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Language teaching/Cochlear implants and language instruction

Introduction
Cochlear implants allow individuals with profound hearing loss to regain or develop speech and verbal language ability by providing auditory stimulation via electrical impulses. Speech and language ability varies among individuals, with many cochlear implant recipients developing age appropriate linguistic ability. Research in this field has looked at language ability of cochlear implant recipients in comparison to hearing individuals and/or deaf individuals on a variety of dimensions. Ability to produce accurate speech, ability to understand speech and writing and reading ability have all been studied. This chapter will be devoted to the topic of cochlear implants and language development in prelingually deaf children. It will begin with a review of some basic information about cochlear implants. It will then review two common methods of language instruction, namely oral communication and total communication. Empirical evidence examining speech perception, production and development following implantation and language instruction will also be examined.

What is a cochlear implant?
A cochlear implant is a piece of medical technology that restores and/or improves hearing and speech ability in deaf individuals. Approximately 199,000 people worldwide have a cochlear implant. The implant consists of a portion embedded in the skull and a portion worn exterior on the side of the head. The internal portion of the implant comprises a receiver and a transmission coil. The external portion includes a microphone, radio transmitter and speech processor.

Learning Exercise
Watch the video below to learn about the basics of cochlear implants and language instruction. The video provides a summary of important information outlined in the introduction of this chapter. See the learning exercise at the end of the chapter for questions that test your knowledge of the entire chapter.

Parts of a Cochlear Implant
External
 * Microphone: Detects sound in environment
 * Speech Processor: Organizes sounds detected in the environment.
 * Radio Transmitter: Consists of a coil and magnet that transmit information received from speech processor via an electric impulse

Internal
 * Receiver and Stimulator: Have electric circuits that control electric impulses that are delivered via the auditory nerve
 * Microelectrode Array: Inserted onto the bottom of the basilar membrane in the cochlea. This allows the damaged cochlea to function.  It consists of a group of electrodes which receive the sound information in the form of an electrical impulse and direct the impulse to the auditory nerve.

Who is eligible for a cochlear implant?
Candidates for cochlear implants are individuals with severe to profound deafness. Cochlear implants are effective for individuals with conductive deafness. Conductive deafness occurs from damage to the cochlea in the ear, which inhibits the supply of sound information to the brain via the auditory nerve. Cochlear implants work to restore hearing by stimulation of the auditory nerve. For this reason, cochlear implants they are not an effective treatment for individuals with nerve deafness. This type of deafness occurs when the auditory nerve is damaged, often from infection or injury and does not currently have an effective treatment. Generally, surgery is most beneficial when performed at a younger age. Ideal candidates are very young children, however adults can also benefit. We will discuss age of implantation more later in the chapter. Cochlear implantation candidacy is always determined by a team of medical professionals including audiologists, otologists, surgeons and speech therapists. Potential candidates complete a full medical history and several hearing tests to determine their eligibility for the surgery. The American Speech Language Hearing Association outlines the following criteria for cochlear implants for children:
 * Profound hearing loss in both ears
 * No success with hearing aid use
 * In good general health
 * Have a realistic understanding of the benefits of cochlear implants
 * Are willing to participate in rehabilitation and intensive therapies following surgery
 * Plan to make use of education support

How does it work?
Cochlear implants facilitate hearing by taking on the role of the cochlea and providing electrical stimulation to the auditory nerve. Individuals with conductive deafness have damaged hair cells in the cochlea. These hair cells are responsible for responding to sound and sending information to the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve is responsible for delivering sound information to the brain. The electrodes implanted in the cochlea replace the function of the damaged hair cells, and with the other internal and external portions of the implant, relay sound information to the brain. The sound quality provided by the cochlear implant is often described as muffled or disjointed, but significantly improves hearing in the recipient. The poor sound quality can be attributed to the limited signal output of the implant, with the signal reaching the higher auditory centres at only a fraction of what it would normally. Cochlear implants do not completely restore hearing, extensive training and rehabilitation is required in order for individuals to learn how to perceive sound.

Methods of Language Instruction
Following implantation, children must begin specialized learning programs in order to develop age appropriate language abilities. Because children have had a period of time prior to the implant without auditory stimulation, and the sound quality received from the implant is degraded, they will require extra training in order to make up for the period of deprivation. Cochlear implant recipients will need to learn to discriminate between sounds, understand spoken and language and learn how to reproduce sounds in the form of written language. Significant controversy has surrounded the best way to teach language to children prior to receiving and following cochlear implant surgery. Two methods of instruction have been developed, namely oral and total communication. In this section we will review the benefits of each type of language instruction and discuss current research comparing methods.

