User:Stepheny

I'm in my 3rd year after taking a year off to travel. Currently I am working on a double major in Psychology and Spanish at Dalhousie University. I am taking psycholoinguistics because I would like to learn more about language more specifically how people with learning disabilities are affected. I also hope to learn more about biligualism in this class.

January 17, 2011- Blog #1

 * What is language? A short question that sounds relitively simple, a few words should be sufficient to answer this question, right? I mean our lives revolve around language it should be easy enough to explain, yet a few of these short worded questions have lead to a 604 page textbook, a professor and lectures to teach our class about language. A simple question I think not! Concepts dictated by Freud, Pavlov, and Piaget with respect to language are being taught to us in PSYC 3190. We are being taught how past ideologies have lead us to our current beliefs so our generation does not waste any time repeating that which has already been done in past research. Since today's society seems to about advancement, the way this class is being taught is sure to spark specific interests, and new innovative ideas among the students and from there the possibilities are endless. This will give the future generations something new to talk about. This class is teaching many students how to use a new part of the internet and is allowing us to help our fellow students as well as those who want to be more educated about psycholinguistics. It is nice to do something different in class instead of cramming for an exam just to forget it after the term is over. I believe that the class format for PSYC3190 is bringing something new to the table and is allowing us to use our knowledge of the topics interactively and over the course of the semester so the new information we are learning will become ingrained instead of just dissipating. As students we have been to a lecture or two and professors that throw in a few laugh, know their stuff and can present it well tend to have more students attend class which seems to be the current theme of this class even with easy access to podcasts and online notes. Professors that have interactive type learning (ie.practices quizzes, pictures, videos, short answer questions or give examples such as the stroop task) are allowing students to relate, testing their knowledge, not their ability to do narrow MC exam questions down to two answers and then play multiple guess. I believe reading other students works in this course may accually be a great way of learning, since all students know the ways in which they and their friends learn best. Pictures, information and explanations we can relate to, not old television soap characters that we have never even heard of may be a great form of teaching. We will have to wait and see! In the mean time I leave you with this question: What is language? At the end of this course I expect to be able to answer this question with a relatively clear answer.
 * Progess on my topic: I attemped to use some of the design techniques available when editing wiki pages, designing tables and inserting photos.

January 24, 2011- Blog #2

 * During lecture the example that was given where we had to say spin and pin really hit home. I realized how intricate language actually is. As a kid I would have told you the words were basically the same because they rhyme and have very similar spelling. After say the two words I feel like language is way more complex then I originally thought and from now on I will think differently. I look forward to more eye opening experiences in this class and within the readings. I found it appauling when I learned that an ASL dictionary was nonexistent until 1960 when it was developed by Stokoe. I have always believe any form of communicating is a language and growing up I understood the need for sign language. I feel as a society we have grown so much and it makes me happy that new generations are able to recognized ASL as a langauge and have the resources available if they want to learn more. It is not that long ago that it was unavailable for others to learn and I feel that our class project is a step in the correct direction. Not unlike the changes made in 1960, our project is make people aware and give them the ability to be educated if they so desire. Thinking about the lecture material I now wonder how does a child learn a language? It seems to come easily considering all the elements that are involved in speach that go beyond the grammar that children are taught in school.

January 31, 2011- Blog #3

 * During Wednesdays class we learned that chinchillas have categorical perception of the English phonemes which I thought was an interesting addition to the lecture. The McGurk Effect example was also an interesting touch. The fact that the acoustic info was BAH and the visual info (a mouth saying) GAH lead to the class believing that the man was saying DAH was interesting. I enjoy these examples because it shows students that although their first language my be English they still have a lot to learn because our brain can be tricked into thinking something completely different than what is actually being presented to us. I think it would be neat to learn more about these concepts so that you could train yourself to pay closer attention to the info that is actually being given. In class we talked about boundaries and how familiarity with a language helps distinguish where a word starts and ends in a spoken sentence. I was unaware of the difficulty that deaf people had when learning to read. I was shocked at how low the average reading level (grade 4) was in deaf adults. My interest was sparked by the statistics on deaf adults and I will be sure to look up more information on this topic to cure my curiosity. I would like to find out more about why there is such difficulty for these individuals and if there are anyways to teaching reading in a more effective way.


