Essay plans Flashcards
Week 1 question overview
- Opening paragraph
- The features of a language and how it is different to just mere communication
- Hockett’s design features
- Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Week 1 question paragraph 1
Around the world 3-8k languages, there is no clear number as the definition is dependant on what we consider a language
Language definition
- “when one organism (the transmitter) encodes information into a signal which passes onto another organism (the receiver) which decodes the signal and responds appropriately (Beattie & Ellis, 1986)
- Important elements of a language- it is a type of communication that contains a structured system of symbols and rules, known as grammar
The problem with the quote
- Languages are much more than a bridge between thought and communication, it has relevance with different domains in the world (e.g. clinical) + overall can shape how we view the world as explored in theories like the Sapit-Whorf hypothesis
- Essay will explore the key distinction between lamguage and communication, analysing the design features of a language and how language is much more than simply communicating
Week 1 second paragraph
- Definition of communication- verbal and non berbal like speech and writing, not restricted to linguistic forms (as seen in gestures ) where can convey meaning without words
Lots of organisms can communicate however this is not comparable to what a language is, language is more specific
-Many examples of this e.g. bee dance, dolphins
-Songbirds? Overlapping with human lang acquisition (evidence)
However language is a system , govered by rules allowing for abstract thoughts to be conveyed - Apes example – researcher area
- describe similarities / Nim chimpsy 1979 125 asl signs + combinations
- Critique- 40% redundant, comparison with children but they have little evidence of syntax, very little creativity
Overall the statement of thq eustion is a very simolistic argument,underestimating the relationship between thought lang and communication. Communication plays a role in lang yes but not the only role
Week 1 third paragraph
-Hockett(1960) 16 design features to what constitutes a language
-Semanticity, arbitrariness, displacement, productivity, reflexiveness
- debate over the importance of some of these elements
- Problems with arbitrariness ? Sound symbolism + goes across languages
- Link to sign languages and how they may have sound symbolism
- Suggests that arbitratiness may not be a key/important element
-Overall design features show language does more than merely communicate pre-existing thoughts; it structures and creates new ways of thinking, enhancing its role as a bridge between cognition and communication.
Week 1 final paragraph
Language can also have an effect on our cognitive processes
- That our language shapes our thoughts
- Linguistic determinism and relativism are concepts within the hypothesis
- Explain
Lingusitic determinism critiques
- Why it may be right at first with the example of snow (inuits ) , critique this – so we must look at behavioural critiques>
- Hopi Indian langauege- again, disproves LD
Linguistic relativism may be more plausabible in how it shapes how we think
- Evidence in gender (Boroditsky 2002) - masculine and fem genders in spanish and german speakers effected descriptions of a bridge
- Evodence of how we encode in space we are egocentric, others are allocentric
- Brown et al 1993 60% tenejapans used allocentric
- Encoding in time
Week 2 speech essay overview
- introductory paragraph
- Griffin and Ferreira (2006)
- Speech errors
4.ToT - Evidence against/ Interactive models against Garett
7.Conclusion
Week 2 introduction paragraph
There are many different concepts that come together to make up a language, like a puzzle.
