User:Doaney

= Laura Doane =

Laura Doane is a third year student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is majoring in psychology and most enjoys the social and developmental approaches in the field. Being interested in the development of children and how language effects their whole world is the reason Laura signed up for this course. Laura has been through many ideas with what she wants to pursue after university ranging from architecture to a clinical psychologist, but as of now her heart remains with her love of children, Laura is planning to take on the career of an elementary school teacher. Laura is hoping that PSYO/NESC 3190 will help her attain the knowledge that she needs to be a great teacher.

= Weekly Blogs =

Blog #1
For my first blog I am going to cover a few different things that I found interesting in the course so far.

The first interesting point I would like to make is about Kanzi the Bonobo chimp and how he seemed to be able to understand language and even play PacMan! But Professor Newman made a very good point when we were discussing this particular point in class. He mentioned that Kanzi could not speak, therefore how would this chimp be capable of getting language across to others. Professor Newman then gave the example of chimps grooming one other, and how humans use language to "groom" a whole group of people all at one time. I found this point interesting because I imagined in my head trying to get a point across but only being able to communicate with one person at a time, that would take too long and people would not have the knowledge that they do today.

I would also like to discuss is my interest in the topic I chose to write my chapter on for this class, the acquisition of more than one language. As I am somewhat bilingual myself (although my french grammar is terrible), it interests me that children at such a young age are able to differentiate between more than one language when they are learning. I joined french immersion when I was in grade 7, so I already had one language that I spoke with confidence. I found that when I was learning french I was able to relate some english words to french words in order to create an understanding. I am looking forward to moving forward in the class to learn more about this topic that peaks my interest.

And to finish off my first blog I would like to mention something small, which is the absolute language and the relative language. When Professor Newman mentioned these and gave the examples I just thought it was very interesting. The fact that there are actually people that relate where another person is in comparison to a fixed bearing, I just cannot picture myself saying that somebody is to the South of me...

Blog #2
The end of last week we discussed American Sign Language (ASL) and many factors that have an impact on the quality of a conversation. Professor Newman was demonstrating how just a simple mix-up in the way the hands are facing or the shape of the sign one is trying to make can take on a whole new meaning and can turn a rather dull conversation into a more exciting one (i.e. hand signal meaning horny). Due to this people using ASL must be aware of the contexts thy are in, along with choosing their signs carefully.

When it comes to sign language and how it works in the brain, researchers have found that the left and right hemispheres of the brain affect signing differently. When there was damage to the Left Hemisphere (LH) signers showed the same problems as speaker with aphasia (Broca's and Wernicke's). When there was damage to the Right Hemisphere (RH) there was no affect on the persons signing ability. Studies suggest that the LH is used for understanding (syntactic) language, and the RH is used to create language (iconically), such as making signs.

Something that I found interesting about sign language is that there are more than one type. I do not know why but I had a thought that there was only one and that it was universal. To my surprise when I was reading abut Bilingual Code-switching (for my chapter project) I came across the fact that code-switching occurs in sign language too (i.e. ASL to cued English)! I suppose it would be similar to learning another spoken language, but I am unable to wrap my head around the fact that signers do not get confused. I hope that when we get to codeswitching in lecture that Professor Newman will address this thought.

Blog #3
This blog may seem a bit scattered because I have missed classes this past week from having my concussion. However, I was present for the class that Professor Newman demonstrated how the two words "pin" and "spin" were not as similar as we first imagined. I am a person who is very interested in the artsy side of things and write poetry. So after doing this activity that showed how different the two words actually were I was surprised because when I write poetry I figure because they rhyme they must be similar, but was I ever mistaken!

Another thing that I was in class to see was the way the voice recognition programs and how they use machines to translate language. I was laughing so hard during the video that Professor Newman showed us a video on how a computer may interpret the way we say things in entirely the wrong way, the video was hilarious and it just goes to show how far technology has come. Something that I always wonder, and always get asked is about my phone, if somebody leaves a message on my phone I get a text message that types out what the message says. Most of the time it is rather correct and I am able to see what they said, however I have noticed that if they are not in a place that is quiet than it works, but if they are in a noisey place (i.e. have the radio on, music playing, or other people talking) the text messages don't make much sense. It is amazing to me that we have the technology to do this.

Also I was intrigued by the fact that we "talk in our heads" when we read, I never really thought about that until my friend and I were talking about it the other day, and now I find that when I'm reading or writing that I can't stop paying attention to the fact that I speak in my head at the same time... I am hoping that this phenomenon will be discussed in class, and I am planning to ask about how people who use sign language "read in their heads", do they see pictures? Or do they see the signs that they would usually be making with their hands? Hmmm...

