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User:Suzanne Walsh11

''' Suzanne Walsh, B.Sc. Neuroscience '''

Dalhousie Premedical Society Executive

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Hello, My name is Suzanne. I am continuing as a student at Dalhousie University, until I write my MCAT and GMAT to apply to a combined program for my MD and MHA (Masters in Health Administration). As this year I am

taking only electives I chose to take yet another neuroscience course, Psycholinguistics. With little knowledge in the field, and a previously held

negative affiliation with the neuroscience of language due to its complexity, I figured with an otherwise easy course

load I may as well tackle it now while an expert in the field is available to teach me.

Outside of class you can find me with the Dal Premedical Society; I am on the executive committee for the

society and we try to inform and help other students with the application and interview process of applying

to medical school. I also volunteer two days a week at the Abbie Lane Hospital in Halifax on the acute

mental health care floors, and at the East Coast Forensic Hospital in Dartmouth with inpatients.

I am always trying to learn more about mental health, and the neural aspects to all types of disorders that we

all come into contact with in our everyday lives in one way or another. I am committed to further educating my-

self, and anyone else I can about mental health and brain health.

Check out my textbook I wrote for the psycholinguistics course on The Neural Basis of Speech Perception.

- Suzanne

Blogs
Hello all!

This is my wikiblog, it is based of my class on Psycholinguistics. Each week I will post an informal blurp on the topics discussed in class that week and my opinions and/or questions arising from them. More information on these topics can be found on the Wikiversity Psycholinguistics page made by our class, it will be finished by April of 2011.

January 17th, 2011
This week’s classes on psycholinguistics went through an introductory to psycholinguistics; highlighting all the major theories, a discussion of language and thought, as well as language and the brain. As the language specialization areas topic was not something I could really argue with, I found my self more inquisitive during the class that discussed the Whorf’s hypothesis in relation to it's validity. Linguistic relativity is the notion that the language that we use influences the way we think about the world. This notion has two approaches: that language variations have natural limits, and the opposing view that says that language is learned; no hard wiring that determines it. The classic problem put forth by Whorf decided to take these simple definitions and run away with them. His notion basically says that language determines our capabilities of thought. When I first heard this in class, before reading the book and re-reading the studies Dr. Newman was talking about, I thought, seriously? My thought basis at the time was if someone who uses three colour terms, compared to my many colour terms, if they are also homo sapiens sapiens and have overall the same brain as me, why should they see a colour any different then me? They too (and if not their neighbour), should have two eyes, and retinal cones with as many as 4 colour pigments to see the visible colour spectrum as I do. Thankfully, once I read the textbook I realized that in my frantic attempt at taking notes I missed the generalizing point the studies were making. They addressed just what I was thinking about, and concluded in the end that Whorf probably shouldn't have used perceptions to explain his idea. Before they made this conclusion, my diminishing question formulation increased as the textbook went into odor terminology. So... here they explained and showed through studies that you can’t remember odors if you don’t know what they are called. They used an example with piano tones, that you can differentiate pitches, but you can’t remember them if you can't name them, and another example about children and how they develop the ability to describe olfactory preferences as language develops. My contrast to the first example is that, well just because someone may not remember the pitch of a key, when you play it to them later, without a name for it; it doesn’t mean they can’t tell you they like the sound of a perfect C to F progression over a progression with many sharps and flats at the time you play it. Perhaps names and terms influence and facilitate memory consolidation, but that does not mean they determine your thought capabilities in an otherwise developed language system. Likewise, just because a child can’t tell you that they prefer the smell of baking cookies to their little brothers diaper, does not mean that they can’t show you they know the difference, and it certainly does not denote that ability is a function of language; in my limited opinion. With other forms of communication the child could show the distinction between the two, like with a grimace expression; it’s quite obvious they can’t spontaneously describe odor experiences if they can’t talk. They likely just have not paired the smell to the name yet. As far as I know we have not yet developed any mind reading techniques, and so, for someone who does not communicate using language the same as you and I, or does not use language at all, there is really no way we can tell or begin to speculate as to their abilities to "think" about a concept. If they have no language ability, or no terms for that concept, in my opinion their thought processes would likely be reflected in their emotions and their body language. Evidence as to the ability to memorize does not show thought ability; with thoughts and thinking being defined as the ability to think critically about an object or concept, with the use of descriptions, comparisons, and/or subjective opinions.

January 24th, 2011
Language and the Brain. There has been question as to whether the brain areas involved in various aspects of language function autonomously or work more like a network with interdependent cognitive functions. In my opinion the idea of autonomous processing seems to go against every other modality in the human brain. Already, we know that the occipital lobe is activated when reading and so the visual system is obviously involved. If comprehension were to only occur in Wernicke's area how would that even happen, logically? Neurons are little electrical wires, would they just hit a non-conductive boundary and remain in Wernicke's area until the boundary is removed? Since the brain is so conductive, I think that that's highly unlikely. To me it seems very unlikely that no signals could be sent elsewhere until the message had been decoded perfectly, that being the case, if other messages are being sent, or leaked out, what research shows that those signals are just ignored? Sure, I'm not language expert, but the theory appears to go against logic. These interdependent processes have certain cognitive limits, where developing them into a language has certain critical periods. While it remains true that it is significantly harder to acquire a new language as an adult, and deaf children acquire american (ASL) or any sign language better then adults do... what about the hearing adult? Does ASL truly act like a language when it comes to bilingualism in the hearing adult? If I decided to significantly improve my sign language abilities right now, could I eventually acquire the same talent and linguistical abilities as someone who knew it their whole life, or do those same critical periods apply? And even if I could learn to sign just as well as someone else, would my brain still show different activation patterns, and would researchers then consider me to be not truly bilingual in that sense. I'm not sure on that one or any of those questions, but they are interesting to think about (well not for me because I become irritated that I don't know the answer). I feel like if I could learn ASL and sign it just as well as someone else, regardless of when I acquired the ability, it should be considered bilingualism. The topic brings about too many what if's in my head to continue on the topic, but it's food for thought non the less! My big question that came up in this weeks class was sex differences in language lateralization. Now, I think that it was mentioned in class that this was a myth, it was on the same slide as the myth anyway. If there is no evidence to support this, why are their many differences between men and women and their linguistic abilities. Many guys that I know, could certainly not out talk me. Although, is that language ability, or is it processing speed? Perhaps I just process things faster and can thus respond faster. Where I become stumped is the fact that my mom is a relatively quiet person and my dad is the one who I talk with for an hour on the phone, he certainly can out talk me and use a much wider vocabulary! If men are not more lateralized in language, then why are many women innately better at language then men, or so it seems? Rather then pointing out all the exceptions that would follow this rule, it seems more likely that social factors contribute. Women do appear to more often have stronger language abilities, but just because men don't talk as much as we do doesn't mean they lack the ability, maybe just practice. Perhaps, it is more of the nurture debate then nature. Maybe women are naturally more social and so we develop stronger skills from when we are young. And of course there is the old time question, which came first the chicken or the egg. I think when it come down to it though, it's the fact that these are all interdependent cognitive processes, and so when you are a child, being strong in one venue that is tightly linked with another could increase your skills in that linked venue. As you can see I always seem to develop this sort of circling questioning when I'm asked to think about these sorts of topics in depth....lets just say I don't get into these talks with my friends.

