text:
User:Arichter

I am a third year psychology student at Dalhousie University. My interests include developmental and clinical psychology. I am part of the wikiversity community as part of a third year psycholinguistics course. I chose to take psycholinguistics after learning about the speech language pathology program at Dalhousie. This sounds like an interesting graduate program, and I hope that this course will provide me with background about the study of language from a psychological perspective.

Blog One due January 17th

So far in class we have looked at an overview of history, theories and the concept of language and thought. I found the lecture on language and thought particularly interesting. When the question "Can we think without language?" was initially posed in class, my first response to the question was yes. However, as the lecture progressed, I started thinking about the important role language plays in shaping and organizing our thoughts. I was particularly interested in the study of cultural differences and language. When we were learning about linguistic relativism, I was reminded of the concept of cultural relativism which states that a person's belief system and actions should be judged and observed in relation to that person's culture. These two types of relativism may be related in more of a philosophical than a psychological fashion, however I am interested in how our language and culture shape our thinking and understanding of others. Another interesting topic discussed last week was the idea of language creation. I am interested in learning more about new languages and whether languages such as Toki Pona could ever be sucessfull.

Blog Two due January 24th

This past week in class we covered the topics of language and the brain, literature analysis and components of speech. I found the lecture on literature analysis to be particularly informative. The tips Dr Newman provided for reading papers will be useful in other courses. Over the next few weeks I will be reading many papers in preparation for my textbook chapter and hope that the techniques for reading papers that were discussed in class will help to ensure my literature search goes smoothly.

Another interesting topic that we covered this week was neural plasticity. I was amazed to learn that very young stroke victims can recover with very few negative side effects from the stroke. I was interested in learning about how neural mechanisms such as plasticity can help to prove that there is a critical period for language acquisition. This topic made me think of my own very unsystematic 'research' about language acquisition. My younger siblings all started to learn a second language at age 5, while I began in junior high. I observed that their accents and language abilities far surpassed my own even after the same number of year of language learning.. just a thought.

Blog Three due January 31st

So far this week, lectures have focused on speech perception. I was especially interested in the phonemic restoration effect. Dr Newman played an audio clip in which a speaker read several sentences that were interrupted by white noise. For example, The ___ was on the axel and The ____ was on the orange. In both cases the noise in the '______' was exactly the same however in the first sentence listeners heard the word wheel and in the second they heard the word peel. Using top down processing, our brain fills in the appropriate word for each sentence. I was interested in this effect in relation to bilingualism. In class we learned that people who are bilingual are better than people who are unilingual at the stroop test. This means that they are quicker to separate the color they see on the paper and the word they are reading. I was wondering if a similar phenomenon could apply to the phonemic restoration effect. Are people who are bilingual less likely to rely on the phonemic restoration effect?

Blog Four due February 7th

With a storm day and Munro day, it has been a short week in terms of course lectures. In the lecture on Monday we learned about morphology. Morphology refers to the "building blocks" of words and includes the meaning of these word fragments and their combinatorial system. We learned that morphemes are recursive, meaning that we can continue to add morphemes to a word to change its meaning (ie establish, establishment..). I was interested in morphology and ASL. We learned that ASL is polysynthetic, meaning that a single sign may represent several concepts. We also learned how subtle differences in signs represent different morphologies. It is interesting how the direction and specific placement of movements in space can change the meaning of the gesture. Non-ASL speakers may have trouble distinguishing the differences between similar signs, so I was wondering whether individuals who sign ASL have heightened visual-spatial abilities.

Blog Five due Feb 14

This week in class we learned about word recognition and syntax. We discussed topics including word meaning, semantic knowledge and the different dimensions of words. We also learned about word lexicons, semantics and the difference between syntax and grammar. There were a few topics this week that I found particularly interesting. The first was Zipf's law. Zipf's law is used to explain word frequency. According to this law, word frequency follows a mathematical model. For expample, the second most common word in the English language is twice as frequent as the third most common word, the third is twice as frequent as the forth, etc. This model has been validated in different languages. I thought this law might place more of an emphasis on a hierarchical network model lexicon than a spreading activation model. A second topic of interest was "Watson". Watson is a computer program that can answer Jeopardy questions with great accuracy. I found it incredible that a computer was able to respond with such accuracy to a variety of questions. I think that Watson will be a valuable tool for understanding mental lexicons and syntax in humans.

Blog Six due Feb 28th

This week in class we discussed sentence processing, syntax and discourse. I was interested in the research done by Tanenhaus (1995). This research demonstrates the importance of context on sentence parsing, by showing how eye movement differs based on the visual information that accompanies a sentence. When we are parsing a sentence we rely on contextual information to inform our parse. This research does not support the garden path theory. The garden path theory says that when parsing a sentence, we commit to a parse which may be incorrect (depending on sentence structure). I think that the garden path theory places too much emphasis on the cognitive aspects of parsing. I think that if garden path sentences were placed in an appropriate context we would find that people modify their parse to fit the context. I would be interested in results of eye tracking studies using garden path sentences in context.

Blog Seven due March 7th

This week in class our topics were language and music and speech errors. I found the lecture on language and music particularly interesting. We began class by discussing many similarities between language and music (phonemes, structure, recursivity, etc). After all the similarities that were brainstormed, I expected that we would learn that language and speech are controlled by the same brain areas. I was surprised to learn that neuropsychology research has found that language and music may be related to different areas of the brain. This research was supported by findings about aphasia and amusia (impaired perception of harmonic relationships). These are two distinct disorders, and in many cases a person can have severe defecits in musical perception but not speech perception. Like my classmate, I also thought of the movie "The King's Speech", which I saw over reading break and was interested in the idea that an individual may be able to sing a sentence but not speak it or vice versa.

Blog Eight due March 14th

This week I found the lecture about gesture to be particularly interesting. I volunteered in Dr Newmans demonstration at the beginning of class and discovered that I use more gestures when I am speaking than I thought I did. When we discussed types of gesture I was familiar with emblems, iconics, beats and deictics, but less familiar with the concept of metaphorics. A metaphoric gesture represents an abstract concept in a more physical way. Previous to this lecture, I had thought of metaphoric gesture as more of a "random" hand movement, however I can see how concepts can be represented in physical space using gesture. When Dr Newman was talking about people gesturing while speaking on the phone I was wondering about whether blind people gesture. I found an article by Iverson and Meadow that explains that deaf individuals do gesture. Iverson's study (1998) of congenitally deaf and sighted children found that they used gesture at similar rates. This supports the idea that gesture is not something we merely learn through observation, but it is a tool for helping us to express our thoughts and structure language.

Blog Nine due March 21st

This week in class we learned about language development. I have been away all week, so I have been following our class on podcast. I was very interested in the study that Dr Newman presented about the effects of early language exposure by Mayberry et al because it relates to my Wiki chapter. I wrote the chapter about cochlear implants and language instruction, and in the chapter I discussed the debate about whether deaf children should spoken language (oral communication) or a combination of sign and spoken language (total communication). I found conflicting evidence about both methods of teaching for cochlear implant recipients. Mayberry's study does not involve cochlear implant recipients, but looks at deaf adults language ability (both ASL and spoken). The study found that ASL facilitates spoken language ability. Although this may not directly generalize to cochlear implants, I think evidence would support the use of total communication. This means that any type of language instruction, whether verbal or signed will be useful in a individuals language development.

