User:Alicataroo

January 13, 2011
Yesterday in class we discussed the concept of language without thought. It's an intriguing topic to think about because it seems like most of our thoughts revolve around words and that when we privately think, (I know I do at least) we tend to think in words. It seems like language is so ingrained into us, but is it really? An interesting point was brought up in class in that people are unable to describe everything with language, like the senses. We can ascribe certain labels, and categories to these senses but in reality the labels we create are superficial and are unable to relate the complete physical experience. When we try to describe how something tastes we tend to describe it as being "-like", i.e. lemon-like. It's hard to actually describe what's physically happening, when you taste something salty you don't say that "the sodium ions from this compound activate the ion channels on my tongue in order to provide a salty sensation," instead you say, "Oh, that's salty.". Language is interesting because it's something that we attribute a lot of faith onto, we use it for communicating and for most aspects of our life. Language seems so natural and ingrained into human beings, but when you think about language you realize it's actually quite a large constraint. Language is a way to anchor arbitrary labels onto things that we interact with, and the labels that we provide don't fully relate or provide an accurate description of the item. An apple is an apple, but is an apple really an apple? Would a better name for an apple be "a round biodegradable food item which smells sweet which can be small, medium, or large, and can be red, green, or yellow, that acts as the edible seed of an apple tree which is then eaten either raw or cooked by animals and humans, providing either a sweet, sweet-sour, or slightly sour taste which can have a gritty or smooth texture depending on ripeness"? Clearly that's a hassle to say, let alone try and think about but I think it proves the point that the word apple really has no relation to what the physical experience of an apple is.

Language is amazing in that it seems to have given humans enormous capabilities for thinking, socializing, and organizing the world but it has limitations. Language is vague, and requires interpretation in order to have the proper sentiments conveyed. It's clumsy and unable to accurate portray the emotions behind the words. A good example is text messaging, because this is a time where the only available means of interaction are words. The normal cues that are involved in a conversation aren't present, so it's easy to misinterpret meanings when you can't see the other's facial expressions, or hear their tone. I think that when put into that context, it becomes obvious that we are capable of thinking without language, but we cannot have meaningful language without the necessary social cues. When you strip language of the mental implications and emotions behind the words, as well as the social cues, you're left with something meaningless.


 * "...They were only ingenious half-humans, little better than savages; all living shut off from one another, with only clumsy words to link them. Often they were shut off still more by different languages, and different beliefs. Some of them could think individually, but they had to remain individuals. Emotions they could sometimes share, but they could not think collectively. When their emotions were primitive they could get along all right, as the animals can; but the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus." - Wyndham, 1955, pg. 156.

References

January 21, 2011
Today in Psycholinguistics we discussed sign language. It was interesting to learn more about sign language because as an individual who is not deaf, learning about the different constraints in sign language was really neat. The constraints were orientation, movement, location, and hand-shape. These four factors can create and convey such a wide variety of words/meanings that it was really interesting to see. I know for instance that in Western culture, holding up your index and middle finger (apart) while your other fingers are closed is the "peace" sign. However, in other cultures this sign can have various meanings. For instance, it can be used to signify victory if the palm faces outward, but if the palm faces inward in the United Kingdom, than it has an entirely different meaning. It's interesting to see how these signs can vary from country to country, or culture to culture and it's easy to understand why different countries evolved different sign languages.

Sign language has been shown to activate areas in the brain similar to language activation within the left hemisphere of the brain. . However, it has also been shown that there is right hemisphere activation when deaf individuals process language, which is also seen in non-deaf individuals. This is due to the fact that sign language can interpret prosody, and even without prosody there is still right hemisphere activation. It would appear that when examining the fMRI data between native English speakers and BSL (British Sign Language) speakers, brain activation of the "core language system" is seen in both groups. This was really cool to read about because the study demonstrates how sign language activates the same core language components that are involved for people who are not deaf. When I first thought about it, it seemed like sign-language should activate different areas within the brain from regular language use in non-deaf individuals, but when I thought about it further it actually makes sense why it does activate the same pathways. Language is language given any context. For example, different languages have different phonemes from English but it still activates the same language areas within the brain. So while one language may not be necessarily spoken or heard, it doesn't mean that it's not involved in the same neural pathways. Another really cool thing from the study was that within BSL speakers, the auditory cortices and areas that surround the superior temporal gyrus were still activated (normally activated by hearing).

One fad that seems to be very popular lately is to teach sign language to babies who are not deaf. It's really interesting that children who are typically not yet speaking can grasp the concept of using sign language to communicate desires. This seems like it would be highly useful for parents in order to communicate with their babies. One paper discusses that infants are able to grasp sign language because they are born with a sensitivity towards rhythmic patterns, as well as have a capacity to use these patterns. I'd like to find some more research at some point though that discusses why infants are able to pick up on sign language faster than spoken language, both of which are considered innate abilities of babies. Perhaps it's due to fine motor control and babies are able to grasp and execute hand movements sooner than mouth/throat movements.