January 31st, 2011
This is my first class covering all the logistics surrounding speech production and perception. To be quite frank the concepts are still some what of a blur in my head and will require some extra time to have the definitions ready on demand. Regardless, I find it quite amazing that speech is broken down into so many components, someone had to be so self aware to be able to decipher between various phones and phonemes and the application of reliable phonotactic rules. What I find extremely interesting is how all languages seem to develop with similar components, and how their is debate over if ASL even has versions of consonants and vowels using movement and holds. As simple as sign language appears it obviously is much more of a language then surface value examination makes it appear. When all of these aspects of language are surfaced it becomes obvious that language is a very complex ability for our brain. It is fascinating how even the smallest of injuries can completely take away one of these components. Typically I like to think critically about the material and come up with reasons for or against each topic, however when it comes to a body of information that refers to factual knowledge there is less for me to argue with. The theories of speech perception allow me to have more of my own opinion though, even with my limited knowledge in the area; hopefully as the class progresses I'll be able to return to my blogs and see how my thought processes have changed. In term os the Motor theory, Cohort theory and the Trace model. Since I have more knowledge in functional neuroanatomy I'm more inclined to respect the Dual-Stream model of processing and the influence of some of the Trace model perhaps. Without a doubt I'm sure Motor and Cohort Theories could play a role also, but either of them alone are very shallow arguments in my opinion. My reasons for including some of the Trace model is the inhibition/excitation of various words or phonemes, this reminds me of the visual system when processing images and boarder perception. When light is shined on certain cones they inhibit others. A dual-stream model is also present in visual processing. Logically, for me, these two theories make sense. The other two are slightly more abstract, and I can't think of a way that they would work anatomically on my own and so I'm therefore less likely to agree with them. Perhaps with more information on What, Where, and How I'll be able to concede with their influence.

February 7th, 2011
Since we had a short week, I will discuss morphology. My reflection resulted from the "Rulelike Processes in Language" section in the class reading (referenced below). The section discusses regular inflection, adding the affix -d to the stem of the verb; contrasted with irregular verb forms that are relatively unpredictable. Now the models that are proposed are all rather different, but I don't really feel convinced by any of them. I like the notion under the associationist theories' connectionist model that the regular and irregular patterns are computed using a single mechanism. The idea of stem sounds and past sounds being remembered by recording and superimposing associations, sounds more on the right path. When I was learning to speak in different tenses I can confidently tell you right now I did not sit down and memorize anything, definitely no attention span for that, and my parents were probably not the type to correct me repeatedly to get it in my head in a form of memorizing lists. Creating patterns based on the sounds and links between them in relation to verb tenses causes me to wonder about the influence of the auditory cortex in this area. Doing a quick search on Pub-med I found research on it's influence in analyzing speech signals and so forth, it would be interesting to see some select lesion studies and the influence on language development. Although the associationist theories do not account for inflectional mappings. Why do they have to be considered in this group? They are non language mappings, it just reflects the brains innate ability to learn new things, it is plastic. Perhaps, these are memory based acquisitions, or maybe the patterns become expanded and altered to accommodate the new input-output mappings. Or perhaps the unsystematic and semantically unrelated homophones with different past tense forms are remembered using the same sound processing the connectionist model suggests based on the context of it's use. I guess all in all, I feel the models are all a little simplistic. To be honest, I think it will be really difficult to learn exactly just how the human brain creates networks and the linking the lexicon entries. All we can do is speculate, none of us know all the information even if we think we do. Even in my meager attempt to rationalize my opinions on the matter I can see it must be quite difficult.

February 14th, 2011
This past week we discussed words and word recognition, as well as sentence processing. I wasn't too argumentative in these classes, the information seemed straight forward. However, while continuing my readings on sentence processing I began to ask questions on the section concerning working memory. Perhaps we will discuss this further in class today or Wednesday, none the less I'm going to talk about it because it was just after the syntactical and grammatical processing sections. So here is my argument. The book explains how working memory is like the set of tools or resources that you have to perform operations, and is limited by tasks that demand more resources, and particularly ones with higher complexity. The product of these demanding and complex tasks is errors in processing sentences or delayed processing times. So, that's all fine and dandy... the book goes onto explain it's relation to individual differences in processing syntactically complex sentences and those that include ambiguity. Put simply, the book states that if you have a smaller amount of resources in your working memory bank, you will process sentences slower; you will take longer to understand something and less accurately at that. Conversely the person who has a higher working memory will understand something faster. So now I will take on my devils advocate role. What about the student who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? Their working memory is said to be slower, or hindered, compared to the non-ADHD student. Yet, with my experience, these students understand what you are saying before you are even finished telling them. They pick up what you are saying and then start cutting you off so you don't have to finish your sentence. How is it then that their impaired working memory, which is suppose to hinder their comprehension skills, can still allow them to process language as fast or faster then the average person and do so flawlessly? Perhaps they may jump to the wrong conclusion, but that is not because there was ambiguity in the word choices, more because people with ADHD are impulsive and may not listen to the whole story. The authors explain how you cannot use traditional working memory tests to predict sentence comprehension, but you can use alternative working memory span tests. Are these models actually testing working memory though? or are their other factors at work? When an IQ test is administered, the end result will give you a percentile for working memory span, and another for processing speed. It seems to me that the processing speed score would more likely equate more accurately, or at least be a contributing factor to the speed of comprehension. For example; a person with an overly high processing speed, and a limited working memory, may perform just as well as their comrade. Therefore, I have to say that this model is limited. Maybe it does account for this difference, but it certainly doesn't clearly state it in the book. I'll have to point out that there is obviously more to the story when it comes to working memory and it's relation to sentence comprehension times, in my opinion.

February 27th, 2011
Reading week is over, and now it is time to get back to reality. This weeks blog entry is based off of the week of classes prior to the break. In those classes we discussed sentence processing and discourse. The topic that sticks out in my mind when referring back to these classes was the discussion of mental models in the discourse section. In class Dr. Newman showed us some examples of these by reading a bit of text about a man and his wife going to a restaurant. Afterwards, he asked us to respond to some questions based on what we had heard/read. He showed us that our mental model of surface representation is really not that good, we cannot accurately recall the individual sentences and propositions very well. It is more of the text based mental model that we remember, a macrostructure of what the story or text means as a whole. With the questions it also became apparent that the situational model is always present. In the story, there was a description of what the couple was eating. From that, he asked what type of restaurant they had eaten at. One of the other students said "Italian," but in fact the text didn't say that at all, it just described an italian dish. Later, Dr. Newman explained how a week or two down the road most of us probably will not remember this paragraph, we might recall there was a couple eating, but that may be all; we might not remember that it was his third wife he was with. However, now that it has been a week I actually find that I remember it better then I did right after I heard it and he was asking questions. Which makes me ask some questions of my own. There has to be more to the story then just those mental models. Because, normally I would not remember almost anything about that story today, but because he brought my attention to it afterwards and made me start thinking about it again, now I do. How much of a role does attention play on things? Of course I have a striking interest on the discussion of attention and so perhaps I will naturally revert back to it. Although, it does seem logical to me that having an increased attention on something will cause better recall of the event or situation later on. Where does that boundary occur though, and is attention all that is involved. Probably not. After the reading of the story I wouldn't say I was that much more attentive, although I was actively thinking about the situation. So to what degree does using and manipulating linguistic stimuli account for a better mental representation of that material? Seems to me that things like inferences that we discussed and that are in the textbook, would probably constitute manipulating the material. An inference means to link two concepts, so that can't be done on it's own, you have to do that actively your self. Perhaps that is why you remember it better, using the information more causes you to remember it better; even if it is just for a few split seconds.

