Title: PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
1PSY 369 Psycholinguistics
- Foundations of Language
- Language and the brain
- Language and thought
2Announcements
- Exam 1 Tuesday, Feb. 7th
- Coverage
- Chapters 1, 2, 3
- Format
- Multiple choice
- Definition matching
- Short answer
3Localization of function
- Josef Galls phrenology
- Mental functions (e.g., intellect, morals, etc.)
are supported by specific regions of the brain - You can feel the skull to assess peoples mental
abilities
4Localization of function
- Modern Neuropsychology
- Psychological functions are localized in
particular regions of the brain
5Localization of function
- Modern Neuropsychology
- Psychological functions are localized in
particular regions of the brain - 4 critical questions (Pulvermüller, 2010)
- Where which brain parts, areas, and eventually
neurons are active during, and are critical for,
process P and representations(s) R that P relies
on? - When at which point in time in the usage or
understanding of language does process P occur
when is representation R activated and processed? - How which neuronal circuit, which nerve cells
linked in which way, is the brain basis for
representation R which spatiotemporal pattern of
neuronal activation in this circuit does underpin
the process P? - Why for what reason are R and P located in these
specific brain parts and activated at these
specific points in time, and why is R laid down
in this specific neuronal circuit, P being
expressed by these specific activation patterns?
Todays focus
6Location of Language Organ
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Split Brain patients
- Direct Electrical Stimulation
- Modern Imaging Techniques
- Ancient Egyptians Greeks reported speech loss
after blow to head (brain damage) 3000 years ago - Paul Broca (1861) found that damage to left
inferior frontal region (Brocas area) of a
language impaired patient (Tan), in postmortem
analysis - Carl Wernicke (1876) Found that damage to
posterior part of the temporal lobe caused a
different kind of language problems.
7Lateralization of functions
- Human body is asymmetrical heart, liver, use of
limbs, etc. - Functions of the brain become lateralized
- Each hemisphere specialized for particular ways
of working
- Left-hemisphere
- Sequential analysis
- Analytical
- Problem solving
- Language
- primarily located in the left hemisphere (97 of
right handers, 81 lefties)
- Right-hemisphere
- Simultaneous analysis
- Synthetic
- Visual-Spatial skills
- Cognitive maps
- Personal space
- Facial recognition
- Drawing
- Emotional functions
- Recognizing emotions
- Expressing emotions
- Music
8Location of Language Organ
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Dysarthria a motor speech disorder
characterized by poor articulation - Apraxia of Speech a motor disorder affecting an
individuals ability to translate conscious
speech plans into motor plans - Agraphia (dysgraphia) - Impairment in writing
- Alexia - disturbances in reading
- Aphasia - is an acquired language disorder in
which there is an impairment of any language
modality
9- Most also lost the ability to name persons or
subjects (anomia) - Can utter automatic speech (hello)
- Comprehension relatively intact
- Most also have partial paralysis of one side of
the body (hemiplegia) - If extensive, not much recovery over time
- Brocas (cortical motor) - slow, effortful
halting speech, lacking grammatical words
- Me build-ing chairs, no, no cab-in-nets.
One, saw then, cutting wood working - Cookie jar fall over chair water empty
ov ov (Examiner overflow Yeah.
10- Cannot repeat words or sentences
- Unable to understand what they read or hear
- Usually no partial paralysis
- Fluent but empty speech
- But contains many paraphasias
- girl-curl, bread-cake
- Grammatical inflections
- Normal prosody
- Syntactical but empty sentences
- Wernickes (cortical sensory) - fluent prosodic
speech with little or no real content
- Examiner What kind of work have you done?
We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working
for a long time in the you know its the kind
of space, I mean place rear to the spedwan
Examiner Excuse me, but I wanted to know what
work you have been doing If you had said that,
we had said that, poomer, near the fortunate,
forpunate, tampoo, all around the fourth of
martz. Oh, I get all confused. - Well, this is mother is away here working, out
ohere to get her better, but when shes working,
the two boys looking in the other part. One
their small tile into her time here. Shes
working another time because shes getting, too.
