Origins of Human Language

Question 1

What is language defined as?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What is one common debate about language?

Answer 2

Is it learned or innate?

Question 3

What is unlearned language?

Answer 3

Something that has no direct learning history (for example, didn’t learn it from our parents)

Question 4

What is the name of the theory that is linked to unlearned language?

Answer 4

Language Generativity

Question 5

What did skinner argue about speaker & listener distinction?

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

What was the issue with Skinner’s book about verbal behaviour?

Answer 6

It is ambiguous with no hard data. Is down to the interpretation
It cannot account for language generativity

Question 7

What is the Stimulus Equivalence Paradigm that Sidman used?

Answer 7

Asks ptps taught to match up spoken words to printed words and/or pictures

Question 8

What is one thing humans can do that no other species has found to be able to do?

Answer 8

Reverse a learned relationship

Question 9

What happens to the stimuli when you learn the reversed relationship - what is it called?

Answer 9

They become functionally equivalent - stimulus equivalence

Question 10

What did Sidman’s discovery NOT propose

Answer 10

An explanation of language

Question 11

What are the three main theories for Language Generativity?

Answer 11

Sidman’s genetic given - like skinner’s reinforcement
Horne and Lowe’s Naming Theory
Hayes Relational Frame Theory

Question 12

What was Horne and Lowe’s Naming Theory?

Answer 12

Goes back to Skinner’s speaker/listener theory but goes into listening to your own speaking and mediating your own speaking

Question 13

What does modern studies say about Naming Theory?

Answer 13

You don’t actually need to name things to complete stimulus equivalence

Question 14

What is Relation Frame Theory?

Answer 14

Responding to one stimulus in relation to another instead of responding to the individual stimulus’ features
Generativity is a result of generalised responding

Question 15

What are the 3 features of a relational frame?

Answer 15

Mutual Entailment (ME)
Combination Mutual Entailment (CE)
Transformation of Stimulus Functions (ToSF)

Question 16

What is Mutual Entailment

Answer 16

Refers to deriving a relation between two stimulus

Question 17

What is Combination of Mutual Entailment?

Answer 17

Deriving relations between two stimulus, given the relations of those two stimuli with a third stimulus

Question 18

Transformation of Stimulus Functions

Answer 18

This means a stimulus can have different functions depending on contextual cues

Question 19

How are relational frames developed?

Answer 19

As a child taught and train each object-word and word-object relation. After multiple training trails, generalised relational responding emerges

Question 20

What kind of behaviour is deriving relations?

Answer 20

Generalized operant conditioning

Question 21

What is generalised relational responding?

Answer 21

The ability to respond to or relate stimuli in novel ways

Question 22

What is the main type of relationship regarding relations?

Answer 22

Comparative

Question 23

What are the 9 families of relational frames?

Answer 23

Equivalence/coordination
Distinction
Opposition
Comparison
Spatial Deictic
Temporal
Heirarcichal
Causal

Question 24

What are Deictic relations?

Answer 24

A temporal/spatial relationship between the stimulus and the perspective of the speaker

Question 25

What is responding to deictics a basis for?

Answer 25

human perspective taking and theory of mind skills

Question 26

What is perspective taking crucial for?

Answer 26

Self-awareness, pro-social behaviour, prejudice and empathy

Question 27

What is the key point about deictics?

Answer 27

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

Question 28

How does human language enable psychological suffering?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

What is experiential avoidance?

Answer 29

Trying to alter the form, intensity or frequency of a private event