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Introduction to Psychology: Term 2Week 1 – Understanding and Producing Language
Learning Outcomes:
- Describe how evolutionary changes in the vocal tract system allows humans to speak
- Provide a definition of language on the basis of its universal characteristics
- Name some of the disciplines that deal with the scientific study of language
- Outline some of the milestones in children’s development
Psychology (psycholinguistics): Scientific study of representational aspects of language –
how we represent language for the purpose of producing and understanding it
Linguistics: Study the nature of language with particular focus on study of rules that govern
organization of words into sentence –
Speech Sciences: Study of physical form of speech (how speech is executed by vocal system)
Anthropology: Role of language in human evolution
Neuroscience: How language is learned, stored and processed in the brain
An ubiquitous human behaviour…
Understanding language is a large part of understanding people:
- We talk to others to communicate thoughts and needs, give instructions, share
memories etc
- We also talk to ourselves (inner speech) to work out problems, rehearse information
etc
- Language is a tool that allows us to manipulate out mental representations (ideas,
images, concepts or principles)
Typical vs Atypical Language learning
- Language development is robust
- For some children, language development doesn’t go smoothly (autism spectrum
disorder, down syndrome, pragmatic language impairment, strong links to dyslexia,
developmental language disorder) which can cause difficulty in production of speech
What is Language?
Two lines of enquiry that are useful for defining language:
1. Research on origins of language as humans evolved
2. Research on human vs. other forms of communication
Adaptive Functions of Language
Our current modern behaviour (homo sapiens) is largely different from our ancestors (homo
erectus).
Language – missing key re: human evolution and the late emergence of modern humans? –
increased communicative efficiency – revolutionizes thought – makes culture possible
What changes enable this?
1. Vocal tract changes ( changes to mouth and throat)
, 2. Brain changes
Speech sounds generated by the vocal system:
1. Respiratory system – delivers air at modest pressures, which can be used to create
sources of sound
2. Speech articulators – used to both generate sounds and to shape the sound quality
that emerges from the lips and nostrils (lips, tongue, jaw, lorings and soft palate)
what makes us unique
But what is language?
Hockets (1959, 1960, 1961) design features of language
- 7 – 16 universals common to all known languages
- Semanticity, arbitrariness, discreteness, systematic structure, productivity/openness,
displacement, learning
- Features distinguish human from animal communication
1. Semanticity – words are language signals that have meanings (including sounds,
couting etc), beyond simple associations between label and object, labels can refer
to collections of objects with particular properties ( ‘dog’ is furry thing that barks,
wags tail when happy, ‘dog’ related to ‘paw’ than ‘apple’)
2. Arbitrariness – sound of a word gives no hints of its meaning. Two exceptions –
onomatopoeia (incorporating sound dog makes into sign for sound itself), sign
languages embed more iconicity
3. Discreteness – vocab is made of distinct units (words) each with their own meaning,
longer utterances made up of contributions
4. Systematic Structure - 1. meaningful words are built from sound units that have no
meaning ( d+o+g, combinatorial structure), 2. Words can be further combined into
sentences (the boy bit the dog, compositional structure)
5. Productivity/Openness – language is not a fixed set of messages that we repeat, 1.
We create and understand new words (guess who facebooked me last night), 2. We
generate/understand infinite numbers of sentences that we may have never heard
before (alcoholic elves rarely eat margarine)
6. Displacement – possible to talk about something which is not present in time and
space, remembered anticipating or something that might never happen
7. Learning (tradition) – different languages have different phonemes, words and
grammatical structures, adopted Chinese baby in UK learns English adopted English
baby in china learns Chinese
Five Components (Moats, 2010)
Phonology – even before recognizable speech has begun infants: 6 months – discriminate all
sounds contrasts languages of the world, 7 months – canonical babbling, 8 months –
detection of typical stress pattern in words
Semantics (vocabulary) Development – 1. Receptive vocabulary - understanding the
meanings of words and phrases, 2. Expressive vocabulary – using words and phrases to
communicate effectively
,Syntactic Development – two word utterances emerge around 2nd year of life (Anisfeld et al.
