14.2 Evolution And Physiology Of Language Flashcards
Human language stands out from other forms of communication because of its ____ – its ability to improvise new combinations of signals to represent new ideas.
productivity
Nearly all animals ____ through visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical (pheromonal) displays.
communicate
If language is a product of ____ ____ ____, then anyone with a full-size brain and normal overall intelligence should have normal language. However, not all do.
overall brain size
Sixteen members of one family show ____ ____ ____. Despite the language difficulties, these people behave normally and intelligently in most regards, evidently, language requires more than just large brain and overall intelligence.
severe language deficits
Could someone with mental retardation have good language? Psychologists would have answered “no”, until they discovered ____ ____, affecting about 1 person in 20,000.
Williams syndrome
Despite mental retardation in most regards, many people with Williams syndrome speak ____ and ____.
grammatically and fluently
The cause of William syndrome is a deletion of several gene from ____ leading to decreased grey matter, especially in visual processing areas.
chromosome 7
People affected with William syndrome are poor at tasks related to numbers, the visuospatial skills (e.g., copying a drawing), and ____ ____ (e.g., finding the way home).
spatial perception
In spite of overall ____ ____, with a mean IQ score of around 50 to 60, many people with Williams syndrome perform well in certain regards.
mental retardation
One is ____, such as the ability to clapper complex with them and memorise songs.
music
Another is ____ and the ability to interpret facial expressions, such as relaxed or worried, serious or playful, flirtatious or uninterested.
friendliness
Their fascination with faces probably relates to the fact that the ____ ____ – an area sensitive to faces – is about twice as large as normal.
fusiform cortex
Their most surprising skill is ____. Although their language abilities development more slowly than average, some individuals have remarkably good language, considering their implements in another regards.
language
Let’s not overstate the case. People with Williams syndrome do not handle language perfectly. Their ____ is awkward, like that of someone who learned a second language later in life.
grammar
Still, observations of Williams syndrome indicate that language is not simply a byproduct of ____ ____.
overall intelligence
Chomsky (1980) and Pinker (1994) proposed that humans have a ____ ____ ____, a build-in mechanism for acquiring language.
language acquisition device
Most children develop language so quickly and easily that seems they must have been _____ “prepared” for this learning.
biologically
Researchers have begun to explore the genetic basis of this ____ for language.
preparation
Perhaps we are adapted to learn best during a ____ ____ in life.
sensitive period
One way to test this hypothesis is to see whether people learn a second language best if they start young. The consistent result is that adults are better than children at memorising the vocabulary of a second language, but children have a great advantage on learning the ____ and ____.
pronunciation and grammar
However, people who start learning a second language _______ or so almost never reach the level of a true native speaker.
beyond age 12
People who grow up in a ____ ____, speaking two languages from the start show substantial bilateral activities during speech, for both languages. Also, the language areas of the temple and frontal cortex grow thicker than average.
bilingual home
A child who learns no language while young is ____ ____ at learning any kind of language.
permanently impaired
Paul Broca examined the brains of patients with ____ (language impairment). In nearly all cases, he found damage that included a similar area, which is now known as ____ ____. The usual cause was a stroke.
aphasia : Broca’s area
We now know that speaking activates much of the brain, mostly in the ____ ____, and not just Broca’s area.
left hemisphere
Damage limited to Broca’s area produces only ____ or brief language impairment. Serious deficits result from extensive damage that extends into other areas as well.
minor
Most cases result from a stroke, but similar deficits result from ____ causing gradual atrophy to Broca’s area and surrounding areas.
diseases
When people with brain damage suffered impaired language production, we call it _____ ____, or nonfluent aphasia, regardless of the exact location of the damage.