- Hierarchical structure of a language
- To answer the analogy we must also look at how speech is produced, with the understanding that language each stage must come together as a sequence to achieve communication
Week 2 Griffin and ferriera 2006 second paragraph
Proposed 3 main stages conceptulisation, formulation, articulation,
- Conceptualisation= pre linguistic, message planning
- Formulation= word and sound processing
- Articulation= expression
Weaver++ model proposed by ( Levelt, 1989)
- Component of self monitoring divided into internal (whats youre going to say) and external monitoring (during speech)
Model suggests that formulation is comprised of 3 linear, discrete levels
- Functional level= lexical seleection
- Positional level= grammatical encoding
- Sound level= sound form encoding
In addition suggests we have a two stage linear retrieval process
- go from the meaning (lemma) to the form (lexeme)
- Overall suggests we have different sub sections involved when poroducing speech , rather than production being one singular unit
Week 2 third paragraph speech errors pt 1
Speech errors are…
- It is automatic as suggested by Levelt ,
- We pay less attention to speech production than comprehension
Types of speech errors
- errors can be word or sound errors, showing that there must be a difference between reteiving words and constructing a syntactic frame in which the words are slotted
- E.g. substitution is when we replace a word for another word
- E.g. anticipation, anticipating an upcoming sound and using it earlier
- Both errors have different rules
- , e.g. word errors are always of the same type and aren’t restricted by distance while sound errors are close together and can cross word type
This aligns with Garretts’s model as…
- According to the model, functional level is first, where the word is selected (location of word errors), because they havnt been through the positional level where words are put into order. In relation to sound errors, this happens at the sound level, which explains why they are always close together and happen late
Week 2 third paragraph speech errors pt 2
The two stage retrieval process model also backed up
- Two types of word substitution errors, either semantic or phonological
- Shows semantic and phonological process are separate in lexical retrieval
Neurobiological evidence
- Martin et al (1994) reported that the retrieval of semanticcly related words relied on the temporal love whilst lexical forms were forcussed more on the frontal lobe
- Double dissociation further emphaissing theyre two separate stores
Week 2 fourth paragraph ToT
Brief info
- When we come up with partial information such as an initial sound
- Often phnologically related words get activated (interlopers)
Why is this evidence?
- Because whilst we may have the meaning , syntactic info (lemma) , there is a blockage when accesses the word sound ( lexeme)
- + evidence for lexicalisation
Supporting evidence
- Dyslexia is understood as a deficit in phonological processing, with semantics remaining intact. Research found that dyslexic children experienced much more ToT and errors in phonological word retrieval. Semantics stayed in tack
- Overall shows there is a distinct phonological stage when wanting to retrieve words
Week 2 fifth paragraph intercative model>
Errors aren’t random, opposite to what discrete models may suggest
- Lexcial bias definition
- Similarity effects
- These are more often than chance
Exaplian the interactive model
- Activation cascades down to the phnological level, then feeds back to level above = activation of lemmas that are RELATED WORD FORMS
Overall there should be no biases if we go in a linear way.
How do we investigate this>
- mediated priming (Levelt et al, 1991)
- explain findings
- people not fast at saying sheet than unrelated word, in support of discrete
Week 2 conclusion paragraph
- Lowk have their own flaws so where to we go?
- A weak interactive mofel (Dells interactive model?) , where parallel processing occurs as well as a bidirectional activation of both the lemma and lexeme W
Week 5 essay overview
- Introductory paragraph
- The stages of language development
3.Debate on what is responsible for language acquisition . Behaviourist account
4.Natavists approach
5.Flaws in Natavist approach
Week 5 intro paragraph
Babies go through several stages to develop language acquisition. This process lasts up to the age of 3 years old and comprises of the babbling, holophrastic, two- word stage and the telegraphic stage. Whilst language development can be explained to be something innate, behaviourist accounts argue would argue it to be something we learn though the environment around us .
Week 5 second paragraph - the stages of lang development
Early speech perception
- Babies from birth able to distinguish between speech sounds, for example they may hed turn to noise especially chose from their mother (deCasper et al 1980)
- Crying and cooing = universal, even found in deaf children (1-4 months)
4 main stages of language development
- Babbling, 4-9 months, meaningless , simple consonant-vowel structure vocalisations , not language specific and universal e.g. gaga (Not language , doesn’t pertain to Hockett, 1960)
- Holophrastic, 9-18 months, one word stage, names and objects in babys life, words will usually be easy to produce and high in frequency= nouns e.g. water . Fast mapping hypothesis Carey (1978)
- Two word stage 18-24 months, lack of grammatical markers (e.g. plurals) but the beginning of syntax, able to express more ideas due to combining words
- Telegraphic stage, 24-30 months , absence of function words (e.g. ‘the) however quick progression, approx. 3 words
Week 5 behaviourist account
Behaviourist e.g. Skinner 1960
- Language development thought by behaviourists as a response to stimuli
- process of imitation and reinforcement from a parent would determine lang production
CDS
- Child directed speech , used to facilitate language
- has phonological differences such as a higher speech
- Characterized by simpler sentences, often repeated
- Inidivdual differences of more diminuitives towards girls e.g,. kitty which potentially hekps then acquire better noun morphology compared to boys (Dressler, 2007)
- Shows how our environment can increase the likelihood that our lamguage develops better
- However, research from Fernland,2013 suggests that CDS in actuality does not get used as much as we may think, stating its not very essential to acquisition
Imitation/reinforcement
- Ungrammatical utterances that children use are often never heard of before.
