Language Development Test 3 Experiments

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Cotton-top tamarins – statistical learning

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a string of syllables is played for 20 minutes to a colony of monkeys (GolabuTupiroPadotiBikadu…), and later on day 2 either the words (ex: Golabu) or part-words (ex: labaTu) were played;  RESULTS: showed that they were more likely to turn to listen to part words, like children, showing preference for novelty, and showing that they can distinguish between words based on statistical distributions

Front 2

Vervet monkey communication

Back 2

referential call system (with different calls for things in the air, on the ground, or in the trees) - limited, not creative

Front 3

Bee communication

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referential bee dance (figure 8) tells other bees where to go for food, and also recently discovered, where not to go because of a threat

Front 4

Negative effects of deprivation on birdsong learning

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 Skewed distribution of syllables
 Degraded syllables
 Syllable ordering is less consistent
 Dropped or new syllables can be seen
o Effects of deafening are even worse in early stages of development

Front 5

Chimp study: goals, intentions and knowledge

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two chimps inseparate rooms (on opposite sides of a 3rd room), one subordinate and one dominant chimp, placed food in the middle room, two conditions: either the dominant chimp saw food being hidden or not, subordinate chimp always saw it;  RESULTS: subordinates only ran to get the food if they assumed that the dominant chimp did not see the food hidden

Front 6

o WADA Test

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 Anesthetize one hemisphere prior to surgery, to determine language dominance - if hemisphere is dominant, person stops speaking

Front 7

Limitations of the lesion approach

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• Not always sure what functioning was like before damage, small sample size, lesions affect multiple region, brain may reorganize after lesion, regions may not be necessary (just sufficient)

Front 8

study with Split Brain Patients

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 STUDY: different things are flashed in the different visual fields (left and right), and split brain patients were asked to either verbally or non-verbally indicate what they saw ; • RESULTS: verbally, split brain patients can only communicate the thing from their right visual field (processed in the LH of the brain). If the response was required non-verbally, they can identify things in their left visual field, but only using their left hand (processed in the RH of the brain)

Front 9

categoric perception in infants

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• STUDY: to see how the brain processes phonemic changes (categoric perception), 3 year olds were given a mini-habituation study; o RESULTS: it was seen that the children had bigger brain dishabituation responses for across-category changes in phonemes, proving categoric perception with a brain scan

Front 10

forward speech and backward speech in infants

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2-3 month olds were put in fMRI machines to show how they respond to forward speech and backward speech; o RESULTS: it was seen that by 2-3 months the activation patterns in the brain were lateralized to the left hemisphere (like in most adults)

Front 11

forward & backward speech NIRS

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• STUDY: 2-5 day olds were given NIRS scans to see if they have left hemisphere dominance (like in the fMRI study), by giving them forward and backward speech - lateralization was found

Front 12

Critical periods in animals

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 STUDY: cats have shown that they never completely develop binocular vision if they were given eye patches in this early period
 STUDY: ducks will irreversibly follow their mother after birth, or if it is not the mother, the first moving thing they see
 STUDY: owls have shown that they never completely develop auditory localization skills if one of their ears is plugged in this early period

Front 13

Senghas and Coppola 2001 –How Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired Spatial Grammar

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• The evolution of language production was studied in a group of 1st and 2nd generation Nicaraguan deaf learners, specifically in performance of spatial modulations; 1st and 2nd generation Nicaraguan deaf learners were studied for their language learning abilities in a degraded environment – to see what the innate abilities in language learning are – tests involved showing a 2 minute video, and asking the participant to narrate back the story they saw;  RESULTS: grammatical systematicity can arise from children alone, and does not require adult input; o Exposed before age of 10 – including early- and middle- exposed learners – resulted in more spatial modulations being used per verb and faster signing;  They indicate shared-reference more often
o 2nd generation learners surpass the 1st generation learners in production of spatial modulat

Front 14

The McGurk effect

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hear ‘ba’, if a visual of ‘ga’ is being shown to us, we end up hearing something in the middle of ‘ba’ and ‘ga’ = ‘da’

Front 15

o Use of gestures in blind children

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STUDY: to see if blind children gesture the same way as seeing children, between ages 14-28 months; • RESULTS: Blind children produced their first words around the same age, and basically produced the same types of gestures; o Blind children- low rate of gesturing throughout development, blind children point with flat palms, gesture more for close objects, touch objects more

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problem areas for blind children

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Deictic terms – “this” and “that” must be interpreted with respect to the speakers position in space used infrequently & with errors; Pronouns - parents avoid using them, Auxiliary use delayed b/c parents tend to ask fewer yes/no questions

Front 17

environment vs genetics effect - twin study findings

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25-60% of the differences across individuals in language abilities are due to genetics; • Grammatical abilities are more related to genetics than vocabulary

Front 18

 Theory of Mind in Autistic Children vs typical/DS children

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• STUDY: experimenter puts a marble in a basket and leaves. While she is gone, the marble is moved from the basket to a box. When she returns, the children are asked where the experimenter will look for the marble; o Typical and DS children respond (using theory of mind) to say she will look in the basket; o RESULTS: Autistic children respond egocentrically (without theory of mind) by saying she will look in the box – not based on Sally’s belief, but based on what they know

