Language and the Mind

Question 1

What is Wundt’s approach to studying the mind known as?

Answer 1

Structuralism.

Question 2

What percentage of languages use SVO?

Answer 2

42% (Tomlin)

Question 3

What percentage of languages use SOV?

Answer 3

45% (Tomlin)

Question 4

What percentage of languages use VSO?

Answer 4

9% (Tomlin)

Question 5

What percentage of languages use VOS, OSV, or OVS?

Answer 5

4% (Tomlin)

Question 6

How many words are there in “one Korean dictionary”?

Answer 6

A million.

Question 7

How many words are there in Oxford’s classical Latin dictionary?

Answer 7

40,000.

Question 8

How many phonemes does English have?

Answer 8

42-44, with 24 consonants and variation between dialects for vowels (14-16 in SAE, 20-25 in RP).

Question 9

What did Richard Warren (1970) find ?

Answer 9

That replacements of phonemes by extraneous sounds does not prevent listeners from believing they heard the phoneme.

Question 10

How many phonemes does Xoo have?

Answer 10

About 150.

Question 11

What is duality of patterning?

Answer 11

The fact that meaningless phonemes combine to create meaningful morphemes, words, sentences etc.

Question 12

What did Janet Werker find?

Answer 12

Newborns can distinguish phoneme contrasts in all languages.

Question 13

When do babies start understanding their first words?

Answer 13

~6-7 months, cross-culturally.

Question 14

When do babies start speaking their first words?

Answer 14

~12 months, cross-culturally.

Question 15

Who published the famous list of 13 linguistic universals?

Answer 15

Charles Hockett

Question 16

What is significant about Vervet monkey predator calls?

Answer 16

They aren’t entirely innate.

Question 17

How many distinct meanings in Chimpanzee gestures did Hobaiter and Byrne document?

Answer 17

More than 60.

Question 18

What did Emile van der Zee find about object categorissation in dogs?

Answer 18

Emphasised size, whereas humans emphasise shape.

Question 19

Who wrote ‘A Monkey with a Mind’ (1909)?

Answer 19

Lightner Witmer.

Question 20

How many cells do human bodies contain?

Answer 20

~35 trillion (including non-human cells).

Question 21

How many genes do humans have?

Answer 21

19,000-22,000. Recent estimate 21,306.

Question 22

What does ‘evolutionary conservation’ mean?

Answer 22

That similar genes and chromosome segments are present across species.

Question 23

Who coined the ‘new machine out of old parts’ metaphor?

Answer 23

Elizabeth Bates.

Question 24

Which family enabled the discovery of the significance of FOXP2?

Answer 24

The ‘KE’ family.

Question 25

How much does the human version of FOXP2 vary from other animals?

Answer 25

2 amino acids out of 175 for chimps, 3 for mice.

Question 26

What brain regions are affected by FOXP2 mutation?

Answer 26

Areas involved in motor control of the mouth and tongue.

Question 27

What did Wolfgang Enard (2002) find?

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

What did Carolyn Mervis find about Williams Syndrome?

Answer 28

Mathematical abilities severely impaired, but relatively spared phonological and semantic abilities. [Karmiloff-Smith et al. 2003 disagrees “dethroning the myth”]

Question 29

What role do the homologues of Broca’s and Wernicke’s area play in Chimpanzees?

Answer 29

Production and comprehension of vocalisations.

Question 30

What is significant about the NOTCH2NL gene family?

Answer 30

It emerged after humans split from Chimpanzees. David Haussler suggests it may explain our larger, more neurally connected, brains.

Question 31

When was the neocortex added on top of the subcortex?

Answer 31

When mammals and reptiles diverged.

Question 32

What neural system underlies drives for food, territory, protection, and sex?

Answer 32

The limbic system (hypothalamus, amygdala, cingulate).

Question 33

What is unique about the human limbic system?

Answer 33

It is unusually strongly connected to the frontal cortex.

Question 34

What did Goldin-Meadow discover about Piagetian conservation?

Answer 34

Children indicate that they are transitioning with gesture i.e. when talking about height they gesture width.

Question 35

What two functions of gestures does Tomasello say are unique to humans.

Answer 35

• Helping others.

- Sharing attention.

Question 36

What did Rebecca Saxe find about infant facial recognition?

Answer 36

Differentiation of faces from natural scenes at 4-6 months, but not yet localised in FFA.

Question 37

What did Isabel Gautier (1990) find?

Answer 37

Bird experts showed FFA activation when viewing birds.

Question 38

What did Werker and Tees (1984) find?

Answer 38

Six month olds can distinguish phonemes, English or Hindi.

Question 39

What term did Pat Kuhl coin?

Answer 39

‘Perceptual magnet effect’

Question 40

What did Jenny Saffran (1996) find?

Answer 40

That eight-month olds can determine word boundaries.

Question 41

What three cognitive constraints did Ellen Markman identify?

Answer 41

• Whole object assumption
• Mutual exclusivity bias
• Taxonomic assumption

Question 42

What did Dare Baldwin find?

Answer 42

Babies learn toy names much more reliably when they can see what the adult is looking at.

Question 43

What did Jones and Klin find about ASD children?

Answer 43

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.

Question 44

What did Christian Keysers (2013) find?

Answer 44

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.