Blog Ten due March 28st

This week in class (on Monday and Wednesday) we learned about bilingualism. This lecture made me think of an article I read a few weeks ago in the National Post about elderly adults who learned English as a second language late in life and lost their english language ability as they aged. These elderly individuals were still fluent in their native language, but lost their ability to speak their second language. This ties into when Dr Newman was talking about how different areas of the brain are used when we learn language early in life as opposed to later in life. I was wondering about how these areas of the brain affect our ability to retain language as we age. On Friday we had a guest lecturer speak about aphasia. This was a very interesting lecture- I especially enjoyed watching the videos. I have never met anyone with aphasia, so I found it very useful to watch the videos to help illustrate the concepts the lecturer was talking about. I was interested in the techniques that were used to help with rehabilitation.

Blog Eleven due April 4th

This week our in-class debates began. The topics being debated this week were the teaching of Ebonics in schools, the dyslexia Fast ForWord program and oral communication for cochlear implant recipients. My group debated against the use of total communication for cochlear implant recipients. After writing my textbook chapter on the subject of cochlear implants and preparing for the debates, I am quite bored of the topic, so I will focus this blog post on dyslexia treatment. I was interested in this debate because I had never heard of the Fast ForWord program. I liked that the debate focused on the economic advantages/disadvantages of the program. Although, I was also interested in the studies that looked at the scientific evidence in favour of the program. While analyzing both arguments, I was reminded of a lab course that I took last semester where we were discussing the effectiveness of different types of clinical treatments. The prof gave an example of comparing Dr Phil and a private psychologist. Dr Phil reaches millions of people and may help only 1%, while a private psychologist can only meet with several clients a day, but will help 50%. In the end, Dr Phil may still be helping more people, even if he is very ineffective. I thought this tied into the Fast ForWord program in that the program can be done at home, so it can reach many people. Even if the program isn't as effective as others, it may still help more people because it is easily accessible.

Blog Twelve due April 11th

With class wrapping up this week, I will use this blog entry to provide some general comments about the course. There were many things that I liked about this course. For one, I liked the "unconventional" style. I am very tired of multiple choice tests, so I think Dr Newman did a good job of engaging students in a different style course. I enjoyed working on the Wikiversity chapter because it allowed me to focus on learning about one topic in detail, rather than learning about a variety of topics very generally. I liked the debate assignment, I would only suggest that Dr Newman provide more tips in class prior to the debate as I found many students read completely from their notes, which gets boring to watch. When this class is taught in the future, I would suggest that less blog posts are assigned. Perhaps one post every two weeks with a slightly longer length. I would also suggest that the blog posts are worth more of the final mark (eg 20%) and the learning exercise is worth less (eg 20%). Overall, I enjoyed the course. I appreciate Dr Newman's creativity in designing the course, and feel this has been a successful semester.

title: User:Arichter


text:
User talk:Andreas Link

 Hello Alink, 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. Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat 19:30, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Alink. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Alink~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:Andreas Link


text:
User talk:Arichter

 Hello Arichter, 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) 19:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Arichter


text:
User:Egreer

Eleanor Greer is a third-year student in linguistics and English literature.

January 13, 2011
While attempts to teach language to and prove that chimps have the ability to learn and use it yield interesting results, I must admit I am opposed to these experiments both academically and ethically. Academically, I find it hard to fathom that an animal as highly social as a chimp could have the innate ability to use language and NOT use it naturally. Ethically, I find these experiments' anthropomorphic attitude regretable: the researchers claim (no doubt truthfully) to feel a deep emotional and personal connection with their subjects and treat them like humans, and yet I'm sure the issue of consent is never raised (and if it were, I suspect what ensued would be something like the end of "Rainman"). It seems to me that while the researchers purport to treat the chimps as human, they contradict themselves by also treating them as animals under human control. I'm of course not suggesting chimps should be asked to sign a consent form, just pointing out the assumptions of human superiority and dominance over the natural behaviour of a different species that are inherent to these experiments.

January 23, 2011
I found our discussion about the lateralization of different language functions interesting, particularly the part about the role of the right hemisphere in processing prosody. We talked about prosodical features in terms of the emotional cues they give, and aprosodia being the insensitivity to these cues. I'm curious about sensitivity to tone, though, in languages where it is used as a phonemic feature rather than an emotional or syntactic clue. Would a speaker of a tonal language (ex. Thai) who suffered right hemisphere damage and developed aprosodia be able to distinguish between a set of minimal pairs differing only in tone? In other words, is the right hemisphere associated with tone/pitch purely as an acoustic phenomenon, or is it associated with tone only as much as prosody is carried by it?

January 31, 2011
Phonological awareness if fascinating because of its largely unconscious nature--children presumably aren't aware that they are acquiring and improving their phonological awareness. The centrality of the syllable to phonological awareness seems to lend credence to the notion of the syllable, rather than the phoneme, as the unit of perception. I admit I know little about the evidence supporting the stages of phonological awareness (counting syllables, identifying onset and rime, etc.), but if it hasn't been done already I think an experiment involving people's ability to manipulate phonemes within the syllables of multisyllabic words would yield interesting results, both about the development of this ability and about the patterns of consonants in English onsets and codas (when one is changed, are there circumstances where the surrounding ones would also have to modify themselves?).

February 7, 2011
Chinese speakers have low phonological awareness because of their logographic writing system, which is not at all based on mapping sounds onto visual letters and strining their sounds together. I wonder about the effects of deafness on reading a logographic system--would deaf people still be at a disadvantage, or if there was no picture-phoneme correspondance, and the meaning was deduced immediately from the visual representation on the page, would deaf people perform better than reading an alphabetic system? It would be interesting to look at data on deaf Chinese reading first to shed light on this question.

February 14, 2011
I found our discussion of assimilation of ASL signs (like how the sign for "film" gradually became less iconic) quite interesting. This phenomenon can also be seen in spoken languages in words borrowed from other languages. A good example is the word "beef" in English, which was borrowed from French "boeuf" shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066. This was before the English vowel shift, which changed the vowel sound to the present one (the vowel shift applied to this word as if it were a native English word). Interstingly, more recently, the word "beef steak" has been borrowed back into French where it appears as "biftek". I wonder if the first syllable will ever return to its original pronunciation?

February 28, 2011
I think the product view of discourse might give some support to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativism. It is fascinating to examine the social artefacts of language such as schemata and scripts, and comparing these representations cross-linguistically and cross-culturally would undoubtedly yield interesting results. Another interesting approach would be to examine these differences among different social groups of a language's speakers. For example, the restaurant script we discussed in class would likely look very different from a cook's perspective, from a diner's perspective and from a server's perspective. The events are the same and occur in the same order but all the implications are different, right down to the very language involved in the process (kitchen jargon for the cooks, perhaps business jargon for the diners, etc.) As discourse is a very visible artefact created by a linguistic community, it throws light on social differences both between and within these communities and makes the differences in their mental representations obvious (as Whorf's hypothesis would predict).

March 7, 2011
The similarities we discussed between language and music were fascinating. It seems, though, that all the studies we looked at examined music as a separate entity from language that uses some of the same areas. I am curious about how the brain processes the two entities at the same time, i.e. song lyrics. Most people (not only trained musicians) are able to detect harmonic violations, but what about prosodical violations in song lyrics? While musical beats can enhance the prosody of lyrics, this is not always the case. Many songs' stressed syllables don't necessarily match up with the music's strong beats. Is this detected as naturally and in the same way as harmonic violations, or is it differently processes because of its great complexity?

March 14, 2011
One of the most popular discussions amongst worriers over what is becoming of society is the decline of so-called sophisticated means of communication (like letter writing) and the rise of the evil text message and wall post. But in reality, a lot of the same skills are used when composing a text message of max. 140 characters and writing an essay of max. 3000 words. You may have to shorten sections (through the cunning use of smileys), exclude things, and you absolutely have to plan out in advance what you will say. It must be succinct, but not rude. One of the most interesting challenges in writing such short compositions as these is conveying tone of voice. When gesture, expression and prosody can't be detected, the text-er is left with a unique problem: there usually isn't room to write "I'm happy about this" (not to mention that that would be weird), and seemingly straightforward messages can become ambiguous very easily. So far, it seems the best solution to this problem is the use of smileys. I would even go so far as to say that these are the iconic gestures of the texting world!

