Psychology 100:12Psychology 100:12

Chapter 11: Part IIIChapter 11: Part III

Development Development

Outline

Language Gender DevelopmentMoral Development

Study Questions:

• Compare and contrast animal communication with human language. Use Hockett’s defining features to underscore the distinction.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to meAs plurdled gabbleblothchits on a lugid beeGroop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromesAnd booptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdlesOr I will rend thee in the gobberwarts With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t

Prostetnic Vogon JeltzHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

Language• Hockett’s linguistic universals

– Essential design features>Semanticity

Linguistic utterances convey meaning by use of the symbols used to form the utterance

>Arbitrariness The connection between the symbol and the concept

is arbitrary We have few onomatapoeia.

Language

Language• Hockett’s linguistic universals

– Essential design features>Discreteness

Small separable set of basic sounds (phonemes) combine to form language

Language

Consonants Vowels

p pull s sip i heedb bull z zip I hidm man r rip e baitw willf fill æ badv vet u boot thigh U put

y yipt tie k kale o boatd die g galen near h hail a hotl lear sing

shoulds head

pleasurez

c chopgyroj

thyo but

V

bought

c

sofa

e

manyi

LanguageLanguage

Language• Hockett’s linguistic universals

– Essential design features>Duality of Patterning

Process of building an infinite set of meaningful words from a small set of phonemic building blocks

Language

Language• Hockett’s linguistic universals

– Essential design features

> Displacement “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”

We talk about things are not in the here and now

Displacement and bee hive communication

> Productivity If we were bees, we would make up a new word

“Palimony”, “Podcasts”, “Twoonies”

> Traditional transmission Most elements of language are passed from

generation to generation

“feral” childrenFrancois Truffaut’sWild Child (1970)

Language

Language• Three levels of analysis

– Grammar: The complete set of rules that produce acceptable sentences and not produce unacceptable sentences

> Three levels Phonology

• Sounds of language Semantic or lexical

• Meaning Syntax

• Word order and grammaticity

Language

Language– Semantics vs. syntax

The gorpy wug was miggled by the mimsy gibber.

> Was the wug gorpy?> Who did the miggling?

> Was he mimsy?

Language

Language• A critical distinction

– Competence: Internalized knowledge of language that fully fluent speakers have

– Performance: the actual language behaviour that a speaker generates

> Our speaking performance is not always a good indicator of language competency

> Disfluencies: irregularities/ errors in speech Lapses in memory (er….ummm…..er) Distractions

> Linguistic intuitions Which sounds better?

• I need a long, hot bath• I need a hot, long bath

Noam Chomsky

Language

• The behaviourist approach to grammar - Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour.

- Grammar as chaining discriminative responses.

- Chomsky’s Rebuttal: Perceived Grammaticality

§ Grammatical sentences should contain words that have been paired often before:

E.g.1,

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

E.g.2,

Will he went to the newspaper is in deep end.

LanguageLanguage

B. F. Skinner

Language• Whorf’s hypothesis

– Linguistic Relativity hypothesis: Your language shapes your thoughts>Language controls thought and perception

– The Hopi as a timeless people– Heider (1971, 1972)

>Focal colours>Dani Language (New Guinea)

Two words for colours: Mola (bright) & Mili (dark, cool) Recognition memory influenced by focality

Language

Benjamin Whorf

• Pragmatics - Making sure people understand what was meant not what

was said. E.g., taking attendance.… they won’t be going to class because they want to be there!

- Austen’s (1962) description. § Locutionary act -> Actual utterance

Do you feel cold? § Illocutionary act -> Interpretation by listener

Turn up the heat, please. § Perlocutionary act -> Effect on the listener

Turns up the heat.

LanguageFOR SALE: Large dog

Eats Anything, loves children

Language– Some Basics

>Qualitative and quantitive elements of sensory stimuli

Low

High

Com

pres

sion

Speech

Language• Perceiving Speech

– Phonology: The rules underlying production and

comprehension of speech.

– Phonetics: The nature of linguistic sounds.

>Articulatory phonetics: Placement of the mouth, tongue, lips, etc. used to produce particular sounds.

>Acoustic phonetics: Physical characteristics of speech sounds.

Speech

Language– The Speech spectrograph

Speech

Language– Articulatory Phonetics

> Three ways in which consonants differ.