References

January 30, 2011
This week in Psycholingustics, we discussed the different theories associated with speech perception. One theory that we discussed was Motor Theory. Motor Theory was proposed by Liberman et al in 1967 and it was believed that you could understand speech based on how you articulate. This theory was later revised to: speech is perceived within the brain by a specific module that is designed to recognize the associated gestures that accompany phonetic information.

In class we discussed counter-evidence to the original motor theory. One example was that infants are able to comprehend speech before they are able to speak. Thus if speech can only be perceived by the process of knowing how words are articulated then infants should not be able to communicate with adults using sign language. Another example was that animals are also capable of understanding language because you are able to command them to perform (if taught) tricks. It's interesting that Liberman revised the concept of motor theory to include gestures, but it still seems as though it's a flawed theory. Blind and deaf individuals, like Helen Keller, are still able to communicate and understand speech but according to motor theory they shouldn't be able to because they are unable to see the accompanied gestures, or hear/replicate the correct sounds. Helen Keller may be a special example however as she did not become deaf and blind until she contracted a severe illness at 19 months.

However, the concept of motor theory made me curious about something else: feral children. Feral children are children who have been isolated from human contact at a relatively young age. Feral children are typically deprived of many things (love, care, etc) but specifically language. There are all sorts of legendary feral children, such as Romulus and Remus who are brought up by a female wolf until a shepherd finds the twins. They later go on to be the founders of Rome.

One infamous case of a feral child is Genie. Genie's case is a horrific one: she spent the first thirteen years of her childhood locked inside of a bedroom while strapped to a potty. Her father deprived of her of language by barking at her instead of speaking, and would punish her if she ever vocalized. This is clearly a case of terrible abuse, and once Genie was discovered researchers took an interest in studying her and her abilities. Genie had surpassed the critical period of language acquisition, and she became a research interest in regards to supporting the language acquisition theory. Genie was able to develop the skills to verbally communicate (as well as through sign language) with others, but her capabilities were severely limited. Clearly we are still capable of language after we pass through the critical acquisition period, but our abilities are still limited. I think that Genie's story brings up a lot of intriguing questions in regards to speech. For example, it appears that Genie was capable of understanding other people who spoke to her but was limited in her ability to communicate herself. If the original theory of motor theory is correct, she shouldn't have been able to understand higher levels of speech because she didn't have the ability to either produce or communicate in that manner. Genie could be asked questions that to us are "normal" and not complex, but was only capable of answering in short disjointed answers. It seems like if motor theory is right, then while she is capable of producing the sounds needed to analyze speech than she should have been able to either replicate speech on a higher level, or have a different way of perceiving speech. Clearly there is much more to speech perception than just motor theory!

Genie's story is a very tragic one, and it's really difficult to read and learn about people who suffer from this kind of horrific abuse. It's devastating to learn that these kinds of things still can occur in society today, because we'd like to think that the world is a bit better than it was centuries ago. I hope that by writing about these sorts of topics, people become more aware of the abuse that still occurs in today's society. Genie was found forty years ago, which is really not that long ago. One thing that was really amazing is that after she was removed from her father, she did begin to express genuine affection to people who were present in her life (i.e. researchers). Another thing however in regards to Genie is that a lot of people involved in her case were more interested in becoming famous, rather than genuinely helping her. If you read the Wikipedia article about her life, she's been constantly moved into foster homes, and she's actually regressed a lot in her language abilities because in one of her foster homes she was severely abused again. To be honest, I had already known a bit about Genie, but reading the article just really affected me and I did cry. I hope that other people come away from this blog post with a little bit more awareness, as well as compassion for people who are in abusive situations.

References

February 5, 2011
This week in Psycholinguistics we learned about morphology. Through learning about morphemes (which are the smallest units of meaningful language/function) we discussed the different types of typology in languages. Morphological typology is the distinguishing features between different languages, such as isolating, agglutinative, synthetic, polysynthetic, and infixing. . In isolating language, every word is a single morpheme (1:1 ratio) and this is seen in Chinese and Vietnamese. In agglutinative languages, there are boundaries to separate morphemes from each other, and these boundaries are distinct. Synthetic languages have one morpheme with various meanings, and an example of synthetic language would be French. . English is typically thought to be mix of isolating, agglutinative, and fusional typology.

