Language and Communication

What is communication in the adaptationist view?

The relation between a signal and its response

What is a signal and response in an adaptationist view of communication?

Signal → an act/structure which has evolved to alter the behaviour of another organism (not just inferred)

Response → an act/structure which has evolved to be affected by the signal

What is the informational view of communication?

• Biological signals carry information about the world

• Information is a reduction in uncertainty

What are the six modalities of communication?

• Vocal

• Facial

• Olfactory (smell)

• Gesture

• Bodily

• Visual

What is language?

1. An open and generative system

2. Linguistic signals are referential and can be symbolic

3. Language is hierarchically structured and governed by syntactic rules

What does referential mean?

What is refers to in the real world

What is the hierarchy of language made up of?

1. Semantic

2. Syntactic

3. Morphological

4. Phonological

What are the five universal features of language?

Phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology

What is syntax?

The rules and principles that govern the structure of a language

What are semantics?

The meaning and relationship of linguistic units and their meaning

What is phonology?

The organisation of speech sounds

What is a phonemes?

The smallest units of sound recognisable as speech that are meaningless themselves but form meaningful units

What is pragmatics?

How context contributes to meaning

What is a homonymn?

Two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but with different meanings

What is morphology?

The structure of words and the rules of how they are formed

What are morphemes?

The smallest meaningful units of language

Why is language modality-independent?

• Speech

• Sign-langauge

• Written-language

Explain why we did not evolve from chimpanzees and bonobos?

We shred a common ancestor with them from 5-7 million years ago

What are the two evolutions of language?

Vocalisations and gestures

What are the different forms of primate communication?

1. Communicative flexibility

2. Referential communication

3. Call sequences

4. Audience effects

5. Great ape gestures

What is referential communication?

Vocalisations that refer to objects/events in the world

What do playback experiments?

Used to experimentally test what information is conveyed to receivers

What are primate referential alarm calls?

Vervet monkeys

What are the two types of referential vocalisations?

Alarm calls and food calls

What is syntax?

The arrangement of words and sounds to create sentenced

What animals use call sequences as a basic form of syntax?

Putty-nosed monkey alarm calls

What experiment did they do to measure bonobo call sequences?

Playback experiment - produced bark, peep, peep-yelp, yelp, grunt

What is compositionality?

The capacity to combine meaningful elements into meaningful structures

What are the two types of compositionality and what do they mean?

Trivial - combinations meaning is the sum of the meaning of its parts

Nontrivial - one element changes the meaning of the other

What primates show compositionality?

Bonobo’s vocal communication

What experiment showed compositionality in bonobo vocal communication?

Berthet et al. recorded 700 calls and sequences and estimated meaning

Produced 7 call types which they combine to form at least 3 nontrivial sequences

Occurred in context of coordinating travel

How do chimpanzees show audience effects and intentionality?

Inform their friends about food presence and danger

Describe the experiment where it was found out that chimpanzees inform each other about danger

• Predator presentation experiment

• Wash how they respond to snake

• Adapt their signalling to change others knowledge state

What is a gesture?

A discrete mechanically ineffective body movement used to communicate intentionally to change the behaviour of their receive

What is a discrete gesture?

Distinct event driven action

Facts about ape gestures

• Produced flexibly across many contexts

• Can be learned, modified and invented

• Show intentional control

• Some gestures have specific meanings

How many gestures can wild chimpanzees produce?

66 gestures with 19 meanings

What is visual modality?

The process of receiving and understanding information through the sense of sight

What chimpanzees were used to try and teach apes spoken language?

Gus and Viki

What happened to Gus the chimpanzee?

• Raised as a child

• Never produced intelligible words

What happened to Viki the chimpanzee?

• Raised as a child

• Given reinforcement training

• 7 years training, only 4 poor words

What apes were taught American sign language?

• Washoe - chimpanzee

• Koko - gorilla

• Chantek - orangutan

• Nim - chimpanzee

What happened with Washoe?

• Produced around 150-200 ASL signs

• Understood hundred of signs

• Signed with other chimpanzees

• Evidence of creative

What happened to Nim Chimpsky?

• Raised like human child

• 350 ASL sign

• Sign was not like language

• Very slow compared to human child

• Ethical issues

What happened to Kanzi?

• Bonobo that understood at least 3000 words

• Used lexigram board to communicate

• Mainly just requests and demands

Why do language-trained apes not really have language?

• Limited production

• Make demands rather than communicate

• Limited syntax

• Slow acquisition

• Not natural

Where is Broca’s area found?

Inferior frontal gyrus of the front lobe in the left hemisphere

What is Broca’s area important for?

Speech production

What did an MRI scan show about Broca’s area in apes?

• MRI of 27 great apes

• Show evidence of a homologue of Broca’s area - Brodman’s area 44

Where is Wernicke’s area located?