- Role of reinforcement never really used. Brown and Hanlon, 1970 found that parents there was no real difference in comprehension/approval ratings when hearing a grammatical or ungrammatical sentence from their child.
- Even when corrected, child would not take this in
- This shows that reinforcement plays a weak role in developing language
Week 5 natavist account fourth paragraph
Chomsky 1967 states language is something innate within us, born with .
We do not need to rely on imitation and reinforcement
LAD/UG
- Born with a language acquisition device (LAD)
- Provides rules and principles that allows for the learning of any language in the world
- Tells us what is acceptable and what isn’t in grammar , this is depndant on the language
- Works by input going into the LAD, with the output providing the child with a number of parameters they must choose from in the context of their language
- E.g. word order
Evidence for nativist view
- Nicaraguan deaf children developing own sign language+ syntax
- This consisted of many basic rules seen in other languages, though not taught to them (Kettlewell,2004)
- Suggests we are predisposed to develop language
Critical age hypothesis
- Lenneberg, 1967
- Biological events related to language (laterlisation) need to develop during a ‘critical period’ of maturation
- Typically until the onset of puberty
- Insufficent input= insufficient language will be insufficient
- Case study of Genie , missed this period and whilst able to comprehend complex topics , grammatical sentence productionswere often poor showing that her LAD never got the opportunity to develop further supporting the natavist
Week 5, fifth paragraph flaws in natavism
May not have an innate ability to comprehend abstract grammatical rules from the beginning
- Instead children begin by learning simple grammatical structures , generlisaing rules into more complex structures
- It is found that grammatical errors within children are often inconsistent, children may make some ‘wh-questions’ correctly , and others in correctly
- Contarsts UG that predicts we shouldn’t have these inconsistent errors as we should have already grasped the rule, suggests use of the correct rule may vary dependant on the situation
- Lack of empirical evidence by Pinker, natavist unable to find conisatnt findings in childrens ability to match universal rules to specific languages
Alternate view
- Ibbotson et al (2016) proposed usage based learning
- Children use cog abilities + lang mechanisms+ social situation knowledge
- To understand grammar and language development
Week 7 sign language overview
- Introductory paragraph
2.Sign language similarities to language . Production errors
3.Sign language similarities to language. Syntax - Differs with spoken language speakers in terms of cognitive domain skills
Week 7 intro paragraph
- Introductory paragraph
- Sign languages= natural languages, arising in the commities the same way languages do
- As consequence Not universal- each language has their own one
- Gestures= holistic hand movements that are just acting these can vary and have no wrong way to do it (idiosyncratic) , compared to sign lang which is sequence of movements and motions
Week 7 second paragraph sign language similarities production errors
Sign phonology
- Made up of handshape,location and movement
- The change of what element would change the meaning of the message
- Similar to minimal pairs in spoken language
- Like in speech, phonological units in sign language can be anticipated in sign language causing an antipation error as seen in Hohenberger et al’s , 2002 research
-speech errors
- what are they? Evidence that we have independent levels for semantics and phonology
- - similarly, sign languages have slips of the tongue that could provide the same evidence
- Gollan,2005 found when provoked in a ToT state, that signers may know a meaning of something but cannot find the approprote sign.
- Behaviour = parallel
Week 7 third paragraph sign language similarities .Syntax
Syntax is responsible for word ordering, without this sentences wouldn’t make sense,thus being essential to language
- Sign language has the same e.g. use of pronouns
- Called co reference processing, Used to refer back to an earlier noun in a similar way to how we use ‘s for pronouns
- Grammatical use of space for referencing
- Different to topographic space where we may point to where things actuallt are in space
Evidence that co reference processing involves syntactic processing
- Kilma 1990 looked at signers with left side neglect
- Language speakers with neglect often report failure to recognise stimuli on the affected side of the of the body.