In learning about these different typologies for language, it made me think about how the different typologies of language may create different ways of thinking. For example, most people know that there are vast differences between East Asian and Western cultures. For example, it's more common in the East for parents to live with their children as they grow older, while in the West we tend to place our parents in nursing homes. There's also vast differences in concepts, like individuality is a largely Western concept while East Asian countries typically focus on a more communal way of living. Another example of West vs East is that Westerners tend to focus on categories, while East Asians typically focus on the relationships. Research has shown that Westerners tend to only pay attention to a focal object, while East Asians are attending to the overall picture.

I wonder though if these cultural differences may be due the differences in language typology, and processing. One interesting thing is that in Japanese, there are different styles of writing ("alphabets") based on the origin of the word. Words that were borrowed from Chinese, are written in kanji, words from other languages (i.e. English) are written in katakana, and words that originate from the Japanese are written in either kanji or hiragana. It seems that in the processing system of Japanese, there are four options such as: mental, material, verbal, and relational. IIt seems interesting that a culture that is associated with relational thinking has a processing system that involves relations as a "primary option".

Language influences a lot of aspects in our lives, from how we communicate to how we typically think. By having different typology of languages, it seems that there should be vast differences between typologies in not only how language is processed and understood, but also in the way that the cultures may differ. It seems likely that a core concept in language should influence the perception you have of the world.

References

February 13, 2011
This week in Psycholinguistics we discussed syntax. It was interesting to get the first taste of syntax through a lecture because I have been working on the Syntax in the Brain chapter for Psycholinguistics. The lecture however didn't focus on where syntax worked within the brain, but instead gave a general overview of syntax.

I think that syntax is interesting because we seem to know instinctively whether a phrase is grammatically correct. Sometimes we don't know why a sentence sounds wrong, we just know that it is. One valuable lesson from the lecture was that grammar does not equal meaning. This means that while a sentence can be grammatically correct it may not have any semantic value. A wonderful example of this would be Lewis Carroll and his Jabberwocky poem:
 * "And, as in uffish thought he stood,
 * The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
 * Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
 * And burbled as it came!"
 * - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.

Lewis Carroll was really able to maximize syntactic rules while using senseless words that in the context of the sentence seem to actually have some meaning. For exampe, uffish isn't a word but in the context of the sentence you can deduce that it is an adjective being used to describe a kind of thought. Syntax is really neat because it's basically a set of rules that dictates the proper structure and format of a sentence, but it really doesn't provide a framework for having a meaningful sentence. Clearly you can have sentences that follow the proper formatting but are devoid of any real meaning. However when mistakes are made with regards to syntax, they are glaringly obvious. For example, my friend and I had some "bad grammar" moments this week. She was about to take a test and I told her, "Have a good luck!" which is clearly grammatically incorrect.

However, non-native speakers tend to make these types of mistakes because while syntax is innate, it is different in other languages. For example, Japanese is a "head-final" language which means that a sentence follows a complement-noun/verb format so that instead of saying, 'Chihiro ate yaki-udon' it would be, 'Chihiro yaki-udon ate'. This type of phrasing seems very bizarre to a native English speaker, I had to ask ǂ : is learning a second language that uses head-final sentence branching more difficult if you speak a language that is head-initial?

Literature seems to suggest that when adults are learning a second language, there is a slower progression when learning languages that are opposite to your syntactic rules. It seems that this occurs because learners may not have adequate control over using sentences that used a branching sentence. As a result, they tend to avoid sentences that use branching. For example, an English speaker (head-initial) will have a harder time learning Japanese (head-final) than if they attempted to learn Portuguese (head-initial). It seems like the reason why it is harder to learn a language that opposes your native languages head-phrasing is because learners have a harder time with accurately predicting the structural configurations of a sentence, as well as there is a difference in ability.

I found this to be really interesting because perhaps if people have a knowledge of the different syntactic rules for the language they are trying to learn, they may have an easier time learning a second language as an adult. It's very interesting that these types of problems are typically seen in adults learning language versus a young child learning a second language. While syntax for our own language is an innate ability, I wonder if the problem with learning the syntax of another language is due to never engaging in introspection of our own syntactic rules so other languages seem completely foreign.

ǂsorry for the blatant joke.

References

February 27, 2011
We've had a week off from school, and one thing that really stuck with me from Feb. 18th's lecture was an example from class:
 * "Donald and his third wife entered Mario’s. When they were seated, Donald declared himself unhappy with his table, which, located near the door, was not conducive to a romantic conversation. He requested a table in the back of the restaurant. He studied the menu and ordered ossobucco for two. The food was great. Instead of a dessert, they ordered cappuccino. Donald left a big tip." (Newman, 2011).

