Language and the Mind Flashcards
What is Wundt’s approach to studying the mind known as?
Structuralism.
What percentage of languages use SVO?
42% (Tomlin)
What percentage of languages use SOV?
45% (Tomlin)
What percentage of languages use VSO?
9% (Tomlin)
What percentage of languages use VOS, OSV, or OVS?
4% (Tomlin)
How many words are there in “one Korean dictionary”?
A million.
How many words are there in Oxford’s classical Latin dictionary?
40,000.
How many phonemes does English have?
42-44, with 24 consonants and variation between dialects for vowels (14-16 in SAE, 20-25 in RP).
What did Richard Warren (1970) find ?
That replacements of phonemes by extraneous sounds does not prevent listeners from believing they heard the phoneme.
How many phonemes does Xoo have?
About 150.
What is duality of patterning?
The fact that meaningless phonemes combine to create meaningful morphemes, words, sentences etc.
What did Janet Werker find?
Newborns can distinguish phoneme contrasts in all languages.
When do babies start understanding their first words?
~6-7 months, cross-culturally.
When do babies start speaking their first words?
~12 months, cross-culturally.
Who published the famous list of 13 linguistic universals?
Charles Hockett
What is significant about Vervet monkey predator calls?
They aren’t entirely innate.
How many distinct meanings in Chimpanzee gestures did Hobaiter and Byrne document?
More than 60.
What did Emile van der Zee find about object categorissation in dogs?
Emphasised size, whereas humans emphasise shape.
Who wrote ‘A Monkey with a Mind’ (1909)?
Lightner Witmer.
How many cells do human bodies contain?
~35 trillion (including non-human cells).
How many genes do humans have?
19,000-22,000. Recent estimate 21,306.
What does ‘evolutionary conservation’ mean?
That similar genes and chromosome segments are present across species.
Who coined the ‘new machine out of old parts’ metaphor?
Elizabeth Bates.
Which family enabled the discovery of the significance of FOXP2?
The ‘KE’ family.
How much does the human version of FOXP2 vary from other animals?
2 amino acids out of 175 for chimps, 3 for mice.
What brain regions are affected by FOXP2 mutation?
Areas involved in motor control of the mouth and tongue.
What did Wolfgang Enard (2002) find?
That inserting KE family FOXP2 into mice genomes led to difficulties controlling high-pitched vocalisations (used for communication with mothers) whereas inserting functioning human FOXP2 genes proliferated neuronal activity in motor regions of the mouse brain.
What did Carolyn Mervis find about Williams Syndrome?
Mathematical abilities severely impaired, but relatively spared phonological and semantic abilities. [Karmiloff-Smith et al. 2003 disagrees “dethroning the myth”]
What role do the homologues of Broca’s and Wernicke’s area play in Chimpanzees?
Production and comprehension of vocalisations.
What is significant about the NOTCH2NL gene family?
It emerged after humans split from Chimpanzees. David Haussler suggests it may explain our larger, more neurally connected, brains.
When was the neocortex added on top of the subcortex?
When mammals and reptiles diverged.
What neural system underlies drives for food, territory, protection, and sex?
The limbic system (hypothalamus, amygdala, cingulate).
What is unique about the human limbic system?
It is unusually strongly connected to the frontal cortex.
What did Goldin-Meadow discover about Piagetian conservation?
Children indicate that they are transitioning with gesture i.e. when talking about height they gesture width.
What two functions of gestures does Tomasello say are unique to humans.
- Helping others.
- Sharing attention.
What did Rebecca Saxe find about infant facial recognition?
Differentiation of faces from natural scenes at 4-6 months, but not yet localised in FFA.
What did Isabel Gautier (1990) find?
Bird experts showed FFA activation when viewing birds.
What did Werker and Tees (1984) find?
Six month olds can distinguish phonemes, English or Hindi.
What term did Pat Kuhl coin?
‘Perceptual magnet effect’
What did Jenny Saffran (1996) find?
That eight-month olds can determine word boundaries.
What three cognitive constraints did Ellen Markman identify?
- Whole object assumption
- Mutual exclusivity bias
- Taxonomic assumption
What did Dare Baldwin find?
Babies learn toy names much more reliably when they can see what the adult is looking at.
What did Jones and Klin find about ASD children?
For the first two months they are just as interested in eyes as neurotypicals, but from 2-6 months look less and less. Connection to joint attention.
What did Christian Keysers (2013) find?
Psychopaths show less empathic reaction to pictures of others in pain, unless you ask them to try and take the perspective of the person photographed - but in that case they show more frontal lobe activity. This suggests that empathy is possible, but not default for them.