- Similarly, signers show the same left side pattern of neglect
- Topographic task= fine, this is because it is a spatial task where you put things in space as you see them
- In comparison to a task involving co reference processing = not able to use psca ecorrectly
- Overall shows that the processing for spatial and grammatical tasks are different for signers, thus paralleling spoken language
Weekm 7,fourth paragraph differs with spoken language part 1
Motion processing
- Signers usually look at each others face when signing, with information from the hands being picked up in the peripheral vision
- Corina looked at motion processing between signers and hearing non-signers. Showed them a target structure of the motion of a mandarin letter and asked pts to copy
- Hearing= more likely to misinterpret transitional momvements of a target structure for purposeful movement
- Comes from sign perception where have to distinguish that’s phonologically significant due to their e
- = enhanced sensitivity from purposeful movement and transitional#
- Overall better motion analysis showing an impact pn general cognition rather than linguistic relativity where they perceive motion differently
Weekm 7,fourth paragraph differs with spoken language part 2
Mental rotation
- Involves totating info around in space
- Task similar to what signers do in communication situations e.g. when having to rotate space to describe something in a room + seeing someoene performa sign the view differs on there youre standing
- Thompson 2003 tested this ability against hearing and signers of different levels
- f the sign is at a 0 degree angle, everyone’s faster, at a 45 degree angle its harder and people get slower
- For deaf people the slope isnt as steep and rotation is not that hard
- Intermediate signers have a really hard time doing this (little experience)
Week 10 language and ageing
- Introduction
2.Speaking
3.Understanding language
4.Lifestyle factors affecting brain health
Week 10 intro paragraph
Today 1/10 are over 50, however reserchers predict this proportion will rise to 1/5, outnumbering children ages 0-14.
Increasign rise of life span however this does not equate to healthspan soits important to explore ways to prevent unhealthy age decline, looking at strategies for maintancne of cognitive health
Dominant view e.g. Tyler 2014 affirms there is no decline in understanding language with little decline in production.
Essay will argue against this , decline in all core aspects of lamg ,looking at inidivual variability within this decline
week 10 second paragraph speaking
- Grammatical complexity of sentences trend= always on a gradual decline
- often steep decline at around mid 70’s (Kemper,2001)
- Why? Speaking relies on working memory for grammatical structures , usually using same words as a priming effect
Tot - Why do we have this? Disruption between meaning and phonology
- Elderly pts experiences much higher Tot including sentences than younger pts ( Segaert 2018)
- When in thus process, elederly had access to sig less correct phonologival info than young pts
Overall we can see age related differences in word finding abilities
week 10 third paragraph understanding lang
How to test for this? Asking pts to detect syntactic mistakes using a syntactic comprehension test with real and pseudoverbs
- Psuedoverbs can still correctly follow syntactic structure
Poulisse et al, 2019 correlational data with working memory
- Better working memory= increase in speech comprehension
- So decline in syntactic comorehension is related to a decline in the working memory
Poulisse et al, 2019 looked at accuracy and speed
- Accuracy in real word is higher than psuedo world across both groups
- Younger pts. Had higher comprehension accuracy
- Same results for reaction times
- Older pts had longer reaction times s
- Shows understanding of language delines in aging populations
week 10 fourth paragraph lifetsyle factors pt 1
Statistics show Activity levels fall with age, sharp decline at around 75 years, with 85+ only 26% active
- Can obviously increase physical health but what about mental health
Influence of fitness on cognition
- Executive control hypothesis
- + fitness = enhanced executive control processes such as co coordination and working memory
- Erickson et al (2011) investigated hippocampus
- Hippocampus= memory + temporal cunctioning (higher cognitive brain function)
- Volume of exercise impacted volume of hippocampus
- A link between physical exercise and our brain
week 10 fourth paragraph lifetsyle factors pt 2
In relation to language
- Segaret et al (2018) cross sectional study
- Healthy elderlies recruited with questionnaire about lifestyle
- Measured oxygen consumption whilst cycling
- Measured Tot states using sentences
- Higher aerobic fitness score= lower probability of experiencing ToT
- Adults also split by how fit they were, lower fit adults had higher indicidents of ToT
- Shows impact of ToT varies on how fit you are
- How to improve data.. need neurological evidence to look at the impact of excerising in the elationship between brain function and structure
ASIDE- whats week 10 compensation hypothesis
- Compensation hypothesis – how brain changes as we age
- As we age we there is decline in GMW , weaker deline in WMV
- Hypothesis= older adults engage greater volumes of brain tissue relative to young adults, which serve as compensatory mechanisms to aid cognitive performance and counteract age-related decline
- So age related differences are strongest in the hemisphere that is non dominant (e.g. right hemisphere in language)
- Tyler et al 2010 found upon hearing of anaomalous sentences brain activation patterns were more extended activation with younger people more bilateral
Week 11 bilingualism essay overview
- Introductory paragraph
- Linguistic disadvantages- addressing myth
- Cognitive advantage- Executive functions
- Why are we skilled?
