User:Minsun

I am third year student in Dalihousie in Halifax, and I am taking Psychology and Gender and Women Studies.

Blog Post 1
History Theories: Kanzi the Bonobo chimp I am very interested in the example of Kanzi teaching Bonobo chimp human language. I have some thoughts about the significance of the research. 1.	The sample of chimps were selected was the smartest chimps. The researchers who selected these chimps want to know how well they could learn language. In my opinion, the implication of the research is trying to communicate with non-human by study these super smart Bonobo chimps. Starting with the specie which is very close to human, gradually to other species are very different from humans. One day maybe human can understand some species who live in totally different environment from human (e.g., dolphins) very well. 2.	The baby chimp was raised in the language environment, he had better ability of learning language than its mother, and I think it happened because of two reasons. First of all, the power of environmental influences was a big part (as we were told in the class). He was raised in the lab, watching its mother was learning from the researchers. The baby must have strong stimuli of language during his development. Secondly, chimps are wild animals, and they use a lot of their energy for finding food and being safe in the wild field. Potentially, most chimps have ability as Kanzi can learn language, but they have to use most of their brain to seek food and be safe. Due to this, if the researchers taught Kanzi in the wild field, it may not learn as well as him in the lab, since he would have to worry about the basic biological needs.

Blog Post 2
On Jan 19th, we talked about critical analysis of journal articles. I think this class was very important, because good critical analyze can make us think deeper in science. In particular, Dr. Newman talked about critical thinking should be focused on hypotheses, theory, biases, and background of journal articles. How hypotheses have been tested is very important when we read journal articles. I agree with this point. In my opinion, if measures of hypotheses have not been done properly, the whole experimental research would be pointless. Except for hypotheses, indeed I think our critical thinking should be focused on operational definitions and results. A good operational definition has both parts of art and science. The art part requires researchers to describe a concept very accurately in language without any bias. The science part requires researchers to find measurement theory. Thus, if researches can not defined operational definition well in language, or if the operational definition has bias, the whole research will not be valuable. When we read journal articles, we should not only look at results, it is very important for us to think about consequences of results. Some results have negative or positive consequences of the world. For example, there were old studies that suggested men are better at sciences than women, particularly in the performances of math. The results may be good, but it had negative effects in the world. Women may believe they were naturally worse at math. Nowadays, there are many studies suggest that there is no gender differences of the performances on math between men and women. The differences can be caused by social and cultural expectation. Women may be treated differently by their math teachers, and unlike men, some women may lack the opportunities to get higher education. Due to these reasons, when we read journal articles, we should ask questions:

•	How well the operational definitions are defined? •	Do the authors have any bias?

•	What are the relationships between operational definitions and hypotheses? Do the hypotheses confirm the operational definitions?

•	How the researchers test the hypotheses?

•	What are the results? Are there negative consequences? If there negative consequences, why did the results cause the consequences, and how can we change the consequences?

Blog Post 3
In this week, both our lecture and the book mentioned deaf reading, and Chinese reading, and I find the topics are very interesting to me. English is an alphabetic language; readers use the inner speech while they read texts. However, for deaf readers, because they never heard the sound of English, they cannot read English through alphabetic channel as other English speakers do. Some deaf people cannot even read English at all. No surprise, deaf people do not have difficulty to reading homophones as non-deaf people. Also, deaf people with a little bit hearing ability would perform better than totally deaf people in reading tasks. I find this is a very interesting topic that can help us understand how deaf people learn English, and which kind of potential they have compared with non-deaf people. However, I think our book may focus on the research of deaf people on reading tasks too much. Since deaf people cannot hear, they need to use sign language to talk with each other. In my opinion, their ability to recognize body signs should be very sensitive. For future research, psychologists should look at which kind of brain activation they have when they read sign language compared with non-deaf people. To find a good way for non-deaf people learn sign language also has great implications. For example, this type research may be able to help soldiers learn sign language faster and more accurate. Thus, soldiers may have higher probability of success in their missions.

As I am a Chinese speaker, I agree with Ziegler et al (2000). I learned orthography language, and I do have inner speech when I read Chinese text. In my opinion, a big difference between Chinese speakers and English speakers is that many Chinese speakers read English in orthography. Since Chinese people read characters as having a whole meaning, Chinese speakers use the same way to read English. The way Chinese speakers read English can apply to the dual-route model. Many Chinese spacers may take directly from the whole word according to the model. Because Chinese people get used to read their own language as a whole, it is difficult for them to read English by separating words into syllable. I think that may be able to explain why Chinese people cannot pronounce well. It is because many of them cannot see well that there are different syllables in words. It is also may be able to explain that why English speakers who learn Chinese, have hard time to read and write Chinese well. It may be because they use to recognize words in syllables in English, but Chinese has nothing like this. Due to the materials I learned, I think these are very interesting and useful. If Chinese people and English people know these when they learn another language, it can help them to take good strategies at the beginning. Language teachers also should know this in order to help their students learn better and faster.