March 7th, 2011
This week we had a lecture discussing language and music. This is an interesting topic for me as speech and music are both on my favourite things list. It was very interesting to learn that some of the same brain areas that process language, also process music. I'm not sure why I assumed they would be different, but I suppose I just never thought of music as being similar to language. I suppose it is sort of a language of it's own, the auditory cortex still needs to process the sounds, so their obviously has to be some overlap. In terms of musical abilities being innately determined, I'm not so sure I believe in that statement. Prenatally I think the brain has better things to do (like develop) then to interpret and differentiate between new sound signals, not to mention the obvious impedance of the sound when transferring through the mother. Somehow I feel that the most important thing to be focusing energy on, would be developing the essential brain areas before developing new specialized musical centers. But maybe thats just me. Once babies are born it does not surprise me that they are just as sensitive to non-native musical sounds until the age of 5 to 7. Those little humans are sponges! They can learn anything until their brains get moulded by their surroundings. That being said, music or language, it's learning in general. If you talk a whole lot, you'll probably become better at it then someone who doesn't. But if you change the word talk in that sentence with sing, play music, play basketball, swim... I think the sentence would still be logical, especially if you start those things at a very young age. Okay, so music is a little bit different if they are detecting differences in the intervals of musical styles that are unknown to them... but music is still very systematic. Who's to say that they are not just picking up on the patterns sooner? Are these studies giving the babies a one time shot to listen and detect changes, or do they get to listen to them for a little bit? In terms of cross-cultural features of children's songs, why should that be surprising? We all talk to babies similarly, treat them similarly, and why would we make complex lyrical songs for kids when we are trying to teach them? Repetition, rhyming, alliteration... they are learning tools, and they make it easier for the child to listen and sing along without getting confused with too many new words and sounds. Personally, I think we should use these features on trying to teach teens too, maybe a little informative jingle will catch their attention better these days!

March 14th, 2011
Our discussions in class have moved onto the production aspects of language. With that we discussed gestures and writing. Unfortunately, due to an annoying illness I caught, I was unable to attend Fridays lecture, but I did get to listen to the podcast. However, I think it was last years, but it will likely contain much of the same information. In the discussion on gestures, we had a group discussion on why we use gestures when we speak. An important aspect of that is to communicate information, but they also provide emphasis, and an extra layer of information in what we are saying conveyed through our body language. Although, there are some other subtle functions of gestures that we may not have thought of. Turn taking, how do we know when the other person is done talking and that its our turn to jump in? Gestures can provide those cues. Then there is the view that they facilitate lexical access to the speaker, as Robert Crous agrees. Our conversation then steered into, well if we are gesturing for the listener, why is it that we still gesture when we are talking on the phone, when our listeners cannot see us? This question makes me half want to say, well that provides evidence towards Mr. Crous's argument, it must be to assist ourselves. But, then the other side of me says, well telephones have only been developed recently, and we were talking long before that. Since gesturing was some of the primitive languages, to me it makes sense that when we started speaking, we retained some of those gestures with our speech to help explain what we were saying when language wasn't as concrete. Over the years, they have just become smaller and more ambiguous as they are not taught or used regularly. That being said, gestures while talking on the phone may simply be a habit of talking to people in person. While you are thinking about what to write, or if you are having a conversation over the computer, you will notice small gestures that you make then. Or at least I make small head movements, or face expressions that reflect what I'm thinking about. I'm sure they do not facilitate my lexical access, but they would create no ambiguity to a person who was watching me if I was speaking. Our next class discussion was on writing. We discussed the writing process and the Flower and Hayes Model. This model incorporates all the influences that have an impact on your writing. This includes things like your Long-term and working memory, your task environment, and aspects of the writing itself like planning, translating, and reviewing. Dr. Newman brought up about how when he is typing fast he makes spelling mistakes more related to the phoneme then to letters placed closed on the keyboard. I too have noticed that this is basically the only type of mistake that I make when typing, for instance, typing fone instead of phone. Why is that? Why is it that I always make these mistakes when I'm typing, but I hardly ever make these type of mistakes when I'm writing by hand? Is it because I'm much faster at typing than I am at hand writing? Perhaps because we type so fast and it becomes such an involuntary thing, some correcting center that evaluates our writing gets lots along the way? Because once I start to slowdown my typing and I begin to think about it and making every correct key placement, I don't seem to make these mistakes as much, instead the mistakes I make are of hitting the correct key. The next part of the lecture that made me do some thinking was when we discussed some of the neural basis of writing. The inferior parietal areas like the angular gyrus, are said to be involved in writing complex written forms. Although, the current neuroimaging information shows no difference between letters and pseudoletters, clinical evidence showed certain patients with these deficits could for example write out pseudoletters, but not real letters. This made me think about the information I learned while writing the chapter on the neural basis of speech perception. The inferior parietal areas, including the angular and supramarginal gyri as being a potential location for phonological encoding. If that were the case, perhaps that would be the location of the problem when people are typing fast. There may be another brain area that reminds you 'okay I'm typing out this language' and if you are typing too fast, perhaps that region just get bombarded and the phonological encoding phase goes straight to the motor control areas. Sure it may be a little simplistic (I know our brains don't say 'okay I'm typing out this language'), but it's the type of connections that float around in my bubbly head. Hope my rant wasn't too difficult to comprehend!

