PSYCH 105 - Language and Thought

lectures from Dr. Arturo Perez

What is language?

System for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning

What is grammar?

Set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages

How does human language differ from other communications?

• Is more complex than other forms of communication

• Involves words representing intangible things

• Used to think and conceptualize (different than other animal species)

How many languages are there?

There are ~7100 human languages and all have a basic structure of sounds and rules

What are the basic units of language?

• Phonemes: (follow phonological rules)

• Morphemes: smallest unit of language that conveys meaning (follow morphological and syntactical rules)

What are the three characteristics of language development?

1. Children learn language at an astonishing rate

2. Children make few errors while learning to speak

3. Children’s comprehension of language faster than their production

How does distinguishing speech sounds work in language development?

Infants can distinguish between ALL human phonemes, but by 6 months, this ability dissipates and they can no longer distinguish between phonemes not present in their L1

• Eg. preferential head turn experiment with Japanese children show that they cannot distinguish between /ɹ/ and /ɹ/

• Note that there is an innate order of phoneme acquisition (plosives first, interdentals last (babies don’t have teeth and can’t produce /θ/ and /ð/))

What are the milestones in language development?

1. 0-4 months: coos, especially in response to speech; can distinguish all human phonemes

2. 4-6 months: consonant babbling

3. 6-10 months: understands some words and simple requests

4. 10-12 months: first words, single-word utterances;

5. 12-18 months: vocabulary of 30-50 words (simple nouns, verbs, adjectives (majority nouns))

6. 18-24 months: two-word utterances follow/order based on syntactic rules; vocabulary of 50-200 words

7. 2-3 years: phrases and incomplete sentences vocabulary of ~1000 words

8. 3+ years: full sentences; mastery of grammatical bound morphemes/function words; vocabulary of 10000+ words; ability to categorize words

• this is a neurotypical development, not all children follow this timeline, and when they don’t it’s generally indicative of a neurodivergent condition

• Note that deaf children will also have babbling stages, but without language input the other development stages are extremely delayed or absent

What is fast mapping?

Occurs when children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure

What is telegraphic speech?

Early child language that is devoid of function morphemes and mainly consists of content words

When are most aspects of the language acquisition process completed by?

4 to 5 years old

What are mistake trends in children that show they are acquiring grammatical rules?

• Incorrect verb forms (commission) → Eg. “breaked” instead of broke shows they are acquiring the “-ed” morpheme

• Overgeneralizations (same principle as above, using one rule across all words not yet knowing irregular forms)

What does the orderly progression of language development depend on?

• General cognitive development

• Experience with a specific language

How does English language acquisition by internationally adopted preschool children compare to infants whose L1 is English?

• Development is the same

• shows that development may be experience-driven

Behaviourism vs. Nativism explanations for language acquisition

• Behaviourism - Language is learned through operant

  conditioning and imitation

• Nativism - Language is innate

Expand on why behaviourist views on language acquisition aren’t the most accurate

• B. F. Skinner

  • parents spend little time teaching language

  • children generate more than just what they hear

  • errors made cannot be explained through conditioning or imitation

Expand on nativist views on language acquisition

• Chomsky

  • Language development is best explained as an innate biological capacity

  • Universal grammar - collection of processes that facilitate language learning

  • Generative grammar - using a set of finite rules, we can create unlimited word combinations and sentences

• Language ability is partly separate from general intelligence.

  • It’s one aspect of it, not one-to-one in development stages

  • Articulatory problems in KE family; phonological loop components of working memory

• Language is harder to learn after puberty.

  • Language acquisition is possible during a restricted period of development (generally before 7 years).

  • fMRI shows that acquiring a second language in early childhood results in different representations in the brain than when learned later.

What are interactionist views on language acquisition?

• Combination of behaviourism and nativism

• Social interaction plays a crucial role in language

  • Social experience interacts with innate biological language abilities

What is the 30-million-word gap?

By age 3, children in high-SES families are exposed to millions more words than were children in lower-SES families

• highly predictive of how these children perform as 3rd graders on language/cognitive tests

How does the brain develop during language development?

