WORSHEET 2 (B) - Neurological perspectives and Functional approaches Flashcards
The brain doesn’t function in a series of activities but rather performs a range of activities at the same time, parallel to each other.
Parallel Distributed Processing
Connectionism
it advocates that learning, representation and processing of information are dynamic, and that human cognition works as an interconnected network of processing units (neurons).
Emergentism
it posits that FLA is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment. Neither nature nor nurture alone are sufficient to trigger L learning.
Explain what ‘‘Learning’’ is
Brain cells going wild, making connections, discovering each other, forming the basis of what we call “sth learned”. It is about connection, connectivity and exuberance. A child has hundreds of trillions of connections in the brain, twice as many connections as the adult.
What happens when babies reach 11 months?
Babies are born as citizens of the world, and by the age of 11 months they become citizens of a single country (culture-bound listeners).
By 20 months, babies have been learning as many as a dozen words a day, increasing the size of their vocabulary dramatically. This (the increase of exposure) is what impulses lateralisation. In the case of bilingual babies, it was seen that their L1 was in the
left hemisphere and their L2 everywhere.
What concept is this explanation related to?
Lateralization of the speech centre to the left hemisphere
What happens with the right hemisphere?
It was seen that the right hemisphere seems to do as good a job as the left hemisphere at understanding spoken speech. This suggests that those abilities are represented in both hemispheres but the right one is not as efficient as the left (so they might need to use more of it).
Interactionism
it poses that there is an interplay between the innate learning
ability of the children and the environment.
Explain the role of the environment for the
