User:Arichter

I am a third year psychology student at Dalhousie University. My interests include developmental and clinical psychology. I am part of the wikiversity community as part of a third year psycholinguistics course. I chose to take psycholinguistics after learning about the speech language pathology program at Dalhousie. This sounds like an interesting graduate program, and I hope that this course will provide me with background about the study of language from a psychological perspective.

Blog One due January 17th

So far in class we have looked at an overview of history, theories and the concept of language and thought. I found the lecture on language and thought particularly interesting. When the question "Can we think without language?" was initially posed in class, my first response to the question was yes. However, as the lecture progressed, I started thinking about the important role language plays in shaping and organizing our thoughts. I was particularly interested in the study of cultural differences and language. When we were learning about linguistic relativism, I was reminded of the concept of cultural relativism which states that a person's belief system and actions should be judged and observed in relation to that person's culture. These two types of relativism may be related in more of a philosophical than a psychological fashion, however I am interested in how our language and culture shape our thinking and understanding of others. Another interesting topic discussed last week was the idea of language creation. I am interested in learning more about new languages and whether languages such as Toki Pona could ever be sucessfull.

Blog Two due January 24th

This past week in class we covered the topics of language and the brain, literature analysis and components of speech. I found the lecture on literature analysis to be particularly informative. The tips Dr Newman provided for reading papers will be useful in other courses. Over the next few weeks I will be reading many papers in preparation for my textbook chapter and hope that the techniques for reading papers that were discussed in class will help to ensure my literature search goes smoothly.

Another interesting topic that we covered this week was neural plasticity. I was amazed to learn that very young stroke victims can recover with very few negative side effects from the stroke. I was interested in learning about how neural mechanisms such as plasticity can help to prove that there is a critical period for language acquisition. This topic made me think of my own very unsystematic 'research' about language acquisition. My younger siblings all started to learn a second language at age 5, while I began in junior high. I observed that their accents and language abilities far surpassed my own even after the same number of year of language learning.. just a thought.

Blog Three due January 31st

So far this week, lectures have focused on speech perception. I was especially interested in the phonemic restoration effect. Dr Newman played an audio clip in which a speaker read several sentences that were interrupted by white noise. For example, The ___ was on the axel and The ____ was on the orange. In both cases the noise in the '______' was exactly the same however in the first sentence listeners heard the word wheel and in the second they heard the word peel. Using top down processing, our brain fills in the appropriate word for each sentence. I was interested in this effect in relation to bilingualism. In class we learned that people who are bilingual are better than people who are unilingual at the stroop test. This means that they are quicker to separate the color they see on the paper and the word they are reading. I was wondering if a similar phenomenon could apply to the phonemic restoration effect. Are people who are bilingual less likely to rely on the phonemic restoration effect?

Blog Four due February 7th

With a storm day and Munro day, it has been a short week in terms of course lectures. In the lecture on Monday we learned about morphology. Morphology refers to the "building blocks" of words and includes the meaning of these word fragments and their combinatorial system. We learned that morphemes are recursive, meaning that we can continue to add morphemes to a word to change its meaning (ie establish, establishment..). I was interested in morphology and ASL. We learned that ASL is polysynthetic, meaning that a single sign may represent several concepts. We also learned how subtle differences in signs represent different morphologies. It is interesting how the direction and specific placement of movements in space can change the meaning of the gesture. Non-ASL speakers may have trouble distinguishing the differences between similar signs, so I was wondering whether individuals who sign ASL have heightened visual-spatial abilities.

Blog Five due Feb 14

This week in class we learned about word recognition and syntax. We discussed topics including word meaning, semantic knowledge and the different dimensions of words. We also learned about word lexicons, semantics and the difference between syntax and grammar. There were a few topics this week that I found particularly interesting. The first was Zipf's law. Zipf's law is used to explain word frequency. According to this law, word frequency follows a mathematical model. For expample, the second most common word in the English language is twice as frequent as the third most common word, the third is twice as frequent as the forth, etc. This model has been validated in different languages. I thought this law might place more of an emphasis on a hierarchical network model lexicon than a spreading activation model. A second topic of interest was "Watson". Watson is a computer program that can answer Jeopardy questions with great accuracy. I found it incredible that a computer was able to respond with such accuracy to a variety of questions. I think that Watson will be a valuable tool for understanding mental lexicons and syntax in humans.

Blog Six due Feb 28th

This week in class we discussed sentence processing, syntax and discourse. I was interested in the research done by Tanenhaus (1995). This research demonstrates the importance of context on sentence parsing, by showing how eye movement differs based on the visual information that accompanies a sentence. When we are parsing a sentence we rely on contextual information to inform our parse. This research does not support the garden path theory. The garden path theory says that when parsing a sentence, we commit to a parse which may be incorrect (depending on sentence structure). I think that the garden path theory places too much emphasis on the cognitive aspects of parsing. I think that if garden path sentences were placed in an appropriate context we would find that people modify their parse to fit the context. I would be interested in results of eye tracking studies using garden path sentences in context.