March 21, 2011
Kuhl's research on motherese provides a strong argument for children having innate language-learning ability. Motherese is exaggerated and simplified. But babies who have been exposed to motherese don't talk like that. In fact "baby talk" is often discouraged by parents who don't realize that they are doing it too. If language development was just about copying parental behaviour, then surely children would speak to each other and to their parents with the exaggerated prosody and phonemics of motherese, but this certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

March 28, 2011
I found the guest lecturer on aphasia very eye-opening. I was shocked to learn that aphasia is more prevalent than Parkinson's disease! I especially thought the videos she showed us were fascinating. It's one thing to read or be told about the condition, but quite another to actually watch and hear someone struggling to make themselves understood like that. So first I wanted to say thank you so much to both Dr. Newman and the guest lecturer (I'm sorry I can't remember her name) for including that class in our curriculum. Second, I have a question about the differences between fluent and non-fluent aphasia. Frustration was listed as a symptom of non-fluent aphasia. This is entirely understandable, as it must be awful to not be able to express thoughts in language. But I don't understand why frustration is not associated with fluent aphasia. How is it not frustrating to think, again and again, that you are making sense and talking coherently, only to be told repeatedly that no one understands you? Obviously this must be very challenging to study as a researcher couldn't rely on speech to communicate with a patient. It would be interesting, though, to examine in more detail the symptom of frustration in aphasia. All things considered, it must be one of the most difficult symptoms to deal with both for patients and researchers.

April 4, 2011
The debate on oral vs. total communication training for deaf children was fascinating, particularly because it is actually current and relevant in the world today. Regardless of which side presented a stronger argument in class (and both were very good) I support total communication training for children with cochlear implants. Even if a child has cochlear implants and so can hear, he or she will never be able to function in mainstream school as well as a hearing child will. This is why these children need special training to help them cope with their disability. Given that special education is provided, I see no reason not to use as many means as possible to communicate with these children. Certainly oral communication is necessary given that they are able to hear, and obviously oral communication is more helpful in society at large than sign would be. But why shut these children off from the deaf community when they are, in fact, deaf? Why not teach them the skills to get by in both deaf and hearing contexts? My position was strengthened when Dr. Newman played us a recording of what speech sounds like with cochlear implants. The poor sound quality makes it seem ludicrous to provide only oral communication to these children when sign must in fact be clearer.

April 11, 2011
On the whole, I enjoyed this course and found it interesting. In particular, I really enjoyed the guest lecturer who talked to us about aphasia. I also liked that due dates for assignments were well spread out over the semester. This was particularly helpful around midterms and finals because there was nothing major due in this class! I did not like how the grading scheme for the blog posts changed in the middle of the semester and also the confusion over the chapter rubric. I know this was the first year for this assignment, but next year it would be nice if the TA and the prof were more on the same page from the beginning of the semester about how things were graded. That being said, I thought the blog posts were a good and fairly low-stress way of synthesizing material learned. I liked the debates during the last two weeks, but although the topics were interesting I found they got boring halfway through. Because of the time frame, no one could really bring anything new to the discussion during the rebuttals and so there was a lot of repetition. My suggestion for improvement might be to have both sides' presentations and then have a more informal discussion with the whole class rather than a formal debate format. The wikiversity chapter was a weird assignment. It was interesting to research a particular topic and write a paper, but because there was no final or midterm it meant that the only thing we ever studied in detail was our debate topic and our chapter topic. This makes it too easy not to learn anything all semester except those two things! (Of course I'm not talking about myself here...haha.) I know I'm contradicting what I said above, but while it was less stressful it was also difficult to know if you were understanding the material correctly.

title: User:Egreer


text:
User:Shanedidona

Shane Di Dona enjoys chemical engineering, physics, 3ds max, SolidWorks, Mathematica, and Wikipedia. His homepage is http://www.shanedidona.com/

title: User:Shanedidona


text:
User:Samanathaarseneau

Samantha Arseneau
Samantha Arseneau is a third year student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is currently completing a double major in Psychology and English, and applying for the combined honours program. Upon completion of her first degree, Samantha would like to enrol in the Speech Language Pathology Master's program. As someone who has always been interested in language and communication, Samantha jumped at the opportunity to study psycholinguistics. The study of language from a psychological perspective peaked her interest, and she hopes that the class will help in broadening her overall understanding of the subject. Along with her classmates in Psyo3190, she is currently developing an online textbook via Wikiversity on the topic of Psycholinguistics. The project is one of great interest for Samantha, as she believes that knowledge should be accessible to all. Stay tuned for more information on the class project, and Samantha's thoughts on the course!

The Week of January 10, 2011
Today in class we discussed what is a language and an array of history and theory. While much of the history component was review of materials that I had learned in a previous class, I was struck by one piece of information presented in lecture. Dr. Newman at one point discussed sign language and its function in language. Upon thinking of the different components of language and their relevance towards sign language, I began to wonder about empirical research done on morphemes. I know there is very little research in the field of prefixes in spoken language, but what about in sign language? And would the findings be the same between spoken and sign? Would prefix sensitivity depend on the language (French Sign language vs. Russian vs. English?). As I am doing research on morphemes in one of my other courses, I found this idea to be of great interest to me.

Another aspect that peaked my interest was the discussion of Kanzi the Bonobo. I know that there's evidence of speech as an overlaid function in Chimps, but I began to think of other research on Chimps and their relevance in regards to Kanzi. For example, Viki could only say 4 words, but understood language very well, and Nim Chimpsky, who was raised in a rich environment, reached a ceiling effect in the syntactic correctness that was learned (Nim wasn't able to successfully combine more than 2-3 words at a time). With all of the constraints evident in language acquisition in chimps, what exactly is it about language that increases observational knowledge in these animals, and, does that mean that there's some evidence that language input could have a greater effect on higher order cognitive functions that output? While I'm sure that I'm probably missing something, these were, in fact, my initial reactions to the course material today. Hopefully they raised some questions for you too!

The Week of January 17, 2011
The week of lectures started off with a completion of the "Language and the Brain" lecture series. One subject that caught my attention was the portion of the lecture on aphasias. As I am writing my textbook chapter on Language and Arithmetic, I began to think about the implications that aphasias can have on one's math skills. Since both math and language share similar properties, such as symbolic meaning and grammar, it would seem that there is a great chance that both subjects are severely impacted by aphasias. For instance, one study examined the association between phonological awareness and arithmetic in fifth graders, finding that phonology was related to small-sized math problems. Furthermore, it was also found that the problems most related to phonological awareness had to do with retrieval (Smedt, Taylor, Archibald & Ansari, 2010). As some aphasias, such as Broca's aphasia, demonstrate issues in spontaneous speech (an area that would require both phonological awareness and processing), it would appear that one could associate these phonological issues with math retrieval problems (as, I said previously, there seems to be a correlation between phonological awareness and small sized math problems). If such is the case, then what kind of mathematical problems arise from acquired damage to the language areas of the brain? I am still in the early phases of research in regards to my textbook chapter, so I am still quite fuzzy on the relationships between language and arithmetic, but I hope that I will be able to find a more definite answer to my question as I continue to read the literature on the topic.