Blog Post 4
In this week, we learned Morphology. I think there are two very important terms, which are morpheme and phonology. Morpheme refers to the smallest shape of the word that makes associated smallest meaning and grammar structure of words. Phonology refers to different sounds in words, but different phonology does not necessary apply to different meaning. For example, if we add “ed” at the end of some verbs, it means past tense. However, depending on situations, “ed” can be sounded differently. In “walked”, the “ed” sounds like “d”, and in “relaxed”, the “ed” sounds like “t”. The debate in psycholinguists of whether we use rules or use generalizations in language is of most interest to me. In my opinion, to answer this question depends on which language you talk about. I think different languages have different logics, and one may have more rules than generalization, while another may have more generalization than rules. In analytic and polysynthetic types of languages there may be more generalization than rules. For example, Chinese is an analytic language, which has no word agreement in sentences, and the semantic depends on context. Syntax is less important in detecting the meaning of sentences (Liu, Li, Shu, Zhang & Chen, 2010). However, in languages such as French and German, rules are very strict and more important than generalization, and these types of languages are classified as synthetic. For example, in one words have affixtures that imply the gender of words, who (e.g., first person), and when (e.g., happened in past). You have to have all the components in one word to make it correct. Due to this, I think we cannot say in a language people just use rules or generalizations. Each language has both; just one language may focus on one more than the other.

Blog Post 5
According to de Saussure (1916), “signifier” is refers to particular things through sounds pattern. “Signified” refers to signs and symbols. One of the important points is the relationships between words and meanings. For example, one word may relate to other words or meanings (e.g., apple, can mean a type of fruit, or the Apple company). This phenomenon refers to two register differences. How people use a word depends on context. Semantic and syntax may change with different register differences. For example, in “I ate an apple” and “I made a phone call by using an apple”, “apple” in each context refer to different semantic meanings.

How people process information in a cognitive way is also important for psychologists. Varying models suggested by psychologists explain how we think about words. Hierarchical network model was suggested by Collins and Quillan in 1969. They noticed that all words have hierarchical relationships depend in different context. For example, if one says the word “bird”, most likely one can think about “wings”, “fly”, and less likely think about “swim”, even duck is type of bird which can swim. However, if one says the word “fish”, “swim” may come very quickly to mind. Another model spreading activation model was suggested by Collins and Loftus in 1975. Unlike hierarchical network model, this model suggests that one may get different note of a word. For example, one can read word “bird”, then think about “duck”, one type of the birds, and then think about “swim” because ducks can swim.

More than one factor or model should be considered. In my opinion, one model may not fully explain words cognition in mind. How people come up with words associated with other words may depend on the frequency of the words. The people’s experiences and knowledge may play an important role. For example, people may have different reactions of seeing the word of “psychology”. For ones who do not have much psychology knowledge, they may more quickly associate higher frequency words (e.g., therapy, clinical and so on), but if they have strong knowledge of psychology, they may come up with low frequency words which are familiar to them in a particular field (e.g., particular name of disorders and area of brain and so on).

Blog Post 7
This week we learned the differences and similarities of language and music. For example, for similarities both language and music have minimal sound units (phonernes of language, and notes of music). There are also differences between language and music, such as them have different semantic. In particular, I want to talk about the differences of the function and production between language and music. The notion of "all speak fluently" for language can be challenged. In my opinion, not everyone speak fluently, even their native language. One extreme example, People who has stammer. There are many people event cannot speak their own languages well, they have trouble to express their emotion in words. If the notion is right, there will be no people who worry to give speech. The functions language and music are also different. According of our lecture, the function of language is communication, and social bounding. It needs to take a lot of practice. And the function of music is entertainment and personal expression. It needs a lot of practice. I my opinion, if individuals want to be good at language and music, both language and music needed to be practiced a lot. As the example was given in the class, people do not need to practice language if they just chat with their friends in coffee store. And people do not need to be good at using language to do it. I think the same idea applies to music, everyone sings and plays music for having fun in social lives. However, if ones want to be good at it to perform in front others, they have to be professional. Same as language, if people want to be success in politics, they must good skills of persuasion, particular one wants to be in the high positions of politics. Some people need to learn this language skill.

Both language and music all have hierarchical structure. Pate (2003) suggested shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis. Language and music have overlapping neurocognitive resources for syntactic integration, and it may activity certain areas in frontal lobe. Separate from syntactic knowledge may activity certain brain areas of posterior brain regions. Pate also suggested that people may have the knowledge where the rules are. Thus, they perceive things, doing integration and taking sequence what they hear, and find what relationships are.

