Cognition 2: Exam Practice Questions – Language (copy)

Language

Infant Phoneme Discrimination

• Evidence: Infants can discriminate phonemes from birth.

• High-Amplitude Sucking (HAS) Technique:

  • Measures changes in an infant’s sucking rate in response to auditory stimuli; an increased sucking rate indicates perception of change.

  • Study Example: Eimas et al. (1971) showed that one-month-old infants could differentiate between /ba/ and /pa/ based on voice onset time (VOT).

• Prenatal Studies:

  • Fetal heart rate deceleration and MEG studies show fetuses (around 28 weeks gestation) can detect changes in auditory stimuli, especially prosodic features.

• Native Language Preference: Newborns prefer their native language, suggesting phonological learning begins before birth.

• Theoretical Alignment:

  • Supports nativist theories (Chomsky, Pinker).

  • Integrates early learning from environmental exposure.

Infant Speech Segmentation

• Segmentation Problem: Infants must identify individual words within a continuous stream of spoken language without explicit boundaries.

• Strategies:

  • Statistical Learning:

    • Saffran et al. (1996) showed infants track syllable co-occurrence probabilities.

    • High transitional probabilities indicate syllables belong to the same word; low probabilities indicate word boundaries.

  • Phonotactic Constraints:

    • Infants become sensitive to permissible sound sequences in their language.

    • Example: English-speaking infants learn that "ng" is unlikely at the beginning of words.

  • Prosodic Bootstrapping:

    • Infants use rhythm, stress, and intonation to infer word boundaries.

    • English two-syllable words often have a trochaic stress pattern (strong-weak).

    • By 7.5 months, infants use this pattern to segment speech, preferentially extracting words beginning with a stressed syllable.

  • Familiar Words as Anchors:

    • Learned words serve as reference points to segment adjacent speech.

Infant Word-Meaning Association

• Age: Begins around 10-12 months.

• Fast Mapping:

  • Children form a connection between a new word and its referent after minimal exposure.

  • Carey and Bartlett (1978) demonstrated that children could remember a novel word's meaning after hearing it once in a clear context.

• Innate Biases and Heuristics:

  • Mutual Exclusivity: Children assume each object has only one label, ruling out known terms when hearing a new word.

  • Syntactic Bootstrapping: Inferring word meaning based on grammatical structure.

  • Pragmatic Cues: Using gaze direction and speaker intention.

• Vocabulary Development:

  • Non-linear trajectory with U-shaped learning patterns.

  • Initially using correct forms, then overgeneralizing rules (e.g., “goed” instead of “went”), and eventually returning to correct usage after learning exceptions.

• Cognitive Mechanisms: Combining domain-specific tools (attention to language) and domain-general cognitive mechanisms (categorisation and memory).

Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) for Language Acquisition

• Definition: There is a biologically constrained window (before puberty) during which language acquisition is most efficient.

• Impact: If a child is not exposed to a language during this time, full native-like proficiency may be impossible, especially in syntax and phonology.

• Evidence:

  • Case Studies: Genie, who was isolated until age 13, failed to acquire normal grammatical structures.

  • Late Sign Language Learners: Perform worse on syntactic tasks compared to those exposed from birth.

  • Neuroscientific Studies: Early language exposure leads to typical lateralisation and activation patterns in language-related brain areas; late learners often show more diffuse or right-hemisphere activation.

  • Cochlear Implant Studies: Children who receive implants earlier acquire language more effectively.

• Conclusion: Brain plasticity for language is time-sensitive, and language input during the critical period is crucial for native-like mastery.

Critical Period for Second Language (L2) Acquisition

• Complexity: More complex than L1 acquisition.

• Evidence:

  • Earlier exposure may lead to more native-like proficiency, especially in pronunciation and grammar.

  • Johnson and Newport (1989) found a decline in grammatical performance among immigrants learning English after puberty.

• Counter-Evidence: Birdsong and Molis (2001) found some adults achieved high levels of grammatical accuracy, suggesting compensation through motivation, input quality, and frequency of use.

• Sensitive Period Model: While younger learners have advantages, successful L2 acquisition in adulthood is possible, particularly in immersive environments.

• Bilingualism: Experience with multiple languages enhances cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic awareness.

• Conclusion: Age interacts with social, psychological, and experiential variables in shaping L2 outcomes.

Dual-Route Model of Reading

• Mechanisms:

  • Lexical Route: Direct recognition of whole words from the mental lexicon; facilitates reading of irregular words (e.g., “choir,” “colonel”).

  • Non-Lexical Route: Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion; enables decoding of regular and novel words (e.g., “mint,” “flirp”).

• Neuropsychological Evidence:

  • Surface Dyslexia: Damage to the lexical route results in difficulty reading irregular words, leading to regularisation errors (e.g., reading “pint” to rhyme with “mint”).

  • Phonological Dyslexia: Damage to the non-lexical route impairs ability to read non-words; familiar words remain accessible via the lexical route.

• Functional Imaging Studies: Distinct neural pathways; temporal lobe regions support lexical access, and inferior parietal areas are involved in phonological conversion.

Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) in Reading

• Location: Left fusiform gyrus.

• Role: Facilitates rapid recognition of orthographic patterns.

• Literate Individuals: Activates robustly during reading tasks, interfacing with phonological and semantic networks.

• Illiterate Individuals: Shows reduced or absent activation during reading tasks.

• Plasticity: Braille readers show VWFA responsiveness to tactile reading, indicating its tuning to symbolic input relevant to language.

• Literacy Training: illiterate adults Leads to measurable increases in VWFA activity.

• Conclusion: Reading recruits and repurposes existing brain regions through structured exposure and practice, highlighting that it is not an innate capacity.