The Week of January 24, 2011
One of our lectures this week focused on the topic of reading, an area of psycholinguistics that really interests me. Currently, I am doing some research in a language lab (particularly with morphemes), so I found that there were some aspects of this lecture that brought up some questions on the reading front. For instance, one technique that I noticed is typically used when studying word processing is the missing letter effect (MLE). I have found this method useful as it allows the researcher to quickly assess what kind of words the participants are focusing on and what kind of implications it has on their reading abilities. I understand that this is a much more cost effective way of studying reading, but I was wondering if there would be benefits to completing an MLE test while also studying eye tracking? One thing that I really enjoy about the MLE test is that participants are reading for meaning, so paying attention to what they attend to can in fact have a great effect on what one is testing; but by adding the eye tracking, we could see what kinds of words are focused on more, what part of the word individuals attend to, and how this affects their overall understanding of a text (with adults, anyways). Moreover, in regards to eye tracking, I was also wondering what kind of patterns would arise in children who are learning to read. For instance, which part of a word would a child be more apt to focus on? Would they tend to look at the word orthographically and focus on familiar letter patterns, or would they have a decent understanding of the semantics behind the word and pay attention to morphology (for example, focusing on the base of the word as opposed to another familiar letter pattern). Also, would the eye tracking change depending on base frequency, or family size?

The Week of January 31, 2011
This week the lecture series was cut short due to a snow storm and a holiday, so we were only able to learn about the topic of morphology. During the lecture, professor Newman discussed ASL (American Sign Language) and how it varied morphologically to other languages. In terms of its typology, ASL is considered polysynthetic, meaning that most words are represented by one motion, and that there aren't necessarily different signs for different speech parts, like affixes. This idea of typology and ASL really caught my attention as we also briefly discussed the overgeneralization of morphemic rules. Typically when a child is acquiring language, they tend to overgeneralize when combining morphemes to adhere to specific speech rules. For instance, one would generally add "ed" as a suffix to create the past tense of a word (i.e. I walked downtown); however a child might overgeneralize by saying "I goed to the store" instead of "I went". While this idea of overgeneralization seems to hold true for most languages and would almost appear to be a universal step in language acquisition, I wondered if individuals who learn ASL as a first language also make similar overgeneralization errors despite the fact that one motion can represent a morphologically complex word. If individuals learning ASL did in fact overgeneralize in the way that other languages do, would there be a systematic signing system that would match these errors (for example, a sign that would represent "goed" as opposed to "went"). As someone who is rather naive about ASL, I am really interested in learning about the different linguistic components of the language (including morphological inflection), as well as the way that it varies and is consistent with other languages.

The Week of February 7, 2011
A few topics caught my attention this week in lecture. To begin with, one of the major topics discussed in Monday's class was lexical access and the notion of priming. While we were talking about the many ways in which priming occurs, I was wondering what kinds of ways one can actually stop priming. For example, I know that if one were to do an articulatory suppression task (i.e: say the word "the" over and over again while reading a list of words and trying to remember them for a later recall task) it would prevent an individual from processing a visual image into a phonological code, reducing the probability of making a phonological error on a recall task (i.e: saying that there was a "p" in a list of words when there was really a "b"). If such is the case for memory tasks, then would keeping the phonological loop busy through articulatory suppression cause someone to be less likely to prime from a visual word? It may seem like a silly question, but I always find it interesting the way that some tasks can trick the brain into working in a certain manner.

Another subject that I found really interesting this week was syntax. Since I am writing my chapter on language and arithmetic, the formulaic structure of syntax really caught my attention. As a result, I found myself thinking of the various ways that one could manipulate said formula to compose sentences that varied on several levels, including surface frequency, overall frequency etc. Just as it is possible to create problems that range in difficulty due to their equation, is there a specific formula that invariably creates sentences that parallel on all levels except for the words in the sentence?

The Week of February 14, 2011
In class we discussed a few different syntactic theories and the way in which they tend to divide the scientific community; however, it seems to me that they could almost be complimentary of one another. For example, one can look at words in a sentence in terms of meaning, but how can one be sure that one is in fact reading for meaning? By looking at the formulaic structure of syntax (as suggested in Chomsky's theory), one can control for all aspects in the sentence except for meaning. That way, one can be sure that individuals are reading for meaning and not using any other cues, like orthography. By combining both the theories centralizing around meaning and formulaic structure, one can get a clearer picture of how syntax works. So, maybe the theories do not need to be considered so separate after all?

The Week of February 28, 2011
This week in lecture I was fascinated by the topic of language and music. As someone with a background in music, I found it really neat to learn about the various brain areas that are active when processing music and language. While learning about the communal cognitive resources in class, I couldn't help but think of one of my friends, a fellow musician who is fantastic at his craft, but remarkably tone deaf. For instance, in class we discussed a study that examined non-experienced and experienced musicians when listening to music. They found that participants who were experienced in music were able to discriminate between 2 pieces of music that only varied slightly in musical notes (both songs shared the same musical properties). Interestingly, my friend, who has been trained in music for several years, cannot discriminate between songs that are only slightly different. So, I couldn't help but wonder, how can he be so good at playing/writing music without being about to hear the notes when tuning instruments/singing? This, of course, got me to thinking about the brain areas that could be affecting my friend's music abilities. We discussed in class the role that Wernicke's area plays in language and music comprehension, so I was wondering if a deficit in the Broca's area could be resulting in my friends inability to produce music in key? Or, if there might be a combination of brain areas that could cause my friend's strange musical abilities.

The Week of March 7, 2011
As someone doing a fair bit of research on reading and writing in one of my other classes, I found the topic of writing this week really fascinating. At one point we discussed the evolution of writing language and how it developed from pictographs to logographs and eventually to phonetic representations of words. While thinking of this, I thought that that it was interesting to note that writing started off fairly syllabic and evolved into something more phonetic, making me think that a chunking in terms of writing would be most intuitive type of breakdown. So, if written language was intuitively chunked (i.e: syllabic), then why do most school systems mainly focus on phonetics when teaching children to write and read? It would seem to me that to teach children the skills they need to learn to read and write, it would make sense to teach children to write phonetically, but also with a chunking method, as it may be one of the intuitive ways to learn writing. One of the best ways this could be accomplished would be through teaching a morphemic breakdown of words. By teaching children to find the "words within words" (i.e base words, etc), kids would have yet another skill to draw upon when learning to write. I think that this is important, as both written and spoken language are integral to our society.

The Week of March 13, 2011
The lectures this week focused on the topic of development. Most of the discussions and readings this week actually made me think about next week's topic as well (Bilingualism). I come from a bilingual background, so I find it interesting to think of development in monolinguals and bilinguals and how they might differ. In particular, the assumption of mutual exclusivity caught my attention in terms of bilingualism. With mutual exclusivity, it is assumed that infants only learn to map one word to one object. This, of course, would not seem to work of a child that is bilingual, as they would learn two separate names for everything. For instance, both "arbre" and "tree" would be mapped onto the same object. So, if the assumption of mutual exclusivity holds true, then does this mean that children who are bilingual develop language skills differently than monolinguals? Moreover, does this mean that children who speak more than one language store language differently? And do other assumptions in terms of development hold true? Would one have to change their techniques when speaking to their children to help with development? Another notion that was brought up was the fact that children can map and identify words differently depending on who the infant is interacting with. If such is the case, would it be beneficial to have one parent teach one language and another parent teach the other? I hope that we touch on some of these development questions when we start to discuss bilingualism.