11- Intact auditory comprehension
- Fluent (yet paraphasic) speech production
- Poor speech repetition
- Conduction - fluent speech with good
comprehension but impaired repetition and many
phonological errors subcortical pathway between
Brocas and Wernickes areas disrupted
Arcuate Fasciculus
but see Bernal Ardila (2009)
12Location of Language Organ
- Epileptic activity spread from one hemisphere to
the other thru corpus callosum - Since 1930, such epileptic treated by severing
the interhemispheric pathways. - Left hemisphere could read and verbally
communicate - Right hemisphere had small linguistic capacity
recognize single words - Vocabulary and grammar capabilities of right is
far less than left - Only the processes taking place in the left
hemisphere could be described verbally
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Split-brain patients
Language Dominant Side
Motor Cortex
Brocas Area
Motor Cortex
Can point to and identify the cat
13Location of Language Organ
- Epileptic activity spread from one hemisphere to
the other thru corpus callosum - Since 1930, such epileptic treated by severing
the interhemispheric pathways. - Left hemisphere could read and verbally
communicate - Right hemisphere had small linguistic capacity
recognize single words - Vocabulary and grammar capabilities of right is
far less than left - Only the processes taking place in the left
hemisphere could be described verbally
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Split-brain patients
Language Dominant Side
Motor Cortex
Brocas Area
Motor Cortex
The left hand can point to it, but you cant
describe it!
14Location of Language Organ
- Penfield and Roberts (1959) During epilepsy
surgery under local anesthesia to locate cortical
language areas, stimulation of - Large anterior zone
- stops speech
- Both anterior and posterior temporoparietal
cortex - misnaming, impaired imitation of words
- Brocas area
- unable comprehend auditory and visual semantic
material, - inability to follow oral commands, point to
objects, and understand written questions - Ojemann et al. (1989, 2004)
- Stimulation of the brain of an English-Spanish
bilingual shows different areas for each language - Stimulation of inferior premotor frontal cortex
- Arrests speech, impairs all facial movements
- Stimulation of areas in inferior, frontal,
temporal, parietal cortex - Impairs sequential facial movements, phoneme
identification
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Split-brain patients
- Direct electrical stimulation
15Location of Language Organ
- ERP (Event Related Potential)
- Good temporal resolution
- MEG (Magnetoencephalography)
- Good spatial temporal resolution
- PET (Positron Emission Tomolgraphy)
- Radioactive isotope, blood flow, lower
resolution, can move around (some), relatively
slow (lots of trials) - fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance)
- Blood flow, fairly high resolution, poor temporal
resolution (5-10 s after neuronal activity)
- Evidence for the localization of language
facilities comes from - Patients with language disorders
- Split-brain patients
- Direct electrical stimulation
- Modern imaging techniques
16Storing information about words
- In ordinary dictionaries
- an entry for each word
- all the information pertaining to that word is
given there - Phonological, graphic, grammatical, semantic
- all together in one place
- In the brain
- The situation is entirely different
- Each word is represented as a large network
- Different kinds of information in different
locations - So also each phrase that is learned as a unit
17Storing information about words
- The compact entry (as in ordinary dictionaries)
- All the information is there in one place the
lexical entry - Accessing the information
- First, locate (activate) the information
(requires searching) - Then read it
Looking for the unitary meaning center binding
meanings and words
- Epstein (1999)
- Posner DiGirolamo (1999)
- Pulvermüller (1999)
- Salmelin et al (1999)
- Skrandies (1999)
- Tranel Damasio (1999)
- Scott Jonsrude (2003)
- Hickok Poeppel (2007)
- Hodges Patterson (2007)
18Language in the brain
- Initial theories proposed very localized regions
- More recent theories suggest much more complex,
distributed systems - It is hard work, we are a long way to go to
understand the neural circuitry. Given that, is
it worth it? Yes - Knowledge of how words and grammar are
represented in the brain provides - May be the key to understanding linguistic
structure - It also sheds light on how the brain works in
general
19Lanuage and thought
- How are language and thought related?