Temporoparietal junction of the posterior superior temporal lobe

What is the function of Wernicke’s area?

Important in the perception of speech, phonological processing and language comprehension

Explain the experiment that looked at 12 chimpanzees brains?

Left hemisphere asymmetries in part of Wernicke’s area

What are the evolutions of ape brains and language?

• Gestures

• Handedness

• Vocalisations

What is multi-modality?

Use of hand and mouth gestures to understand language

What is the social brain hypothesis?

Social complexity drives primate cognition

What is the Dunbar number?

The number of people you can know well

What is the cultural intelligence hypothesis?

Co-evolution of cognition and culture

How does brain size change as type of primate moves forward in time?

Brain becomes larger

What is the foraging brain hypothesis?

The high cognitive demands of searching and acquiring food drove the evolution of large complex brains

Wat does new research suggest about the prediction of brain size expansion?

Diet not sociality is a better predictor

When was there a rapid increase in Homo brain size and cerebral blood flow?

800,000 - 2000,000 years ago

When did tool-use begin?

2.6 million years ago

When were more complex hand-axes created

700,000 years ago in the late acheulean

When do the first symbolic artefacts date back to?

120,000 years ago

Who discovered mirror neurones?

Rizolatti and colleagues in 1992

What do mirror neurons do?

Match observed and executed actions

What are mirror neurones important in?

Language, imitation, action learning, action understanding and empathy

What is the gestural theory of language evolution?

Human language originated from manual gestures and body language

What is more active during speech perception?

MNs and the motor system

What processing are MNs important in?

Lower-level rather than higher-level processes that infer others intentions

What occurs in the left hemisphere?

Analysis of sequences

• comprehension/production of speech and language

• logic, reasoning, analysis

What happens in the right hemisphere?

Visual-spatial skills

• processing space and shapes

• organising a narrative

• understanding speech rhythm and intonation

• recognising and expressing emotion

• music

How can epileptic activity spread from one hemisphere to another?

Corpus callosum

What are split brain patients?

• Left - read and verbally communicate

• Right - identify visuo-spatial info not linguistically communicate

What is Brocas’s aphasia?

• typically due to strokes

• problems in language production

• comprehension intact

• may have partial paralysis

What is Wernicke’s aphasia?

• problem in lang comprehension

• fluent but meaningless

• patient unaware of deficit

• no partial paralysis

Negativity of bilinguals?

• Weaker in verbal skills

• Lower verbal fluency

Benefits of bilingualism?

• better executive control

• superior mental flexibility

What is joint activation?

The constant activation of both languages in a bilinguals brain

What are the two options about where language can come from?

Innate (biologically predisposed) or learned

What is the Nativist Perspective?

• Humans are biologically disposed to acquire language

• Noam Chomsky - innate brain module that allows children to learn language

• Humans born ready for universal grammar

What is Universal Grammar?

An abstract set of rules common to all languages

What is the support for Nativism?

• Children master language quickly

• Children can invent new languages w/o exposure

• Newborns are sensitive to language

• Children pass through predictable language stages

What is the sensitive period for language?

The period in early childhood when language develops

How is linguistic competence predicted?

By age of acquisition, not length of exposure

What is the critical period for language?

Linguistic input is vital for development

What are the limitations of the Nativist approach?

• Universal grammar not identified

• Neuroscience shows distributed nature of language

• Nativism focusses on certain aspects of language

• Overlooks the influence of the environment on gene expression

• Can be explained in other ways

What is the learning (empiricist) perspective?

• Skinner/Bruner

• Focuses on the child’s external world with language acquired through learned

• Learning depends on domain-general cognitive abilities

• Children learn to construct the world through their own actions

What is the Interactionist Perspective?

• Lev Vygotsky

• Biologically prepared to acquire lang but maturing and environment influence its development

• Universal stages but still lots of plasticity in lang acquisition

What is the Developmental Systems Approach?

• Focus on epigenetic interaction between genes and environment

• Sensitive to lang but need social interaction

What are the building blocks of speech?

2 months - cooing

3-4 months - proto-phones

4-6 months - onset of babbling

How is babbling defined?

Culturally specific and incorporates sounds from the infants native language

How do care givers actively support language development?

Language is a social process so quality of environment important

What are infant-directed speech?

• Short, simple sentences

• Exaggerated and slow

• High pitched and repetitive

• Involves pointing and facial expressions

When does the vocabulary explosion begin?

18-24 months

How many words does an average 5 year old know?

10,000

At what age do children begin using symbolic gestures?

10-12 months

What children invented language from scratch?

Nicaraguan sign language

What are the two main forms of pointing?

Imperative - pointing to request something (apes as well)

Declarative - pointing to share info and direct attention (only human)

When does declarative pointing start?

Around 12 months