Language 109psych

Test 3

What is language?

An impressive human achievement and enables us to convey thoughts, ideas and feelings

Whorfian hypothesis

Languages shapes thoughts and thought also shapes language and language evolves express new concepts or ideas

Language production

Ability to speak or otherwise use words, phrases and sentences

Language Comprehension

Ability to understand the message conveyed by words, phrases or sentences

Four aspects of language

Phonology, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Phonology

How Phonemes are used. Basic perceptual units of speech, smallest unit of sound which is combined with others

Letters?

Graphemes

Sounds?

Phonemes

Speech perception

Biological miracle, but can be hard to distinguish individual phonemes

Casual speech

15 phonemes/sec

Rebel sports ad

25 phonemes/sec

Speed up speech

45 phonemes/sec

Syntax

Language is governed by a complex set of rules - descriptive grammar or syntax

Phrases

Group of words that act together as a unit to make a sentence and convey meaning

Descriptive grammar

Describes what people say - focused on finding commonalities among speakers

Prescriptive grammar

Approach which tells people how to use their language

Semantics

Meanings of words, symbols and signs and the relationship between words and how we draw meaning from those words

Content(or whole word) morphemes

Bull, charge, quiet, picnic, purple

Function morphemes

The, and, that, a ,an, “s”, “ed”, “ing”

Pragmatics

Way language is used and understood in everyday context

Colloquialisms and slang

Common metaphors and phrases rooted in shared culture.

thoughts transfer

From my mind/brain into your mind/brain

Language production - Generative

Speakers can create new words and sentences that have never been spoken or heard before

Language development

How children acquire language so quickly. With the first three years of life being an optimal time to attain language fluency.

Ahakoa he iti - he iti pounamu

“Although it is small - it is precious”

Burnton et al. (2023) Psych 6th ed, chapter 11

Anyone who has learnt a (new) language as an adult will be humbled by the ease with very small children seem to be able to fluently use the language. A current debate focuses on whether nature or nurture is responsible for this remarkable capacity for language acquisition.

Case for nurture

• Skinner (1957)

• Described language development using the same conditioning principles used for other behaviors
  Reinforcement, punishment, generalization, and discrimination

Childs verbal output

Reinforced by their parents/caregivers which will result in more vocalizations from the child and shape into more recognizable words/sentences.

Language and early infancy

Exchange of looks, smiles and attention, adult reinforcement of any attempt to engage.

Case of nature

• Chomsky (1959, 1963)
  Children cannot possibly learn all the words and grammatical rules they need to proficiently use their language in 3- 4 years with reinforcement alone
  Proposed universal grammar

Innate or learned?

innateness idea steams from observing with ease and which children typically learn spoken language. With 0 to 12 months not happening, 12+ more things are happening

Who critised this?

Bishop(1997), who believed that innate grammar cannot be general enough to account for learning of such different languages

Genetic evidence for innate factors

Bishop et al(2006) - Strong genetic influence on structural and pragmatic language impairments

KE family Liégeois et al (2003) Nature neuroscience

Pediatrician checked child language difficulty and found that there was genetic language difficulty and was found in multiple different family members. Half of the family unable to pronounce certain words, difficulty with language in reading and writing.

Hard wired for words (Jacques Mehler and colleagues (2003)

Infants were recruited to try and understand what was going on using optical topography study (measuring blood flow to the brain) Heard recordings of women reading to them. Normal speech, periods of silence and speech played backwards.

Results?

Children had increased blood flow to the left hemisphere when they heard normal speech but no reaction to backwards speech

Adults talking to children

Child direct speech (Motherese - old term)
High pitched tone of voice, slow speech with exaggerated innoation

Why?