As the brain matures, specialization of specific neurological structures takes place, these allow development of language

What is aphasia?

Difficulty in producing or comprehending language

What are the types of aphasia and the brain regions that are involved?

• Fluent/Wernicke’s aphasia - damage to left temporal cortex, affects language comprehension; patients appear to respond properly with correct conversational rules/inflection (Eg. turn-taking) but they’re often speaking nonsense

• Non-fluent/Broca’s aphasia - damage to left frontal cortex, affects language production; patients can understand and know appropriate responses, but cannot form the words, can sometimes be bypassed by singing because they use different brain regions

How involved is the right cerebral hemisphere in language?

Evidence indicates the right cerebral hemisphere contributes to language processing, especially language comprehension

Evidence:

• Right hemisphere activation during language tasks

• Damage to right hemisphere related to subtle language comprehension problems

• Neuroimaging studies reveal evidence of right hemisphere activation during language tasks.

• Some children with left hemisphere removed can still recover many language abilities.

What are past views on bilingualism? What is the evidence to disprove them?

Early studies suggested that bilingualism slows or interferes with cognitive development

• Later studies show that monolingual and bilingual children do not differ in language development but there are advantages and disadvantages for each group.

How does bilingualism affect brain development?

• Learning a second language seems to increase the ability of the left parietal lobe to handle linguistic demands

• Bilingual individuals tend to have a later onset of Alzheimer’s disease

Why can other animals (namely apes/chimps) not learn spoken human language?

Apes’ vocal tracts not well-equipped to produce human language phonemes

• Note that partial success has been seen in trying to teach apes/chimps ASL and written language with keyboards

What are limitations seen in other primates attempting to learn human language?

• Limited vocabulary size

• Limited conceptual repertoire

• Limited understanding of grammar

• Not included in the lecture, but note that there is little evidence of displacement (human language produced by other primates only seems to regard the here and now, generally ask for food, still survival needs)

What is the developmental specialization hypothesis?

Being blind from birth alters typical development of brain specialization, which allows regions normally devoted to vision to be co-opted for language processing

What is the unmasking hypothesis?

Absence of visual input at any time of life “unmasks” the hidden ability of what are typically visual regions to become involved in language processing, even in individuals who first became blind as adult

Which hypothesis about vision and and language does research support?

Developmental specialization hypothesis

• Blindness from birth alters the development of brain specialization

• There is a sensitive period in brain development during which visual cortex can be most effectively co-opted to perform language functions.

What is anendophasia?

A lack of inner monologue

Is language a requirement for thought?

No, even if language is heavily related to thought, language has to have the property of displacement, but thoughts only about the here and now/survival can be considered thoughts

• Many animals have good problem solving abilities, which implies thinking despite a lack of language

What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?

Language shapes the nature of thought

• originated by Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941)

• Eg. “If a language has many different words for the word snow, they are able to see different things that other humans cannot”

• newer studies cast doubt on this theory

How correct was Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis?

He was half-right (elaborate later)

What did studies on language and colour find?

There are different perceptions of colour across different languages but regardless of having more or less words for different colours, subjects seem to show same ability to distinguish hues (children make more mistakes regardless of language)

• casts doubt on Whorf’s theory

What is a concept?

Mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli

• Rules that specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a category

What are 2 conditions that determine categories?

Necessary condition - something that must be true of the object to belong to the category

Sufficient condition - something that, if it is true of the object, proves it belongs to the category

What are 2 major theories to explain how people perform categorization?

Prototype theory - New objects classified by comparing them to the “best” or “most typical” member (the prototype) of a category

• new objects are classified by comparing them to the “prototype” (or most typical) category member

• more holistic process involving image processing

Exemplar theory - Category judgements are made by comparing a new instance with stored memories for some other category cases.

• new objects are classified by comparing them with all category members

• more analysis and decision-making

How to brain different regions play a role in categorization?

• Left hemisphere (language processing done here) and visual cortex primarily involved in forming prototypes

• Right hemisphere, prefrontal cortex, and basal ganglia mainly active in recognizing exemplars

  • Neuroimaging techniques show that we use both when forming concepts and categories

    • forming prototypes is a more holistic process involving image processing

    • exemplar-based learning involves analysis and decision-making

What is category-specific deficit?