Oral Communication
In the oral communication method of instruction, children are taught exclusively spoken language. This is a challenging method of instruction, because children must learn to hear, decode and produce speech using their limited experience with hearing to guide their learning. Children's initially limited language ability may hinder their ability to communicate using only verbal communication.

Total Communication
In the total communication method of instruction, children are taught both spoken and signed language. This method of communication allows the child to fully express themselves using both spoken and signed language. A possible drawback of this method is that children may rely too heavily on signed language, which may come more naturally to them, and therefore do not make as significant progress in their spoken language ability.

The Debate
There has been significant debate in the medical and educational communities surrounding the best method of language instruction for children to use following cochlear implantation. Traditionally, the oral communication method was preferred, valuing spoken language over signed language. More recently sign language has been acknowledged as a rich and complex language that may be useful for individuals with hearing loss to learn in combination with other methods. In this section we will review some of the research comparing total and oral communication. A substantial body of research has found numerous benefits associated with oral communication. Oral communication was found to be more effective for measures of spoken word recognition, speech intelligibility and expressive language ability as well as speech perception and overall language skills. Oral communication may also facilitate speech production. Based on measures of consonant-production accuracy, receptive spoken vocabulary and expressive vocabulary in pre-operatively deaf children, researchers found that oral communication can be useful for facilitating expressive and receptive vocabulary. . The oral communication method is often supported by evidence that children’s language ability will be hindered by their tendency to “fall back on” signing as an easy method of communication if they are taught total communication. However, there is no conclusive evidence that total communication discourages spoken language development. Tye-Murray, Spencer, and Woodworth. studied children taught using total communication and found there was great variation in the type of communication style children adopted. When taught both signed and oral language, many children used both to communicate and some chose spoken language exclusively. Spencer and Woodworth concluded that exposing children to sign language does not mean they will adopt it as their prinicipal form of communication. Geers. found children taught in total communication used sign to express words 50% of the time and language 77%. Sign and spoken language were often used together, yet language was still predominant. Other research has also supported total communication as a valid method of instruction for cochlear implant recipients. It is clear that research has not conclusively found one type of instruction be superior. Recent research has shown more positive language development associated with oral communication. The preference for oral communication is often justified by the fact that this method forces children to rely on their oral language ability to express themselves. In the total communication method, children may fall back on signed language, hindering their ability to develop a full oral vocabulary. More research is required to examine the differences in language outcomes between the two programs.

Cochlear Implants and Language Ability
Previous research has demonstrated that cochlear implants significantly improve language ability. This improvement is further enhanced by implantation at a young age. Currently, cochlear implantation surgery is conducted on children as young as 12 months. Numerous studies have concluded that implantation at a young age is associated with better language outcomes  Specifically, implantation before age 2.5 is associated with better speech and vocabulary  This may be because children have a shorter period of auditory deprivation and are therefor are at less of a disadvantage when testing age appropriate language skills. Further reading about cochlear implants and age of implantation are available at the end of this chapter. Our focus for the remainder of the chapter will be on looking at three dimensions of language ability, namely speech production, speech perception and reading, and examining children’s abilities on these three dimensions following cochlear implantation as well as factors that contribute to their development.

Speech Perception
Cochlear implantation facilitates dramatic improvement in speech perception. Children progress from perceiving 0 words per minute to 44 within five years of receiving the implant. Speech perception continues to improve between childhood and adolescence, this increase mirrors increases in speech production (to age 10 level). Despite these dramatic improvements, speech perception in individuals with cochlear implants is impaired compared to hearing individuals. Studies have concluded that speech perception ability in cochlear implant users reaches levels similar to that of a person with 70-90 db of hearing loss. Speech perception in cochlear implant users is especially impaired by distractions such as background noise or low volume and pitch. These impairments are due to the imperfect nature of the cochlear implant. Although it provides auditory stimulation, the implant is not able to provide the same information that hearing individuals get from the auditory world.