April 4th, 2011
This week we have begun the presentation of our debates. We choose a topic and there are is a team that is For the topic and one that is Against. Unfortunately, I missed Monday and Wednesday's debates due to the unfortunate passing of a friend, however I did get to attend Friday's debate. The topic was based on the type of language instruction that should be given to children who have undergone a cochlear implant surgery. Each side presented their case to the best of their ability, and it was interesting to watch. While I feel that when debating topics such as these, each position must be largely left winged or right winged, there is no between ground. My opinion on the matter would cover the between ground. I casted my vote based on how each time presented the material to convince me, and how I would vote if I had no prior knowledge in psychology to generate my own opinion, although in reality I would not have chose either. One side argued for only oral communication training for the child, while the against team argued that total communication training in multiple languages (i.e., american sign language etc.) is the better way to go. Each side had empirical evidence to support their claims as to why we should choose their side. However, (and I feel this occurs in many clinical settings as a whole) too much emphasis is placed on the studies. What about the individualistic nature of assessment and learning? There too many ways that people can differ when it comes to learning to group 181 students who share one common trait and then say because a large percent did well that it was effective for all of them; this is referring to one study mentioned examining oral communication instruction. Many of the students probably did very well based on the instruction, their home support system and environment, and their own innate abilities. What about the ones who did not? Well those outliers likely got omitted from the statistics, although I didn't check the data. But that does happen very often in research, so everyone just gets grouped under that umbrella because it works for most people. This argument can be translated onto the other position as well. Some children obviously do do well in oral communication instruction as is apparent from that one study alone. Some peoples environment is better suited for the child to get neither oral communication instruction nor total communication instruction, rather solely focusing on american sign language because their parents both speak it. On the other hand, maybe the child just doesn't want to learn all these different methods for communicating, maybe they would just like to master one and be able confidently rely on it. The bottom line is that it is too simplistic to group all children, especially with varying dates of implantation in their development, into one neat category of 'following implantation you will study this..'. Children require individualistic attention and assistance. A research paper does not have a brain center specifically designed for reasoning.

April 11th, 2011
The topic of my blog today is whether or not people who speak minority languages should learn the dominant language as early as possible. On Wednesday we watched a debate on the topic and each side presented their opinion. But, regardless of what their studies found it has to be really difficult to sit in a class attempting to learn the material and not speak a word of the language. Although in the future we could create schools that are taught in some of these languages, the fact of the matter is that currently we don’t. Plus, there is no way in the future for us to have a school for every single minority language in every province, let alone every town. It is just not feasible. I grew up in Bedford, just outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is a preppy little town, and very multicultural. Growing up I had friends who were from Iran, Nigeria, Taiwan, Hungary, South America, and England; to name a few. Of course some of these people already spoke English, but those that didn’t still went to the same school as I did, they went to a special class each day initially to help them learn English. But, some also went to an afterschool program once or twice a week to help them retain and improve their native languages. Every single one of these friends now speak perfect English, without an accent, and most can speak their native language very well also to my knowledge. What is the benefit of moving to a new country, only to retreat from the local people, and segregate yourself into your own culture? That would not be very good for the stigmatization that many minority cultures already experience. Aside from the intuitive nature of the matter, if the children are very young they should be able to acquire both languages without a problem. This is a well-known fact, and was quite apparent among my peers. Therefore, I see no reason to change the current system that is in place. For families or cultures, that feel they are loosing their heritage, it should be their responsibility to retain what they can and develop an after school program for their children or something similar. Canada is embraced for it’s ethnical diversity, especially apparent in our schools. Lets keep it that way.

title: User:Suzanne Walsh11


text: Category:Eukaryote phylogeny

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category:Eukaryote phylogeny


text:
User:B-Parks

Bio Blurb
Ben Parker is a 3rd year Psychology major at Dalhousie University.

He also enjoys dinosaurs.

And sailing, sailing is fun too.

January 15th
Class raised a number of points I found interesting this week, which I suppose is the goal of these opening classes. The connection between language, thought, and brain anatomy is a fascinating one, perhaps because it is so readily relatable. One case I was surprised we didn’t cover, at least not yet, was that of Genie, the feral child from California discovered in the 1970s. She was deprived of and actively punished for any use of language for the first 13 years of her life. As a result, she showed drastic deficits on auditory neurological tests, to the point of resembling a left hemispherectomy. While she showed remarkable recovery overall and it is clear that she is capable of thought, emotions, and desires, her use of language has not recovered to the point of normalcy. I am curious as to whether this deficit would be noticeable as some form of anatomical atrophy that could be detected on a structural MRI or CT scan. It would be also be interesting to perform some of the neuroimaging tests we discussed in class, particularly an fMRI or PET scan, or perhaps a Wada test, in order to see what portion of her language functions remained localized in her right hemisphere after her speech therapy. It also raises an interesting question about speech lateralization in general. If such drastic environmental deprivation results in total neglect of the left hemisphere in the development of language, can a milder form of environmental deprivation account for the right hemisphere language lateralization we observe in the general population? However, none of the information I’ve encountered on Genie has ever mentioned her handedness, perhaps she was left handed and the right lateralization is less remarkable than it seems, although that would be a somewhat large coincidence.

January 24th
This week we started speech perception, which is my topic that I will be dealing with for my chapter. Unfortunately I was unable to make class on Friday, but looking over the slides, I was reminded of a video that I found on my journeys across the internet that dealt with the interaction of speech perception as an auditory and as a visual process. You can watch the video here. Called the McGurk Effect, it's a really fun way to illustrate the complexities of human speech perception, and makes you question how much of our speech is actually "heard" through the ear and how much is a result of top down processing and contextual factors. This serves as just another illustration of why speech recognition programs can be more difficult to design and implement than we first expect.

January 31st
The research involving spectrograms, sound splitting, and recreating sounds really piqued my interest. The idea of "playing" with sounds like that and examining the impact of different modifications to the sound on how that sound is perceived is intriguing. In the book, This is Your Brain on Music, I read about a study where they examined the perception of various instruments. They recorded the sounds, and then edited them, cutting off the initial sound, or the "attack" as they called it, of one instrument, and then attaching it to the rest of the sound from another instrument. If I remember correctly, the resulting chimera sounds wreaked havoc on the participants ability to identify the instruments, and they more often identified the chimera by the instrument giving the attack, even though that lasted only a matter of milliseconds, and the other instrument making up the rest of the sound played for several times longer. I'm curious to see if a similar effect could be produced in human voices and speech, or if the lack of distinct breaks between words would make speech too fluid and sustained to be able to maintain the effect past a word or two.

From an engineering perspective (or perhaps more due to my lack of one) I found the process of drawing sounds and then playing them back fascinating. Though the results were sub-par, I wonder if a more comprehensive and detailed printout of a recorded spectrograph put through this reverse sound generator device would be more recognizable. I'm also curious as to whether a detectable difference exists between spectrographs of a man's and a woman's voice on a spectrograph, or if most of the differences are too subtle to be detected by eye on paper and need to be heard instead.

February 7th
Although we didn’t have much in the way of class this week due to inclement weather and Munro Day, the class we did have on morphology was interesting enough to keep me thinking for the week. What grabbed my attention most was how inflection can constitute its own form of morpheme. As soon as I was told this in class, it immediately made sense, but for some reason it had never occurred to me in previous classes on the topic. When conversing with people who all have the same native language as you, it goes almost entirely unnoticed, but when you are speaking with someone not as familiar with the rules, any violation becomes immediately apparent, not unlike the violation of some social norms, such as personal space. To me this implies that, though mostly unconscious, inflection is an absolutely critical part of the English language, and made me wonder what it would be like with that inflection mostly removed. I’m sure it could still be mostly functional, but it would certainly lose a lot of the subtlety that makes works of art in literature and theatre possible.