Neurological syndrome is characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category

• ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed

• organization of visual regions does not depend on visual experience

Is category-specific brain organization innate?

Yes, research has ben where category-preferential regions showed highly similar activity patterns in blind and sighted individuals, implying category-specific organization of visual regions does not depend on visual experience

What is rational choice theory?

The classical view that decisions are made by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

Why does decision making and rational thinking depend on how problems are described?

• People are good at estimating the frequency of an event

  • People are poor at tasks that require thinking in terms of probability

What are system 1 and system 2 thinking?

• coined by Daniel Kahneman

• System 1 - “irrational” thinking, subconscious, automatic, everyday decisions, error prone

• System 2 - slow, conscious, effortful, complex decisions, reliable

What are heurisitcs?

Fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached

What is the availabiltiy heuristic?

Items more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently

What is the representativeness heuristic?

Mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event with a prototype of the object or event

What is the conjunction fallacy?

People think that two events are more likely to occur together than either as an individual event

What is an algorithm?

The well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem

• in contrast to heuristics

What are framing effects?

People give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed)

What is the sunk-cost fallacy?

People make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation

• Even if something is no longer of benefit, we have a difficult time letting go of it because we’ve put so much time and effort into that thing

What is optimism bias?

People believe that, compared with other individuals, they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future

How is optimism bias seen in research of different cultures?

• Earlier research findings suggest that optimism bias is greater in North Americans than in individuals from Eastern cultures

• More recent research studies examined optimism bias concerning the risk of natural disasters and attacks and reported similar findings

What is prospect theory?

People choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains

• Certainty effect - people simplify available information

• Expected utility - people choose the prospect with the best value

What part of the brain is involved in risky decision making, and how do we know?

The prefrontal lobe

• People with prefrontal lobe damage do not show emotional reactions during risky decision making

• There are similar effects in substance-dependent individuals

• There is greater activation in prefrontal lobe in healthy individuals

What is the correlation between perceived risk and actual risk?

Research reports no correlation between perceived and actual risk regarding COVID-19

• We have a tendency to underestimate risk, and perceived low risk will increase willingness to engage in risky activities

• Intervention can increase the correlation between perceived and actual risk

What is mean-ends analysis?

Process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal

What are the 4 steps of means-ends analysis?

1. Analyze the goal state

2. Analyze the current state

3. List the differences between the states

4. Reduce the list of differences by direct means, generating a subgoal, or finding a similar problem having a known solution (analogical problem solving)

What is analogical problem solving?

Solving a problem using a known solution to a different problem

How do insights play a role in decision making?

Insights involve the spontaneous restructuring of a problem or unconscious incremental processes (smaller parts)

• Insight problem solving may be impacted by processing outside conscious awareness

How do insight problem solving and analytic problem solving differ physiologically?

• EEG data shows brain activity in insight problem solving occurs one-third of a second before the solution was reported

• fMRI results show that only the right temporal area had greater activity for insight solutions over analytic strategies

What is functional fixedness?

A cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in its traditional, intended way, hindering creative problem-solving

• Eg. You need a hammer, and all you have is a stapler, you are so caught up in the intended use of a stapler that you do not realize it’d be just as effective

What is reasoning?

Mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions

What is belief bias?

Judgements about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid

What is syllogistic reasoning?

Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that assumed to be true

• belief-laden trials/reasoning - based off beliefs and not logic, stimulates temporal lobe

• belief-neutral trials/reasoning - based purely of logic, stimulates parietal lobe

What is the illusory truth effect?

Occurs when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge the statement to be true

• Repeated exposure increases the familiarity of a statement, which is mistakenly accepted as evidence that the statement is true.

What is the illusion of explanatory depth?

Illusion that occurs when people overestimate the depth of their understanding; reasoning and truth assessment may be undermined

• research shows that asking people to explain basic concepts/issues helps them realize that they understand a topic less accurately