Dr. Newman asked us questions about the example, such as: what kind of restaurant did he dine at? Even though the restaurant is not discussed in the actual example, we are able to conclude based on hints that they most likely dined at an Italian restaurant because they ate ossobucco and had a cappuccino. As I was writing this I almost wrote that they had "tiramisu" for dinner, which is a classical Italian dessert, but this isn't mentioned in the example! Dr. Newman mentioned that it's likely that when we thought back to the example we would remember things from the example that weren't likely there if we were to later describe them such as: Donald is an older man (based on the fact he has a third wife), he complained to the waiter to get a different table (he actually "declared himself unhappy with his table" but it's not even mentioned who he complained to!), he had a romantic conversation with his third wife (the table wasn't conducive to a romantic conversation), and that they dined at an Italian restaurant (which is true but is never mentioned).

I thought that it was interesting how even though these specific details are not mentioned in the story, we are able to discern what is occurring in the story. This example and our later recollection of the story makes a mental model that portrays the "gist" of the story, so when telling someone we may say, "Donald and his third wife went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, where they had a romantic conversation and tiramisu for dessert.". The problem with mental models is that they may not accurately represent the discourse which can lead to misunderstandings, or inferences (as in the case of Donald).

One study that focused on inferences was conducted by Kintsch et al (1990) who tested sentence memory by presenting subjects with a sentence that could vary in terms of discourse (i.e. original, word order changed, and sentences that could be inferred by the subject) It was found that when subjects were immediately tested after being shown the original sentence, they were able to accurately determine (~0.7 probability) whether the sentence was identical to the original one or not. It was found that when subjects were immediately shown a paraphrased sentence after seeing the original one, they incorrectly guessed half the time (0.5 probability) that the sentence was the same as the original. When immediately shown an inference sentence though, subjects only said identified the sentence as being the original ~0.2 of the time. However a delay in recall increased the effect of incorrectly identifying the inference sentences as being the original, and after a four day delay the probability of subjects identifying the inference sentence as the original rose to ~0.6. The study showed that there was such a thing as sentence memory and that it was affected by levels of discourse within a sentence.

This made me think about memory, and how it can be really faulty. For instance, studies have shown that flashbulb memories is really a misnomer. When you think about what happened on a monumental day, for example 9/11, you feel as though you can "vividly recall" what happened but it's likely that this memory is wrong. Flashbulb memories are like regular memories and they fail in the same way as normal memories: previous knowledge, and inferences can affect your memories and contort them into something else. There have been studies where immediately after an important event, a subject will write down their memory of what happened but when asked the same question at a later time period, the memory has generally changed. Usually previous knowledge interferes with the memory when recalled at a later date so that the memories from the same subject don't line up. It's funny that flashbulb memories feel so distinct and that you "vividly remember" what happened, but studies have shown that these types of memories have the same faulty mechanisms of regular memories, but because they're so significant they feel more memorable than a regular memory.

It's funny to think that regular memories are distorted after time, but not only are regular or significant memories distorted after a delay in recall but a delay in sentence memory can lead to a twisting of the facts as well. When I think about how sentence memory becomes increasingly faulty over time, it makes me wonder whether when we brood over a conversation that went poorly if it's actually as bad as we thought it went. Or when we're trying to interpret a conversation after we had it, if it's actually being recollected correctly or if other knowledge is interfering with it (i.e. we think maybe someone is mad at us, but we find out they had a bad day and when we re-examine the conversation we may see cues that let us know that they were in fact having a bad day). I wonder if the previous memories of a conversation with someone also may affect how we interact with them in the future, for example maybe we met someone who said something sarcastically and we later interpreted it as being very rude so that when we see them again we may think, "Oh, great, it's that guy.".

It seems that while our brain is capable of providing all of these great cognitive features, it still has some work to do!

References

March 6, 2011
This week in class we began to discuss speech output. One topic I found interesting was speech errors. We talked about the different types of speech errors people can make. My favourite one was blended speech errors because they happen commonly enough and they're always kind of funny. I thought that it was kind of weird that a lexical bias (a type of error that involves substituting a real word that sounds phonologically similar to another, for example: darn-bore and barn-dore) is typically seen in English.

This made me wonder why a strong lexical bias is seen in English. Other researchers have shown that these speech errors tend to only show up in English. A research study on speech errors in Spanish demonstrated that lexical speech errors only occur about 35% of the time which was equivalent to chance. However in English a lexical speech error is seen approximately 40-45% of the time. When I first thought about this difference, I thought it was really strange because it seems like if lexical errors are supposed to be the most common than they should be seen in different languages, but there is a considerable bias for English instead. It made me wonder if maybe this due to some other factor like how English language is constructed versus other languages, and that maybe some innate characteristic of English lends itself to lexical biases. I don't know what would be different though, maybe it's the typology of English, or the different grammar/speech rules that make English speakers more susceptible to lexical errors.