The Week of March 21, 2011
I absolutely loved the guest lecture today on aphasias, and didn't realize it's prevalence along within our society. As someone who wants to become a speech pathologist in the future, I found that having the opportunity to actually see videos of individuals with aphasia was fascinating. One of the videos that really caught my attention involved a man with non-fluent aphasia and his attempts at communicating with his wife. In lecture we discussed the fact that many individuals with non-fluent aphasia have difficulties with written communication; however, to make himself understood, the patient often wrote down what he was trying to say. In doing so, he was for the most part able to communicate and even read the words that he had written. This made me wonder about the spectrums of aphasia, and what specifics neural impairments would cause the different kinds of non-fluent aphasia. If there are so many different types, and different spectrums, of aphasia, then there must be an equally large set of treatments available. This in turn made me think about the different methods of therapy for each type of aphasia. I would have to imagine that global aphasia would be one of the most difficult to treat, but I wonder what methods would be most effective to help someone who have deficits in both speech comprehension and production? Of course intensive therapy is the best route, but how do you communicate with someone that they do have a problem when they can't understand language or can't get the words out? Would you have to start from the very basic elements of language development, or would you be able to take an approach? Another piece of information that boggled my mind in class was that in recovery some types of aphasias could turn into other types of aphasias. For instance, global aphasia can eventually become another, less severe, aphasia. However, how does that happen? If someone has a deficit that affects areas involved in speech comprehension and production, then how does one of the deficits simply disappear? And, if someone is able to lessen the severity of their aphasia (i.e. go from a global aphasia to a non-fluent aphasia), could they also once again develop their language skills? Can one completely cure their aphasias?

The week of March 28, 2011
This week marked the start of the debate section in our class. I have to say that listening to the different viewpoints of contemporary topics in the psychological field has been really neat. One debate that really caught my attention was the argument for/against the "fast forword" reading intervention program. I find that both teams worked very hard to present their point in a very clear and precise manner; however, there was one point brought up that I was a little unsettled with. This point was the notion that the company who invented the intervention program must be tampering with data in the research to make the program look more successful (this, of course, was a point brought up by the 'against' team). While I know that the group promoting the "fast forword" program did not back up the program with as much empirical evidence as the 'against' group, I do feel that their usage of the company's results on the helpfulness of the program was valid. I understand that the company is in fact making money from the program, but would they not have to consider the ethical implications of manipulating their data to make it look more significant than it really is? Most boards would not let a study be considered if it was not ethically valid. Not only that, but the goal of the program is designed to help individuals with dyslexia, so it seems a bit unjust to automatically assume that the company is only interested in personal gain and are not willing representing their data properly. I understand that some corporations do in fact fund their own research to make their product seem better than it really is, but I think that one needs evidence before accusing the company.

I also found it interesting that in the case of the debates there never seems to be a strictly right or wrong answer. For example, evidence illustrated that the "fast forword" program was both beneficial and not. I found similar answers when I was researching information for my own debate. This coming week I will be arguing against the notion that right hemisphere activity helps with the recovery of aphasia; however, with as with most topics in our debate section, there does not seem to be a clear single side to the argument. In fact, it seems that one's opinion on the subject can vary by large amount. This leads me to wonder who decides which side is right when it comes to controversial subject matter in the psychological field. Do the researchers decide (even though the literature on the topics vary significantly)? Or is it the government? Or perhaps the public? How does one solve a contemporary issue? I can't week to see what the next week's worth of debates has in store!

The Week of April 4, 2011
This week we were asked to focus on blog on our reactions on the way that the course was organized. I have to say that I found this course's structure to be very different from any other class that I've taken, and I've loved it! It was really nice to know that the effort I put into my work (such as the wikiversity chapter) made a contribution to something much bigger than my educational experience. I really feel like I was a part of something that benefited others who are interested in psycholinguistics. I also thought that the debates were a great way to illustrate controversies that can arise in the world of psycholinguistics. One aspect of the course that I didn't particularly like was the blog section. I understand that it was a method to consolidate information learned in class and develop critical thinking skills, but I sometimes found that another assignment form would have been more effective. Overall, I feel that the course was very effective in teaching me about the subject material. If given the choice, I would take the course again in a heart beat! Thanks for a great class, Dr. Newman!

title: User:Samanathaarseneau


text:
User:Bcorrigan

b corrigan's user page, more information to come. A student at Dalhousie that is working on a section of a text book for Wikiversity on Psycholinguistics. The chapter is on connectionist models.

Week of January 10th
Being a philosophy student, the question of whether we can think without language has always been very interesting to me. The idea of smelling or seeing something as an experience can arguably be said to be prelinguistic. However, to be self conscious, or to be aware of what is going on in my own brain, still appears to require language. I think this has to do with the difference between experiencing and describing that experience. A person can experience something, but without being able to describe it, even just to themselves, to me it seems that they would lose the ability to remember it. Without relating it to other experiences, the memory gets lost, and so the only aspects that survive are those that can be put into language. Despite the many rejections of the Whorfian Hypothesis, I think that in a longitudinal development of an individual, the different languages have more of an affect that is immediately apparent from the Weak version that certain contrasts might not be possible is a particular language, while easy to make in another. Bcorrigan 18:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Week of January 17th
By far the most ineresting, perhaps because of its novelty, was learning about the phonetics of sign language. I admittedly know no sign language, but had learned a little of the alphabet at one point, in conjunction with eurthmy which was part of my primary school curriculum. That was a lot more intuitive, and so would not be a basis for a language, but the play of space did seem very similar for what you were expressing (though not for what you meant specifically). The only thing that got me was the difference between location and orientation struck me as odd. I think what rankled me was that the hand is not free to move in any orientation, and its connection to the arm meant that the entire arm would have to move to change the orientation. This makes me think that the distinction is really one of increasing the classifications for academic reasons rather than because it is necessary. Looking up ASL on Wikipedia and seeing that it is the third most used language in the States was thought provoking, not merely because of its predominance, but also because the idea of using a language feels a little strange to me. the word is necessary to include spoken and signed language, but I wonder if signers also feel that 'use' is inadequate to express the concept of signing as I feel it is to capture the process of talking. 15:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Week of January 24th
In thinking about how telephones only use a limited frequency band, and that most of the information in speech is isolated to two bands, I started wondering how much sound can we create with our voices that fall outside of the audible range? any? After exploring wikipedia's article on Audio Frequency, I realized that we probably don't. trying to create a sound higher than 6 octaves above middle C sounds fairly impossible. All puns are entirely unintended. The effects of top down recovery of sounds, phonemic restoration or the McGurk Effect are really mind boggling. Although we may think that we hear is the sounds that were made, and that we are merely decoding those sounds, the fact that the decoding actually changes the sounds for us is surprising. If people are are incapable of understanding me because I mumble sometimes, how much sound has to actually be distorted before they start failing to understand me. I really should work on my enunciation and articulation. On the topic of reading, I wonder if there is a difference between males and females for reading upside-down? The disparity between mental rotation abilities could create a difference, but probably only when a person starts. Practice would likely make the person immediately recognize the characters for what they are, instead of having to actually rotate them in their heads. I wonder this because I find that many people are surprised that I can read upside down almost as quickly as I can right side up. Bcorrigan 15:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Week of January 31st
single words that contain entire sentences. I am sorry, but that just seems ridiculous to me. Mostly from the point of view of trying to read it. I recognize that people can read faster than I can, but it still takes a certain amount of time for me to process a sentence. Perhaps they don't speak as quickly? Maybe to read a word like "n ä ï k ì ḿ l y ì ï à" takes longer to read on average than 'excruciating' (alright, it has one more letter, but I think the comparison is valid). Actually, I would guess that because of the way that we, as English speakers and readers, can recognize words wtihuot hnaivg to raed ecah letetr, would prove impossible for people who spoke the Kivunjo language. I recognize that some fonts may lead to the lexical reading effect better than others. I have heard of experiments that tested the arithmetical abilities of children who had learned their numbers in different languages, and some languages just were faster than others. There were even individuals who could do math in different languages had different speeds. I can't find a source right now, but I was taught it in class at some point in the last year. Anyways, perhaps these languages that have such small parts of meaning allow people who think in them to actually process their thoughts faster. I believe that this would be a very difficult thing to ever assess, because of the difficulty in finding a close enough translation that speed could reasonably be compared. However, I think that it would be really interesting to test the different speeds of reading and cognition between different languages. Particularly between an analytic language, and a polysynthetic language. Bcorrigan 15:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Week of February 7th
So after watching the clip on WATSON, right before class, and then 2 minutes into class, after handing in a paper on the philosophical possibility of artificial intelligence, it reminded me of Tesler's Theorem (as quoted by Douglas Hofstadter ) "Artificial Intelligence is whatever hasn't been done yet." The idea that syntax is just computation is not a terribly novel idea, particularly because the definition of syntax includes a definition for programming languages. The argument about whether this machine, that can use language quite effectively (apparently they think it can challenge the champions), is actually intelligent of course depends on the definition. It would be hard to argue that the machine was self-relfective, especially after seeing it make such bizarre errors. However, humans also make mistakes that can appear to illuminate the fact that they are not paying attention to what they are saying. Freudian slips for one. Before i write too much off topic, we also say thing by rote that we might mean upon reflection, but not actually have thought about at all. The phrase "Have a good one" come to mind.