Speech Production
''Developing spoken language ability is an important benefit of using a cochlear implant. In this section current research on speech production will be discussed.'' Following cochlear implantation, children show dramatic improvements in speech production. The most dramatic improvements in speech intelligibility are seen in the first three years following implantation. For example, Blamey et al found that speech intelligibility (measured by percent of unintelligible syllables in conversation) significantly improved from only 10% intelligible after using a cochlear implant for 3 months to 95% intelligible at a three year follow up. This research illustrates that the dramatic increase in sound quality that a cochlear implant provides has a significant impact on speech production. This increase in speech ability is further enhanced if implantation occurs at a young age. If a children receives a cochlear implant between 12 and 16 mos they are likely to achieve age appropriate speech ability earlier (by 4.5 years of age) than peers who received implants later. Early implantation may also allow children with cochlear implants to enter public school during the primary grades. Speech production continues to improve during the six years following implantation. After this period, improvement in speech production tend to plateau.

Overall speech production ability following cochlear implant surgery varies amount children. Previous research has chronicled the significant improvement in speech production ability in the six years following implantation. Speech production has been found to improve 22% between the elementary and high school years. Although cochlear implants provide users with a tremendous advantage over their deaf peers in their ability to produce speech, their speech production is variable and often lags behind levels of hearing children. Greers found 50% of cochlear implant users had language ability at an age appropriate level. Specifically, prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants seemed to be impaired in sentence recall tasks due to memory deficits for spoken and written language. Cochlear implant users excell at expressive voaculary tests, with 58% scoring at an age appropriate level.

Factors that Influence Speech Production
35% of variation in speech production can be explained by the following factors
 * Age: Children who receive a cochlear implant at a young age generally develop better speech production ability than those who receive the implant as an older child or adult.
 * Hearing aid use prior to cochlear implant: Children who used hearing aids prior to receiving the cochlear implant have better speech production ability.
 * Time since cochlear implant surgery: This factor explains the most variability in cochlear implant users speech production ability. Longer time since implant is associated with improved speech production.
 * Gender: Females develop stronger speech production ability than males.
 * Parental Education: Having educated parents is associated with speech outcomes. This can be attributed to higher socio-economic status among educated parents, more parental involvement and better access to resources.
 * IQ: IQ is a predictor of language ability in both hearing and deaf children. Higher IQ is associated with better language ability.

Reading
Deafness significantly impairs an individual’s ability to learn to read. Studies of deaf high school graduates have revealed very poor reading ability, averaging at the fourth grade level. Further, 50% of deaf individuals are illiterate. The challenge of progressing beyond a basic level of reading ability is often referred to as the “fourth grade barrier” due to the fact that it is difficult for deaf individuals to learn to read beyond the fourth grade level. An important tool for improving reading ability in deaf individuals is cochlear implants. Cochlear implants have been associated with significantly improved reading ability on a variety of measures. In this section a variety of research evidence will be reviewed, detailing improvements in reading ability following cochlear implantation.

Current research has found that children with cochlear implants achieve significantly higher reading levels than then deaf children without implants. Cochlear implants have been shown to improve children’s scores on a variety of reading measures including reading comprehension, reading accuracy and standardized reading tests (Moog, 2002). Young elementary school children with cochlear implants show impressive improvements in vocabulary. On measures of word accuracy and comprehension, elementary school children have shown to reach grade level expectations at high rates (60 and 70% respectively). Spencer et al 1991 research study found that of school aged children and teens between grades 4-12 with cochlear implants, 54% were reading at a fourth grade level or higher. Compared to a similar sample of deaf children using hearing aids and other conventional hearing technology, only 8-14% achieved a fourth grade reading level.

Cochlear implants provide children with a clear advantage in reading comprehension when compared to deaf peers, however, they may still not be reaching reading levels of hearing children. Developing age-appropriate reading ability poses extra challenges for individuals with profound deafness due to their limited spoken vocabulary and lack of phonological awareness. Perfetti & Sandak (2000) characterized this challenge as due to an “incomplete spoken language system and demands of reading a speech based system””. Cochlear implant users make significant improvements in reading ability in years following implantation, however when tested later in high school there is variability in improvements in reading ability. Geers' longitudinal study of high school students with cochlear implants found that reading ability at appropriate grade level decreased as children aged. 56% achieved an appropriate level in elementary school, while 44% achieved age appropriate scores in high school. Researchers found great variability in ability in high school student. Other research by Geers in speech and hearing has found 44-66% of high school students have average reading ability, yet continue to be impaired by very poor spelling, writing and phonological knowledge.