Thinking about speech errors though was interesting because I realized that even when someone is engaging in internal dialogue speech errors still occur! This was really interesting to realize because it seems like if speech errors are a result of language output then we shouldn't have these types of errors occur when we're thinking to ourselves. Studies have shown that people internally analyze speech while engaging in a conversation to determine whether or not a word is used correctly, or whether the sentence is grammatically correct. Based on this other researchers have proposed that the reason why lexical biases are seen is because when engaged in internal speech or listening to someone talk, there is a system involved in analyzing sentences for "non-words". If this system is in place and is frequently looking for non-word speech errors than it's easy to see why a lexical errors may occur more frequently. However, the question still stands as to why do we still have speech errors occur when engaging in internal dialogue? Is it because thinking to yourself engages the same systems that would be involved in a conversation with an individual?

At first I thought that it seemed strange that you would be able to have speech errors when you're not even speaking. It seems like speech errors should occur when you're talking with someone else but after thinking about it more it makes sense. Evolutionarily speaking it wouldn't make sense for two separate systems to have arisen that each basically do the same job. One system is less complex than having two, and thus it makes sense that speech errors would still occur if we're using the same system to speak while we think to ourselves. The benefit of having an integrated system is we're able to self-monitor and pick up on our own speech errors while we think, but also to pick up on them before we actually speak. If the there were two systems involved it would be very difficult to self-monitor for any errors before speaking, and it's likely that speech output would take longer. I thought it was really interesting that errors in inner speech can illicit different effects like: interrupting our own flow of speech to think about the error, or quickly fixing the error so that speech can continue as normal, another speech error may occur, or that we may just completely miss out on the error. Based on this self monitoring system it seems more likely that we're going to stop ourselves from using non-words (easier to notice in our speech errors because they aren't words) but words that are phonologically similar may be able to slip through the system and pepper our speech. I like the idea of having a system in place to be on the lookout for these non-words that may slip into our speech, but can appreciate that it's not on the look out for words that don't fit in the context of the situation and that's likely why we have these types of lexical speech errors. When you think about it though, language is really complex without even considering input and output of language. English alone is confusing enough as it tends to have many words with multiple meanings (i.e. present: moment in a time, a gift) so if you don't quite have a grasp of the language it's easy enough to make mistakes without even considering the amount of mistakes that can occur in input and output for language!

I guess I'd like to conclude this blog post with one of my favourite speech errors: Blue Blazer Black

References

March 10, 2011
On Monday we discussed a well known phenomenon: tip of the tongue. Tip of the tongue (TOT) is weird because it's something that everyone experiences from time to time. It typically entails trying to say a word but you're suddenly unable to remember the word even if it is relatively common. An example would be my own recent blunder: "Can you hand me that object that is long, brown, thin and you put papers into?" For the life of me I couldn't remember the word for envelope, so this was my way of coping with it. Usually I just say "thing" and hope that someone knows what I mean!

One thing that's kind of cool about TOT is even though we experience the sensation of being on the verge of getting the word, we're still able to access other information in regards to the word. Research studies have demonstrated that when people experience the TOT phenomenon they're still able to access information about the word: such as syntax, and semantics. These types of studies demonstrated that people are able to access this kind of information before phonological information, but people are often able to say what the first syllable of the word may be or how many syllables are in the word.

The TOT phenomenon made me think about which kinds of words actually cause the phenomenon. Personally I feel that the words I most frequently forget are words that are common, every-day words. I think that it makes sense that the TOT experience would occur more frequently with common words because I feel like there may be competing synaptic nodes that may be associated with the word and thus activate the wrong words. However studies have shown that uncommon words frequently illict the TOT experience. This is likely due to the fact that the synaptic connections for uncommon words are weaker than more frequently used words. Luckily for my line of thinking other researchers have demonstrated that words that are frequently used can also invoke TOT.

Based on what I could find, it seems like researchers are at odds with one another over what is the genuine cause behind TOT (which begs the question of why can scientists never agree with one another!). Based on what research articles I have read it seems like it is likely some combination of both of these theories: that common words do have stronger synaptic connections (which can be in competition with other words), but also uncommon words also experience TOT because they are less frequently use and the synaptic connections are weaker (therefore easier to forget). Research has begun to focus on age and the relation to TOT and they have found that TOT experiences increase as you age. This is likely due to your mental processes slowing down.

TOT was interesting to research a bit more because it is a common speech problem that happens to many individuals. One thing I find interesting about TOT experiences personally is that I may even have the right word in my mind but it doesn't "feel correct" until someone confirms. For example, last night I was writing about action potential conductance and I struggled for the word conductance. Upon reflection I realized that I was able to get the "kah" sound out, explain what it meant, and I did keep coming back to conductance but it never felt like the appropriate word until someone else did confirm that was the word. I wonder how much TOT experience really is forgetting a word versus some type of mental block that may stop you from accessing that yes, this word is the correct one you're looking for!

