Language and Conciousness

What is the 2 way language development

Language production vs language comprehension

what are the 5 stages of language development

1. Crying and cooing 0-6m

2. Babbling 7-12m

3. single 12-24m

4. two-word 24m

5. later stages 36m

Crying and cooing stage

• 0-6 months

• Vocalising, are these precursors to language?

• Sensitivity of newborns to language sounds

  1. High Amplitude Sucking

  2. P and B sound discrimination

  3. Preferred to hear a passage that was read aloud by mother before birth

  4. Infants less than 6 months old can discriminate any phoneme from any language

  5. After 6m infants ignore sound distinctions absent in speech environment

  6. Newborns can distinguish between American and Swedish English

  7. Preference for child-directed speech

• Child-directed speech

  1. High pitched

  2. Slowed and exaggerated

Babbling

• 7-12 months

• Appears to be important, delayed speech if babbling is prevented

• Babbling also seen in deaf children with sign

Single words

• 12-24 months

• Can comprehend one word before 12 months

• First language production around 12 months

• Content words (dog)  instead of function words (the), even though function words are more prevalent

• Overextension errors (Dada to mean any man)

• Underextension errors ( Car only means family car, not any other)

• Pronoun difficulty due to the fluidity

• Single words can mean many meanings if said differently

  1. Nana - That's a banana

  2. Nana! - I'm hungry and want a banana!

  3. Nana? - Is that a banana?

• Can understand short sentences like the Sesame Street example 

  1. The infant will look at the video corresponding to the sentence the mother said, "Cookie Monster is tickling Big Bird", and vice versa

  2. Starts to understand grammar

two word stage

• 24 months

• rd stage (24 months)

  1. Growing vocabulary

  2. Content words mainly

  3. Beginning of syntax

  4. Gradual learning of first words

  5. Around 18 months, vocabulary begins to increase at a very rapid rate

     1. Some learned after a single exposure

     2. Some children don’t have the spurt

Later stages of language learning

• Explosion of vocabulary

  1. 5 years 10-15,000 words

  2. Adults 75-100,000 words

  3. Toddlers: 3 words per day

  4. Preschoolers: 5-8 words per day

  5. School age: 10-15 words per day

• Over-regularisation

  1. Common verbs past tense are irregular

  2. At first children may use them correctly

  3. But then make errors, overusing learnt grammar rules rather than imitation

Conciousness paradox

Nabokov- consciousness is the only real thing of the world and the greatest mystery of all

2 distinctions of consciousness

1. Consciousness as a state

   • Being conscious and alert, or asleep, meditating, in a coma or in an ‘altered statemeditating, in a coma or in an ‘altered statemeditating, in a coma or in an ‘altered state of consciousness ’ of consciousness’

2. Content of consciousness - being conscious of something

   • Becoming aware of the hum of air conditioning

3. Though distinct, the two senses of consciousness are interdependent

What is an EEG

• Recording of tiny electrical changes at scalp surface

• Indirect measure off underlying brain activity

• Developed in the 1920s and used to study sleep since the 1950s

What are the stages of sleep

1. Stage 1

2. Stage 2

3. Stage 3&4

4. REM

Stage 1 of sleep

• Breathing becomes deeper and more regular

• Presence of theta waves

• Lasts about 5 minutes

• Easy to awaken

• Hypnic jerks

Stage 2 of sleep

• Lasts about 20 minutes

• Relatively easy to awaken but more deeply asleep than Stage 1

• Presence of sleep spindles in EEG

  • Bursts of energy that builds up on EEG

  • Plays an important role in consolidating memories

Stage 3&4 of sleep

• Slow wave

• Slow, high amplitude waves in EEG recording - delta waves

• HR and breathing slow, body temp decreases

REM sleep

• Rapid eye movement

• EEG record resembles waking pattern (paradoxical sleep)

• Associated with dreaming

  • Correspondence is not perfect

  • REM dreams vs NREM dream

• Postural muscles are relaxed

• Breathing and heart rate are fast and irregular; genital arousal

Sleep Cycles

• Last around 90 minutes

• 4-6 cycles per sleep

• The nature of the cycles changes over time

• Initial cycles spend more time in slow wave and less in REM

• Later cycles spend less time in deep sleep, but REM is longer

Changes in sleep pattern with age

• Infants sleep 13-16 hours per day

  • Higher proportion of REM sleep

• The proportion of slow-wave sleep decreases from 40 years onwards

research on mental imagery

• Francis Galton

  • Breakfast table study where they were asked to imagine breakfast table

  • Asked participants to think about the illumination, definition, and colouring

  • For some, mental imagery was “perfectly distinct and full of colour "

  • For others, imagery was entirely absent

• Marks 1973 Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire - VVIQ

  • 5-point scale

    • 1- no image at all

    • 5-Perfectly clear and vivid as real seeing

• Adam Zeman 2010

  • The case of ‘MX’

    • Man lost visual imagery after heart surgery

  • Aphantaia - coined in 2015

    • Absence of visual imagery

    • Lack of a ‘mind’s eye’

    • Galton revisited

  • Hyperphantasia

    • Extremely vivid visual imagery

Aphantasia

Absence of visual imagery, lack of a mind’s eye

Anauralia

Absence of auditory imagery, lack of a mind’s ear

Sensory imagery vs imagination

Sensory imagery is the internal recreation of sensory experiences, while imagination is the broader cognitive faculty used to form new ideas, concepts, and scenarios

Correlation of aphantasia and anauralia

• Anauralia and aphantasia are associated

  • Half of anauralics also experience aphantasia

• But visual and auditory imagery can dissociate

  • 20-25% of anauralics experience typical or vivid visual imagery

  • 20-25% of aphantasics experience typical or vivid auditory imagery

Aphantasia associated with

• Reduced autobiographical memory

• Difficulty recognising faces

• Reduced self-esteem & wellbeing

• Scientific & technical occupations;

• Higher scores on a measure of autistic traits

Anauralia associated with

• Improved self-control

• Improved attention

• Greater mindfulness

Views of aphantasia and anauralia in society

• Both sound like neurological conditions – unfortunately !

• Best viewed as alternative ways of being normal – like extraversion

• A neutral dimension of neurodiversity