theories and diversities of language development

what is ieractionism?

understanding to what extent more important than either nature or nurture

what did Chaser the border collie do?

learnt over 1000 words via toys, managed to figure out a new word by process of elimination

what was the FOXP2 gene mutation in KE family?

KE family struggled to talk if inherited this gene mutation, made a number of grammatical errors

why might FOXP2 not be domain specific to language?

the KE family deficits extend to motor control and perception/production of simple rhythms, which shows the gene contributes to skilled coordination of rapid movement sequences and their timing -> not domain specific but most relevant to human speech

how is FOXP2 expressed in other species

in birds, FOXP2 is more greatly expressed during song learning over developmental time

in mice, FOXP2 is more restricted to brain circuits in motor control over developmental time

how has evolution impacted language abilities?

the infant cortex started out pre-specified and has evolved over time to have more structures suited to language

-> Cosmides and Tooby (1994) swiss army knife metaphor

what shows that language is composed of modular parts?

there are specific deficits in adult neuropsychological patients such as prosopagnosia

what is an example of the brain adapting to abnormalities?

44 year old civil servant had posnatal hydrocephalus causing ventriculoatrial shunt, abnormal amount of liquid in the brain, yet patient functioned normally and would have been oblivious

what is Williams syndrome?

Hemizygotic deletion of 26 genes at chromosomal position 7q11.23

what are symptoms of Williams syndrome related to speech?

grammar remains intact whilst intelligence is impaired

why might it be hard to generalise the gene deletion in Williams syndrome to neurotypicals?

other measures such as problem-solving, spatial cognition and number understanding are impaired so those with Williams Syndrome may develop differently from the beginning

what are non-linguistic skills with have a cascading effect on language development?

concepts, joint attention, memory, pattern recognition, motor development and understanding others' intentions (Bradshaw et al, 2022)

what are examples of language being affected by external factors?

Genie and deaf children with hearing parents who aren't exposed to any language have developmental issues due to insufficient language

by the age of 3, high income children know double the vocabulary of words compared to low income

grammatical judgements in a language are affected by the age you are when you move to a certain country