Ch. 9 - Language and Thought

Question 1

What are the 5 key higher cognitive functions?

Answer 1

1. acquiring and using language
2. forming concepts and categories
3. making decisions
4. solving problems
5. reasoning

Question 2

What is language?

Answer 2

a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning

Question 3

What is grammar?

Answer 3

a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages

Question 4

3 differences distinguish human language:

Answer 4

1. the complexity
2. humans use words the refer to intangible things like unicorns
3. we use language to name, categorize, and describe things to ourselves when we think, which influences how knowledge is organized in our brains

Question 5

When did language emerge? as a written system? how many languages? how many language families?

Answer 5

1. 1-2 mill yrs ago
2. 6000 yrs ago
3. 4000 languages
4. 50 language families

Question 6

What are phonemes? How do they differ?

Answer 6

the smallest units of sound that are recognizable as speech rather than as random noise. building blocks of spoken language, they differ through the way their produced by speaker (ex. b and p)

Question 7

What are morphemes?

Answer 7

phonemes are combined to make phonemes, the smallest meaningful units of language

Question 8

All languages have grammar rules that fall into 2 categories:

Answer 8

1. rules of morphology - indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words
2. rules of syntax - how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences

Question 9

What are content morphemes and function morphemes?

Answer 9

content morphemes refer to things and events (dog, take)
function morphemes serve grammatical functions (and, or), or indicating time (when) (re- to retake)

Question 10

What type of morpheme comprises most of human language and makes language complicated enough for us to express abstract ideas?

Answer 10

function morphemes

Question 11

What is syntax?

Answer 11

content and function morphemes can be combined to form an infinite number of sentences governed by syntax rule which indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences

Question 12

How fast do children learn language? What mistakes do they make? Do they understand or speak it better?

Answer 12

around 6-7 words a day, little errors and most are overregularizing grammatical rules. passive mastery (understanding) of language is better than their active mastery (speaking)

Question 13

How does the ability to understand language change within the first 6 months of life?

Answer 13

at birth, they can distinguish all contrasting sounds in human language but after 6 months can only (like parents) distinguish among the contrasting sounds in the language they hear being spoken around them

Question 14

What occurs at ages 4-6 months?

Answer 14

they begin to babble, which involves combinations of vowels and consonants that sound like real syllables but are meaningless

Question 15

Do deaf babies babble?

Answer 15

yes but they stop if they cant hear themselves

Question 16

What happens at 10-12 months? by 28 months?

Answer 16

they begin to utter or sign their first words, by 28 months they can say about 50

Question 17

How many words do kids know before school? by 5th grade? university?

Answer 17

10,000
40,000
200,000

Question 18

What is fast mapping? What does it allow?

Answer 18

the process whereby children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure.
allows them to learn at this rapid pace which contrasts effort required to learn other concepts and skills like writing

Question 19

what happens at 24 months?

Answer 19

children begin to form 2-word sentences referred to as telegraphic speech because they are devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words (more milk) (throw ball). tend to be grammatical though

Question 20

What happens by age 3? 4-5?

Answer 20

children begin to generate complete simple sentences that include function words (give me the ball)
4-5, the complexity increases and many aspects of language acquisition are complete

Question 21

Language development usually unfolds as a sequence of steps where they achieve one before moving on to the next, 2 reasons for this:

Answer 21

1. general cognitive development unrelated to experience with a specific language (ex, short term memory is limited)
2. experience with a specific language, reflecting a child’s emerging knowledge of the language

Question 22

Doe observed shifts in early language development reflect specific characteristics of language learning or general limitations of cognitive development?

Answer 22

specific characteristics of language learning

Question 23

According to B.F. Skinner how do we learn to talk? What’s wrong with this?

Answer 23

the same as any other skill, reinforcement, shaping, extinction, and other basic principles of operant conditioning
It does not account for many fundamental characteristics of language development

Question 24

How changed the study of language and cognition in 1950s by criticizing the behavioural approach? What did he believe?

Answer 24

Noam Chomsky, believed language learning capacities are built into the brain, which is specialized to acquire language rapidly through simple exposure to speech

Question 25

What is the nativist theory?

Answer 25

holds that language development is best explained as an innate, biological capacity (Chomsky)

Question 26

How does the nativist view and genetic dysphasia connect?

Answer 26

normal children learn the grammatical rules of human language with ease in part because they are wired to, the biological predisposition to acquire language explains why newborn infants can distinguish contrasts among phonemes, even ones they’ve never heard

Question 27

What are limitations of behaviourist approach?

Answer 27

if we only learned through imitation like behaviourists theorized, infants would distinguish only the phenomes they heard

Question 28

What are criticisms of nativist approach?

Answer 28

they do not explain how language develops just why, a complete theory of language acquisition requires an explanation of the processes by which innate, biological capacity for language combines with environmental experience

Question 29

What is the interactionist approach to language?

Answer 29

holds that although infants are born with an innate ability to acquire language, social interactions play a crucial role in language

Question 30

How does language processes change in areas of the brain across infancy?

Answer 30

in early infancy, language processing is distributed across many areas of the brain but becomes more and more concentrated in 2 areas: Brocas areas and Wernickes area

Question 31

How are Brocas and Wernickes area connected?

Answer 31

arcuate fasciculus

Question 32

What results from damage to language centres in brain (brocas and wernickes area)?

Answer 32

aphasia, difficulty in producing or understanding language

Question 33

Where is Brocas area located? Whats it involved in?

Answer 33

left frontal cortex

involved in sequential patterns in vocal and sign languages

Question 34

What happens to someone with damage to Brocas area?

Answer 34

Broca’s aphasia, understand language well but have difficulty as grammatical structures get more complex, struggle with speech production, they speak in short phrases that consist of mostly content morphemes. function morphemes are usually missing and grammatical structure impaired

Question 35

Where is Wernicke’s area located? What is it involved in?

Answer 35

left temporal lobe

it is involved in language comprehension

Question 36

What happens when Wernicke’s area is damaged?

Answer 36

Wernicke’s aphasia differs from Broca’s in 2 ways:
1. they can produce grammatical speech but it tends to be meaningless
2. they have difficulty understanding language
although the ability to identify non language sounds is unimpaired