1998), syntactical complexity develops gradually: negative emerge (mummy no go) and
morphology develop (-ing and -s)
Pragmatic Development – language used to communicate for social purposes, in different
manners depending on social context, persuading someone versus appeasing someone,
engaging in a casual conversation versus delivering a public speech, inferring meaning from
nonliteral or ambiguous sentences, Metapragmatic skills – ability on ones own
communicativeness
Does timing matter?
Common belief that children are better at learning language
- Critical period: fixed window for learning a particular behaviour
- Lenneberg (1967): successful language acquisition biologically constrained to occur
within ‘critical period’ ending at puberty 1. Data from children who grew up without
language 2. Age effects in second language learning 3. Brain damage
- Genie (Curtiss, 1977) brought up in isolation punished for making noise, rescued at
age 13, learned large vocab but syntax and morphology never fully developed,
problems with interpretation.
Animal Communication Systems
- Many animals communicate with each other using ‘signals’ – e.g. vocalisations,
smells, sounds, tactile signals, gestures
- Debate about whether signals are truly intended as ‘communication’
Comparisons of Human VS Non-Human Communication Systems
- One view- maybe some animals (primates) have the cognitive apparatus necessary
to learn language but haven’t needed to do son in their evolutionary niche
- Or maybe these structures are built into these species
Can we Teach Language to Animals?
Early talking Chimps:
- 1930’s – 1950’s
- Raised as children – trained to use English including moulding mouths to produce
speech
Signing Chimps (1970’s)
e.g. Washoe (Gardener and Gardener)
- Lived in family from 1 year and trained in ASL
- Claimed to learn few hundred signs
- Claimed to have some syntax
- Strung some signs together
- Sensitivity to word order
- Claimed to show productivity
e.g. Nim Chimpsky
- large vocabulary and combined signs with some word
- Terrace (1983) reviewed his language
- Terrace concluded much of the structure was due to direct imitation
- Lots of long repetitive strings (banana me eat banana eat)
, - Vocab increased but not utterance length (average 1.5 sings)
Symbol Manipulating Chimps (1970’s)
Sarah (Premak) manipulated plastic tokens
- Trained to string into sentences
- Followed instructions ‘put banana in bowl’
- Early on researchers claimed had some syntax
Came to decide that learned some labels for objects and ways to manipulate tokens could
get a reward (could substitute in words into slots e.g. Randy give sarah banana to Randy
give Sarah apple) but no real understanding of structure
Output of very intensive training
Kanzi (1980’s)
- Studied by Savage-Rumbaugh)
- Bonobo chimpanzee
- Learned from watching his mother’s (unsuccessful) training at young age
- Produced with portable keyboard (YERKISH)
- Understands English
- Trainers strove to overcome many of the methodological criticisms of earlier work
By 46 months, trainers argue language comparable to that of a small child (2 years) – 50
symbols, 800 combinations, 80% of utterances spontaneous, some evidence of syntax, could
understand references to objects not present
BUT
1. Syntactic (grammar) abilities lack complexity – utterances generally about 2 words
long
2. Semantic (meaning) abilities with BUTs: uses ‘strawberry’ for ‘piece of fruit’
Teaching Primates Human Language: Summary
- Some design features present to some extent – at least in Kanzi
- Reveal some impressive conceptual abilities
- BUT: much debate about the interpretation of the data
- No good evidence other primates can learn same types of semantic representations
as humans
- Don’t learn grammars with anything approaching the complexity of human
grammars
The Broader Question
Something Is different about the human species which allows us – and only us – to acquire
and use language
1. Language is part of our biological heritage
Strong ‘nativist’ hypothesis: language specific cognitive structures are built into our
species – genetically pre-programmed with knowledge of linguistic rules that enable
us to learn
2. Language rests on more general cognitive abilities
Some primates may be capable of acquiring some aspects of human language using more
general cognitive abilities. Somehow our more complex cognitive abilities give us full human
language behaviour in all of its complexity
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