The other thing that really interested me this week was the difference between connectionist models of the mind, and the spreading activation theory. I really like that despite the shift in connectionism away from dedicated nodes, the use of vector distances can be used to give a representation of the system that actually appears similar, insofar as like is grouped with like. The ability for the connectionist network of Rogers and McClelland (2004) generate the proper verbs for what a canary can do is striking. It would be really astounding however, if the computer was able to give statements about its own abilities, although learning these, instead of merely having a threshold to activate a particular phrase might not happen for quite some time. Bcorrigan 15:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Week of February 14th
All right, so if the inside fridge to animal size ratio was such that the elephant had to be removed before the giraffe could fit, why couldn't the giraffe kick the fridge door open when the King of the Jungle called a meeting? obviously she had been slighted by him. A distinction that I found very interesting this week, was the one between schema and script. Trying to wrap my head around the difference between what is experienced, and what usually happens seems, at first blush, to be pretty much the same thing. I guess these two terms rely heavily on multiple experiences to differentiate the possible, with the probable. A rude waiter could certainly be part of the schema, but not likely part of the script. If someone told me that they had gone to a restaurant the night before, I would not assume that they had been mistreated by the staff, whereas I would assume things like sitting at tables, menus tips and talking to the waiter. The distinction between a particular experience, and the common experience is likely hard to create with only a small sample. for example, despite never having actually been to a restaurant in France, if someone who had no French language skills, and a terrible red neck had told me they had gone, I would probably expect that they had been treated with disdain. This would however, not really stem from the restaurant script, but be a combination of the 'hick goes to town' script, where he makes a fool of himself, and the restaurant schema, where waitstaff can sometimes be jerks.

The idea that diferent languages use different cues left me wondering how languages could be compared on levels of understanding, and studying how these are changes in things like word order and inflection affect the interpretation and priming probably were the source. However, I think that ERP measurements of confusion and difficulty processing might also be fruitful, and it would be interesting to see if certain types of changes produced different degrees of effect, and possibly at different times in processing. Although I concede that this might not give any more information than well constructed measurements of priming.

Bcorrigan 20:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Week of February 28th
Alright, so although not the most thought-provoking example, something that really nagged at me this week was that when i saw the word 'grastly,' I immediately knew that it was a Blended word, made up of 'gross' and 'ghastly.' Although the topic was speech production, I am really interested in how I was able to make that leap. Possibly because the reading of 'ghastly' was not difficult to comprehend, and then associated words that start with 'gr' and would only be entitled to a small part in the Blend was probably 'gross.' This ties back into speech perception, and I would suggest that it has a similarity to the Liberman et al's Motor Theory of perception (1967), where how the sound is likely formed is used to conclude what the sound is. This would be on a higher level, but a self-report would lead to me saying that I tried to say the word, and found the words that I would mostly likely confuse, coming up with the correct ones. This was done out of context as well, and not embedded in a sentence, which makes it a little more impressive. An issue that this brings up, is one of the label of "top-down" processing. In terms of categorical perception (to tie this back into this week, with the way that young children can detect changes in cross cultural music that adults can't), it is usually suggested that this is caused by the adults have a top-down way of perceiving the music. I believe that not only is this a misnomer, but that it is actually misleading as well. I think that, if we were to separate processing into the levels of distinct notes, and then one higher that uses scales or moods, it is not the case that the notes are not processed, but that they also activate the higher category. This higher category would then just not change when the music changes keys in a different culture's music, so that the adult would not become aware of the change, having come, through experience, to trust the categorical relationships built over many trials, rather than the more difficult processing of note to note relationships (which is what the children likely do, not having built up the categories yet). This is a little heady for a the space of a blog, but I think the important thing is not that the sense data is not processed first on a high level, and then on a lower, but instead progresses through the levels coming out at the high level, and retroactively is assigned its place in the lower levels, not by the processing, but by the subjects who think that they are taking a more active role in their minds than merely being determined by the wiring in their brains. It isn't that the important comparisons don't occur at the top level, but that to get to the top level, there was a lot of bottom level processing already. Bcorrigan 20:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Week of March 7th
For the gesture lecture, I was a little taken aback at the suggestion that considering anything that cannot be written down as non-linguistic is a cultural artifact. All categorizations are cultural artifacts, for a linguist to say that there is language that people don't call language, is ridiculous. However, there is something to be said for the idea that perhaps there is a contradiction in the classifications, and that un-writable gestures can have meaning that should be included in language. I looked it up in the OED, and although the primary definition only included spoken and written communication, secondary definitions broaden the scope to include anything that communicated meaning (facial expressions, gestures, etc.). Perhaps in everyday use people forget that linguistics does not only concern that which can be written down, but to suggest that it is a cultural artifact is to forget what de Saussurre said about language, namely that it is arbitrary. It is equally valid to have a different word for communication that cannot be written down as it is to bring everything under the scope of 'language.' Maybe that wasn't completely on topic, but that kind of confusion, especially from a linguist, irks me. I was also intrigued by the correlate of babies learning to speak that confuse 'me' and 'you' is similar to how they confuse pointing to themselves and to others. The failure to grasp how one is supposed to modify actions and speech when the participants are the subject of the conversation is fairly amusing. I had never known that evil pencils were the cause of the writer's block that I get when I sit down to write these blogs. Not actually writing these down with a pencil though makes the argument difficult. I would argue that the blank page is more daunting, which is actually easy to escape by adding to the previous blog post, as does having a title that makes the page less blank.