Blog #4
Last week we had Munro day on the Friday along with a snow day on the Wednesday afternoon, so the lack of class time leaves me with no choice but to discuss morphology which we learned about in class on Monday. Morphology consists of morphemes which are the "building blocks" of words and can easily change the meaning of the word, or can change whether or not a word makes sense. An example would be a simple verb such as "to walk" in order to put this word in the past tense one would need to add an "-ed" to the end, to create "walked". This seems simple enough, so children are able to grasp the concept rather easily, however, what happens when they come across the verb "to run".... They will most likely automatically say "runned". Due to the fact that irregular verbs such as "to run" are not as simple as adding "-ed" to the end, I am sure many children get confused. When it comes to American Sign Language (ASL) do children also get confused with the translation of present tense to past tense? What I gathered was that many signs are similar and have a meaning that can be easily interpreted into what the child is trying to say, similarly to English. As I mentioned in a previous blog a simple direction or placement of a sign can change the entire meaning into something that either does not make sense, or may be inappropriate for the context in which they are communicating.

Something else that I found interesting is how in todays society certain words are becoming verbs that were probably never expected to become verbs in the first place. For example, when someone is not sure of what something means, how something is spelled or how to put something into a sentence you will often hear them say that they "Googled it". When did Google become a verb? And how does something like that evolve? Another example that is more recent is getting in contact with people, nowadays many people will say that they "Facebook'ed the person" or "Twittered" them. I personally use these terms, but that does not change the fact that I find it strange that website names are being used as verbs... Does this mean that they will soon be in the dictionary with a definition such as "Facebook: an networking website that aids in people staying in touch with one another". Who knows...

Blog #5
This blog is going to discuss what I thought about the assignment that was just submitted on Friday. I would first of all like to state that I am appreciative of the fact that we have these due dates that are meant to keep us on track, they are helpful and although many people complain about them, I like them!

My topic for the project is the acquisition of a second language. I had a bit of trouble when it comes to what exactly I am expected to talk about because I feel as though I am supposed to focus on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in which a person develops a second language at a later age in life when they are already capable of speaking at least one language fluently. However, I have been having a much easier time finding articles, information and other resources on bilingualism in children and how they develop and learn two languages simultaneously. I discuss how children are expected to develop two systems if they are interested in becoming successful in the language that they are expected to learn. An example of when a child only develops a single system is when a child has trouble thinking and differentiating between the two languages that they know. This is common in children when they are learning more than one language, but they usually grow out of this phase after being exposed to the languages enough to grasp the concepts.

Blog #6
Editing another classmates chapter is more work than I thought. I am noticing the different views that people have on topics and how people interpret different aspects of information. What I am finding most difficult is the fact that people seem to have not really finished their chapter and I feel as though a lot of the information is missing, although this is more work for me it will broaden my horizons on the aspects of language that I have not really focused on.

The chapter that I am editing is "Lexical Access". When looking into this there are different effects that will have a say in which lexical part of what we are trying to say will be used. The frequency effect and the word-superiority effect are two examples of ways in which a person is capable of remembering such a thing.

Something I wanted to discuss in this blog, is "word concreteness" and "word imagery". Words such as "trust", "jealousy" and "love" have very broad meanings and many people will explain them differently judging by how they felt in the situation.. whereas concrete words such as "house", "dog" and "chair" will most likely be explained the same way. what boggles my mind is the explanation of feelings, I realize that they are imagery so there is not description that is "carved in stone" but I feel as though there should be a general understanding of the word. I guess what I'm really trying to say is how do people know that what they think is correct, is correct? Someone once told me "People may not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel..." and I feel as though this relates to what I am trying to say, because although people may not be able to describe things such as "justice" and "hope", these words (especially in the case of feelings) are universal. Whether somebody knows how to explain what they are feeling or not, they are feeling the same thing as other people...

Blog #7
There are different approaches to speech production and how people approach language in separate ways. In class this week there was a study discussed in which the participants were asked to read a list of words and then to name a set of pictures. What the experimenters found was that the participants had an easier time reading off the list of words due to the fact that when they saw the pictures they were forced to go back and think of which description fit the picture. This reminded me of one of the topics that interests me very much... Freud stated that people have "speech slips" also known as "Freudian slips" in which the person says something by accident that may be hinting at what they are actually thinking.. Also I relate this to the word association task in which people are given one word, and they are to answer as quickly as possible with the first word they think of. The word association reminds me of the study we discussed because it involves finding a word that relates to the given word, and it also relates to the slips in speech known as "Freudian slips" because the person may say something that is unconsciously what they are thinking (according to Freud). One thing I need to mention though is the priming effect... When doing these studies do the experimenters take into consideration the priming effect? In which the participant is primed from a previous word.. For example: if a person is doing the free association task and they are given the word fire, and are later on given the word "red" they are more likely to say "fire-truck" as a response because they have been primed. So what I am wondering is if the experimenters think about this when evaluating the participants.

Blog #8
I was trying to find something out of the ordinary to write about for my blog, but was having a hard time thinking of something that I wanted to discuss. As I was trying to decide I was listening to my regular playlist which involves rap, rhythm & blues, reggae and hip hop. My best friend is very into indie and rock music and mentioned to me that she could not understand what the artists in my songs were saying half the time. Now, to me this seemed absurd due to the fact that I have grown up surrounded by people who speak this way and I speak very mucht like them myself. I figured that she had the most trouble understanding the reggae because it is almost like a different language sometimes and many people have trouble understanding the accent they have and the terms they use. I am interested in the study of Ebonics, and often get comments saying that although I am white I tend to speak in "Black Speech". The funny thing was that I did not even notice it until someone pointed it out to me. My question is whether or not the reggae speech (Caribbean) is considered to be listed under Ebonics., because the majority of people from the Caribbean are black but the language that they speak is different.