Factors that Influence Reading Ability (Connor & Swolan, 2004)

 * Pre-implant vocabulary: In both deaf and hearing children, a larger vocabulary prior to learning to read is correlated with stronger reading abilities.
 * Language skills: Strong spoken language ability is associated with better reading ability.  This may be due to increased vocabulary, better phonetic understanding, etc
 * Age of implantation: Children who receive a cochlear implant at a younger age generally make better progress in reading ability
 * Socioeconomic status: children from lower SES generally achieve worse reading ability than their higher SES peers. This can be contributed to factors such as lack of opportunity, stress, constraints of single parent household, etc.

Learning Exercise
Test your knowledge of the content of this chapter with questions below. 1. How does a cochlear implant differ from a hearing aid? 2. Who can benefit from a cochlear implant? 3. How does a cochlear implant transmit sound?

Complete the following table: ''Using the information in this table, write a short essay supporting either oral or total communication. Use research to support your position.''

Case Study Using the research presented in this chapter, answer the questions, in short essay form, posed at the end of each case description.

Case 1: Ella is a 6 year old female who will be receiving a cochlear implant. Ella was born deaf. She has used a hearing aid since she was born. Ella comes from a low income family. Ella's family doctor believes she is in general good heath, with an average IQ for her age. Ella lives with her two hearing parents who are excited for the opportunity for Ella to be able to hear. Imagine that you are Ella's doctor. Outline the factors detailed in this case study that may affect Ella's speech production and perception abilities. Provide evidence from research to support these predictions. Ella's parents are wondering about her language abilities after the implant. Detail what sort of information you would provide to Ella's parents to help them support her transition with the cochlear implant including communication styles and what type of language ability they can expect Ella to develop.

Case 2: Sean is a five year old hearing child. He is a strong student in school and loves to read. Abbey is a five year old who received a cochlear implant at 18 months old. Abbey has been taught to hear and speak using oral communication. She has made significant improvements over the past five years. Explain the possible similarities and differences between Sean and Abbey's hearing ability, speech perception, speech production and reading ability. What factors might explain these similarities and differences?


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Mathics/Modus Ponens

Modus Ponens is a rule of inference in logic. More explicitly, it is the following logical syllogism.

 * p implies q
 * p
 * Therefore, q

Modus Ponens is usually proved by constructing a truth table. This is easy to do when p and q can take on only two values (true and false). To prove Modus Ponens, one constructs a truth table.

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

title: Mathics/Modus Ponens


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User:Emilypmcguire

Hello, I am a fourth year Honours in Neuroscience student and I am interested in pursuing a career in audiology and/or speech language pathology. How humans process and make sense of language is by far the most interesting topic I have come across in my years at Dal. Looking forward to this course!

Blog Post 1
So far I have very much enjoyed the lectures presented by Dr. Newman. While the history lecture and the brain imaging lectures were reviews for me (having taken previous courses such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and perceptual processes), I found that they refreshed the important information that I will need to be on top of this class. The lecture on language and thought was my favourite so far - it brought up interesting questions about language that I had never considered before. I had never before approached the idea of thought as being defined or regulated by language, and how thought may differ when a person uses a different language system. The question of whether or not thought can exist without language, as was brought up in class, is still floating around in my head. When this question was posed, I immediately thought of Helen Keller (as did other people in the lecture). The story of Helen Keller is one of my personal favourites and has been ever since I read a biography of Anne Sullivan, the woman who was able to work with Helen and teach her to communicate by spelling onto her hands. Helen lost her hearing and her eyesight around the age of 19 months, at which point most normally developing children have acquired some aspect of the production of language, such as forming basic words and the ability to follow simple instructions, and it is widely accepted that a child of this age would be able to understand many more words than they could produce. So what would happen to the development of language if suddenly the ability to hear it and the ability to see it being produced were taken away? If language development were eradicated, would this also eradicate thought? Are the development of these two phenomena dependent on each other, or does one drive the development of the other? These are interesting questions, but not ones that I think can be answered using Helen Keller's life as an example.