References

March 20, 2011
This week we talked about development of language within children. Funnily enough, a lot of things that I've already discussed here were mentioned (i.e. baby sign, Genie). We also talked about motherese which was interesting to me. I'm sure everyone has experienced it: they see a cute baby, or an animal (that may or may not be tiny) and find that their voices change. They tend to have a higher pitched voice that stresses and prolongs vowels. It's funny to think about but it does happen, and it's very intuitive. Learning about motherese made me wonder why it happened. Was it because speaking at a higher pitch allowed infants to hear better? But if that was the case then motherese should always be high-pitched. However when a baby cries the mother tends to speak in a lower soothing voice which still stresses and prolongs vowels. If it's not a case of motherese being used so that the baby can hear then maybe it has more to do with attention? Fernald suggested that the prosody mothers use may be finely adapted to the attention and arousal level of the infant. Thus if a baby requires soothing the mother speaks in a lower voice but if the baby is excited then a higher pitch is used.

It seems really fascinating to me that this ability is so innate because it really doesn't require any thinking or planning on the mother's part. It just happens. This made me wonder about maybe why motherese is so intuitive. It seems likely to me that if a new mother with little experience of babies (unlikely in this day and age but still) may try soothing her baby and find that a higher pitched voice doesn't sooth. Instead it may make the baby more excited (i.e. irritated/upset) and this only furthers the mother from her goal of soothing the baby. She may then try a quieter voice to sooth her baby and usually a quieter voice means a lower pitch. If the lower pitch does work to sooth the baby then it's likely that the mother will continue to use a soothing lower pitched voice. In a way conditioning occurs so that the mother continues to use a soothing voice to calm her baby down. This can also work in the opposite way: a mother is more likely to respond to an excited baby (happy baby) in a higher pitched voice. For times when the baby is in a good mood and giggling, they respond more to higher pitched voices. The more a high pitched voice is used, the more engaged the baby becomes (i.e. giggling, smiling, gurgling, basically responding) so the mother will continue to use the high pitched voice in those moments.

Studies have shown that when babies listen to either a normal adult conversation or motherese, they prefer motherese. The baby is also more responsive to the voice of the mother. This is probably because the baby can listen to sounds within the uterus, and will hear the mother's voice the most and thus respond more to her voice. Infants also get a lot out of motherese though as it helps them develop their language abilities since the words are clearly stressed and occur at a slower tempo. This is supported by the fact that the language abilities of an infant are associated with the clarity of the mother's speech!

I wondered what the effects of motherese would be on children who had a language disability such as autism. Some children with autism tend to be unresponsive to speech. Around 25% have language disorders. It seems that infants with autism tend to prefer superimposed voices versus their own mother's voice in experimental studies. ERP measurements have also demonstrated that children with autism tend to not to pay attention to speech. This was really interesting to me because perhaps this may be a reason why children with autism sometimes have language disorders. If a child prefers to listen to the speech of others than the motherese which is designed to help facilitate language development in infants, then they may not be able to pick up on prosody or word borders. Without being able to learn the sounds and patterns of the native language, these infants may struggle later with language.

Thus it seems like motherese must be very influential in teaching infants their native language. By using exaggerated speech and slowing down the tempo of speech, infants develop language skills that they will use for the rest of their life.

References

March 21, 2011
This week in class we talked about bilingualism. I find bilingualism very interesting, because I have many friends who speak other languages. Growing up, my best friend was Polish. She knew Polish, English, and French (so really trilingual!). Being with her was interesting because I would pick up on Polish words. I remember one time her mother asked me a question in Polish and I knew what she had asked, but that was my only "fluent" moment. I distinctly remember asking her father once for a peach when we were at the beach, and he gave me a drink. There were lots of little "errors in translation" between me and her parents but never any issues between her and I.

One thing I always found kind of funny though is when people who are bilingual switch between languages. For instance there are times where I listen to my friend talk to their mom on the phone, and they switch from their native language to English and it seems like they don't realize that it happened. It's kind of neat how they can switch, and seemingly not realize. It made me wonder why as a native English speaker I can pick up on the English words in their conversations though.

It seems like we can pick up on our language when listening to other people speak because we probably know where the word boundaries are. One of my Egyptian friends thought it was funny that English speakers can pick up on these English words even when other Arabic words are used that we have no clue about. She mentioned that she's always wondered if other people noticed, but never asked.

