Lecture 4 - Language and the brain Flashcards
1
Q
What is the social brain hypothesis (Dunbar 1998)?
A
social complexity drives primate cognition
2
Q
What is the cultural intelligence hypothesis (Van Schaik et al 2011)?
A
co-evolution of cognition and culture
3
Q
Foraging brain hypothesis?
A
- new research comparing 140 primate species suggests diet not sociality better predicts brain size expansion in primates
- specifically eating fruit and extractive foraging
4
Q
Brain size in genus homo?
A
- homo habilis (first member of the genus homo) show evidence of Broca’s area
- homo erectus = larger brains and bigger body size
- brain size doubles between homo Erectus and Homo sapiens
5
Q
Brain evolution and language?
A
- rapid increase in homo brain size during a period of dramatic climate change
- Homo sapiens were likely to be the first linguistic species
- language cannot be time stamped as it’s a very gradual process with many blocks already in place
6
Q
What is the mirror neuron system?
A
- discovered by Rizolatti and colleagues in 1992
- mirror neutrons match observed and executed actions
- ‘monkey do, monkey see’
- they are implicated in language, imitation , action learning, action understanding and empathy
7
Q
What is the Gestural theory of language evolution?
A
- Corvallis (2010) argues that language evolved ‘hand to mouth’ starting with gestures
8
Q
How do mirror neutrons contribute to language?
A
- they are active during speech perception
- they contribute to complex control systems in low level ways
9
Q
What is the left hemisphere of the brain responsible for?
A
- analysis of sequences
- comprehension/ production of speech and language
- logic, reasoning, analysis
10
Q
What is the right hemisphere of the brain responsible for?
A
- visual-spatial skills
- processing space and geometrical shapes including faces
- organising a narrative
- understanding speech rhythm and intonation (prosody) = they way we speak
- recognising and expressing emotions of speech
- music
11
Q
Split brain?
A
- epileptic activity can spread from 1 hemisphere to the other through the corpus callosum
- in the 1950s-60s epilepsy was treated by severing the corpus callosum
12
Q
What did research from Sperry and Gazzangia find?
A
- left hemisphere = read and verbally communicate
- right hemisphere = identify visuospatial info, could not linguistically communicate
- only processing occurring in the left hemisphere could be described
- also found evidence of hemispheric neural plasticity
13
Q
What is Broca’s area?
A
- important region for language production
- located in the left inferior frontal cortex
14
Q
What is Broca’s aphasia?
A
- is caused by lesions to Broca’s area
- causes problems in language production
- speech = non fluent, laboured and hesitant
- comprehension = relatively intact
- partial paralysis of the body
15
Q
What is Wernicke’s area?
A
- important region for language comprehension
- found in the temporoparietal junction of the posterior temporal lobe
16
Q
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
A
- caused by lesions to Wernicke’s area
- problems in language comprehension
- speech is fluent but meaningless
- patients cannot repeat words or sentences and cannot recognise speech sounds
- no paralysis
17
Q
What is a problem of bilingualism?
A
- verbal skills of bilinguals are generally weaker than those of monolingual speakers (Bialystock et al. 2013)
18
Q
What are some benefits of bilingualism?
A
- show better executive control (Bialystock et al. 2013)
- executive control = cognitive skills like inhibition, attention and working memory
19
Q
Joint activation?
A
- there is neural evidence of joint activation of both languages during bilingual linguistic processing even when focused on 1 language
- bilinguals must select the language from competing options and selectively attend (Krollet et al. 2006)
20
Q
Bilingualism and mental flexibility?
A
- fMRI research shows bilingualism leads to grey matter changes
- e.g. Michelle et al. 2004 found that Italian-English bilinguals had higher grey matter density in left inferior parietal regions than English monolinguals
- Peal & Lambert 1962 said that bilingual people have mental flexibility and a more diversified set of mental abilities
21
Q
How do you assess bilingualism?
A
- is difficult and depends on factors such as age and duration of exposure
- children may be bilingual but not biliterate