I also recognize phonological errors while typing. Often these are caused by the word that I am going to type next, and so the first letter from the next word, or even the start of one of the embedded syllables finds its way into the word being typed. Although many typos when I was younger could be pegged as merely missing the right key, or not having the keyboard perfectly memorized. I think it would be interesting to look at when this starts, and how skilled someone has to be with a computer before they actually get so comfortable that they start making different types of mistakes. Bcorrigan 21:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Week of March 14th
Categorical perception. Yes it wasn't a large part of the discussion this week, but it still grabbed my interest, and I can't seem to shake it. I had originally understood that this was learned, because babies could discriminate all categories. However, being corrected this week, that despite babies being able to differentiate between all categories, they were not as able to discriminate as well within categories. I had originally assumed that the pathways for these categories were just learned. This made sense because babies obviously learn categorical perception of their own native language, and learn to not distinguish between categories that do not exist within their native tongue. Further research (alright I started on wikipedia) led me to a paper (Tijsseling, A. and Harnad, Stevan (1997) Warping Similarity Space in Category Learning by Backprop Nets.) that showed that a connectionist back propagation model developed categorical perception(CP). Although this suggests that CP is actually learned, and not genetic, because it was not programmed into the network examined here, there is an issue with the fact that backpropagation has not been satisfactorily described as mirroring an actual biological process within the brain. The mechanism that is suggested is that there is a compression within a category based on the stimuli presented, and at the boundaries, there is better discrimination because there is a spreading of the differences. This suggests that perhaps one of the reasons that it is difficult to tell whether categorical perception is learned or innate is because despite not having innate categories, babies are still constantly presented with exemplars that, to use the perceptual magnet effect as an example, would appear closer to the centre than actually all over. This could lead the baby to lump particular sounds together as their listening develops. I would be really interested in seeing if a baby were brought up hearing an even distribution of all sounds, whether they would still have the capacity to differentiate better between categories than within them. If only ethics boards could see the benefits of this test, having babies only hear computer generated sounds for the first few months of their lives. (lthough, perhaps a way of measuring what they did hear over the course of the day, and supplementing it with sounds that occur at category boundaries might be able to counterbalance natural exposure. Bcorrigan 15:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Week of March 21st (SPRING IS HERE!)
So I was really interested in the final presentation, although I did forget to write down the presenter's name, so I can't actually cite her. That Parkinson's is less prevalent than aphasia was a really striking revelation, and although at first I was skeptical about how impressive that was considering the range of effect of aphasia, I recognized that individuals with Parkinson's have a decline, so at the early stages, there is not really a difference. It was really fascinating to watch the videos of the two individuals who had Broca's and Wernicke's aphasias, because I had not seen anyone like either of them before. It became very evident why there had not been a spokesperson for wither aphasia before, because it was so difficult to understand either of them (alright, it was impossible to understand the fluent-aphasic). The level of understanding that the fluent aphasic had of the comic that he was describing was very interesting to try and determine. How he could think that he was making sense, or what kind of sense he was making in his own head is to me mind boggling. Is the total lack of sense due to concepts not having a regulation that could keep their activations in order? Perhaps it is true, but I find it hard to believe that the only reason that I make sense is because I can listen to myself. I recognize that I might make mistakes if i could not hear myself, or monitor what I was saying, but it seems that it would take a lot crossed connections to have a thought that was associated with an entirely different word. Possibly before the actual cognitive monitoring, there is a strong amount of feedback when the concept is attached to the right word, and that this is an essential part of how we actually even think. To describe this would be that I might want to think of a brother, but in not activating the word "brother" other words that are normally activated with it which would in turn help isolate the activation of the concept might lead to completely different words coming out. "monkey" perhaps, as the concept of brother and monkey for me are quite closely related. Bcorrigan 15:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Week of March 28th
The debate over Ebonics was interesting in both the issues raised in the debate, as well as the way it was carried out. before I would want to give an opinion however, I would certainly want more information, particularly because the two sides seemed to be arguing against different points, instead of each other. One thing that I was left wondering was that if it was a language, how had it developed, as I do not believe this was addressed. Wikipedia suggests that it is a creole, which certainly lends credence to treating it as a language, but not necessarily to the argument that it should be used to teach in schools. Perhaps offering it as language credit, like Spanish or French would contribute it possibly becoming an academically recognized language. Another possible course that it might take would be to form a creole with US English. The problem that I see with this project however, is that if English already has such a pervasive written stronghold in the US, and the possibility of people understanding each other despite the different language structures, there does not seem to be much likelihood of English syntax being shifted towards any compromise. Despite the fact that Ebonics is a language, and the suggestion that the young children need to understand it to communicate with the older generations, I would be interested in comparing fMRI's of these older monolinguals, English/Ebonics bilinguals, and other bilinguals to see if the differences in bilinguals and monolinguals is observed in these Ebonics/English ones. The overlapping vocabulary could make differences difficult to identify, or it could be that the differing syntax would show large differences. This would largely just show what activations are due to syntax as opposed to vocabulary. Bcorrigan 13:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Week of April 4th
For an overall analysis of the class, I believe that I enjoyed quite a bit of it, while being frustrated with others. Some problems couldn't be helped, such as the room, which, having no sunlight, meant that I found it very hard to stay alert and attentive during classes. I think there were also too many students for the focus that the class seemed designed to have, and the professor and TA had to do a lot of extra work, and knowing that there was a lot to be done meant that it was easy to think that some marks might be affected by not having the time they deserved. Part of this is likely due the fact that if I were in that position, I would find it hard to devote as much time as Dr. Newman and Sarah actually did. For that they should be commended. The debates were quite interesting, but I found that despite the closer than average calls, they seemed to be a little one sided, so that one team would have to completely re-frame the question in order to try and argue effectively. Particularly the ESL and Ebonics ones. The Wiki idea was novel, and I don't think what i was doing really struck me until my Dad looked at it, and was really impressed. Yes, its just my Dad, but that is what really drove home the idea that someone would probably actually come across it and find it useful. The problem I found with this as the major way of marking, however, is that it meant that there was no weight attributed to learning the material in class, and so if other subjects had assignments that did have weight, it was very easy to let keeping up with Psycholinguistics slide. This is likely just a problem with Neoliberal society, but I do think that the blog posts worked towards evening this out. I think that overall, I learned a lo of extracurricular skills, and am very happy with that fact. I also learned more about psycholinguistics, as well as connectionist models of the mind, and am very interested in pursuing more knowledge in that area in the future. Bcorrigan 19:14, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

title: User:Bcorrigan


text:
User:Keegancolville

Keegan Colville

I am an undergraduate student at Dalhousie university currently in my third year of a BSC majoring in psychology. My interest in psycholinguistics is to gain an understanding of the formation of language and speech. Further I would like to increase my understanding of human interaction that comes from our use of language.

January 17th, 2011

The first full week of this class has been a great introduction to psycholinguistics. I think that starting with Whorf's hypothesis was an excellent spot to start the class because it portrays the complex relationship between language and thought. The idea that our language determines, in however large or small a role, how we think about the world around us not only a great way to introduce the importance of psycholinguistics but it also sparked great interest in the subject matter. As the week went on, our discussion of the chimps that where taught a language and their increased cognitive activity that occurred afterward was an interesting display of the importance of language in our ability to complete high level activities.

Overall this first week has been a great start to my study of psycholinguistics. The subject matter has been interesting so far and I am excited to further the discussions about how language makes us think the way we do.

January 24th, 2011 After this week my ideas of what constitutes a language has changed. Our Friday lecture that discussed phonology and phonemes surprised me after learning that ASL (American Sign Language) is consider a language under the same classification as english, french or any other spoken language. The idea that language comes from its minimal unit of sounds (or in ASL movement) is one that I had never thought of. The second concept that I found very interesting about this week was the ERP measurements during the reading or listening of sentences. The idea that our mind works a lot less when what were are presented in normal and of frequent occurrence is an interesting concept that leads to two questions: does this mean that there is greatly increased brain activity when learning a new language because non of what you would see would be regular? and is this the reason that we are often fooled by those t-shirts that have words spelled wrong on them (i.e "thnik" rather than think)?

January 30th, 2011 The perception and articulation of words has been the most interesting thing for me this week. After this week I have been constantly picking apart what I am saying to see if the letters are behaving in the way that you would typically think they should or if they are making a completely different sound. The greatest example of this comes from 'ghoti', which can be pronounced as fish because of how the words are used. Overall before this week I understood that the simple rule that says one letter makes a certain sound was not true, however I have become much more aware of it in my everyday speech now and find it very interesting that this idea can almost be ignored as we learn language.

