PSY1EFP Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Receptive Aphasia, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Creole Language
18 Jun 2018
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EFP Lecture 11 Session 1 – Memory, Thinking and Intelligence (4)
What is language?
In over 4,000 languages, humans can speak, write, and read, communicating everything from basic information to
complex emotions and the subtle nuances of great literature.
Language: a system of communication using sounds and symbols according to grammatical rules
Morphemes: the smallest language units that have meaning, including suffixes and prefixes
Phonemes: the basic sounds of speech, making them the building blocks of language
Language is a system of communication using sounds and symbols
A language’s syntax is the system of rules that govern how words are combined into phrases and how phrases are
combined to make sentences.
Semantics is the study of the system of meanings that underlie words, phrases, and sentences.
The sounds of language
The human vocal tract has the capacity to make many more sounds than any language uses.
Languages differ from one another not only by the words that are used but also by the number of phonemes and the
patterns of morphemes.
Language and the brain
Aphasia: a language disorder that results in deficits in language comprehension and production
About 40 percent of all strokes produce some aphasia, which can be temporary or
permanent.
When Broca’s area is damaged, patients develop expressive aphasia (also called Broca’s
aphasia), which interrupts their ability to speak.
Wernicke’s area: an area of the left hemisphere where the temporal and parietal lobes meet,
involved in speech comprehension - Receptive aphasia (also called Wernicke’s aphasia), in which people have trouble
understanding the meaning of words
Researchers have shown that a network of brain regions work together to facilitate language
Extensive damage to the left hemisphere can cause global aphasia, whereby the person cannot produce or
comprehend language.
The right hemisphere also contributes to language in important ways.
oProcessing the rhythm of speech
oInterpreting what is said, and especially understanding metaphors
Language and Cognition
Benjamin Whorf hypothesized that language reflects how people think.
Linguistic relativity theory: the claim that language determines thought. The theory means that those without
language are incapable of thought.
oAccording to Whorf, (a) the Inuit may have developed many words for snow because different kinds of snow
have played such important parts in their daily lives. (b) People in warmer climates do not need such an intricate
snow-related vocabulary.
Language Develops in an Orderly Way
As the brain develops, so does the ability to speak and form sentences.
There is some variation in the rate at which language develops, but overall the stages of language development are
remarkably similar across individuals.
Early interactions with caregivers lay the groundwork for children's’ acquisition of language.(a) If the parent is looking
at the toy when saying a new name, “dax,” the child will assign the name “dax” to the toy. (b) If the parent is looking
at something else when saying the new name, the child will not assign the name “dax” to the toy.
Learning phonemes
Listening preferences in newborns are influenced by the language or languages spoken by mothers during pregnancy.
From hearing differences between sounds immediately after birth and then learning the sounds of their own
languages, young children go on to develop the ability to speak.
They progress from babbling as babies to employing a full vocabulary of about 60,000 words as adults without
working very hard at it.
Telegraphic speech: the tendency for toddlers to speak using rudimentary sentences that are missing words and
grammatical markings but follow a logical syntax and convey a wealth of meaning
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Overgeneralizations
As children begin to use language in more sophisticated ways, one relatively rare but telling error they make is to
overapply new grammar rules they learn.
When they learn that adding -ed makes a verb past tense, they then add -ed to every verb, including irregular verbs
that do not follow that rule. Thus they may say “runner” or “holded” even though they may have said “ran” or “held”
at a younger age.
There is an inborn capacity for language
B. F. Skinner proposed that children learn language the same way a rat learns to press a lever to obtain food: through
a system of operant reinforcement but in fact language acquisition does not work this way. Parents introduce young
children to words and help them understand language, but they do not teach language using operant reinforcement.
Noam Chomsky transformed the field when he hypothesized that language must be governed by a universal grammar.
Surface structure: in language, the sound and order of words.
o Deep structure: in language, the implicit meanings of sentences
oAutomatically and unconsciously transform surface structure to deep structure
Noam Chomsky transformed the field of linguistics when he hypothesized that language must be governed by a
universal grammar.
Acquiring language with the hands
Deaf babies exposed to signed languages from birth acquire these languages on an identical maturational timetable as
hearing babies acquire spoken languages.
Deaf infants have been shown to acquire signed languages at the same rates that hearing infants acquire spoken
languages.
Social and cultural influences
Environment greatly influences a child’s acquisition of language.
The fact that you speak English rather than (or in addition to) Swahili is determined entirely by your environment.
The term creole describes a language that evolves over time from the mixing of existing languages.
A creole language evolves from a mixing of languages. In Suriname, where this boy is reading a classroom blackboard,
over 10 languages are spoken. The official language, Dutch, comes from the nation’s colonial background. The other
tongues include variants of Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and half a dozen original creoles, among them Sranan Tongo
Animal Communication
Nonhuman animals have ways of communicating with each other, but no other animal uses language the way humans
do. To test Chomsky’s assertion that language is a uniquely human trait, researchers attempted to teach American
Sign Language to a chimpanzee.
After years of teaching Nim the chimp, the team admitted that Chomsky might be right. Like all other language trained
chimps, Nim consistently failed to master key components of human language syntax.
Reading needs to be learned
When we look at letters grouped into words, we automatically derive meaning from these groupings, even if they are
misspelled.
Phonics: a method of teaching reading in English that focuses on the association between letters and their phonemes
Learn a small number of simple words that teach the sounds of letters across most words of the English language
Whole language: a method of teaching reading in English that emphasizes learning the meanings of words and
understanding how words are connected in sentences
The general idea behind whole language instruction is that children should learn to read the way they learn to talk.
Dyslexia
Learners who have dyslexia struggle to figure out which symbols are letters, which letters are clumped into words,
and which words go together to make meaningful sentences
People with dyslexia have trouble reading, spelling, and writing even though they have normal levels of intelligence.
Dyslexia results from impaired sound and image processing, especially for words that rhyme.
Key facts Worldwide Pathophysiology of AD
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