There are studies have looked up what the differences in brain activities between professional musicians, amatur musicians and non-musicians. Some studies suggested that professional musicians have grey matter volume differences in motor cortex. In professional musicians, they are more likely to use their fingers to produce music have more grey matter motor cortex in controlling of fingers. I think this discover not apply to professional musicians only. People who are professional at anything have association with physical movements, should have more activities in motor cortex, because they need good control of their bodies.

Blog Post 8
This week we learned gestures, and I found this is very interested to me. Gestures means body languages, people use it for communicate information and facilitate lexical access. I was surprised with the idea that actions can help to think about word. This idea of gestures has changed the thought what is "usual" language which is come from month. Also according to brain research, some brain areas are associated with gestures. Gestures more likely happen when people have tip-of-the-tongue. People's speech would be slower, and gestures would be increased. In my opinion, gestures are a good topic for culture differences. From my observation, North America people are more likely express their emotion by using body languages. In Asian, like China, Japan, Korean, these people are more likely hide their emotion inside. Body languages are used much less in these countries, even some time body languages are considered as rude in form situations. Thus, psychologist may want to see that when these people have tip-of-the-tongue, do they have more gestures, or they have other kind of behaviors that have similar foundation as gestures. I think people tend to lower their heads to think rather use rich gestures to help them think about words.

Blog Post 9
Bilingualism is an interested topic and it is popular today since the world is globalized, people need to know more than one language to comminute with others who are use different languages. Why do many people can not use second language as well as their fist language? The hypotheses which were discussed in the class were very important. I totally agree that neural plasticity is reducing while with people growing up, and this also reduce the abilities to learn new languages. Thus, to learn and use languages well, critical period is very important. If people do not explore stimuli of language, they may not use language well in their whole lives. This type of studies are done with some children, who were isolated from society. since language is part of culture, it is also important to look at how language leaning is influenced by social factors. I agree with Johnson and Newport, social variables are need to be considered. In particular, motivation is more important. In my opinion, to explain language fully, both biological and social factors need to be studied.

My self can be a good example to explain the both factors. My father was an English teacher, I learned English with him when I was 3 years old. I could have conversation with my father in English. I also did not find English was hard at all. However, I stopped to learn English when I was 6 years old. The language soon was forgotten. I re-learned English when in junior high school when I was 13 years old. Even I learned from very beginning, I found English was so hard, and nothing made sense to me, particularly tenses. I thought leaning English is useless, and I had no motivation at all. Since I decided to come to here, the motivation of learning English become very strong, and I pass all my English exams in 9 months. However, 9 months ago, I could even speak fully sentences. Now I can use English well, but I can feel both languages are not activity same. Once I get tired, I almost can not speak English. Thus, I always wonder that if the second language is learned in adulthood, it maybe coded difficulty in brain areas compared with the first language. I think psychologists should do more research on bilingualism, they may find some language potential someday, to help people learn language, or recovery with some language disorders.

Blog Post 10
In the lecture of aphasia disorders, we have learned three types of aphasia disorders, which are non-fluent aphasia, fluent aphasia, and global aphasia.

People with non-fluent aphasia can only produce short words together, but not sentences. They always know what they want to describe but they have hard time to come up with words to describe or can’t think about the label objects. Although they can say the name of object, they can write and draw what they want to describe. They also have no problem to understand commutations.

People with fluent aphasia can speak fluent, but their speaking does not make any sense. Also, they can not understand what other people say, and answer questions in nonsense. Both their writing and reading abilities are affected.

People with global aphasia have little or non language ability. They may use some particular sound to describe what they want to say. For example in the video, the man use “do do” to describe different things by changing “do do” into different tones.

There were three examples were showed with each disorder. I wonder do they only speak English or do they speak more than one language? I know some Psycholinguists suggest that first language and second language may be formed in different areas in the brain. Thus, do people speak more than one languages would be affected differently than people who only speak one language? Also, do people who learn different language in childhood would have different affect on this disorder compare with people who learn one language in childhood and other in adulthood?

Blog Post 12
I enjoy this class, and I am happy about what I have done in the class. It took me long time to write my chapter (much longer than I planned), but I really like what I have learned from the chapter. I am surprised how much I learn about my own language. I have sent my chapter to some of my Canadian friends who are learning Chinese, they found my chapter was very helpful. I am glad to hear these commons, and thank you for Dr. Newman give us this assignment. I can read many articles which were not included into the textbook, it is a better way to study compare with taking exams. I also had another big challenge which was the debating. I never though I could debate with Canadian due to my language problems. I tried my best to prepare the debating, and I thought I was failed after the class. But I was so happy to see I got A+ it. This really made me feel more confidence with my future study. I had the most challenge assignments in this class, and I think I did very good on them, and I learn a lot from this class. Also thank you for Sarah, it must be so stressful and tired to mark so many writings in each week. I am very appreciate all work you have done for this class, and thank your for the great commons. Again, thank you for Dr, Newman and Sarah, it had been great time in the class.