What many people do not know is that when Anne Sullivan met Helen Keller, she was not without language. Helen had a system of "homesign" (which, interestingly, is part of the chapter I will be writing later!!) with which she was able to communicate with her family. Sign language, whether it is invented or formally taught, is just as much a language as speaking or writing. When Helen lost the ability to see and to hear, it became impossible for her to learn to speak (unless formally trained, as she was later in life). Sound, vision, and their uses were no longer available to her, so, she invented a new way to communicate with those around her. Interestingly, when we think of sign language, it is a very visual experience - Helen invented a homesign language without the ability to see what her signs looked like. What does that say about her internal understanding of her world? What does this say about her thoughts? Did she come up with signs to express the thoughts and ideas in her head, or were those thoughts and ideas facilitated by her ability to make signs? Did she spontaneously invent specific signs or did natural motions, as she tried to express herself, become reinforced and "learned"? Or both? Did her signs approximate the visual appearance of things in her world, like ASL tends to do (sign for "cat" is to make motions indicating whiskers; "red" indicates one's lips)? Or did they represent things that she could directly experience, like texture, taste, weight or purpose? Or, in signing properties of objects that she could experience, did she unknowingly create an intuitive visual experience for those around her? One could imagine that even without sight or hearing, a cat's whiskers could be felt and indicated in the same way a conventional ASL user would. Did she have a theory of mind, where she was aware (by memory?) that other people could "see" things and "see" her and by signing for an object, she could communicate a thought? This seems farfetched in that a 19 month old child who loses vision probably does not remember what it is to "see", but it is still puzzling. If the most important things to communicate were nouns and possibly verbs, did Helen have any concept of grammar (before Anne Sullivan's work)?

Anyway, before I ramble on forever, my point is that Helen Keller never really lost language and she never lost the ability to think. Whether her success at communicating even in the absence of sight and hearing indicates that language is driven by thought and the internal desire to express oneself is still something I am considering.

Blog Post 2
Week two was again a bit of a review for me, but my interest was still captured during the lectures - maybe not by the big picture per se but by some small details which I will make some comments on for my second blog post. Firstly, the point that Prof Newman made about determining "language areas" of the brain has stuck with me. It is so true that every time we (or at least, I) see an image of the brain, our focus is on the gyri and sulci and the boundaries they form. Of course, it is just too easy to divide the brain up into functional parts based on the visually pleasing lines made by the folds of the brain. Using an illustration of the fiber tracts and their projection ares in the cortex, the fallacy of this method was made very clear. If you took a sheet of paper, colored it into 100 different "compartments", then balled it up, the likelihood of each compartment being nicely represented by the folds and bumps on the surface is pretty low. Now I know that's an exaggeration, and sometimes dividing functional brain areas by surface anatomical landmarks is fairly accurate, but what I hope to see in the future, as computer imaging and modelling progresses, is this: a functional map of the unfolded cortex, based on many (many, many) subjects, data, and imaging methods, that eliminates the potentially misleading folds and grooves and allows us to see the "page" as it would be without its convolutions. Maybe I am dreaming - I don't know how hard it would be to get a computer program to take the cortex and flatten it out - but I think it would be illuminating (does anyone know if this has been done already??).

Secondly, I want to share with you a nerdy moment I had while browsing some of my favourite internet pages...Hopefully at least some people have heard of the site damnyouautocorrect, a site for iPhone users to submit funny autocorrections their phone has placed in their texts. Some of these are funny because they have turned innocuous messages into something crude, and some of them are funny just because the word is clearly not supposed to be there. The thing about this site is that it is just so universally entertaining that I think it must be tapping in to something natural and common to most humans. Also, the more of them you read, the funnier they get. I think there are videos on Youtube of people helplessly laughing after spending some time on the site. Anyway, my nerdy thought was this: what if the N400 is important to this perception of "funny" and "entertaining"? The autocorrect errors violate the semantics of where the sentence or conversation is going. Without this blip in our brain waves (actually I should say "without the mechanisms that cause this blip in our brain waves), would we be able to tell if these mistakes were hilarious or not? I realize that I am taking good hard neuroscience data and twisting it far outside the box but I think it is important (since we touched on lesions and deficits as well) to consider just how many aspects of our life are affected by the mechanisms we use to process language - if we look past the big picture of losing our ability to communicate efficiently, we see that other things which make life enjoyable, like music, humour, some other art forms, etc., would also be lost.  People who lose some part of their language abilities truly have a mountainous challenge to overcome, which is sadly impossible in some cases, and this is why I think that language research is one of the most important and definitely the most interesting area of neuroscience that I have come across.

My apologies for the rather haphazard thoughts I have thrown together this week - this concludes my post.