 * Topic:Teaching Reading- I was wondering if you could give me feedback on my topic outline I was given an extension because I did not receive the articles on teaching until the day it was due. Thank you

February 7, 2011- Blog #4
Growning up in a english speaking family sentences such as the following should seem fairly simple: The general rule in this case is as follows, because it happened in the past you add the morpheme -ed to the word walk, the person that did the action is not relevent as it is in synthetic languages like French or Spanish. Below is the Spanish equivalent to the above sentences. In languages like Spanish the word "caminar" meaning to walk in english, changes and is dependent on who the verb is refering to and sometimes an alternate ending is added with respect to the noun, which seems to be more complex than the english language. So why is english known as one of the most difficult language to learn compared to others, if the previous examples are true? If you consider the plural of box which is boxes the obviously the plural of ox is oxes. That is not the case though, the plural is actually oxen. Oxe is not the only irregular word in english language which is why I think english can be a difficult language to learn. There seem to be far more exceptions to rules and lots of irregular tenses compared to Spanish. There could have been a man outside but now there are a bunch of men. Similarly my friend's child could have went outside to play with the other children. A boy may have hit a boy last night or he may plan to hit his sister for stealing his toy. The english sentences in the first paragraph are indead simple because walk follows a regular pattern. I believe the difficulty in learning the english language is that many words do not conform to the normal morphemes such as -s, -ing or -ed. On another topic during Mondays class I began to wonder who are the special individuals that get to add and remove words from the dictionary. I can see a difference today between my grandparents generation and mine and the need for new words. Obviously I know what tapes, a desktop computer and A tracks are but when they came out with Ipod, or laptop, obviously needed to be given a name and therefore needed to be placed in the dictionary. I feel like the english language is evolving and the texting generation has created a lot of short forms before T9 was available. Does the majority population actually dictates what goes into the dictionary based on norms? Is there a small group of people who decide? Will we begin to see words such as ain't, dragged instead of drug, twitter, and facebook in the english dictionary one day if people continue to say them or will they just continue to be slang terms?
 * I walked to class
 * You walked to class
 * He/She walked to class
 * We walked to class
 * They walked to class
 * Yo caminé a clase
 * Tu caminaste a clase
 * El/Ella caminó a clase.
 * Nosotros caminamos a clase.
 * (Vostros caminasteis a clase) Used in Spain roughly translates to you guys walked to clase (used when talking to a group of people)
 * Ellos caminaron a clase.

February 14, 2011- Blog #5

 * I found fridays class particularly interesting with regards to the IBM computer Watson. I had no idea that this machine existed but I plan to watch Jeapardy this week. I am amazed that a computer is this advanced but I also enjoyed the parts that were showed in the video where Watson kept answering wrong. Even though technology is advancing it shows that it's not perfect especially with respect to jokes and puns. This is one thing I have found people who are learning a language strive for: the ability to understand not only the standard language but the slang, puns and jokes that involve almost another category of language. I wonder if IBM had to deal with psycholinguists or vis vera inorder to better understand how syntax works. Will Watson help linguists to perfect syntax?
 * The example: The old man the boat. Was a neat additive to the lecture. English is my first language and at first I did not think it was a sentence until Aaron said the sentence aloud. Does practice of examples such as the one above lead a person to understand grammar better than those that don't or is it related to what one learns in grammar class in elementary school?
 * In relation to Chomsky and his idea that language is the structure of the human mind. The examples given in class made me question why it is so hard to remember the sentences when the cognitive sentence structure was different from the norm. Is it hard because our working memory is not programmed to work in this way? It seems like one needs to decode the sentence in order to understand it.

February 28, 2011- Blog #6
The lecture I found the most interesting this week was the lecture on discourse. The examples in both the lecture and the textbook showed that causal inferences can be made depending on how related the material is to each other. An example that the text used was Tony's friend suddenly pushed him into a pond. He walked home, soaking wet, to changes his clothes. Most people would infer that it was Tony that walked home wet but we don't know it could have been his friend but because Tony was pushed into the pond, it makes sence that he would be wet and have to walk home soaking wet to change his clothes. Examples like this make readers a lot more aware when they are reading. It makes me wonder that when I am finished reading a novel how much external information did I infer but was not really in the text I read at all. The research example Aaron gave in class about the Disneyland trip was quite interesting to me because the last couple lectures in my forensic psychology class have shown how reliable peoples memories are (not very good). In my forensic psychology class we were told to remember a list that went something like this(try to remember these while reading them after you have read them all, then write as many of them down as you can): The whole class was asked to write down what they remember and then we were asked how many words they had remembered and then were ask who had wrote needle. Over half of the class had wrote needle down (did you?) and truely thought that it had been in the list although it was not one of the words. Looking back on the words made me wonder how do humans organize our memories. From the words the class was given most of us must have organized the words around a central theme possibly needle as a strategy to help ourselves remember the majority of the words. The Disneyland example also relates to this because individuals were told a story about seeing bugs bunny and the next time were asked what happened during there trip and most said that they had seen bugs bunny although that was clearly not the case because he would not be found in Disneyland. They clearly had a false memory of what had occured. On little activities such as these we learn how bad our memories can be which should make everyone take a step back. In court we rely on a persons memory, in test we rely on our memory of what we read or think we read, how much of our memories are false and how many of them are true? Will there come a day where tests or machines can tell us how accurate our memories are?
 * thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, prick, thimble, haystack, thorn, hurt, injection, syringe, cloth and knitting (now write down as many words as you can remember)