An interesting aside for the sci-fi fan, the folks at BioWare toyed with this idea in Mass Effect with their species the Elcor, who’s complex and subtle language based on minute gestures and different scents often led to misunderstandings with other species. Eventually, they learned to speak English in monotone, and simply preface every sentence with an emotional context. You can watch the often hilarious results here.

Feb 14
This week in class we talked about Watson, the IBM supercomputer built to beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy!. While fascinating in its own right, the possibilities for other applications I find much more interesting. For example, since a large percentage of Jeopardy! questions involve a "trick" of some sort (such as a pun or other wordplay), it is clear that Watson must be able to take a step back from the literal words themselves and contextually assess them for deeper meaning, detecting the "trick" and compensating for it accordingly. In that vein, I am curious as to whether or not some variation on Watson's programming would be able to function as a lie detector. What aspects of our vocalizations change when we lie? Anecdotally, it seems clear that our tone changes, and it seems likely that word choice and pacing could all vary. The problem I suppose would be a lack of consistency across subjects, but the possibility seems tempting. I'm sure that when initially proposed, the idea that a computer could successfully play Jeopardy! seemed virtually impossible, so I see no reason why this seeming impossibility would be any more impossible.

Feb 21
I spent the majority of this week curling in the Dominion Club Provincial's Championship, which is why I missed class on Friday, and thinking that I would have very little to write about as I had to miss class 2 times this week. However, I soon found that science truly is everywhere, as within a few minutes of being on the ice, I found myself pondering several speech perception problems. In curling, communication and precision are very important, and small changes can have a huge impact on the results of a shot. For example, when throwing a take out, there are a number of different weights (speeds) that you can throw the rock, which are (in descending order of force): peel, firm, normal, and control. However, at higher levels, some teams introduce up/down variations on each of those four levels, up peel, peel, down peel, up firm, etc. Which to me, having played at a very high level, I understand the need for such subtle distinction, but intellectually it seems somewhat redundant, and thinking of it psycholinguistically it seems that the added levels may have an undesirable effect, depending on how the thrower parses the instructions. With the call of "up normal" the intention is to DEFINITELY throw less than "firm", but to throw a bit more than "normal". I thought it would be interesting to collect measurements and see if this is what actually happens, or if people instead are primed by the initial modifier "up" and instead become fixated on throwing more weight than normal, which is more likely to result in a throw closer to "firm" than if they had been given the instruction "down firm" which, if the same effect is observed, would result in a throw more closely resembling "normal", despite the fact that "down firm" is technically considered to be a call for even more weight. This could potentially be complicated further by the individual team's choice of adjectives to use as up/down modifiers. For example, the team I just played with used solid/soft, as up/down respectively. Would these more semantically active and imagery/sensation loaded adjectives have a stronger effect?

Also of interest are sweeping commands. These need to be given, perceived and acted on in extremely short time slots. However, many of the terms commonly used which are semantically relevant to the order, eg. go/right up (DO sweep), no/right off (DO NOT sweep) are also very phonologically similar, which often results in confusion and incorrect responses, or at the very least potentially damaging hesitation. It would be interesting to see if training the team to use semantically arbitrary words that were more phonologically disparaging, e.g. grape(YES)/zebra(NO), would perform better than teams that used the seemingly more intuitive semantically applicable instructions.

March 5th
One topic that has come up both in and outside of class this week has been the concept of universal aspects of language. Are there any components or constructs of language that can convey meaning even if the listener is not intimately familiar with the source language? In class, we briefly touched on this considering music as a language, and there was some data presented suggesting that there is a degree of cultural sensitization that occurs over time and with experience. Intuitively, I feel as though this sensitization must only be for more minor technicalities of the music that an untrained ear may not distinguish readily anyway, although that may not be the case. I would be interested in performing tests to see if their is any universality to the "affective state", for lack of better terminology, of music. For example, does Clint Mansell's Requiem For a Dream evoke the same feelings of unease and tragic urgency in other cultures in the same way it tends to in the Western culture it was written for? Does this excerpt of soundtrack stir up the same feelings of relaxation and contentedness as the scene it represents, even in people who have never heard it in context? If so, what elements of the music are responsible for that, and are those elements present in other more communicative forms of language? If that is the case, are there ways we could better use those elements to communicate with those who don't speak our language(s)?

I stumbled across a real-life example of how this information could be useful in watching the documentary, Into Eternity. The film discusses the creation of vast, underground, nuclear waste storage facilities which, once completed, must remain sealed for 100 000 years before the material becomes safe again. One major concern the designers face is how, or if, to warn future generations of the dangers inside. Should we mark them at all, or would the enigmatic nature of the warnings serve only to ignite the curiosity of future generations? If we do warn them, what is the best way to do so? How do you convey information to a listener, or reader, or viewer, without knowing what language they will speak, or if they will even speak at all. It is an interesting and important question to consider, and consensus has not yet been reached.

March 13
My blog this week stems from two places, the vast uncharted expanse of the internet, and the skipped over lecture of Math as a language. Having heard some brief mentionings of the concept in years past, I was intrigued to have the topic explored in a class about language. This became doubly disappointing when I happened across this great poster (in case the link doesn't work, here's the URL: http://i.imgur.com/nWVAK.png) which used the idea of math as a language to humorous effect. Warning: Expletives Present

In effect, the concept of first contact and communication with another species is similar to that of the warnings at Onkalo, merely extended to another extreme. How would we go about communicating with an intelligence entirely alien to our own? Like the author of that image, I believe that mathematics would be one of the few viable options. As discussed in the lecture from last year, math as we know it consists of abstract symbols, but the fact that those symbols represent fundamental qualities of the universe is what sets math apart from any other language. However, that same level of concreteness and heavy basis in logic may also limit math's potential to communicate more abstract ideas. I suppose the use of basic inequalities could be used as a means of conveying true and false meanings, which could then be used as a means of rough communication and perhaps serve as a way to share information about other images or objects. Fundamentally, true/false communication is basically the language behind all of our technology, and they are capable of "communicating" with each other in incredible ways, so it theoretically should be possible that similar communication could evolve between us and alien intelligence. That being said, I still feel that Math on it's own is an inadequate way to express more complicated and abstract material, such as colour, emotion, or historical events.

March 21
I am choosing this week to discuss briefly the concept of pidgins and creoles, as the I find the topic to be an interesting one, and it ties in well with my ruminations from previous weeks. Pidgins are, while still somewhat impressive to observe, really not particularly remarkable the more you ponder them. When two groups are forced to interact and cooperate to survive, they will find a means to communicate. This concept is briefly touched upon in the film District 9. The film uses the somewhat more dramatic example of the beginnings of a human/alien pidgin, but as it takes place in South Africa, I feel that this is mostly used as a symbol for the various mixed languages that have sprung up in that region from the interaction between the many various tribes that live there, each with their own language or very distinct dialects. As someone who finds travelling through northern New Brunswick occasionally taxing, I find it somewhat mind-blowing to imagine living and working in a place where there could be upwards of five different languages in use at the same time, possibly even in the same sentence.

