LecturesWeek1 - quote.ucsd.edu

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COGS 156 Welcome!

Prof. Sarah Creel

http://quote.ucsd.edu/cogs156

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time Why study language development?

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time

Why study language development?

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:


Language development

•  We’re really good at learning language.

•  But it takes a long time to get really really good at it.

•  Other species can’t do it.

•  It gets harder as we get older.


Language development Why does language take the form[s] it does? What is contained in mental representations of

language? How much of language is “built in”? Is it unique

to language or more universal across cognitive areas?

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time Goals of the course

•  Understand biological foundations of typical and atypical language development

•  Identify stages and elements present in typical language development

•  Recognize various language skills that develop •  Recognize the differences between language

comprehension and language production •  Know the weaknesses and strengths of different

methodologies for studying language development •  Understand how language development does and

does not compare to development of other human skills

•  Understand how various mental disabilities affect language acquisition


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Sections of course

•  I: Overview & Sound Acquisition

•  II: Semantics (meaning), Syntax (grammar) & Social Factors

•  III: Individual & Group Differences and Literacy Development

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time How to do well in this class

•  Do the readings. – Book* – Short articles

•  Study for exams. •  Show up for class.


Class info

•  http://quote.ucsd.edu/cogs156

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time Grading

•  2 exams + final – First two exams: 25% each – Final exam: 34%

•  Writing assignments – Two article summaries: 8% each

•  Extra credit (+ up to 5 points) –  In-class quizzes – SONA (ucsd.sona-systems.com)


Write-ups •  Twice during quarter •  For each assignment

– Pick an article from the list of potential articles—not course readings

– Summarize in about 2pp – For content, see guidelines on course

website

Class is moving to SOLIS 111 next time Exam format

•  Several multipart questions – Some parts will require short answers – Other parts will require a few sentences


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Academic honesty

•  The work you do should be your own. •  No tolerance for cheating. •  Best idea: avoid the appearance of

cheating. •  See website for a copy of policy.


Language learning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UViec_Kv1s

Language (as performed by a 3-year-old)

•  Good narrative skills •  New words for new concepts

–  Light-up sword, pokey-ball* •  Generalization of concepts to new examples

–  Obi-Wan is a teacher –  Garage sale (overgeneralization?)

•  Co-speech gestures •  Phoneme errors

–  sh --> s (Siny guy, spacesip) –  Erratic production of final L sound

•  “well” followed by “wew” •  Verb overregularization

–  Blew up à blowed up •  Frozen phrases

–  The shiny guy always worries. –  Don’t talk back to Darf Vader, he’ll get ya!)

What children are learning

•  Sounds--even before birth! •  Meanings (“Semantics”) •  Grammar (syntax/morphology) •  Communicative competence

!

Comprehension may precede production!

(Kids can understand some things they can’t say.)


•  Sound structure--even before birth!

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What children are learning •  Sound structure

–  Even before birth: Prosody (ups and downs of speech) –  Speech sounds (b, p, u…) –  Combinations of sounds (sl but not sr)

Phonemes: speech sounds that can change the meanings of words (cat to cot)

Allophones: speech sounds that are audibly different but don’t change meaning (cat to cath; cat to cãt)

You might still use some of these to identify particular speakers or particular accents/dialects


•  Sound structure –  Even before birth: Prosody (ups and downs of speech) –  Speech sounds (b, p, u…) –  Combinations of sounds (sl but not sr)


•  Sound structure –  Even before birth: Prosody (ups and downs of speech) –  Speech sounds (b, p, u…) –  Combinations of sounds (sl but not sr)

•  Semantics –  The meanings of words (dog, run, anxiety, hello)

overgeneralization (wrong!)


•  Sound structure •  Semantics

–  The meanings of words (dog, run, anxiety, hello)


•  Sound structure •  Semantics

–  The meanings of words (dog, run, anxiety, hello) •  Grammar


•  Sound structure •  Semantics •  Grammar

–  Word combinations (syntax) –  Affixes (morphology)

Syntax: The man bit the dog vs The dog bit the man.