March 7, 2011- Blog #7

 * I was surprised that at 6 months old an infant is sensitive to pitch and it's not until 5 to 7 years of age that kids develop their sensitivity to music. I was also surprised that the similarities between music and language. The idea that grammar is equal to the way notes and chords are combined, and phonemes are relitive to notes in music. I am now left wondering are there any other everyday human and non human actions that are similar to each other? Is there similarities between math, clucking, a dogs bark, a cats meow or baby babble to music or language? It amazed me that an individual could be unable to hear the difference in pitch, yet another topic I failed to think about prior to this course!
 * During the lecture this past Friday Dr. Newman gave an interesting example about "O" I was surprised by the knowledge that in general people are faster to read the letter O than to describe it as a picture. This example as well as the Stroop task tells us different things about how we access meaning. The picture naming task in the book is also a great example because it shows that distractor word (if similar in meaning) inhibits the activation of the word, in other words if the target word was sheep and the distractor word was goat there would be more of a delay then if the distractor word was house. These models tell us that the way we process information may come in different forms, in some tasks one may access the material semantically and others may be more phonological. Curiousity has been spark thus many studies are being conducted to see how humans access information. One day will scientist be able to pin point connections between tasks such as the above and the way the brain is working to output an answer? If this ever becomes possible the scientific world will still have other unanswered questions, I guess it's what make the world go round.

March 14, 2011- Blog #8

 * Does society determine the meaning of gestures (ie. In western culture: waving your hand to say goodbye to someone, shaking hands to greet someone, or giving the finger) or do these gestures get passed down from generation to generation, culture to culture? Why is it that a friendly gestures in one culture are offensive in another? While listening to the lecture I decided that gestures can indeed enhances communication. I'm not sure of the complete context but I remember someone telling me that people are curious creatures and that if I was to walk down a crowded hallway and point to somewhere on the ceiling people would look up to where I was pointing, you did not need to say anything, just point and people would take an interest and turn their heads to sneak a peek and be confused when they did not encounter anything out of the ordinary. Try it it is really humourous! I believe that the pointing example illustrates that dietic gesturing(ie. pointing) as well as other types of gestures can aid in maintaining the attention of the listener. From the lectures I decided that gestures really do enhance communication. A fisherman saying, "I caught a huge fish" or a guy who got punched the night before saying, "the guy at the bar last night who gave me this shinner was a giant" indeed have meaning but if the speaker is to include a hand motion of how big something was it not only enhances the meaning but sparks the interest of the listener. I concept I found interesting was the idea of talking on the phone to a friend and continuing to gesture even though the person on the other end wont see you. It makes a person wonder if we gesture to aid us in talkign and help ourselfs organize our thoughts or it we gesture strictly to beneift others and are just accustom to gesture we continue to do it while on the phone.
 * Aaron mentioned that a persons working memory has a lot to do with whether an individual is able to organize their thoughts which can be beniefical when writing papers. I don't know how I feel about this concept because I believe people can be trained to write essays properly and trained to remember things. It may be true that people that have better working memory in generally are able to organise there thoughts better but I still think you can train an individual to organize their thoughts. Here is a youtube video on improving memory by organizing thoughts that you may find interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8

March 21, 2011- Blog #9
I was particularly interested in the lecture on pidgins and creoles and how the creoles develop grammar without their parents having this knowledge. I wondered if this means that our language develops in our brains and does not solely develop from what we learn from our teachers? I remember the case of Genie who did not have any teachers until later in life and still was unable to completely adjust, this led me to believe that the brain and teachers both responsible for learning at certain stages in our development. I think this is a very neat concept that I believe relates to many experiences I have had as a child and why the world has continued developing up to this point. As a child I learned how to play chess and many other games from my Dad and after a couple months my skills had become superior to his. The media now says that University and college are the "new" grade 12 diploma, and in order to get a job in the future it will be much more likely that an individual will need more education. It appears that all around us the majority of people are becoming more educated than their parents. Maybe this is the idea that because we learn so much from them we do not have to make as many mistakes as they did and thus existing knowledge is being passed down from generation to generation. Thus like the creoles, individuals in our society have the ability to add to their existing knowledge learned from their parents and other close to them without learning "the hard way" like they did. The second topic that raised some questions for me was Nicaraguan sign language. I remember as a child my parents friends had visited with their children from Mexico (whom did not speak english). They stayed for a week and although there was a language barrior we were able to communicate through gestures and found ways around the barrior. To play a game of frizbee we found a frizbee, which they had seen before and because the concept was the same in both our cultures (catch and throw the frizbee) we were able to play a game together. During this lecture I decided that gesturing (although it was debated earlier about whether or not it was beneifical to the listener or the speaker) can help with communication barriors and I feel that is what the deaf students in the Nicaraguan school used to communicate at first which developed into a language. I find it unreal that there are still new languages being formed in our society today!