- Are inner speech and thought the same thing?
- How does language impact thought?
- Are there things that we cant think about
because our language imposes particular
constraints? - Does our language affect how we perceive the
world? - Can two people who speak different languages
communicate? - The question has been debated for a long time
- And still is today
- New York Times article (well it was today back
in 2008) - Scientific American (the full article is on BB in
the optional readings section)
20Some history
- Plato Socrates THINKING INNER SPEECH
- Socrates And do you accept my description of the
process of thinking? - Theaetetus How do you describe it?
- Socrates As a discourse that the mind carries on
with itself about any subject it is considering.
I have a notion that, when the mind is
thinking, it is simply talking to itself, asking
questions and answering them. So I should
describe thinking as a discourse, not aloud to
someone else, but silently to oneself.
21Some history
- Aristotle SPEECH IS THE SYMBOL OF THOUGHT
- Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience
and written words are the symbols of spoken
words. Just as all men have not the same writing,
so all men have not the same speech sounds but
the mental experiences, which these directly
symbolize, are the same for all, as also are
those things of which our experiences are the
images.
22Some history
- John B. Watson (1913, early behaviorist)
- thought processes are really motor habits in
the larynx, improvements, short cuts, changes,
etc., in these habits are brought about in the
same way that such changes are produced in other
motor habits. This view carries with it the
implication that there are no reflective
processes (centrally initiated processes). - But see Smith, Brown, Thomas, and Goodman (1947)
used curare to temporarily paralyze all
voluntary muscles, but participant (first author
Smith) reportedly could still think and solve
problems
23Some history
- Vygotsky (Russian developmental psychologist)
- Language and thought have different origins
- Pre-linguistic child thinks independently of
language - Words are not symbols for thought, instead are
properties of objects - Speech sounds are not thought
- Language is acquired from the childs social
grouping - Later speech and thought become connected
- Speech becomes representational
- Childrens monologues are internalized and become
inner speech
24Some history
- Franz Boas, father of American Anthropology
- grammatical meaning can only be understood in
terms of the system of which it is part - Edward Sapir, student of Boas
- the real world is to a large extent
unconsciously build up on the language habits of
the group. - Benjamin Lee Whorf, student of Sapir (and
insurance claims adjustor)
25Benjamin Lee Whorf
We cut up and organize the spread and flow of
events as we do largely because, through our
mother tongue, we are parties to an agreement to
do so, not because nature itself is segmented in
exactly that way for all to see.
- Every language is a vast pattern system,
different from others, in which are culturally
ordained the forms and categories by which the
personality not only communicates, but also
analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of
relationships and phenomena, channels his
reasoning, and builds the house of his
consciousness.
From this fact proceeds what I have called the
linguistic relativity principle, which means,
in informal terms, that users of markedly
different grammars are pointed by their grammars
toward different types of observations and
hence are not equivalent as observers
26Does language affect thought?
- Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- Linguistic determinism
- Language determines thought (memory, perception,
action) - Linguistic relativity
- Different languages map onto the world
differently, resulting in different cognitive
structures - Whorf posited that cultural thinking differences
were the direct result of differences in their
languages - Speakers of different languages see the world in
different, incompatible ways, because their
languages impose different conceptual structures
on their experiences. - Weak version(s) of the hypothesis
- Language influences thinking how we perceive
the world
8 min podcast, Pinker
27The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- What evidence led Whorf to this conclusion?
- The bulk of his evidence was drawn from
cross-cultural comparisons - He studied several Native American cultures.
- But he also used examples drawn from his days as
an insurance investigator
28Does language affect thought?
- Whorfs famous example
- Empty gasoline drums
- Yet the empty drums are perhaps more dangerous
(in comparison to the full drums), since they
contain explosive vapor. The word empty is
used in two linguistic patterns - (1) as a virtual synonym for null and void,
negative, inert, - (2) applied in analysis of physical situations
without regard to, e.g., vapor, liquid vestiges,
in the container. - The situation is named in one pattern (2) and the
name is then acted out in another (1), this
being the general formula for the linguistic
conditioning of behavior into hazardous forms.