1. Place of articulation (7) Examples:

• Bilabial --> /p/• Glottal --> /h/

2. Manner of articulation Examples:

• Stops --> /p/• Fricatives --> /s/

3. Voicing• Vibration of vocal chords

Speech

Language> Voicing

Speech

Perc

enta

ge I

dent

ifie

d

100

80

60

40

20

0

Voice-onset time (ms)

40 50 60 7010 20 30

Language – Is speech special?

>Specialized neural mechanisms? >Categorical perception

Voice onset-time and distinguishing /d/ from /t/

Speech

Language– A bottom-up approach

>The search for invariant features

Speech

Language– Problems with a bottom-up approach

>Phonemic information is presented in parallel CoarticulationE.g. Cf. /M/ in “Tim” vs. “/M/ in “mad”

>We perceive them as the same, but they are different

>We perceive the same sound differently according to the context

Insert a silence between /s/ and /i/ --> “ski” Insert a silence between /s/ and /u/ --> “spew”

Speech

Language • Perceiving conversational speech

– Two main problems: 1) There are no physical boundaries between

words

Speech

Language 2) Speech is sloppy

Misheard Lyrics QuickTime™ and aH.263 decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Speech

Language• Top-down processes and speech perception

– Phonemic restoration effect (Warren, 1970)>Their respective legi*latures>Found a *eel on the axle>Found a *eel on the shoe

–Phonemic perception>The McGurk Effect

Speech

Language– Sentence comprenension

> Miller & Isard (1963) Participants shadow sentences:

• Grammatic: Bears steal honey from the hive.

• Semantically incorrect: Bears shoot honey on the highways.

• Ungrammatic: Across bears eyes honey the bill. Results

Gram. Nonsem. Nongram.

No noise 89% 79% 56%

Mod. Noise 63% 22% 3%

Speech

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Aphasia: Language deficits resulting from brain-related

disorders and injury.> Very common

40 % of all strokes produce some aphasia

– Broca’s Aphasia> Paul Broca - studied patient Leborgne (A.K.A.’Tan’)

Treated for leg injury Died a few days later Autopsied brain Discovered ‘Broca’s area’ Left Hemisphere dominance for language

Brain & Language

Paul Broca

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Broca’s Aphasia

Brain & Language

Paul Broca

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Broca’s Aphasia

> Production Deficits Problems in producing fluent language Range from ‘Tan,tan,tan,…’ to short phrases Lack function words and grammar

• May retain idioms (‘fit as a fiddle’) or songs Proximity to motor cortex

• Dysarthria: loss of control over articulatory muscles

• Speech Apraxia: Unable to program voluntary articulatory movements.

Paul Broca

Brain & Language

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Broca’s Aphasia

> Comprehension deficits Unable to analyze precise grammatical information

“The Boy ate the cookie”Who ate the Cookie?“Boy ate cookie”

• Implied grammar (cookies don’t eat boys)“The Boy was kicked by the girl”Who kicked whom?“Boy kick girl”

Paul Broca

Brain & Language

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Wernicke’s Aphasia

>Carl Wernicke, 1870s Production deficits

• Sounds fluent (e.g., foreign language)• Neologistic (invented words)• Semantic substitutions• E.g.

I called my mother on the television and did not understand the romers by the door.

Brain & Language

Carl Wernicke

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Wernicke’s Aphasia

>Carl Wernicke, 1870s Comprehension deficits

• Do not recognize the incomprehensibility of their own sentences

• Do not comprehend written or spoken language “Here and gone again”

• Aphasia improves over time• Anomia: Losing the ability to retrieve words

(nouns)

Carl Wernicke

Brain & Language

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language– Classical localization model (Lichtheim, 1885;

Geschwand, 1967)

>Damage to main areas Broca’s Aphasia Wernicke’s Aphasia

>Damage to connections Conduction aphasia Transcortical sensory aphasia

Brain & Language

Brain & Language

– Conduction aphasia> Damage to the arcuate fasciculus> Production deficits

Problems producing spontaneous speech

Problem repeating speech Sometimes use words incorrectly

> Comprehension Can understand spoken/written

words Can hear their own speech

errors, but cannot correct them

Brain & Language

Brain & Language

• Neuropsychology of language

– The Big picture

Brain & Language