Week 11 intro paragrpah
- Introductory paragraph
- Bilingualism = the knowledge and use of two languages
- Monolinguial= little or no knowledge at all
- This is a skill shared by half of the population
Week 11 second paragraph overview + disadvantages pt 1
Introduce bilingualism
- Affected by linguistic distance, soirce of input, quality of input
- Can measure vocab using the CDI which asseses child in relation to other bilinguals
- Different from L2 speakers where according to the shallow structure hypothesis, tend to be shallow comprehenders
- Underuse grammatical information when processing sentences isnetad rely on semantics
- Evidence= l2 learners had a bigger garden path effect than L1 learners (Roberts ,2011)
- Shows betterlinguistic awareness at underlying systems
Disadvantages
- Vocab= usually less (Hoff 2012) 1-2yrs
- However dependant on how much input we get , Cattain 2014 found vocab comparable to monolingual if English input is 60%
- This is because of repetition and shows input predicts vocab
Lexical access
- Boston naming task bilinguals= slower naming pictures than monolinguals if they don’t know the translation equivalent however not in catagorising pictures
- Higher rate of ToT
Week 11 second paragraph overview + disadvantages pt 2
Lexical access
- Boston naming task bilinguals= slower naming pictures than monolinguals if they don’t know the translation equivalent however not in catagorising pictures
- Higher rate of ToT
Does it affect neurodivergent kids?
- Impact of bilingualism of the executive functions of autistic children Found that there was some advantage in sustained attention compared to autistic monolinguals
- In other executive function tasks , performance was very comparable to monolingual autistic children
- Shows that there is no evidence that being bilingual is detrimental to autistic children
Overall , whilst some issues with vocabulary access no evidence of negative effects on language development
Week 11 third paragrpah advantages of exec functions
Inhibition/attention
- Flanker task= have to say whether the arrow in the middle points left or right
- Flankers are the ones you need to ignore
- Usually, when the flankers point at the same direction of your target you’re, fast
- Reverse effect with incongruent flankers
- Incongruency effect is reduced within bilinguals (Costa 2008
Creative thinking
- Leikin 2013
- Bilingual produce more unique solutions from a picture, solitions oftenfrom more categories
Week 11 fourth paragrpah why are we skilled
Code switching
- Need to accomodtae both languagees, these are always active and switch from one to another dependent on context or else competition arises (constant interference )
- More skilled you get in lang= + code switching sills
- Suggest competent cognitive control
- Impacts congiton and brain networks responsible for control mechanisms
- Inhibit irrelevant info
Neurological evidence (Abutalebi 2012)
- Particpants performed a flanker task
- Behaviourally no difference
- aimed to see if the same areas in the ACC(which is involved in conflict monitoring) would also become active in bilinguals and monolinguals
- monolinguals use the area to a much higher extent to bilinguals
- This is because bilinguals have to constantly carry out conflict monitoring , suppression etc. they have become so much better at it they don’t need as much of the ACC area to help them carry out the task
- No difference because of the definition of what makes a bilingual? This is unclear
Grey matter
- Greater density and size
- Correlated withproficency in L2 and Age of acquisition