But perhaps even more remarkable is the proposed ability of young minds to impose order on such chaos, resulting in the creation of these creoles. While I did feel that Dr. Newman's particular biases were coming a bit to the forefront in that lecture, the data he did present seemed fairly convincing, and the conclusions they reach about innate language abilities are very intriguing, in particular the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Anecdotally, the idea that children have some inherent ability to understand and apply rules to languages was appealing to me, as I can recall a number of times in my earlier schooling of not being able to know why a certain statement or manipulation was correct or incorrect, but nonetheless knowing that it was. Curiously enough, these experiences happened mostly in Math class, which as discussed in lecture, is often seen as a form of language. Of course, such personal experiences are likely not overly indicative of anything specific, but nonetheless spurs a personal interest in the topic and a desire to read some further research on the subject.

March 28
Of main concern and interest this week was the guest lecturer on aphasia. It was interesting to note that, having worked with aphasic patients for some time, I felt that she gesticulated at a much higher rate than most other professors I have had, perhaps as a result of needing to communicate in non verbal ways so often with her patients.

More academically, the main thing that I was interested in was the methods by which non-verbal assessment and testing for comprehension could be done. This is of particular interest to my debate, as if someone with a severely damaged language center can still think the same way, just not communicate those thoughts, than the idea of language having the ability to control thought would take a major hit. This concept of nonverbal testing seems of particular importance in the case of global aphasics, as it they apparently cannot receive any verbal input or give any verbal output, and yet they are not reduced to their base impulses so clearly they are still thinking and processing information somehow. The trait that some global aphasics possess in which they can speak only one word, just with different intonations and inflections to communicate different meanings struck a chord with me in that it reminded me very much of Pokemon. In that show, the pokemon characters, though clearly demonstrating intelligence, can only speak their names, or pieces of their names and with different intonations or speeds to communicate meaning. An interesting, though likely unrelated, little diversion.

April 3
This week was the beginning of the debates, and they certainly provided some interesting things to file under both the "Good to Know" and "Probably Shouldn't Do" categories while preparing for my debate. The main take away lesson that I gathered came on Monday from the against group. The lesson? There's nothing wrong with impassioned rhetoric (for those with link problems, http://www.youtube.com/user/MercerReport#p/u/36/lMBMcMf85ow), but when that slips instead unsubstantiated rant (for those with link troubles, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkd4MMtYeoI), HUGE issues arise.

I am, of course, referring to the comment made during rebuttal that it was more likely that the increased drop out rates in Ebonic community schools was due to to children having Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder. While I'm sure the student who made the comment didn't intend it as an insult, it certainly came across as one, and an unsubstantiated one at that. There are so many factors that are blatantly ignored by making that statement. First, what is the drop out rate at the schools in question? This is a figure I don't have, but was implied to be quite large. Then you would need to compare that to dropout rates at schools across the country, to see if the school was even statistically worth noting to begin with. Supposing that it is, you could then begin to look for possible contributing factors. You could compare the proportion of races of students dropping out to the proportion of students dropping out over all and see if either race was over represented. Again, supposing that we found a disproportionately large number of Black/native Ebonics-speaking students dropping out, we would need to find some explanation for that difference. This is where the student jumped in, saying not only that most of these dropouts were likely due to ODD and CD, but that this explanation was in fact much more likely than any explanation linked to the defining difference between the two groups, whether or not they were native Ebonics speakers being penalized for the use of their first language.

It could still be possible, so let's entertain the notion temporarily. What is the prevalence of these disorders? Based on my Childhood Psychopathology course, about 1-5% for either of them, 10% at the most. I can't compare this directly to the dropout rated in question, as I don't have them, but in order to be newsworthy I feel like they are probably higher than 1-5%, suggesting that there would have to be some factor leading to a higher than average rate of diagnosis in that area. Given that the majority of the dropouts are black students, and that statement that these dropouts are mostly due to having one of these two disorders, and we are left with the implication that ODD and CD are diagnosed more commonly in Black individuals than White individuals, a strong, and as far as I can tell entirely unsubstantiated, statement with major repercussions.

Now, I understand that in all likelihood, none of this went through her head at the time, and was not her intended point. Nevertheless, in academic matters such as these, "I didn't think of that" should not be an acceptable excuse for such behaviour, and it has a clear (negative) impact on the listeners, e.g. me. It may even be the case that some of those suppositions/conclusions my little analysis made are in fact true, and she may also have the statistics to back it up. But if that's the case, her lack of any citation makes it seem like an aggressive and sweeping statement with potentially malignant connotations that thoroughly distracts from the topic being discussed.

/End Impassioned Rhetoric

April 12
This has been quite an interesting course. I quite enjoyed not having regular tests/quizzes/and exams, and these blogs, while sometimes hard to remember, were an opportunity to be a bit creative and get some feedback.

Having the notes and podcasts posted is a great help, but combined with never having any sort of assessment, it does negate most of the desire to come to class. This is a bit of a grey area though, as it is definitely convenient in situations when workload from multiple courses is piling up and academic triage needs to be practiced. That being said, I'm sure attendance suffers because of it.

I also felt that the debate should have been worth far more, and the learning exercise worth far less. Ideally, maybe swap their weights on the syllabus. I know for certain that I an probably everyone else in my group spent far more time on debate preparation than we did working on our learning exercise, and felt that this effort was necessary, despite the learning exercise being worth three times as much. Also, the way the learning exercise was presented, it felt like an add-on or minor addition to the chapter, but was actually worth nearly as much. This seems a bit odd, given their relative sizes and required workloads. Also, the debate was a lot of fun. having more than one round of them, or maybe just dividing them up more throughout the semester would be a good idea.

Overall, I felt that the Wikiversity course was a very cool idea, and I think it went relatively well, for me at least. However, there were several technical hookups, and perhaps it would have been beneficial to do an image upload walkthrough as part of the in class tour of the site we did at the beginning of the year, as that seemed to be something most people were having trouble with. Also, I'm not sure what exactly the problem was, but there seemed to be an issue with accessing the links that I posted within my blogs. I don't think I ever lost points for it, but there is no reason that they shouldn't be accessible. I think the problem might be that when viewing the wikiversity page within the OWL/BLS frame, external links don't work, so when viewing students' blogs it may be best to ensure that they are opened in a new tab/window.

In closing, a pretty solid semester.

title: User:B-Parks


text:
User:Chantel

 * I am a third year psychology major in the undergraduate program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. I plan to pursue my PhD in Clinical Psychology upon the completion of my honours degree next year.  I planned on completing my degree in Pharmacy up until the fall of 2008, when I realized that my real interest was the thought processes and behaviours of clinical populations rather than the specific medications used to regulate those thoughts and behaviours.

 * I chose to take the psycholinguistics course this semester because I think language is an intriguing human ability that I want to learn more about. I also have a friend taking speech pathology at the University of British Columbia and I would like to have a greater understanding of the topics she studies.