Morphology: The dog runs vs The dogs run. motivate vs motivation vs motivational

Evidence for morpheme knowledge: overregularization blow-->blowed: incorrect, but novel form for past tense

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•  Sound structure •  Semantics •  Grammar

–  Word combinations (syntax) –  Affixes (morphology)

•  Communicative competence –  When to use (and not use) your perfectly

pronounced grammatical utterances “Grampa, you’re fat!”

Grammatical? ✓ Appropriate? ✗

Biology of communication

•  Do animals have language? •  Can animals have language?

•  Critical periods: raising kids without language

Language Development: Biological contexts

Biology and language

•  Evolution – Are other animal communication systems

homologous to language? – Can other species learn human language

under the right circumstances? •  Brain structure

– Are there specialized brain mechanisms for language?

Animal communication

•  What animals communicate? – Bees (von Frisch, 1950) – Birds – Primates

•  A different question: What animals comprehend human language?


•  Bees (von Frisch, 1950) – Bee finds nectar, returns to hive – Does “waggle dance” that indicates to other

bees where nectar is – Refers to something not present – Toy version of actual journey (not arbitrary*) – Limited in communicative scope

* Onomatopoeia in human language are not arbitrary.

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•  African elephants (O’Connell, 1957) –  25 different calls

•  Jackdaws (Lorenz 1979) –  Courting, flying away, flying home, attack

•  Songbirds –  Zebra finches, European starlings, parrots

•  Most other species’ calls: –  Mating readiness –  Identification –  Predator warning –  May not be learned (including primates!!)


•  Feed, breed, fight, flight •  Human language (Brown, 1973):

– Productive (can recombine to make new) – Symbolic (words stand for other things)

•  And symbols are mostly arbitrary – Can exhibit displacement

•  Can talk about something temporally remote or physically absent

Kids:

Animals learning language? •  Various primates •  African grey parrots •  More recently: dogs

Age 6: 10,000 words

Animals learning language? •  Chimpanzees

–  Hayes & Hayes (1940): Viki •  Raised like a child •  After 6 years: good understanding, but said a few words,

effortfully –  Gardners (1970s): Washoe & ASL

•  130 signs •  Could recombine (“water bird”, “gimme food drink”)

–  Nim Chimpsky (Terrace, 1980s) •  Grammar?

•  Bonobos (safer!) –  Kanzi

•  500+ words (lexigrams) •  Understands word order!

Kanzi’s lexigrams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erjBKaaUodo

Kanzi and sentences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtwP7bV-3YQ

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Animals learning language? •  African grey parrots: Alex

(Pepperberg) –  ~100 words –  Recognized many colors,

shapes, numbers of objects

–  Could pick out the number of blue blocks in an array when asked (80% correct)

–  Further greys have been trained with similar results, as long as interactive human trainer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZftK8EgORt8

Animals learning language?

•  Border collies: Rico –  200 German words –  Can recognize a

number of objects –  Very interactive

trainer –  Dogs bred for

intelligence –  Does mutual

exclusivity

Animals learning language?

•  Border collies: Rico –  200 German words –  Can recognize a

number of objects –  Very interactive

trainer –  Dogs bred for

intelligence –  Does mutual

exclusivity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9raR7C2PI8

Animals learning language? •  More dogs:

– Chaser (border collie) •  OVER 1000 words •  All nouns •  Some evidence she understands

word order – Bailey (Yorkie)

•  117 words

Bailey the Yorkie (time permitting)

Humans not learning language

•  Children raised without language – King Psammetichus – Wild boy of Aveyron (late 1800’s) – Genie – Deaf children of hearing parents (see

research by Newport and Supalla, 1987; Ferjan Ramirez et al., 2014*)