(Whorf, 1956, p. 135)
29Does language affect thought?
- Whorfs famous example
- Empty gasoline drums
Container no longer contains intended
contents
Linguistic meanings
Mental interpretations
Nonlinguistic observables
30The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Some of the evidence
- Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow
- Qanuk snowflake
- Qanir to snow
- Qanunge to snow
- Qanugglir to snow
- Kaneq frost
- Kaner be frosty
- Kanevvluk fine snow
- Natquik drifting snow
- Natquigte for snow to drift along the ground
- And more
31The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Some of the evidence
- Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow
- However, there are many different Inuit languages
and not all posses the same number of terms. - Boas (1911) reported one group with four root
terms. - This number is probably matched or surpassed by
skiers regardless of their language. - See Pullums Great Eskimo Hoax (1991)
32The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Specialization based on experience
- Different groups within a culture vary in terms
of the number of words they use for things - Consider memory
- Most people are aware of two kinds of memory,
short term and long term. - As we discovered previously cognitive
psychologists have many terms Sensory registers,
Iconic and echoic, short-term or working or
primary memory, long-term, verbal and imagistic,
declarative, procedural, and episodic. - It would be fair to say that the layman and the
cognitive psychologist think differently about
memory.
33Testing the theory
- Two major approaches have been employed to test
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. - Test the strong view language determines
thought by seeing if the cognitive system can
make distinctions that are not linguistically
represented - Test a weaker view that language influences
thought. - Domains in which this issue has been studied
- Color terms
- Counting and arithmetic
- Time/space language (e.g., Lera Boroditskys)
- Grammatical categories (e.g., John Lucys work,
1992)
34Cultural Variations
- If your language didnt have separate names for
these, would you see them the same way?
35Color Terms
- Much of the initial research focused on an aspect
of language which varies widely across cultures - Color Terms
- There are a few languages which have only two
color terms, and some with three. - Most languages draw their color names from 11
specific colors.
36Color Terms
- Brown Lenneberg (1954) So do naming practices
influence our ability to distinguish or remember
colors? - If something in a culture is named frequently it
may be labeled with a brief name, less frequently
with a longer name, and infrequently with a
phrase rather than a single word - The process of naming in this manner is known as
codability. - Codability how easily a concept can be
described in a language, related to the length of
the word. - Results
- Asked people to name 24 colors (8 central, 16
others). Those with longer names were named with
hesitations and less consistency - Highly codable colors were remember more
frequently than less codable ones
colors disappear
37Color Terms
- Berlin and Kay (1969) Color hierarchy
- Rules Consist of only one morpheme, not
contained within another color word, not
restricted to a small number of objects, and
commonly known - In 2 color term languages the terms correspond to
Black White - In 3 color term languages they correspond to
Black, White Red - Languages with additional terms items are added
as follows yellow, green, blue then brown, then
purple, pink, orange, and gray. - This data runs contrary to Whorfs hypotheses
- They suggest a universal physiological basis for
color naming, independent of language
38Color Terms
- Hieder (1972) (Rosch, 1973 same person)
- Dani tribe of New Guinea use only two color names
- Mili cool/dark shades (e.g., blue, green,
black) - Mola warm/light shades (e.g., red, yellow,
white) - They had no difficulty in recognizing color chips
that were from an initial presentation from among
distracters even though they had no names for the
colors. - Additionally, they were better at recognizing
focal colors (e.g., the best example of blue)
than non-focal colors (just as we English
speakers are) - This data does not support the strong view of
Whorfs hypothesis.