March 28, 2011- Blog #10
I was always skeptical about the idea that an individual could learn new languages and aquire the accents of those languages at an older age. The youtube video on language hacking showed me anything is possible and has impacted me in a way that makes me want to learn more then just three languages. I am currently learning Spanish and started when I was 18, I have always questioned whether or not I would be able to be fluent and what exactly it meant to be fluent. Does fluent mean you can get by in a foreign country? Are you able to have an accent from your first language or must you carry and accent from the language you are speaking to be fluent? Can you speak a language fluently without being able to write it? All these questions are crossing my mind but I suppose that fluency in a lanuage depends who you talk to. I found it particularly interesting that there may not be a critical period for learning languages but there may be a relationship between the language (ie. If your first language was English it would be easier to learn German than Korean because German and English are similar in structure compared to Korean and English where one is a symbolic language). I was also surprised about the few disadvantages that arise to children who grown up learning a second language and the multiple beniefts that went along with it. I have always supported learning a new language and had firsthand experience helping children learn English as their second language, when I was in Spain, working as a nanny. English being my first and theirs being Spanish, I found the three children I looked after to be very fluent in English and they also held an american accent when they spoke English, which I believe came from listening and talking with their other Canadian nannies before my arrival. The children were between 7 and 9 years old and spoke English very well (fluently in my opinion), they could also write everyday words such as pen, book, shoe but they could not write a proper sentence in English. I found this concept very strange but understandable, since they had grown up talking English and Spanish and only learning the basics in English at school. Everyday I witnessed them code switching because as soon as their parents arrived home they would automatically switch to Spanish, some of the reason being that they were shy to speak English with their parents and some because they have always spoke to their parents in Spanish.

April 4, 2011- Blog #11
The first debate on Ebonics was interesting to say the least. I had no idea what to expect as I have never done a debate in class before. I felt both teams were prepared but they were unclear about some important factors. Both sides had points that were of benefit to them but I feel like my opinion on the matter had a stronger impact than point they made during their debate. When the idea of bilinguialism was brought up it lead me to a perspective I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. I don't know that Ebonics can be compared to English and French per se but surely it should be considered a language. Some people may say it is a waste of time to learn a language that is not used in other communities but to these communities it may give them more of a sense of identity and an ability to relate to others with in the community. I'm not sure that teachers should teach the language in the schools but they should certainly recognize it as a language. For me I feel as though Ebonics can be related similarly to England English and Canadian English or even Irish English. I have done a bit of travelling and I must say that I had a hard time understanding individuals from Scotland. Although they spoke English and my first language is English I could not understand most words they were saying because of the speed at which they were talking. Similarly when I was in England I was unaware of the words cue, and had never heard anyone say rubbish before. I continually thought to myself during my travels, "wow, I do not know as much as I think I know about the english language". This for me is how I think of Ebonics, although I would consider it a minority language that people use to communicate. I do not see the problem with Ebonics with respect to it being taught in school, I personally think it should not be, for the simple reason that if one feels they should know the language they can use it at home. They should be considered bilingual and Ebonics should be considered a language and children should not scolded for mixing up two languages. During the debate on cochlear implants I quite enjoyed the comparison of bilingualism as well. It does indeed make sence that although the children may not need to know ASL it can never hurt because if something does go wrong with the implants the individual with the hearing impairment still has an alternative way to speak to others if need be. When Aaron let us listen to the different frequencies of a cochlear implant, I was really surprised at what one actually hears. We can send people to space but people who have trouble hearing have to deal with a BandAid method? Doesn't seem fair to me. I always assumed that when my grandad had his hearing aid in that he could hear everything perfectly well, this is apparently not the case. I was also really surprised at how terrible music sounds through a cochlear implant. I know I surely would never want to listen to music for leasure like I do now. I wonder how long it will be until this technology advances to a new level, will cochlear implants become a thing of the past anytime soon and be replaced by wireless communication systems like other advancing technologies? We can only wait...