* Mayberry lab, UCSD Linguistics

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Genie, the “wild child”

•  VIDEO HERE

Genie & the critical period hypothesis

•  Learned a lot, fast •  Stalled on sentences •  Horrible treatment early in life (and later as

well) •  Possible congenital mental disability? •  Somewhat inconclusive

Brain structures

•  At a very coarse grain: the left hemisphere –  Right-handers: 85% of population –  Left-handers (15%): half still left-lateralized for

language •  Some differences from population to

population •  Right still does (e.g.) emotional processing

Brain structures

•  Two big terms: – Lateralization: what side is language

function on? – Localization: what exact region is

language function found in? •  more specific

Brain structures

•  The left hemisphere •  How do we know all this stuff?

– Brain imaging (relatively new) – Brain damaged individuals

•  Relate damage site to performance deficit

Brain structures

•  Language and brain damage •  Areas in left hemisphere

– Broca’s area – Wernicke’s area – Arcuate fasciculus (fiber tract)

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Brain structures

(The brain, in one slide)

(This is the left hemisphere.)

(This corresponds to purplish area on left

drawing.)

Brain structures

•  Broca’s area –  In frontal lobe – Near the part of “motor strip” that controls

lips/tongue – Damage in this general region: Broca’s

aphasia* •  Labored speech (“telegraphic” speech)

–  “Want. Cookie.” •  Few function words (the, in, of)

Brain structures

•  Wernicke’s area – Back (posterior) of left temporal lobe – Near auditory association area – Damage in this general region: Wernicke’s

aphasia* •  Fluent speech with neologisms (made-up

words) •  Part of family of “fluent aphasias”

Brain structures

•  Arcuate fasciculus – Connects Wernicke’s to Broca’s,

subcortically – To repeat something, process in W and

sent to B along the a.f. – Damage: conduction aphasia

•  Can’t repeat things

Brain structures

•  So these are “language areas”? – Well… – Damage-area correlation not so clear-cut

(really cool Bates et al. 2003 paper in Nature Neuroscience) – These are adults; what happens with kids?

Brain structures

•  Children with unilateral brain lesion (see Bates & Roe, 2001, for a review) –  Basics: if you’re very young and sustain a brain

injury, it quickly doesn’t matter what side it is. •  LH damage ≈ RH damage by about age 6

–  “The classic pattern of brain organization for language … may be the result rather than the cause of language learning, emerging out of regional biases in information processing that are relevant to language, but only indirectly related to language itself.” p. 2

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Brain structures

•  Best explanation so far: •  These areas become language areas

because they happen to have a slight edge in processing things

•  By adulthood, function is pretty well solidified

•  (Very good illustration of why you should take development into account!)

Uniqueness of language

•  Lenneberg (1967): language is “species-specific” and “species-uniform” – Onset of language is culture-invariant – Speech isn’t suppressible (kids learn it

even without much encouragement) – Not learnable by other species – All languages have “universals”

•  Shared traits of sound/grammar/meaning*

Psycholinguistics

•  1960s: studies of grammar (thanks to Chomsky)

•  1970s: child-directed speech (innateness or input?)

•  1980s-90s: all areas of research (sound, meaning, pragmatics too)

•  Present day: cross-cultural work (e.g. int’l adoptions)

Research conduct

•  To assess development of some property of language: –  Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal –  Observational vs. experimental –  Standardized assessment measures

•  CHILDES (system for online data sharing) –  So researchers can analyze transcripts (now,

video data too) rather than reinvent the wheel •  LENA system and Big Data •  Human Speechome Project

Experimental methods (What goes on in baby brains?)

•  Infant research methods •  Behavioral

–  Heart rate ± –  Looking time –  Head turns (to look at X) –  Gaze location

•  Neural –  EEG/MEG –  [f]MRI –  Optical imaging ([f]NIRS)

•  Big questions: •  What are they

paying attention to? •  Can they discern a

change?

Documents

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