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