to interact, play, and communicate with one another →Nicaraguan Sign Language emerged

what are home-signs?

idiosyncratic signs that are used with their families

Nicaraguan Sign Language

the language changed/adapted because of the new generations implying more structure

it was a process of imposing structure on input, structure that apparently can be imposed if children get language exposure relatively early in life, consistent with some kind of innate sensitive period

Word Bank (stanford.edu)

allows you to look up individual words to see why when kids generally learn them, it also allows us to see how many words most kids know at different ages

there is really no cluster of dots which means kids vary

How does word bank work and where does the data come from?

word bank uses surveys first established by researchers at san diego state university where parents were simply asked to check off which words their child uses and which ones they seem to understand

What are some advantages of knowing more than one language?

1. allows you to communicate with a wider range of people (grandparents, friends, etc.)

2. may open up economic possibilities

3. allows us to collaborate with people in distant places who share common social goods

how can a child become bilingual when they live in a home where only one language is spoken?

two important factors:

1. age of acquisition

2. language of peer group

exposure to language input and interaction with speakers of the second language. start early peer group (immersion schools, extended community)

are there cognitive benefits of bilingualism?

a now quite large number of correlation studies claim that bilingual kids are smarter in one specific way

what do the studies on bilingualism claim?

when we learn two languages, we’re forced to constantly be switching back and forth from one language. this constant switching, they claim, involves a type of cognitive control that is central to human intelligence and our ability to plan, think flexibly about problems and to stop old undesirable habits and replace them with new behaviors

What are executive function (EF)?

Executive functions are cognitive processes that include working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, which help individuals plan, focus attention, and manage multiple tasks.

what are the three components for EF?

1. planning

2. flexibility

3. stopping or inhibition (ability to stop automatic response/prepotent response)

Go/ No go task

in this task the child is told to make a response whenever a particular stimulus occurs and stop when another stimulus is shown (e.g flower task → clap for flowers stop for frog)

bilingual > monolinguals on test of EF

What are two concerns with bilingualism research on EF?

1. almost all studies are correlational not experimental

2. small samples which makes it less likely that any particular study reflects the general population

what are correlational studies?

Correlational studies are research methods that examine the relationship between two or more variables to determine if a change in one variable is associated with changes in another, without implying causation.

what is the file drawer problem?

when scientist conduct a study and fail to find a relationship between two variables, these studies are much harder to publish

what are the pros and cons of the file drawer problem?

pro: we don’t want the scientific literature to be littered with reports of things that aren’t correlated

con: often we find correlations by mistake that aren’t real and something the would normally strike us as a bizarre question to ask suddenly seems genius

getting findings published in journals

turns out that positive findings presented at conferences ended up getting accepted to journals almost 70% of the time whereas negative results only got published in journals. about 30% of time time