Language and Comprehension

Broca's area function

Located in the frontal lobe; responsible for grammar, word order, and sentence structure.

Wernicke's area

Responsible for word meaning and selecting the words we want to say.

Vegetative sounds

0-6 weeks

Cooing

6 weeks

Laughter

16 weeks

Vocal play

16 weeks to 6 months - Experimenting with how to make the sound coming out of their mouth different

Babbling

6-10 months - Consonant plus a vowel repeated

Single word utterances

10-18 months - In context

Two word utterances

18 months

Telegraphic speech

2 years - Me go park

Full sentences

2 years 6 months - Kids like to overapply rules

Critical period hypothesis

You have to be exposed to something during a specific period of development in order to learn that thing

Genie Wiley

A severely abused and neglected child who provided evidence for the critical period theory.

Victor of Averyon

Wild child raised by wolves , didn't assimilate

Theory of Universal Grammar

all languages are alike in structural foundation, and because of common grammar rules and patterns, we are able to learn to speak without formal instruction.

language acquisition device

Chomsky's concept of an innate, prewired mechanism in the brain that allows children to acquire language naturally

DeCasper and Spence

asked pregnant women to read the cat in the hat to their unborn baby twice a day - used pacifier sucking to determine that kids preferred the rhythm and sound of cat and the hat

Saffran et al

had babies listen to a fake language - they spent less time on "golabu" (real word) vs "dopati" (non-word)

Transitional probabilities

in between words, there's a lower probability of a sound following the word, so babies can use these boundaries to figure out what the word is

Broca's aphasia

inability to speak fluently, mispronounces words, speaks haltingly

Wernicke's aphasia

inability to comprehend speech - speaks fast in gibberish

Phonetics

Speech sounds - the way your mouth/lips/tongue moves

Phonemes

bits of words - consonants, vowels, ex. Th, p, b, etc

Morphology

structure of words

Syntax

Phrases and sentences - tenses, word order, grammar rules

Semantics

Literal meaning of phrases and sentences - what does each word mean/what does the sentence mean

Pragmatics

Meaning in context of discourse - taking into consideration tone, sarcasm, embedded meaning

Phronology

actual sound of language

Morpheme

smallest unit that carries meaning

graphemes

letters

orthography

correct spelling

Mental lexicon

Mental dictionary

Neighborhood density

Amount of words that sound like the word

Allopenna et al.

Had pictures on a monitor, told stuff like "pick up the beaker, put it below the diamond" - had a picture that started with "bea", participants were equally likely to look at that word

Just and Carpenter study

Eye-tracking research measuring the milliseconds eyes focus on words during reading. The highest fixation numbers occur on unusual words and words that take longer to say.

They are cooking apples

People are cooking with apples vs the apples are used for cooking

Aaronson and Scarborough

Asked participants to read sentences, they spent longest time on natural phrase boundaries, where emphasis goes

Graf and Torrey (1966)

Sentence recall - better when sentences are broken up at natural phrase boundaries

garden path sentences

sentences that begin by appearing to mean one thing, but then end up meaning something else

Singer (1994)

"Did the dentist pull the tooth" - they can infer yes in the first two sentences and answer just as fast, but they are slower when the dentist isn't mentioned

Garrett - Conceptualization

figuring out the concepts you want to communicate

Garrett - functional

extracting what parts of speech are going to go with each concept

Garrett Positional level

order of word, grammar

Garrett Sound level

pronunciation

Garrett Articulation

plan the movement of your mouth

Duality of patterning

the individual letters have no meaning until they're combined in multiple ways

Arbitrariness

assigning words to concepts societally

Generative capacity

we can create a new word whenever we want (ex. Skibidi toilet)

Recursion

you can put a sentence in another sentence and it will make sense ("the chef, whom the manager hired yesterday, burned the noodles")

Primate language capacity

Under limited circumstances, you can teach human languages to primates, but only to a toddler level.

Bilingualism challenges

Every time they speak, they have to inhibit the language they don't mean to speak

Bilingualism benefits

have better metalinguistic awareness (how language works), better inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility

code switching

switching between languages when speaking to other bilinguals

Word substitution

you mean one word but use another

Word blend

both words are active and get mashed together

Morpheme exchange

word before an ending swaps, ex. “Randomed,” “samply”

Word Exchange

word switched, ex. “Mind came to name”

Phrase blend

can’t pick phrases, ex. “Burn that bridge when we get to it”

Phoneme Deletion

sound that should be there is gone

Affix delection

dropped “es”, “ed

Phoneme exchange

first sound of two words get swapped

Phoneme perseveration

sound that happens early makes a reappearance later, ex. “Take my tike”

Phoneme anticipation

sound that comes later happens early, ex. “Bake my bike”

Baars et al

Had stimuli on a rotating drum - 2 words, participants were told to prepare to say the words at a tone - either real or not

Baars et al results

Likelihood of making a sound swap error was higher if the swap were real words

If context was nonsense, more likely to make sound swap

Dhooge and hartsuiker

Picture of an object and a superimposed word (neutral or naughty) - When it was taboo, people made fewer object naming errors, but were slower to do so

Linck et al

Had a classroom and an immersed group do translation tasks

Linck et al results

Immersed learners came up with fewer english words for english and more for spanish, and when they came back their english went up and the spanish stayed the same