January 10th-14th

 * From the lectures we had this week, the lectures on the influence of language in thought and our conceptualization of language itself, were the lectures that struck me. When the class was asked for our definition of ‘language’ earlier in the week, I realized that I had never really considered, in depth, the accuracy of my existing definition.  I thought I could answer simply - language is French, English, every other spoken dialect.   It is the words that come out of my mouth and my mode of communication with others.  However, after our class discussion I realized that language is also much more than that.  Language encompasses a broader range and is not necessarily spoken nor an exchange between humans.  I suppose it is the egocentric tendency, that so often accompanies being human, that caused my failure to initially acknowledge such important aspects in my definition of language.  I am glad that so early in the course I have once again been humbled and made aware of how much more I have to learn.

 * I also found it phenomenal when we discussed language acquisition by animals and the subsequent changes that occurred in those animals’ abilities to learn other behaviours through observation. The paradox of experience shaping our thought processes and our thought processes affecting the way we interpret our experiences fascinates me.  When asked to act in a demonstration in a replication of an experiment on spatial frame of reference performed by Pederson et al. (1998), I thought nothing of it – I simply completed the simple task without much thought.  However, once Dr. Newman pointed out that my completion of the task deviated from relative frame of reference of many people in Western society, I was thoroughly puzzled by my apparent difference.  Being the over-analytical person that I am, I spent the whole walk home contemplating possible reasons for this difference and my conclusion was that experience has indeed altered the way I think.  Growing up on the prairies, more specifically on a farm, engrained the importance of the cardinal directions.  Land does not have an address similar to the conventional city addresses.  Instead it is marked using cardinal directions and their use is common when giving instructions on how to reach a location. For example, the address of some of my family’s land is Northwest 16, 16, 15, West of 2, which is comparable to saying that Dalhousie University is located at 6206 University Avenue.  My resulting familiarity with the cardinal directions has obviously changed the way I think and in turn my behaviours.

January 17th-21st

 * The first lecture this week on the lateralization of the brain and the specific language deficits that occur with damage to different areas of the brain, allowed me to draw some interesting parallels to a book I am currently reading. I am currently reading the book The Siege by Clara Claiborne Park, which chronicles the first eight years of life of an Autistic child named Ellie, in the United States during the late 1950's/early 1960's. At this point in time, little is known about Autism which results in very few resources being available to the family, leaving the family to seek ways to further the development of their child on their own. One chapter considers language specifically and the child's reluctance to embrace it. The mother in the family (who happens to also be the writer of the book) mentions that her child, at four years old, has a vocabulary of far less than a hundred words. She also discusses how if spoken to Ellie may repeat words much later - often in an inappropriate context - but rarely immediately following the demonstration. This point drew similarities to some of the different aphasias discussed in class and their varying deficits in language perception and production.

 * Similarly, in the book the mother mentions that later research had found that even after a child with Autism acquires language, it is common for them to think in concrete terms and lack the ability to understand irony, jokes, or satire. In class, Dr. Newman mentioned that the functions of the right hemisphere in language include: emotion, metaphor (jokes, irony, etc.), as well as other functions. It occurred to me that this area of the brain seems to be responsible for many of the areas that children with Autism appear to lack in. These parallels made me wonder if research has found specific deficits in the functioning of the right hemisphere of people with Autism, or any other areas for that matter. I have yet to have time to do a search for this information myself.

January 24th-28th

 * This week’s lectures began with a look at acoustic phonetics and then continued on to review the role of segmentation in the perception of speech. The first two lectures of this week really highlighted for me the amazing capabilities of the human brain.  I sometimes find that I quickly get caught up in the intricate tasks that the newest technological gadgets can complete and often ignore the far more complex tasks that are carried out by humans every day.  Few things have made me step back and appreciate the inner workings of my own mind and body (which I should do more); however the lectures on speech perception did just that.  The extreme lack in speech recognition technology in computers and the ability of the human brain to “fill in the blanks” when given segments of words or information were only two examples of this.

 * I also found the influence of taught down knowledge on speech perception to be particularly fascinating. The impact that environmental experience plays on all aspects of development astounds me. I cannot even begin to imagine all the numerous and complex ways each of my experiences may have affected any aspect of my development, let alone speech perception.  The complexity of human language, and more generally the human brain, is a wonderful thing and has made me realize that I should appreciate the brilliant minds behind the latest technological advancement much more so than the technology itself.

January 31st-February 4th

 * The lecture on Monday covered morphology/morphemes and their role in linguistics. While discussing the many morphological rules and the information carried by each unit, the idea of children making mistakes using these rules during language acquisition is common.  When Dr. Newman discussed inflection in ASL, I could not help but wonder if children who are acquiring ASL make comparable mistakes to children acquiring spoken English language.  I think I have gained a decent understanding of language acquisition in typically developing children from previous classes I have taken in child development and the general strategies they have been shown to do (ex: use of assimilation, accommodation); however I know little to nothing about language acquisition in deaf children.  I would love to know more about ASL in general - its rules, common mistakes, etc. - and in particular the way children acquire ASL and the mistakes and challenges that come along with it.

February 7th-11th

 * In this week’s lectures I was especially struck by the lecture on syntax and the intricacies involved in understanding and forming sentences or phrases. When shown the video of Watson, at first I was unimpressed.  I overlooked the complexity of understanding a question when it is embedded in a statement.  Once I considered this fact, I found it unbelievable that the program was not simply typing in a question verbatim and retrieving an answer, but rather it was pulling apart a statement to find an underlying statement.  This introduction to the capabilities of the human brain blew me away.  I understood a little about perception of speech from earlier lectures; however this lecture left me with questions as to where this information is stored and how it is pulled apart.  The discussion of Jabiwaki also added to these thoughts and made me question how robust the organizational rules we have for language must be in order to create apparent understanding out of nonsense.  I wonder what the limitations are to this system and how our brains can be so robust in some areas, yet so vulnerable to other complexities.

February 14th-18th

 * In last week’s lectures the topic of false memories was brought up when we began the discussion of discourse. This topic interested me right away because it has been discussed in almost all of my courses at some point in time, including forensic psychology and social psychology.  This fact made me revisit the idea that our brains go through many processes to interpret input from our environment.  I also was reminded that these processes are so complex and influenced so heavily by environmental factors.  The way that a topic can span so many fields of psychology and be relevant in all areas is a testament to the intertwined nature of psychological processes.  Though, when discussing false memories this class new questions arose for me.  I know that the concept of false memories is a very touchy subject in the legal system and has been since a series of false memory cases were connected to hypnosis back in the 1980’s.  However, I began to wonder if other forms of ‘persuasive conversation’ or social contexts should be just as questionable.  In class we discussed the varying ways information can be presented by a speaker and how some ways are more ‘effective’ than others and I couldn’t help but wonder if some of these ways may be just as questionable as hypnosis when it comes to a legal setting.

February 28th-March 4th

 * This week I was talking to my friend who is enrolled in a graduate speech pathology program at UBC. She mentioned to me that her class had previously been working with young children with speech impediments, but were now working with adults who had suffered trauma and required assessment and rehabilitation.  I was blown away by the stories she told me, including one about a woman who had cancer in her mouth and had to have part of her tongue removed in an attempt to control the spread of the cancer.  When learning about Aphasics and other people with speech loss in class, I don’t think I really connected the amount of distress that would accompany such a loss.  I was taken aback by the sadness of these people’s stories and the struggles they would have to endure in an attempt to regain their speech.  I know that speech pathologists are available to help those with these type of struggles but I wondered what other psychological help may be available for these people.  I think, based on how big of a role language plays in our lives, the loss of language would cause huge emotional changes and loss.

