Origins of Human Language Flashcards
What is language defined as?
Complex system of communicating that involves the use of symbols to convey meaning
Storehouse of knowledge, glue that binds communities, the basis for human culture
What is one common debate about language?
Is it learned or innate?
What is unlearned language?
Something that has no direct learning history (for example, didn’t learn it from our parents)
What is the name of the theory that is linked to unlearned language?
Language Generativity
What did skinner argue about speaker & listener distinction?
- The speaker influences the environment through the mediation of the listener
- The speaker is able to influence behaviour using verbal behaviour and the listener responds
- Verbal behaviour is maintained by a verbal environment through enforcement = it is a learned behaviour
What was the issue with Skinner’s book about verbal behaviour?
It is ambiguous with no hard data. Is down to the interpretation
It cannot account for language generativity
What is the Stimulus Equivalence Paradigm that Sidman used?
Asks ptps taught to match up spoken words to printed words and/or pictures
What is one thing humans can do that no other species has found to be able to do?
Reverse a learned relationship
What happens to the stimuli when you learn the reversed relationship - what is it called?
They become functionally equivalent - stimulus equivalence
What did Sidman’s discovery NOT propose
An explanation of language
What are the three main theories for Language Generativity?
Sidman’s genetic given - like skinner’s reinforcement
Horne and Lowe’s Naming Theory
Hayes Relational Frame Theory
What was Horne and Lowe’s Naming Theory?
Goes back to Skinner’s speaker/listener theory but goes into listening to your own speaking and mediating your own speaking
What does modern studies say about Naming Theory?
You don’t actually need to name things to complete stimulus equivalence
What is Relation Frame Theory?
Responding to one stimulus in relation to another instead of responding to the individual stimulus’ features
Generativity is a result of generalised responding
What are the 3 features of a relational frame?
Mutual Entailment (ME)
Combination Mutual Entailment (CE)
Transformation of Stimulus Functions (ToSF)
What is Mutual Entailment
Refers to deriving a relation between two stimulus
What is Combination of Mutual Entailment?
Deriving relations between two stimulus, given the relations of those two stimuli with a third stimulus
Transformation of Stimulus Functions
This means a stimulus can have different functions depending on contextual cues
How are relational frames developed?
As a child taught and train each object-word and word-object relation. After multiple training trails, generalised relational responding emerges
What kind of behaviour is deriving relations?
Generalized operant conditioning
What is generalised relational responding?
The ability to respond to or relate stimuli in novel ways
What is the main type of relationship regarding relations?
Comparative
What are the 9 families of relational frames?
Equivalence/coordination
Distinction
Opposition
Comparison
Spatial Deictic
Temporal
Heirarcichal
Causal
What are Deictic relations?
A temporal/spatial relationship between the stimulus and the perspective of the speaker
What is responding to deictics a basis for?
human perspective taking and theory of mind skills
What is perspective taking crucial for?
Self-awareness, pro-social behaviour, prejudice and empathy
What is the key point about deictics?
The stimuli don’t have material dimensions, don’t change or degrade. I.e my left is always my left, my ‘I’ is always the same
How does human language enable psychological suffering?
Enables us to bring threat/aversive stimuli at any moment (worrying about something) but alone is not a cause for suffering…
Caused by how we respond to internal or private events, not the events themselves
Suffering starts when we try to alter the form, intensity or frequency of the private event
What is experiential avoidance?
Trying to alter the form, intensity or frequency of a private event