Blog Seven due March 7th

This week in class our topics were language and music and speech errors. I found the lecture on language and music particularly interesting. We began class by discussing many similarities between language and music (phonemes, structure, recursivity, etc). After all the similarities that were brainstormed, I expected that we would learn that language and speech are controlled by the same brain areas. I was surprised to learn that neuropsychology research has found that language and music may be related to different areas of the brain. This research was supported by findings about aphasia and amusia (impaired perception of harmonic relationships). These are two distinct disorders, and in many cases a person can have severe defecits in musical perception but not speech perception. Like my classmate, I also thought of the movie "The King's Speech", which I saw over reading break and was interested in the idea that an individual may be able to sing a sentence but not speak it or vice versa.

Blog Eight due March 14th

This week I found the lecture about gesture to be particularly interesting. I volunteered in Dr Newmans demonstration at the beginning of class and discovered that I use more gestures when I am speaking than I thought I did. When we discussed types of gesture I was familiar with emblems, iconics, beats and deictics, but less familiar with the concept of metaphorics. A metaphoric gesture represents an abstract concept in a more physical way. Previous to this lecture, I had thought of metaphoric gesture as more of a "random" hand movement, however I can see how concepts can be represented in physical space using gesture. When Dr Newman was talking about people gesturing while speaking on the phone I was wondering about whether blind people gesture. I found an article by Iverson and Meadow that explains that deaf individuals do gesture. Iverson's study (1998) of congenitally deaf and sighted children found that they used gesture at similar rates. This supports the idea that gesture is not something we merely learn through observation, but it is a tool for helping us to express our thoughts and structure language.

Blog Nine due March 21st

This week in class we learned about language development. I have been away all week, so I have been following our class on podcast. I was very interested in the study that Dr Newman presented about the effects of early language exposure by Mayberry et al because it relates to my Wiki chapter. I wrote the chapter about cochlear implants and language instruction, and in the chapter I discussed the debate about whether deaf children should spoken language (oral communication) or a combination of sign and spoken language (total communication). I found conflicting evidence about both methods of teaching for cochlear implant recipients. Mayberry's study does not involve cochlear implant recipients, but looks at deaf adults language ability (both ASL and spoken). The study found that ASL facilitates spoken language ability. Although this may not directly generalize to cochlear implants, I think evidence would support the use of total communication. This means that any type of language instruction, whether verbal or signed will be useful in a individuals language development.

Blog Ten due March 28st

This week in class (on Monday and Wednesday) we learned about bilingualism. This lecture made me think of an article I read a few weeks ago in the National Post about elderly adults who learned English as a second language late in life and lost their english language ability as they aged. These elderly individuals were still fluent in their native language, but lost their ability to speak their second language. This ties into when Dr Newman was talking about how different areas of the brain are used when we learn language early in life as opposed to later in life. I was wondering about how these areas of the brain affect our ability to retain language as we age. On Friday we had a guest lecturer speak about aphasia. This was a very interesting lecture- I especially enjoyed watching the videos. I have never met anyone with aphasia, so I found it very useful to watch the videos to help illustrate the concepts the lecturer was talking about. I was interested in the techniques that were used to help with rehabilitation.

Blog Eleven due April 4th

This week our in-class debates began. The topics being debated this week were the teaching of Ebonics in schools, the dyslexia Fast ForWord program and oral communication for cochlear implant recipients. My group debated against the use of total communication for cochlear implant recipients. After writing my textbook chapter on the subject of cochlear implants and preparing for the debates, I am quite bored of the topic, so I will focus this blog post on dyslexia treatment. I was interested in this debate because I had never heard of the Fast ForWord program. I liked that the debate focused on the economic advantages/disadvantages of the program. Although, I was also interested in the studies that looked at the scientific evidence in favour of the program. While analyzing both arguments, I was reminded of a lab course that I took last semester where we were discussing the effectiveness of different types of clinical treatments. The prof gave an example of comparing Dr Phil and a private psychologist. Dr Phil reaches millions of people and may help only 1%, while a private psychologist can only meet with several clients a day, but will help 50%. In the end, Dr Phil may still be helping more people, even if he is very ineffective. I thought this tied into the Fast ForWord program in that the program can be done at home, so it can reach many people. Even if the program isn't as effective as others, it may still help more people because it is easily accessible.

Blog Twelve due April 11th

With class wrapping up this week, I will use this blog entry to provide some general comments about the course. There were many things that I liked about this course. For one, I liked the "unconventional" style. I am very tired of multiple choice tests, so I think Dr Newman did a good job of engaging students in a different style course. I enjoyed working on the Wikiversity chapter because it allowed me to focus on learning about one topic in detail, rather than learning about a variety of topics very generally. I liked the debate assignment, I would only suggest that Dr Newman provide more tips in class prior to the debate as I found many students read completely from their notes, which gets boring to watch. When this class is taught in the future, I would suggest that less blog posts are assigned. Perhaps one post every two weeks with a slightly longer length. I would also suggest that the blog posts are worth more of the final mark (eg 20%) and the learning exercise is worth less (eg 20%). Overall, I enjoyed the course. I appreciate Dr Newman's creativity in designing the course, and feel this has been a successful semester.