Blog Post 3
First, a comment on my research for my book chapter: I keep getting distracted in my literature searches by papers that document word structure in different pidgins and Creoles! Maybe it comes from being a (nearly) tri-lingual (English, French, Italian) and being well-read enough to recognize other languages like Spanish and German, but the more I read, the easier I find it is to look at a pidgin word or sentence and recognize which languages contributed to its formation. At the very least, I can identify the main contributing language (superstrate language) and sometimes the substrate languages. Here is an example of an English-based pidgin: dis smol swain i bin go fo maket; which, translated, says "this little pig went to market". Here is a German based pidgin: ja fruher wir bleiben; it means "yes, at first we stayed". Here is a French based pidgin: mo pe aste sa banan; which says "I am buying that banana". The English pidgin is easy to recognize both by its words and its grammar; the word "ja" and word structures like "fruher" tipped me off that the next one was German; "sa banan" appeared to me to be a permutation of "ca banane", a slightly grammatically incorrect way of saying "this banana" in French. It makes me wonder if multi-lingual people would be better at picking up a pidgin, or at creating one amongst themselves. If you marooned a group of bilingual Canadians (English and French) with a group of bilingual Israelis (Hebrew and Arabic), would you get a pidgin that was a combination of all four languages? Or would you get a pidgin combining the two languages that most closely resembled each other in structure and form? Or, alternatively, would you get a pidgin combining the two languages that turned out to be slightly dominant from each group? Say the Canadians chose mostly French to communicate among themselves and the Israelis chose mostly Hebrew - would the pidgin then be French/Hebrew or would there still be bits of English and Arabic in there too? If there were the same amount of people in each group, how would one language become a superstrate and the others substrate? As far as I have read, the superstrate/substrate structure always occurs in pidgins, but I am also assuming that having equal numbers of different language speakers in a heterogenous group of people is rare if not impossible...hmm. If only there was a way to create a pidgin under strict laboratory conditions...the neuroscientist in me comes out!

I would also like to leave a comment with regards to the voice recognition/voice activation/direct voice input technology: I think it is ridiculous that any company has tried to market a voice recognition software that you apparently don't have to "train" or calibrate. The variations in people's speech production are infinite, and although (like we saw in lectures this week) efforts to categorize our speech sounds have been great, they still fall short of explaining how it is we are able to accomplish all feats of speech comprehension. There is yet to be created a computer with the computational power of the human brain, but what I think we have been able to create (from my limited knowledge of computers) are programs that can accumulate "top-down" information and apply it to other data inputs. This is why you could train a program to know YOUR voice and recognize YOUR words: so long as it can retrieve and match information it has stored, it will do alright. But the slight variations in how you say "cat" and your friend says "cat" would leave the program unable to cope. They can't generalize. And since WE don't even know precisely every parameter that influences how we perceive speech, since even we don't know all the ways our speech perception can be influenced and how those mechanisms work, how can we pretend to hope to construct a machine to do it for us?? A machine is only as smart as its inventor, and therefore I think it is obvious that until another few decades of research into speech perception have gone by, any voice recognition program can only be functional for those speech patterns that it can be taught. Buying a program that pretends to have the capabilities to recognize anyone's speech without training is a waste of money.

Blog Post 4
Unfortunately, this week has been very lacking in psycholinguistics. I was unable to make Monday's class, the university closed right before class on Wednesday, and Friday was Munro day! I had a look through the lecture on morphology though, and went off on a tangent while trying to practice separating free and bound morphemes from common words. I found a PDF document online that gave me a list of words to practice on, such as "creating", "seaward", and "astronomer". Most of them were pretty easy but it was words like "astronomer" that gave me pause. Evidently, -er is a bound morpheme. But what about the rest of the word? In English, I would separate it into "astronomy" and "-er", meaning someone who does astronomy. But I also know that I could separate the word into its Greek roots, "astro" and "nomy" plus "-er", breaking it down into (loosely) someone who deals with the laws of the stars. Most people know that "astro" means something is related to the stars, but it has no English meaning when it stands alone. Are language segments like "astro" and "bio" bound morphemes? They don't communicate a grammatical change or a meaning/class change, at least not how it was defined in lecture. They can't be free morphemes because they don't mean anything on their own. What do linguists do when faced with words that are clearly heavily based on other languages and therefore cannot be separated into regular English phonemes?

