Summary
Summary Language and Communication
- Course
- Institution
- Book
Extensive summary of all exam material of the course Language and Communication (Minor Brain and Cognition).
[Show more]
Connected book
Book Title:
Author(s):
- Edition:
- ISBN:
- Edition:
More summaries for
-
Neuromarketing class notes + articles + book + videos
-
Samenvatting Cognitieve neurowetenschap voor Geesteswetenschappers 2023/2024
-
Samenvatting 0HV40 Brain, Body And Behaviour - The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience
Seller
Follow
VeravanderNulft
Content preview
Summary Exam Language and Communication (Lectures & Literature)Class 1 – Language vs. communication & Rule learning (1)
Lecture 1
Non-human animals and language:
• Doctor Dolittle’s Delusion: The “Why only us” question
• Language is a kind of behavior, not a physical organ (such as wings/echolocation) → Argument
from genetics fails
• According to Chomsky language is exclusively human
• But… Some animals are known to have the ability to learn language
→ Zebra finch, monkeys, dolphins
• Vocal learners = Are able to learn some form of language with training and a tutor
- Mammals: Humans, dolphins & whales, bats, elephants, and seals
- Birds: Parrots, hummingbirds, and songbirds
• Primate brains:
- Action-perception learning of speech sounds and spoken words requires strong,
reciprocal superior temporal-inferior frontal connections
- These connections are strong only in humans and weak in non-human primates
- This might explain why language has not emerged in non-human primates
- Kanzi: Has some language knowledge (but not really)
What is language?
• “I know it when I see it”
• The issue is not whether communication takes place, but rather how that communication takes
place, and what sort of system it is based on
• The distinctly human ability that has arisen in us is not, as often assumed, the capacity to use
arbitrary meaningful symbols, but rather the ability to combine those symbols syntactically
• Faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) = us +
→ Conceptual-intentional, sensory-motor, other
• Faculty of language in the narrow sense (FLN) = us only
→ Recursion
• Learning mechanisms for language:
- Domain-specific or general?
- General:
▪ Fast mapping: Words & facts
▪ Categorical perception (speech & non-speech)
▪ Statistical learning: Sensitivity to transitional probabilities
→ Used to find words in continuous speech
(→ See intro course)
- Domain-specific:
▪ Rule learning
→ Especially sensitive to linguistic stimuli
,What does language acquisition involve?
• Phonemes → Words → Word order
• Words are categories: How do we categorize and generalize rules?
• Nativist view:
- Language-specific learning mechanism
- Learner has innate expectations about language structure
- Language acquisition = parameter setting/constraint ranking
- Learning involves manipulation of discrete symbols
• Empiricist view:
- General associative learning mechanism
- Learner is “blank slate”
- Learning is constrained by processing abilities, perceptual preferences, and memory
- Learning is a stochastic process over distributed input: Statistical learning
→ Probably a bit of both
• Units: Phonemes/words
→ learning mechanism: Statistical learning
• Rules: Combining units into larger, grammatical entities (words/phrases)
→ Learning mechanism: Algebraic rule-learning
Behavioral methods: Studying language acquisition
• Dependent variable: Looking time
- Visual fixation
- Head-turn
- Looking time = attention
• Usual procedure:
- Training: Familiarization or habituation to a specific pattern
- Test: Items that are consistent or inconsistent with that pattern
• Expected result: Statistically significant difference in looking time between the two conditions
• How it is tested:
- Novelty preference: Looking time is robustly longer for the items that are inconsistent
with the training stimuli
- Familiarity preference: Longer looking times for consistent stimuli
• What happens during familiarization?
• Bottom line of looking time preference:
- If infant participant has been able to represent and categorize the stimuli during
familiarization, during test the mind is free to start paying attention to new things →
Novelty preference
- Attention remains with the familiar items until categorization is accomplished →
Familiarity preference
,• Beware: It is a dynamic process!
- Learning does not stop after training phase
- Participants can still learn from test items
- Effect: familiarity preference in initial test phase & novelty preference in later test phase
- Final effect: Early and late looking times cancel each other out → Null result
Rule learning
• Key feature of language: Abstraction & generalization
• Discrete infinity:
- Discrete = A (limited) set of fixed units
→ Relation between specific elements = statistical learning
- Infinity = Relations between variables
→ = Rule learning
→ Leap from observed stimuli to novel stimuli that follow the same rules
• Study:
• Big questions:
, - How does rule learning work?
- Is algebraic rule learning domain-specific?
- Is rule learning a shared property between human and non-human animals?
→ language evolution
- Under which circumstances is rule-learning facilitated/hindered?
• Question 1: Domain-specific?
-
-
-
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through EFT, credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying this summary from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller VeravanderNulft. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy this summary for R186,19. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
82191 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy summaries for 14 years now