PHGY 314 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Phoneme, Synaptic Plasticity, Hebbian Theory
11 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Language develops spontaneously, even when ppl cannot hear (sign language) Exposure to vocalisations early in development is critical for vocal learning. There is a period of practice gradually leading to a match between the model and imitation. After learning, loss of feedback causes a gradual deterioration of language ability. If someone losses the ability to hear, they will still be able to speak but over time, they will not sound the same as they did when they could hear (feedback = their own voice) Frequency decomposition of sound (sound as a function of time) Dark areas contain a lot of power. Other species can vocalise but actual language is unique to humans. Vocalisations of other species can also be represented by a spectrogram. The song of a songbird is highly structured just like human speech. Consists of the listening phase where a juvenile bird will listen to his father sing and he will start to memorise the song.
