PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Foundations of Language: Language and animals Language and the brain...

PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

Foundations of Language:Language and animals

Language and the brain

Language and thought

Language and animals

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_goodall_on_what_separates_us_from_the_apes.html

For those interested in more on this topic, you might enjoy the following two videos

http://www.ted.com/talks/denise_herzing_could_we_speak_the_language_of_dolphins.html

Language and the brain

Localization of function Josef Gall’s phrenology

Mental functions (e.g., intellect, morals, etc.) are supported by specific regions of the brain

You can feel the skull to assess people’s mental abilities

Localization of function Modern Neuropsychology

Psychological functions are localized in particular regions of the brain

Localization 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?

Today’s focus

Location 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 (Broca’s 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.

Lateralization of functions

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

• Human body is asymmetrical: heart, liver, use of limbs, etc.

• Functions of the brain become lateralized

• Each hemisphere specialized for particular ways of working



Patients with language disorders

• Dysarthria – a motor speech disorder characterized by poor articulation

• Apraxia of Speech – a motor disorder affecting an individual’s 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

• Broca’s (cortical motor) - slow, effortful halting speech, lacking grammatical words

• Wernicke’s (cortical sensory) - fluent prosodic speech with little or no real content

• Conduction - fluent speech with good comprehension but impaired repetition and many phonological errors; subcortical pathway between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas disrupted

• Global - broad language impairment across all facets of language; associated with broad lessions

• Anomic -word finding difficulties; lesions often localized between temporal and parietal lobes

• Others: Transcortical motor,

Transcortical sensory,

Mixed transcortical

Broca’s (cortical motor) - slow, effortful halting speech, lacking grammatical words

• 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

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.

Wernicke’s (cortical sensory) - fluent prosodic speech with little or no real content

• 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

[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 … it’s 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 o’here to get her better, but when she’s working, the two boys looking in the other part. One their small tile into her time here. She’s working another time because she’s getting, too.

Conduction - fluent speech with good comprehension but impaired repetition and many phonological errors; subcortical pathway between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas disrupted

Arcuate Fasciculus*

*but see Bernal & Ardila (2009)

• Intact auditory comprehension• Fluent (yet paraphasic) speech production• Poor speech repetition

Wernicke-Geschwind Model

While modern models are more detailed, they generally follow the same general scheme

~7 mins



Patients with language disorders “Split-brain” patients

MotorCortex

LanguageDominant Side

Broca’sArea

Can point to and identify the cat

MotorCortex

• 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



Patients with language disorders “Split-brain” patients

MotorCortex

LanguageDominant Side

Broca’sArea

MotorCortex

The left hand can point to it, but you can’t describe it!

• 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



Patients with language disorders “Split-brain” patients Direct electrical stimulation

• 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– Broca’s 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

Start around 5 mins, go to 10 min mark

• 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)

Location 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

thinking and speakingspeaking

readinghearing

Location 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

But wait! Hot off the presses (published Jan. 15, 2014):

Cogan et al (2014). Sensory–motor transformations for speech occur bilaterally. Nature

Dr. Christine Chiarello ( ~40 lecture): Brain Organization for Language: It's All in the Network

“Just the tip of the linguistic iceberg.” Lots of areas of the brain are related to language use (Nov. 2012)

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

V

M CT

PPA

PP

Storing 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

Storing information about words

Looking for the unitary meaning center: binding meanings and words1. Epstein (1999)

2. Posner & DiGirolamo (1999)

3. Pulvermüller (1999)

4. Salmelin et al (1999)

5. Skrandies (1999)

6. Tranel & Damasio (1999)

7. Scott & Jonsrude (2003)

8. Hickok & Poeppel (2007)

9. Hodges & Patterson (2007)

Why is this interesting? Knowledge of how words are represented in the

brain provides the key to understanding linguistic structure sheds light on how the brain works in general

Lanuage and thought

Lanuage 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 can’t 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

Some 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.

Some historyAristotle: 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.

Some historyJohn 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

Some historyVygotsky (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 child’s social grouping• Later speech and thought become connected

• Speech becomes representational• Children’s monologues are internalized and become “inner speech”

Some 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)

Benjamin Lee Whorf

“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.”

“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.”

“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 …”

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

Does language affect thought?

7 min video

The 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

“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)

Does language affect thought? Whorf’s famous example

“Empty gasoline drums”

Linguistic form

Does language affect thought? Whorf’s famous example

“Empty gasoline drums”

Linguistic meanings

Mental interpretations

Nonlinguistic observables

Container no longer contains intended contents

gasoline drum without gasoline

drum no longer contains gasoline

empty

null and void, negative, inert

drum is no longer dangerous; okay to smoke cigarettes

worker smokes cigarettes

Qanuk ‘snowflake’ Qanir ’to snow’ Qanunge ‘to snow’ Qanugglir ‘to snow’ Kaneq ‘frost’

Some of the evidence: Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow

Kaner ‘be frosty’ Kanevvluk ‘fine snow’ Natquik ‘drifting snow’ Natquigte ‘for snow to drift

along the ground’ And more

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

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 Pullum’s Great Eskimo Hoax (1991)

Some of the evidence: Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow


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.


Testing 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.

Two of the domains in which this issue has been studied Color terms Counting and arithmetic Others include: time/space language & grammatical categories

Cultural Variations

If your language didn’t have separate names for these, would you see them the same way?

Color 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.

Color 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 Whorf’s hypotheses They suggest a universal physiological basis for color

naming, independent of language

Color 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. Asked people to name 24 colors (8 central, 16 others). Those

with longer names were named with hesitations and less consistency

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 Whorf’s hypothesis.

Color Terms

Check out: ISU’s Mind Project Virtual Anthropology Lab

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

Color Terms

G G G

GG B

B B B

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

Color Terms

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

G G G

GG B

B B B

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

Color 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

Color Terms

Higher Cognitive Processes Color naming may not seem like a very complex

cognitive process: What about more complex mental processes?

Counting and other Arithmetic processes

Counting & Arithmetic Greenberg (1978) has identified some cultures where

the only number terms correspond to one, two, many. Piraha tribe; Gordon (2004) (in conjunction with ISU’s Dan Everett)

Hoi (falling tone = one), hoi (rising tone = two), aibai (= many)

Matching tasks - show an array of objects, they have to put objects down to match the array

Different languages terms for numbers also has effects on arithmetic

Results - relatively good matching up to 2 or 3, but performance was considerably poorer beyond that up to 8 to 10 items

Counting & Arithmetic

English and French have complex names for numbers Japanese,Chinese and Korean have simpler systems

Miller & Stigler (1987)

From Miller & Stigler (1987)

Counting & Arithmetic

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)

Miller & Stigler (1987)

Counting & ArithmeticMiller & Stigler (1987)

Conclusions At this point it is apparent that the strong view of

Whorf’s 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.”

Conclusions

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.

At this point it is apparent that the strong view of Whorf’s hypothesis is not supported.

PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Foundations of Language: Language and animals Language and the brain...

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