I know that when you listen to a foreign language that you've heard very minimally you don't know where the pauses between words occurs. It sounds like just one long big word. However the more you familiarize yourself with the language, you can begin to hear the breaks between words. You know what sounds go with what sounds, and if they don't match then you know that there's a "pause" in the conversation. You become familiarized to the speech boundaries. It makes sense that when you listen to someone speak a foreign language you don't know where the pauses are, but when they throw in English words you're able to decipher and understand those words because you know the speech boundaries. You know that the sounds "oh" and "kay" go together to make the word "ok". We categorize words into their phonemes when we listen to language. Discrimination of speech boundaries through phonemes is very useful because we are able to have cues as to what other phonemes may follow. This is because we know what sounds go together and what sounds don't go together for our native language.

Thinking about speech boundaries though reminds me of my Systems Neuroscience class from second year. We learnt that when you analyze the sound waves of speech, there's actually no "pauses". We just hear pauses because we know where the words end and begin (i.e. speech boundaries). So if you're listening to someone speaking a foreign language it's hard to know where words begin and end, but if you continue to expose yourself to the language or familiarize yourself with the language you'll begin to learn the intrinsic rules for phonemes about that language similar to the intrinsic phoneme rules for your native language.

The interesting thing about learning new languages is that you sometimes need to unlearn your native's languages rules. This is because these boundaries may or may not occur within a new language, so your brain needs to stop inhibiting the processing of those phonemes so that you can begin to master the new language. This seems kind of cool because it explains why you may not be able to hear the differences between words when learning a new language. In class a while back we discussed Hindi and how non-native speakers cannot hear the difference between: ḍal (lentil) and dal (branch).

One last thing about bilingualism which I find kind of funny: one of my friends is from Croatia, and speaks Serbian. However she's lived in Canada for a very long time and so now whenever she speaks Serbian she actually has an English accent! Upon reflection of why this may be, it is likely that due to "intensive" use of speaking English she may have developed an English accent in Serbian. She would only speak Serbian at home with her family, and from what I have learnt about language this semester it seems like that wouldn't be sufficient in order to not have an accent. If you're enrolled in an English school for 6 hrs a day, 5 days a week for 15 years plus interacting with people outside of the home and interacting with your friends, your use of another language may be less and so you could develop an accent in your own native tongue!

References

April 2, 2011
This week in class we started debates. The debates were pretty interesting, and some were pretty charged. The first debate was kind of a debacle in my opinion. The topic itself was on Ebonics and whether it should be taught in a classroom. I felt that the AGAINST side was overly aggressive and not very respectful towards to the FOR side. I was also horrified by some of the things the students on the AGAINST side said as they made up facts, and just said really racially charged things that were inappropriate in any setting. The information though from the debate was pretty interesting and made me think.

The FOR side argued that in Oakland, California, Ebonics should be taught as a primary language within the schools. It was interesting to hear because (as I'm sure most people have posted about) was unaware that Ebonics was actually it's own separate language. It seems really sad to me that these facts aren't known and celebrated by others. I think it's clear that Ebonics should be celebrated as a language with it's own culture. In Canada we celebrate the fact that we're multicultural and that we are a bilingual country. It seems sad that the USA doesn't seem to feel the same way, or at least it appears that way from an outsider's perspective.

It's hard to know how I feel about this particular debate. I felt like the FOR side made some very strong points about celebrating Ebonics within a community where 53% spoke Ebonics. However, even in Canada we don't teach Arabic in our schools where perhaps there is a larger Arabic community than other communities. It gets to be a very sticky situation because if we don't celebrate other culture's languages in our schools, are we catering to the white majority? Or is it "safe to assume" that if people are immigrating to "our" country (when in reality Caucasians immigrated here) that they want to learn English? Should we offer schools where you can interact in a different language or is that separatism? The whole situation is just confusing, and it's uncomfortable to discuss aloud.

Another point the FOR side made for this debate was that by teaching Ebonics in a classroom you're opening students to bilingualism as English would be later taught. There are many benefits of bilingualism but I think that the point of teaching English as a secondary language later in the curriculum was a poor choice. It would be more beneficial to teach BOTH languages within the school so that students are bilingual from an early age. English unfortunately in North America is the language of the "majority" (though it could be argued that the language of the majority in the USA is Spanish). Bilingualism also doesn't seem to be as highly valued in the USA as it is in Canada, and there's definitely a "supremacy" belief (in my opinion) about English. There are very little opportunities for bilingual speakers in the USA. There seems to be a lot of misconception about bilingualism. Many people believe that by teaching your children to be bilingual that your child will have many language delays. Parents also tend to believe that that by teaching children to be bilingual they will "confuse" their children but this is another common misconception about bilingualism.

In my opinion it seems like it's definitely beneficial to teach students two languages so that they become bilingual earlier in life. Bilingualism will enhance opportunities in life (especially if you speak English and French in Canada) but also foster self-pride. But the question still remains: should another language be taught in a country that is not bilingual?