Check out ISUs Mind Project Virtual
Anthropology Lab
39Color Terms
- Comparative judgments among colors are affected
by color naming practices - Kay Kempton, (1984)
- Investigated English and Tarahumara
- In Tarahumara there are no separate terms for
blue and green - The task was see 3 chips pick the one least
similar in color - Some trials had chips English speakers would call
C1 green, C2 blue and C3 was a focal example of
green but farther away in light spectrum from C1
than was the case for C1 vs. C2
40Color Terms
- Comparative judgments among colors are affected
by color naming practices - Kay Kempton, (1984)
- Investigated English and Tarahumara
- In Tarahumara there are no separate terms for
blue and green - The task was see 3 chips pick the one least
similar in color
- Predictions
- Visual stimuli as only basis pick C3 as odd
- Naming practices influence pick C2 as odd
- Results
- Tarahumara speakers pick C3
- English speakers tended to pick the chip they
would label blue (C2) even though in the spectrum
it was closer to C1 than was C3 - Support for a weak version of the Whorfian
hypothesis
41Color Terms
- Winawer, Boroditsky and others (2007)
- English and Russian divide up blues differently
- Russian makes an obligatory distinction between
lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues
(siniy). - Results
- Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two
colors when they fell into different linguistic
categories (one siniy and the other goluboy) than
when they were from the same linguistic category
(both siniy or both goluboy). - English speakers tested on the identical stimuli
did not show a category advantage in any of the
conditions. - Support for a weak version of the Whorfian
hypothesis, categories in language affect
performance on simple perceptual color tasks
42Color Terms
- Siok, Kay and others (2009)
- fMRI study
- Results
- Lexical color information was accessed in color
discrimination - It also enhanced the activation of color region
V2/3 - Discussion
- Language, by enhancing the activation level of
the visual cortex, differentially influences the
discrimination of colors presented in the left
and right visual hemi-fields. - Support for a weak version of the Whorfian
hypothesis, categories in language affect brain
activation during perceptual color tasks
43Higher Cognitive Processes
- Color naming may not seem like a very complex
cognitive process - What about more complex mental processes?
- Counting and other Arithmetic processes
44Counting Arithmetic
- Greenberg (1978) has identified some cultures
where the only number terms correspond to one,
two, many. - Piraha tribe Gordon (2004) (Mike Frank video,
start at 852 to 1700) - Hoi (falling tone one), hoi (rising tone
two), badgaiso ( many) - Task Matching, show an array of objects, they
have to put objects down to match the array
- Results - relatively good matching up to 2 or 3,
but performance was considerably poorer beyond
that up to 8 to 10 items
- Conclusions The lack of terms for numbers in
the language greatly impacts the way they think
about quantities, evidence supporting a strong
view of determinism
45Counting Arithmetic
Miller Stigler (1987)
- English and French have complex names for numbers
- Japanese, Chinese and Korean have simpler systems
46From Miller Stigler (1987)
47Counting Arithmetic
Miller Stigler (1987)
- The greater regularity of number names in
Chinese, Japanese and Korean as compared to
English or French facilitates the learning of
counting behavior beyond 10 in those languages. - Another advantage is earlier mastery of place
value (understanding that in 23 there are 2
tens and 3 ones)
48Counting Arithmetic
Miller Stigler (1987)
49Conclusions
- At this point it is apparent that the strong view
of Whorfs hypothesis is not supported.
Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct, 1994)
The famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic
determinism is wrong, all wrong. There is no
scientific evidence that languages dramatically
shape their speakers ways of thinking. Most
of the experiments have tested banal weak
versions of the Whorfian hypothesis, namely that
words can have some effect on memory or
categorization. Some of these experiments have
actually worked, but that is hardly surprising.
50Conclusions
- At this point it is apparent that the strong view
of Whorfs hypothesis is not supported.
- However, there is continued support for the
weaker version(s) of the hypothesis - The data from areas of investigation concerning
color naming, counting arithmetic, reasoning,
visual memory, and other areas (e.g., social
inference) indicate that the use of certain
specific terms can influence how we think - The question that remains is how much of the
differences are because of the language and how
much due to the culture? - Problems
- Language cannot be randomly assigned
- Therefore we cannot rule out some third variables
such as culture.