Broca’s aphasia
People with Broca’s aphasia also have ____ deficits when the meaning of a sentence depends on prepositions, word endings or unusual word order – in short, when the sentence structure is complicated.
comprehension
People with Broca’s aphasia are slow and awkward with all forms of expression, including speaking, writing, and gesturing, as well as sign language for the deaf. So Broca’s aphasia relates to ____, not just the vocal muscles.
language
When people with Broca’s aphasia speak, they ____ most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary (helping) verbs, quantifiers, and tense and number endings.
omit
Why do people with Broca’s aphasia omit the grammatical words and endings? Perhaps they have suffered damage to a “grammar area” in the brain, but here is another possibility: when speaking is a struggle, people leave out the ____ ____. Many people who are in great pain speaker as if they have Broca’s aphasia.
weakest elements
People with Broca’s aphasia have trouble understanding the same kinds of words that they omit when speaking, such as ____ and ____.
prepositions and conjunctions
Still, people with Broca’s aphasia have not totally lost their knowledge of grammar. For example, they generally recognise that something is wrong with a sentence. In many ways, their comprehension resembles that of normal people who are ____.
distracted
Brain damage studies give us only general information about what Broca’s area does. More detailed information comes from the rare opportunities to record from ____ ____.
individual cells
Occasionally physicians expose someone’s brain to explore options for treating severe epilepsy. In a few cases, researchers ____ ____ to record activity in Broca’s area while the person listened to sentences or processed them in other ways.
implanted electrodes
Damage in and around Wernicke’s area, located near the auditory cortex, produces ____ ____, characterised by poor language comprehension and impaired ability to remember the names of objects.
Wernicke’s aphasia
Wernicke’s aphasia is also known as ____ ____ because the person can still speak smoothly.
fluent aphasia
We use the term Wernicke’s aphasia, or fluent aphasia, to describe a certain pattern of ____, independent of the location of damage.
behaviour
Wernicke’s aphasia 1. ____ ____ - In contrast to people with Broca’s aphasia, those with Wernicke’s aphasia speak fluently, except when pausing to try to think of the name of something.
Articulate speech
Wernicke’s aphasia 2. Difficulty finding the right word – people with Wernicke’s aphasia have ____, difficulty recalling the names of objects.
anomia
Wernicke’s aphasia 3. Poor ____ ____ – people with Wernicke’s aphasia have trouble understanding spoken and written speech and – in the case of deaf people – sign language.
language comprehension
Although Wernicke’s area and surrounding areas are important, language comprehension also depends on the connections to other ____ ____.
brain areas
____ is a specific impairment of reading in someone with adequate vision, adequate motivation, and adequate overall cognitive skills.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is more common in boys than girls and has been linked to at least four genes that produce deficits in ____ or ____.
hearing or cognition
Dyslexia occurs in all languages and always pertains to difficulty converting symbols into ____.
sounds
As a rule, people with dyslexia are more likely to have a ____ ____ cerebral cortex, whereas in other people, the planum temporale and certain other areas are larger in the left hemisphere.
bilaterally symmetrical
Several brain areas in the ____ and ____ cortex have less than average grey matter in children with dyslexia and show less arousal during reading.
parietal and temporal
Evidently these brain features represent a ____ towards dyslexia rather than a result of a failure to read.
predisposition
In fact, even understanding spoken language requires a combination of ____ and ____. Non-deaf people do far more lip-reading than they realise.
vision and hearing
In the often confusing literature about dyslexia, one point stands out is it different people have different kinds of reading problems, and no ___ explanation works for all.
one
Most with dyslexia have ____ problems, a small number have impaired control of eye movements, and some have both.
auditory
Some researchers distinguish between dysphonetic dyslexics and dyseidetic dyslexics, although many people with dyslexia do not fit neatly into ____ ____.
either category
_____ ____ have trouble sounding out words, so they try to memorise each word as a whole, when they don’t recognise the word, they guess based on context.
Dysphonetic dyslexics
____ ____ sound out words well enough, but they fail to recognise the word as a whole. They read slowly and have particular trouble with irregularly spelled words.
Dyseidetic readers
Most but not all people with dyslexia have ____ ____. Brain scans have shown that dyslexics brains, on average, show less than normal responses to speech sounds, especially consonants.
auditory problems
Most people with dyslexia also have abnormalities with ____.
attention