Blog #9
This week in lectures we discussed the development in language and how children learn and adapt to language. What interested me is the fact that if a language or sound is not constantly practiced by the child then eventually their ability to recognize it fades with time. An example of this is children born into monolingual families, due to the fact that they are being taught only one language they are unlikely to be able to recognize certain sounds after a certain amount of time. Professor Newman showed a slide that had a chart showing the diagram of language development, which stated that in the first 6 months of a child's life is when this is the most important. He mentioned that children are born with universal language perception and then around 6 months they begin to have language specific speech perception, which I found very interesting. This point peaked my interest because my topic for my chapter was second language acquisition and I am very interested in the topic. However, one question that always gets my mind wondering is the nature versus nurture debate. Although we have been learning and debating this throughout our whole degree, I am very interested on the innateness of language. When looking at Genie, it seems as though nurture is the reason she does not have much language ability, however in this case her father was abusive and would beat her if she vocalized... So what I am wondering is if her father hadn't punished her for vocalizing, and she didn't have a negative feeling towards it, would she have been more likely to pick up on different words and learned language in an innate sense?

Blog #10
In lectures this week the topic was learning a second language. Now, initially I thought that my blog would be something simple to write because I did do my chapter on acquisition of a second language. But the more I thought about what I wanted to write, the more I realized I did not know which section of bilingualism I wanted to write about. When I wrote my chapter some of the aspects i found most intriguing were Emotional schemas, additive/subtractive bilingualism, and language differentiation. The additive and subtractive bilingual aspects caught my attention because although researchers state that they can be one or the other, my personal opinion is that people learning their second language experience both subtractive and additive bilingualism in the process. When they begin learning the language subtractive bilingualism is present because until they are fluent in both languages they may have difficulties differentiating between the two. However, once they are able to fluently speak in both languages they then develop additive bilingualism.

Emotional schemas were another interesting part of what I learned when I worked on my chapter project, because I find that in movies there are often scenes where a Latino wife/girlfriend loses their temper and automatically starts cursing out the male in their native tongue. I find it extremely interesting that this is due to an individuals native language being their source of emotional output.

And last but not least, language differentiation interests me very much. I find it interesting to picture a person having two different sections in their head for differentiating language... I am a very visual person and I like to picture it as an image.. The way I picture it is, it starts out as one bubble and as the individual begins to learn the two languages in a sense where they can easily tell them apart and there is no confusion between the two the single bubble breaks into two bubbles, which then represent complete language differentiation.

Blog #11
Since classes have ended we have been organizing and watching debates in front of the class. I have really enjoyed them so far and Dr. Newman has it organized in a way to keep the class interested and coming to class. I have never taken a course in which we have had to do a debate, but unlike a regular oral presentation I find that it broadens the peoples perspectives, and increase the amount of learning.

My group went first for the debate and we found that our argument was very secure, we were confident that we would win. Although we did not end up getting the majority of votes I learned a lot from the whole thing. Even though our group did a great amount of research and we all understood the pros and cons of our argument, it was interesting to see how a group of people other than ourselves was going to approach the exact same topic. I signed up for this debate not really knowing too much about the subject of Ebonics, and not being up to date with the controversy of it. But, after doing this debate I know more about it and can say that I am still "for" Ebonics being the primary language taught in Oakland, California.

I am very interested in doing more research on the topic of Ebonics, I find it fascinating. Although I am Caucasian, I mentioned in a previous blog that I have grown up around a lot of black people, and sometimes I catch myself using Ebonics. Something that I have always noticed is that when I use Ebonics (whether knowing it, or not realizing) I am often told that I am using bad grammar and that I am wrong... I quickly switch back to Standard English (SE), but I can imagine how hard that would be for a child who ONLY speaks Ebonics... It would end up being very discouraging and has the potential to hurt the child's self-esteem. This is why I am still "for" Ebonics being taught in Oakland, as long as the school system continues to teach SE as well.

Blog #12
This class was very interesting for me. I have never had a class with a layout of assignments like this and a class that made me actually understand the material to a point where it can actually be useful and remembered in future times. What I loved most about this class was that throughout the semester we were taught the basics and integrate details about the aspects of psycholinguistics, and at the end of the course we were asked to do these debates. Doing the debates caught us up on current events in the world of psycholinguistics. I enjoyed attending the debates.

I am sad that this class is over but I am very glad I took it. I will be recommending it to many people due to the experience I had. Overall I enjoyed my time in this class very much, a great thanks goes out to Dr. Newman for making it interesting for me ! :)

= References = Jay, T.B (2003). The psychology of language. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall