Language guided notes

Question 1

What is meant by the great leap forward and how does this relate to the evolution of language?

Answer 1

great leap forward coined by Jared Diamond

all decendents from small breeding group somehwere in africa - began spreading around the world. called the great leap froward. commonly assumed that emeregence of language made it possible ot carry otu planning, interpretating and evaulation and expression of thought ect without which hard to see how acts of creative imagination couldve taken place - could have had genetic advantage to communcate through sympolic behaviour .e.g. cave paintings - homosapians first species capable of symbolic thought

Question 2

are gestures the same as sign language

Answer 2

no.
hand gestures are non linguistic expressions whereas words in signed form are linguistic

Question 3

Explain the two neurobiological mechanisms that have been proposed in support of gestural evolution accounts

Answer 3

1: Cerebral Laterisation (corballis)
- humans show right handed preference controlled by LH
- language typically laterised in the LH

*the correlation between hand preference and language dominance is sta

left handers can have RH representation of language.
cerebral laterisation does not provide evidence for gestual evolution of language theories

2: mirror neurons
- a class of visuomotor meurons that fire both when goal directed mouth or hand actions are both observed and executed

Question 4

describe the differences in conceptualisations of time between ENglish and Mandarin speakers - what influence do these differences have on future planning

Answer 4

English speakers tend to think HORIZONTALLY : e.g. we can look FORWARD to the good times ahead, think BACK to days past

Mandarin Speakers tend to think VERTICALLY: e.g. knowledge handed DOWN to future generations

IN english imght say i will go to the play tomorrow (strong future tense)
in mandarin it might be I go to play tomorrow - weaker future tense

speakers of languages without st4rong future tenses tend to be more responsible about planning for the future

Question 5

explain the differences in early language development between biliguals and monolinguals

Answer 5

• children in primary school bilingual programs with fewer hours of english outperformed comparable children in ENglish in statewide testing (2007)
• early studies on biligualism in children reported superior performance in monolingual children (welsh english children aged 7-11 had lower intelligence scores than english monolingual children)

these studies failed to control for age, gender, socioeconomic statis. testign typically occured in one language.

in the first controlled study bilingual children outperformed monolingual children in nonverbal intelligence

Question 6

early monolingual advantages vs early bilgual advantages

Answer 6

1: language and literacy development in monolingual children is better in early years : both receptive and vocabulary in ech language is worse in bilinguals

evidence for maturational delay- they catch up

2: consistent evidence for bilingual kdids to have advantages in metalinguistic awerness, theory of mind and multitasking (better at identyfing gramatically incorrect sentences and better are phoneme segmentation tasks) - they also orientant gaze faster to unfamilar langues being spoken, better at inhibtory control tasks

bi kids outperfomr monos on false beleif tasks

Question 7

brocas area

Answer 7

associated with language production

Question 8

wernickes area

Answer 8

associated with language comphrension

Question 9

anagular gyrus

Answer 9

associated with complex language functions i.e. reading, writting and interpretation of what is written

Question 10

inferiour frotnal gyrus

Answer 10

key area for language prudction and comphrehnsion

Question 11

psycholinguistics

Answer 11

understanding how humans aquire, generate and receive langage

Question 12

phonology

Answer 12

is an independent generative system .e.g. non words (study of sound structure)

Question 13

allophones

Answer 13

phoentic variations - different pronunciatoins e.g. the L in love and wool are pronouncved differently

Question 14

semantics

Answer 14

the study of meanings e.g. destination and last stop technically mean the same thing

Question 15

syntax

Answer 15

the arragment of words in sentences

Question 16

aphasia

Answer 16

aphasia is a brain damaged produced deficit in the ability to produce or comphrend language

it is not an inpairment of intellectual ability, primary motor or sensory disorder

Question 17

brocas aphasia (classic model)

Answer 17

in which the person knows what they want to say but is unable to produce the words or sentence.

Difficulty forming complete sentences.
Leaving out words like “is” or “the.”
Saying something that doesn’t resemble a sentence.
Trouble understanding sentences.
Making mistakes in following directions like “left, right, under and after.”
Using a word that’s close to what you intend, but not the exact word; for example, saying “car” when you mean “truck.”

Question 18

wernickes aphasia (classic model)

Answer 18

Say many words that don’t make sense.
Use the wrong words; for instance, you might call a fork a “gleeble.”
String together a series of meaningless words that sound like a sentence but don’t make sense.

Question 19

brocas aphasia (psycholinguistic model)

Answer 19

difficulty producing the correct allophone of a phoneme
: misspronounce a phoneme and poor phonetic ability and phonem selection

difficulty with syntax production:
- few function words e.g. verbs are produced
- content words preserved
- associated with comprehension deficets

Question 20

wernickes aphasia (psycholinguistic model)

Answer 20

substiture phonemes e.g. p for b
- poor phonemic selection/discrimination but preserved phonetic ability

do not have issues with syntax

Question 21

apraxia vs dysarthia

Answer 21

these are motor speech disorders:
apraxia: inconsistent speech errors - receptive language skills may be significantly higher than expressive langiage skills

dysarthia: articulation is pmrecise, distorted, slurred, mumbled but speech is fairly consistent

in apraxia the ability is present but cannot perform functions whereas in dyspraxia the ability itself is lost.

Question 22

alexia is the

Answer 22

impairment in the ability to read

subtypes:
- surface
- phonological
- deep

Question 23

agraphais is the

Answer 23

inability to wrtie

subtypes:
- central
- peripheral

Question 24

what is dyslexia

Answer 24

reading disorder
Issues with
- phoentic awareness (knowledge of and ability to manipulate the sound structure of words)

• Rapid automatised naming (RAN) – naming series of familiar stimuli aloud (reflects efficient visual-verbal
  connections)
• Reading fluency – ability to read single words and connected text with the accuracy and speed required to
  support efficient comprehension

n the dyslexic brain, the connections between the occipital lobe, angular
gyrus, and Broca’s area are not engaged
• Less activation in areas of occipital lobe and angular gyrus involved with reading
• Only the inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area) is active, and a higher degree of
activity is found here in order to compensate

Question 25

grounded models

Answer 25

propose word meaning is represented in the same sensory or motor structures responsible for mediating perception and action

Question 26

distributed models

Answer 26

do not localise meaning representation to any particular cortical strucutre .

Question 27

distrubted plus hun

Answer 27

propse ATL plays key role in mediating amodal conceptual representation

Question 28

Hebbian assciation

Answer 28

nuerons that fire togehter, wire together

e.g. pair a tone with a puff of air and soon that tone alone with elicit a blink response