Another this that I found interesting this week was the voice recognition technology, or better yet the lack there of. I knew that it was not the best but did not realize how much work still need to be done in that field to help improve the technology. Further I hope that the intelligence agencies that are rumored to constantly monitor phone calls have much better voice technology to do so. I feel bad for anyone who got arrested for saying that they were going to "take Tom to the airport".

February 6th, 2011 A short week this week but a couple of interesting points came up during. The lecture on morphology has once again changed my ideas of American Sign Language (ASL). This is due to the idea that ASL has morphemes in the language as all other languages do. This has once again opened my eyes to understanding ASL as a language with all the defining characteristics, similar to how the phoneme lecture did. Another interested idea came from the book readings on word recognition. The top down and contextual ideas of how we process and understand words in an interesting concept in general. One of my favorite ideas here is that words cannot really be understood through their morphology alone but instead gain meaning through the association they have with the words they are with.

February 13th, 2011 This last week has been one dominated by personal work on my chapter page. From that I have become intently interested in the amount of power that emotion has in our expression and understanding of language. Primarily I am impressed with two things. First the power that emotional cues, both unspoken and spoken, have in determining the meaning of a statement. Secondly the power that emotionally relevant information has in increasing memory of the information. This second idea has been very interesting to me because it explains and age old question that I have had about myself. That is, why am I able easily able to remember a comic's jokes better than I was able to remember what I was told by a teacher about Shakespeare? The answer seems to be the emotional connection that came from those jokes compared to my teachers class.

On the aspect of class material this week I would have to say that my favorite aspect of this week is the lexical access. Mostly the extreme power that it brings up about our complex brains. The mere fact that we are able to store this vast amount of knowledge on word meaning and be able to access it so quickly can only be in one way, amazing.

February 27th, 2011 The last week of class (the one before the break) was dedicated mainly to sentence processing. A major section of interest in this topic is the concept of garden path sentences. Further I have been trying to understand the relationship between garden path sentences and the speed reading abilities of people. As we learning in class and through the readings this week, garden path sentences cause the reader have elevated levels of brain activity due to the unusual pattern of words that they are encountering. From this I wondering two things about speed readers (which I do not have the ability to do, but have friends that can). First I wondering if they have the ability to speed read through garden path sentences or will their techniques cause them to take longer on this type of sentences. I say this because I would assume that skimming a sentence, a common technique of speed readers, would cause confusion in extracting a sentences meaning and possibly causing them to have to read a sentence multiple times while a non-speed reader could read it only once.

My second wonder is about the level of brain activity that a speed reader has. I would assume that speed reading in general would cause a high level of brain activity and that coupled with the increase of reading a garden path sentence may cause even greater levels of activity. On the other hand perhaps this is another reason why garden path sentences are not easy for people who can speed read.

March 6th, 2011 This week I have been interest in the lexical bias effect. More so I have been interested in the idea of whether or not this effect suggests a top-down aspect to how we read and produce language. The top-down operation in word production from the lexical bias effect seems evident in the fact that speech errors occur more frequently in the Baars et al. experiments when switching the first letters of the words would make sense and make real words rather than non-words. This suggests a top-down because the brain is recognizing that the words are real or not before the speech is being produced. I would like to further clarify my thoughts by saying that I believe speech production in general is a top-down process. However, in this case it is more a matter of reading that appears to be a top-down process, which seems interesting because one would think that the brain would need to first take in the information and then produce the correct words. However it seems that here the brain is just taking a logical pattern and producing the word that seems that it should come next unless that word is not real.

One last interesting note is that this topic does seem to refer back to my thoughts last week about speed reading. The abilities and strategies of speed readers appear to be based off of a top-down process during reading.

March 13th, 2011 The Lectures of the last week have made me more concussion in the my speech but more so in my writing. I during our lecture on writing I noticed several things that my writing was missing that I hope to incorporate in to my reports in the future. I major aspect of thing is the idea of knowledge restructuring rather than mere telling. This relates to the concept of stepping back and making the different connection between information which I believe that my writing at times lacks.

Another interesting aspect of this week was the concept that writing requires a greater amount of cognitive thought than speech does. I find this slightly hard to believe and wonder how it is measured. I would agree that typically speaking is an easier process than writing is because of all the added syntactic and semantic forethought that is required compared to general everyday speaking between friends. However, when considering the difficultly of speeches and the required thought that goes into them I find it hard to believe that speech in this sense does not require the same or greater amount of cognitive activity than writing. The only thing that would make sense to me here is that this is not pure speech production. Many people write speeches before saying them and therefore use their writing skills to produce to words that they will say. In the end I guess I am wondering where the two acts combine and are considered the same.

March 21st, 2011 The main concept that I got from this week's lectures on language development is the power of children. I find it impressive that even during the time in utero we can hear and recognize voices, as seen by babies that prefer to hear their mothers voice. Further our general ability to pick up language over the first few years of our life and turn crying and cooing into the language we use today is amazing. However, the most impressive aspect of children in language development might be due to their ability to very easily communicate with one another, without inhibition for social situations, and at times build a language within their own groups. This is best seen by the Nicaraguan children who created their own sign language when they were thought to have no communal language at all. Also this concept of child created languages can be seen by the development of syntax in pidgins languages that turn them into creoles.

A question arises when considering the power of children in the development of language. That is, how is it possible for children to cause such great development to a language when they do not fully understand it themselves? This relates to the idea of critical periods in the development of language. How is it that children can add syntax to a primitive language that they have heard during their young life but are unable to learn language when they have heard nothing through their childhood years? My best understanding of this concept is that a little goes a long way. That is to say that any communication causes much greater understanding and development than none at all.

March 28th, 2011 The highlight of this week was the aphasia guest lecture that we had on Friday. This lecture not only gave a lot of great information on the speech disorder of aphasia but it also opened my eyes up to a few other problems. First was the prevalence of aphasia. I had no idea that it was such a wide spread disorder that effected around 10,000 people per year. This is a fairly high number in my mind and one that I did not expect because I had truly not heard out it outside of my classes in psychology. However, as the lecture continued I was told why aphasia is not as well known. This is because people with aphasia do not have a voice to speech out with about their disorder. Where as people with other disorders, such as Parkinson's that was talked about as being much less prevalent but much more known of, have a voice to speech out and show others the suffering that they are going through. This is a sad and true fact and made we wondering how many people are suffering in silent pain such as those with aphasia.

April 4th, 2011 This last week marked the start of the debates. While they have all been done fairly well so far, one of the most interesting things that I have learned from them is to watch where my information comes from. This is best shown in the second set of debates on the FastForward program. Even though both teams showed a fair amount of research the against team, arguing that the FastForward program was not the best therapy for dyslexia rehabilitation, did a great job of showing that the research provided by the pro team was bias. This is because all the research the pro team had was done by the company who created the program. This was an eye-opener that showed me to not only be concerned about what a research paper is saying but also to be careful that the research is being done by a reputable and, as seen primarily in this case, an un-bias group.

I look forward to another great week of debates and to get mine done on Wednesday.

April 10th, 2011 The last week of class finished off the last three debates. While my team unfortunately did not win our debate, it still went pretty well. Further, the debates in general this week were of the similar quality of the debates from the week before, this being good.

I enjoyed psycholinguistics over the course of this term and have learned a lot from it. While studying for other exams, as I am now, I find myself having a great knowledge of anything that is related to this class. I thought the projects of this class were a great way to get us all involved in our learning and hope other classes that I take in the future share this similar outlook on work.

title: User:Keegancolville


text: Template:User ga-3

title: Template:User ga-3


text: Psycholinguistics/Sentence Processing (Syntax)