In the case of Ebonics, it seems fair for English to be taught as the primary language. Children will be able to speak in their primary language at home, but learning English in a school setting would be more beneficial because English is the language of the country they live in. By learning to speak English they are enhancing the amount of opportunities they can have later in life (i.e. university, jobs). I know many people who speak one language at home, and speak English in school settings and they have done well. By isolating a community and sheltering it in it's own culture you may be stopping individuals from reaching further out of the community and into the country.

However, while English should be taught in the classrooms I think that it is important for teachers to be trained and understand that the community they are teaching in is a community that celebrates it's own language and culture outside of English. Teachers need to understand that Ebonics is a language, and not improper English which is what most people believe it is unfortunately, and need to recognize that while a paper may not be written entirely in English, there are going to be some formatting errors like that when teaching a language that isn't central in a community especially in younger children.

It seems unfortunate that countries don't celebrate the extensive amount of cultures that exist in their country. At the same time however it seems fair that if you're immigrating to a new country, you should learn the language of the country so that you can be an active participant within the country and even within your own community. It seems a bit unfair to immigrate to a new country for all the new opportunities and freedoms, but not want to learn the language and culture of the country you're immigrating to. On a personal level I would never go to Japan without trying to learn the language, especially if I planned on living in the country. By not engaging in the customs of the country you're adopting as your second home, you're severely isolating yourself from new and rich cultural experiences. I've met individuals who have travelled to foreign countries and when in groups there is a tendency to not want to learn the language because you already know people who speak the same language as you, but at the same time I feel as though if you do that then you're really not taking the cultural experience in.

It's difficult to learn a new language, but it's even more difficult to live in a foreign country isolating yourself from other people.

References

April 6th, 2011
Well, this is the last blog post of the year. How exciting!

I enjoyed the Psycholinguistics class a lot. It was really interesting and I felt like I learned a lot. I admit I stopped taking notes half way through the semester, but I enjoyed the freedom of blog writing and how I could take a topic we discussed in class and expand my own knowledge from it. I learnt a lot of cool things that I wouldn't have otherwise known, like how syntax is visualized within the brain. I really enjoyed the guest lecture we had for the InteRACT program and I wish that the lecture could have been a bit longer because the lecturer seemed like she had a lot to say.

I think my favourite parts of class would be learning about bilingualism, as well as the different typologies of languages. Those classes really stand out in my mind as interesting classes. Learning about the different types of aphasia more in depth was great too. Every first year Psychology class briefly touches on aphasia but it was really interesting to learn the different types in more depth, and see videos about them.

For the most part I enjoyed writing the blogs. It gave me a chance to explore things in more depth, and to think critically. To be honest though it eventually got difficult to think of new interesting blog posts to write about. I tried to read other people's blogs, and I spent a lot of time reading my friends. I felt sad that a lot of students seemed to be just summarizing what happened in class because there's so many interesting avenues that they could have explored with their blog posts! I tried very hard to be creative and ask good questions with my blog posts. The blog posts were a good way to be creative with subject matter, and to also research personal interests.

I enjoyed working on the chapter. I felt like it was a fun project, and I really support the idea of giving everyone equal opportunity to education. I find sometimes we're a bit elitist about the opportunities we have for education, especially post-secondary education. Not everyone has the same opportunities that we do and that shouldn't mean that they shouldn't have access to an education. I think the idea of freeing our university classes is great because it still has the same content as a regular lecture class, but without the commitment which can be nice as well. The one criticism I have about the chapter is I felt like I really did learn a lot about Syntax in the Brain, but I didn't learn much from the other chapters. To be honest I read my friends chapters, and the one I had to peer review. I feel like this probably happened to a lot of people where they really focused on their own chapters and no one else's. The one criticism I have about the Chapter/Learning exercise would be it would have been nice to have access to the grading rubric, so that we would know what kind of things we were being graded on.

I enjoyed the debates for the most part. I thought that the topics that were assigned were really interesting, and I really enjoyed working with my group. I had a great group, and we had a lot of fun together. I know this probably wasn't the case for most people though, but luckily I was in a group where I knew two thirds of my group (excluding me of course!). The twenty second time limit for slides was really intimidating at first, but I found that as we continued practicing (a lot) we were able to not only cut words, but also be under 20 seconds without losing too much information. I thought that the subject matter was really interesting, and I think everyone did a great job of arguing their points even if they didn't agree with their stance.

Overall I really did enjoy this class. I'm glad I took it, and I feel like it was a lot of fun. I learnt a lot of really interesting aspects about language which was my goal for the course so yay. I'll kind of miss wikiversity!

Thanks to Aaron and Sarah for making this course what it was! :)