Language guided notes Flashcards
What is meant by the great leap forward and how does this relate to the evolution of language?
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
are gestures the same as sign language
no.
hand gestures are non linguistic expressions whereas words in signed form are linguistic
Explain the two neurobiological mechanisms that have been proposed in support of gestural evolution accounts
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
describe the differences in conceptualisations of time between ENglish and Mandarin speakers - what influence do these differences have on future planning
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
explain the differences in early language development between biliguals and monolinguals
- 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
early monolingual advantages vs early bilgual advantages
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
brocas area
associated with language production
wernickes area
associated with language comphrension
anagular gyrus
associated with complex language functions i.e. reading, writting and interpretation of what is written
inferiour frotnal gyrus
key area for language prudction and comphrehnsion
psycholinguistics
understanding how humans aquire, generate and receive langage
phonology
is an independent generative system .e.g. non words (study of sound structure)
allophones
phoentic variations - different pronunciatoins e.g. the L in love and wool are pronouncved differently
semantics
the study of meanings e.g. destination and last stop technically mean the same thing
syntax
the arragment of words in sentences
aphasia
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
brocas aphasia (classic model)
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.”
wernickes aphasia (classic model)
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.
brocas aphasia (psycholinguistic model)
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
wernickes aphasia (psycholinguistic model)
substiture phonemes e.g. p for b
- poor phonemic selection/discrimination but preserved phonetic ability
do not have issues with syntax
apraxia vs dysarthia
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.
alexia is the
impairment in the ability to read
subtypes:
- surface
- phonological
- deep
agraphais is the
inability to wrtie
subtypes:
- central
- peripheral
what is dyslexia
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
grounded models
propose word meaning is represented in the same sensory or motor structures responsible for mediating perception and action
distributed models
do not localise meaning representation to any particular cortical strucutre .
distrubted plus hun
propse ATL plays key role in mediating amodal conceptual representation
Hebbian assciation
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