Front 19

 Eye Gaze and Word Learning in Autistic Children

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• STUDY: participants were either children with autism, or cognitively impaired children with similar abilities but no autism. The experimenter had a toy, and gave the child another toy. In some cases, when the child was looking at the experimenter’s toy, the experimenter looked down at that toy as well and said a new word (follow-in condition). In other cases, the experimenter looked down and labeled the experimenter toy, while the child’s eye gaze was on child’s toy (discrepant condition).; o RESULTS: both autistic children and normal children with similar cognitive abilities responded by learning the proper label for the object they were looking at in the follow-in condition. However, in the discrepant condition, autistic children almost always remembered the wrong label for the object they were looking at – because they did not use the speaker’s eye gaze as a cue for word learning;  The scores in these tests are 70.6% for mentally handicap individuals, and 29.4% for autistic individuals of the same mental abilities

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• Evidence for a Differentiated System in Bilingual babies (auditory)

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 STUDY: using monolingual and bilingual Catalan babies at 4 months, after being habituated to one language’s sentences, test sentences from one of the two language followed; Monolingual children show a novelty preference
 RESULTS: bilingual children, at the same age as monolingual children, can also tell languages apart (showing the novelty preference when the language switched)

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Evidence for a Differentiated System in Bilingual babies (visual)

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o STUDY: French-English bilingual babies were shown a visual of someone speaking, and when muted, they looked to see if the children could distinguish between the languages after a switch, based solely on visual information (visual discrimination);  RESULTS: Monolingual and bilingual children of 6 months increased in looking times after habituating and then switching the language – suggesting at the start they both use visual information to distinguish between languages; • 8 month old bilingual children increased looking times as well, showing they know the difference of the languages & use visual information to distinguish; 8 month old monolingual children did not increase their looking times from habituation to test - no longer using visual information to discriminate languages

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Word Learning and Lexical Differentiation in Bilingual Children

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o STUDY: parents of English-Spanish bilingual children filled out a MacArthur CDI;  RESULTS: even though bilingual children may show a dominance for one language in production, their comprehension is the same as monolinguals, they exhibit the same milestones of language development, and do not fuse their languages (using a differentiated system) - translation equivalents were still produced about 30% of the time

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proof that bilinguals do not fuse their languages - repairing communication errors caused by language choice failures

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• STUDY: observed that for the most of the time bilingual children chose the proper language (over 80% of the time), but with the 20% where they might have used the wrong language by accident. In these cases the experimenter nudged them to repair the mistake in one of two ways (indirectly or directly); o RESULTS: Children are able to switch back and choose the proper language if they have made a mistake

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 Flanker task in bilinguals

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with 5 arrows, to decide as fast as possible which way the center arrow is pointing; • Bilinguals benefit from being better at ignoring the distracting information of the other arrows, similar performance in Stroop task

Front 25

comparing communities that use an absolute reference frame and those who use a relative reference fram

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given a display on a table, with objects pointed down and left relative to the viewer, and with the table rotated, asked to recreate the display;  Relative reference frame people base things relative to them, so the things remain pointed left from them
 Absolute reference frame people base things on their absolute frame of reference, so the things remain pointed down

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context affects frame of reference

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o STUDY: doing the same animals in a row task, they only used English speakers, but in 3 conditions (indoors with an open view window, indoors with a closed view window, and outdoors);  Indoors, the English speakers had more relative responses, especially when the blinds were down
 Outdoors, the English speakers had more absolute responses -> differences WITHIN language group

Front 27

linguistic relativity and  Motion events

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• STUDY: given motion events in a verbal and non-verbal task (given images), participants were asked to describe the verb motion event, to see whether the path was changed, the manner was changed, or both
o With the verbal task
 English speakers describe the manner
 Spanish speakers describe the path
o With the non-verbal task
 English and Spanish speakers performed about the same
 Therefore, only when asked to describe a situation with language is there a tendency to describe with path if Spanish and manner if English – in a non-verbal task, this distinction disappears!

Front 28

grammatical gender & linguistic relativity for MEMORY

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• STUDY: giving inanimate objects masculine or feminine names (making sure the two languages used differed in the gender of that object), tested how well the memory of the labeling was
o RESULTS: When the random label matched the gender of the language, memory of the label was improved

Front 29

how speakers of gender languages described objects in English

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see if there is lingering influence on how they describe the objects (based on their previous knowledge of Spanish or German)
o RESULTS:
o Spanish speakers used more feminine words to describe keys than germans – keys are feminine in spanish
o German speakers used more feminine words to describe bridges than Spaniards – bridges are feminine words in german

Front 30

grammatical gender & linguistic relativity for SIMILARITY

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• STUDY: asked to rate similarity of words with either pictures of males or females
o RESULTS: showed that gender differences across languages affected the similarity ratings of the words to male or female pictures