March 7th-11th

 * During our discussion of writing this week, Dr. Newman told us that writing has evolved over time from pictographs, to logographs, to rebus writing, to phonetic-based writing. In a religious studies class I took while in university, the professor suggested that over time religions have evolved and across many religions the evolutions seen in an individual religion show obvious similarities to other religions.  My professor also noted that these similarities tended to follow a similar evolutionary time period even though they happened across very distinct religions, cultures, and in many cases geographical locations.  Dr. Newman mentioned in our class that the same evolution of writing has occurred across many, if not most, cultures.  I was wondering if the time period of these evolutions happened at similar points across cultures or if perhaps a cascading effect occurred as a result of trade and interactions between cultures.  Overall, I would be very interested to see a timeline of the acquisition of these different types of writing styles by different cultures and would like to inspect the possible cause of the presence of such overlaps.

March 14th-18th

 * In a class this week on language development, Dr. Newman mentioned that children first learn the names of objects that are manipulable, relevant, and interesting. When I thought about the experiences of my nieces and nephew during their development, I realized that these principles directly applied to them as well.  I thought that it is logical that those things that children commonly interact with and that easily capture their attention would be something that they would want to learn to name quite quickly.  When I thought about the topic further, I realized that these same principles are what directed their learning as they grew as well (including many areas outside of language acquisition).  I started to wonder if these principles, which were obtained through research, are applied to educational strategies.  It would seem that if a child acquires some of their first knowledge based on how manipulable, relevant, and interesting something is, than these same principles should make acquiring more complex and abstract knowledge much easier.  I would like to know how much these principles have been applied to human learning studies or if research in other forms of learning has found the same qualities to be important.  I can see some parallels between these principles and the avocation of ‘hands-on-learning’ and I wonder if they originated from similar bodies of research.

March 22nd-26th

 * This week we had a guest lecturer who spoke to us about her experiences working with people who have a variety of different aphasias. I found that the most important points that she raised (all that I was unaware of) were that many people with aphasias are not elderly and that the number of people with aphasia is far more than those with Parkinson’s, yet people are far less aware of it.  This point boggled me and I tested the point by asking my family and friends what they knew about the disease – not surprisingly very few knew anything.  The whole thing has struck a chord with me and bothered me a lot.  I feel upset that there are disorders and diseases with such high prevalence that are not given the attention, and in turn the funding, that they should have simply because the media has not caught on.  I have been wondering what happens in the division of government funding for research and therapy for these types of disorders.  Do disorders highly endorsed by the media receive more funding for research and therapy programs?  I am particularly interested to know if, when budget cuts are made – which they inevitably are – if these lesser known (but equally important) disorders and diseases lose funding first.  I understand that there is only so much media coverage that can be given to disorders; however I just find it incredibly unfortunate that disorders that are so prevalent are being underrepresented.

March 29th-April 1st

 * This week debates were going on in our class that revolved around some of the controversial issues in linguistics. The debates made me think of some of the other issues in linguistics that are commonly debated and inspired me to look up more information on some of them.  One interesting thing I found was that it was not uncommon for both sides of a debate to cite the same previous study as support for their side of the debate.  In fact, often times I found that either side of the debate would pick and choose through the information or interpret the results of a single study in a way that supported their side.  At the same time, the other side of the debate seemed to follow the same procedure.  Particularly, I found that this happened quite a bit with the controversy over the existence of the LAD.  In terms of the class debates, the use of the same sources was clear in the debate on Ebonics.

 * When considering the fact that this overlapping use of data occurs, I tried to think of ways to prevent it from happening. At first I thought that perhaps more clarity by the author of the work as to their intentions and conclusions may be a key factor.  However, I quickly realised that the fact that others can draw different conclusions from someone’s work may actually be a good thing because those who conducted the study may be biased to see the conclusions in a certain way.  The problem of bi-directionality is examined by others and the ability to draw different conclusions from the same data set seems to be a positive way to evaluate all possible explanations for a phenomenon.

 * Even though I came to the conclusion that having two sides of a debate draw support from the same data set was a positive thing, I really would like to know how the scientific community feels about this. Do scientists involved in these debates believe that data clearly shows evidence of only one thing or the other?  Do they get frustrated when data is not clean cut and obvious in its results?  Or do the results of data and the conclusions drawn from them depend on the experimental design and if so can the design bias the results?

April 4th-9th

 * In general, I really enjoyed the content of this class and the format of the class was a nice change from the typical class layout. However, I think it may have been useful to have some percentage of the overall grade allotted to in-class participation.  I noticed that after the first few classes, many students very rarely came to class.  In fact, I am pretty sure a few never came to class because I was surprised to see them and did not know who they were when they came for their debates.  I think if the ‘no midterm, no final’ class design remains, it may be necessary to implement an in-class participation strategy in order to keep people coming to class regularly.  Also, I am not sure that the textbook was particularly helpful within the context of the current class format.  I had the textbook and tried to do most readings prior to class, but I found that at times when I did not have time to read the textbook, I still gained just as much clarity on the topics from your slides without the readings.  I also know a few friends who didn’t even have the textbook and didn't take notes in lecture and still managed to excel in the class.  I think that perhaps a way of checking a student’s overall comprehension of the topics discussed, rather than just their chapter topic may be needed.  Overall though, I really appreciated the change in typical class format.

title: User:Chantel


text:
User talk:B-Parks

 Hello B-Parks, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

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 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:B-Parks


text:
User talk:Suzanne Walsh11

 Hello Suzanne Walsh11, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Suzanne Walsh11


text:
User talk:C. Calthrop

 Hello C. Calthrop, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:C. Calthrop


text:
User talk:Keegan colville

 Hello Keegan colville, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Keegan colville


text:
User talk:Bcorrigan

 Hello Bcorrigan, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Bcorrigan


text:
User talk:Egreer

 Hello Egreer, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Egreer


text:
User talk:Shanedidona

 Hello Shanedidona, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. All users are expected to abide by our Privacy policy, Civility policy, and the Terms of Use while at Wikiversity.

To get started, you may

 * Take a guided tour and learn to edit.
 * Visit a (kind of) random project.
 * Browse Wikiversity, or visit a portal corresponding to your educational level: pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary, non-formal education.
 * Find out about research activities on Wikiversity.

 * Read an introduction for teachers and find out how to write an educational resource for Wikiversity.
 * Give feedback about your initial observations
 * Discuss Wikiversity issues or ask questions at the colloquium.
 * Chat with other Wikiversitans on #wikiversity-en.

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold to contribute and to experiment with the sandbox or your userpage, and see you around Wikiversity! If you're a twitter user, please follow http://twitter.com/Wikiversity. --Ottava Rima (talk) 00:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Shanedidona