May help infants to parse (break down component parts) the speech signal

Child directed speech

Fernald (1985)
48 4-month infants learned to focus on the sounds from two loudspeakers. Shown to prefer child directed speech than adult conversation

Biological bases of language

Critical period of language learning

Case of Genie

Born 1957, discovered at 13.07 years old
Failure of normal language development and was grammatically impoverished. Absence of function words(words in-between)

Case of Isabella(1938)

Mother was deaf mute
No language and impoverished cognitive development but quickly had a development of speech and caught up with children her age (7 year old)

What does this mean?

Suggests that there is a critical language period

Stage one

0 - 7 months
Crying and cooing

Stage two

4 - 6 months
Babbling using all sounds

Stage three

6 - 9 months
Babbling and speech production is more focused. More use of home language.

Delayed speech development

Babbling is affected for medical reasons - even deaf babies babble but it’s when they do not go to develop specific speech sounds that concern is raised.

Stage four

10 - 12 months
Comprehension - single words occur before 12 months
Production - first word often papa, baba and mama (9 months)

Content words

Dog, car, dada, mama, juice

Function words

The, and, of ,but

Stage five

18 - 24 months
Begins to use two-word phrases
About 24 months, child has a growing vocabulary, with predominately content words

Beginning of syntax

“Mummy go” - gone to work, go away or where?
“Me down” - Put me down

Stage six

2 - 3 years
Begin using 3 word phrases in correct order but not always correct inflection (We goed shops)

Stage seven

4 - 5 years
Can speak with nearly complete syntax

Stage eight

5 - 7 years
Using and understanding more complex language

(Language, make believe, past and present tense)

Stage nine

9 years+
Understand almost all forms of home language

Over-extension errors

“Dada” meaning male not just their father
“Wow-wow” meaning people wearing furs, animals or dogs(usually)

Under-extension errors

“Car” meaning family car but not other cars

Propositional meaning and one word speech

Using the word juice
“Juice” = Thirsty and want juice now
“Juice?” = Can be a question or request

Later stages

Explosion of vocab

Five years old

10-15,000 words

Adults

75-100,000 words

Toddlers

2-3 new words a day

Pre-schoolers

5-8 new words a day

School age

10-15 new words a day

Over-regularisation errors

Many common verbs are irregular
At first children use them correctly then make errors

Language impairment

Broca aphasia and Wenicke’s aphasia

Broca area’s

Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe is involved with spoken language, specialized for movements of the mouth and tongue.

Damage to Broca’s area

From brain trauma can vary severity from mild and temporary to debilitating depending on the location and extent of brain injury

Paul Broca(1861)

Examined the brain of recently deceased man who could understand simple spoken language, had no motor deficits, but could not speak or write sentences. He found large left frontal cortex lesion and studied eight other patients with lesions in their left front hemisphere

Features of Broca’s aphasia

Speech is slow, laboured and ungrammatical making it difficult to articulate words and put together sentences, lots of content words and few function words. Comprehension is relatively spared and problems are more evident when the syntax is complex.

Wernicke’s area

Left temporal lobe is involved in comprehending language but right hemisphere shares some linguistic functions.

Damage to Wernicke’s area

Produce Wernicke’s aphasia, which is difficulty to understand what words and sentences mean. They speak fluently and expressively but the sentences don’t always make sense

Karl Wernicke (1976)

Discovered part of the brain involved in understanding language, in the posterior portion of the left temporal lobe. People with lesion in this location could speak but their speech was incoherent and made little sense. Poor grammatical structure, poor meanings and neologisms. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean the person cannot speak well.

Features of Wernicke’s Aphasia

Comprehension problems where speech is fluent but can be semantically empty. Lots of neologisms.

Aphasia

Language difficulty when all other intellectual, motor and sensory functions are intact, distinct from low IQ, neuromuscular difficulties or hearing impairment and can struggle with numbers

Cause

Stroke in the left cerebral hemisphere and caused by neurological events like viral encephalitis, brain tumor or traumatic brain injury

Impacts of family

Le Dorze & Signori (2009)
Identified long term needs of spouses in adjusting to the aphasia of their long term partner.