In the same interesting PDF file was a reference to Esperanto, which I have never heard of before. In case you haven't either, Esperanto is a constructed language invented in the late 1800's by a man named Zamenhof whose goal was to create an international language in order to bring harmony and understanding to people from different countries. This caught my attention because this, is essence, is an intentionally created pidgin. An artificial pidgin, even. Apparently there are some thousands of native Esperanto speakers in various countries, making it an artificial Creole. Cool. I will definitely be including this in my textbook chapter on pidgins and Creoles!! I am especially interested on which languages he based Esperanto, how they contributed to its structure, and whether or not it is indeed an intuitive international language. What's the range of Esperanto vocabulary? How did he make words?? How did he decide which morphemes stood for gender, plural, past and present tenses?? Where can you learn and use this language? Does learning Esperanto help you learn the languages from which it is based? Excited to keep reading and to write about it in my chapter!

Blog Post 5
This week I would like to write about my progress on my book chapter, mostly because it hasn't really turned out the way I wanted it to and I am not very satisfied with the first version that I have turned in. Firstly, most of my successful attempts at finding good primary research articles turned up information on Homesigns and not on pidgins and creoles. That, coupled with the fact that sign languages are a personal fascination of mine, led to my first version being heavy on the homesign information and light on the pidgin/creole info. In my final copy I hope to balance it out a bit more. I humbly admit that most of my problems with finding good information on pidgins and creoles is due to my own reluctance to go to the library and find information in (shudder) paper form, as most of the resources that popped up in google scholar were actual books and not available for download. I will rise above my laziness and spend some time in the stacks when I am writing my final version. Secondly, I would like to add an entirely new section to my chapter, a kind of summary on how pidgins and creoles are comparable to homesigns and how their developmental patterns are similar and what key points about language acquisition they all support. The information is all there right now but not in an obvious way, and I feel it leaves the reader floundering around a bit. I would just like to tie it all together and make a concluding statement of sorts. Also, I want to add some neat little asides (like about Esperanto) and maybe some pictures, just to make it more interesting and more text-book-like. However, I am having some difficulty with Wikiversity html formatting, in that I don't know how to make tables or put things in boxes or insert pictures while citing them properly. Does anyone know if there is a tutorial for this kind of stuff somewhere? I have looked at some other people's pages and the make mine seem...lame. Any advice on formatting would be greatly appreciated. On my language radar this week is the story of a Canadian soldier who learned to speak Pashto, the language spoken by Afghans. Vancouver Sun story here: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Alberta+soldier+draws+stares+Afghanistan+speaking+local+language/4275343/story.html >br> This is a nice story about breaking down the language barrier and how it opens people up and brings them together, even in a setting like war. Heartwarming, but what struck me about the story was that a Canadian soldier knowing how to speak Pashto was an exception, an anomaly in the military efforts overseas. Why is this the case?? What could be more helpful in peacekeeping efforts than knowing the local language?? The Afghan people now have to deal with many foreign military personnel - what could make it more alien to them than no one speaking their language? I personally think the apparent lack of effort on behalf of the Canadian military to teach their soldiers the local language is not only irresponsible and counter-productive, it also shows a lack of respect for the people to whom the country belongs. On a happier note, I just learned that one of the girls on BC's ringette team competing in the Canada Games is deaf! One of the boys on Winnipeg's speed skating team is deaf as well. Their teammates are making effort to pick up ASL and have completely inclusive attitudes. It makes my day to hear a story proving people with unconventional language abilities are able to be as much a part of a team as anyone else (not to mention their impressive ability to pay competitive sports).

Blog Post 6
Well, not much to say this week - no class to comment on and not a lot of thought put towards school over the break! I did complete my chapter review and enjoyed that assignment - I chose to review a topic that I have some background in and so I feel that I was able to make some constructive comments and suggestions. My own chapter has just been reviewed and the comments are accurate and the feedback helpful. The reviewer pointed out all the shortcomings that I myself acknowledged, and so I know the direction I need to take it for the final version. In my scrounge for ideas for this blog, I came across an article on how learning a second language can protect against Alzheimer's. More specifically, the article reported that bilingual people were 4-5 years older when they were diagnosed with Alzheimer's. In seeming contradiction to this, the bilingual patients had more advanced brain deterioration than monolingual patients who were functioning at the same level. This means that bilingual patients were better able to cope with the loss of brain tissue. The theory behind this improved functioning is that bilingual people must use their "executive control" more often than monolingual people, and its this "exercise" of the executive control that allows them to deal with the effects of the disease. I am going to look into this further because right now the article sounds sketchy. But, this is where my blog ends this week - I have nothing up my shirtsleeves to write about and rather than have you (my TA) read a long, rambly, poorly written blog entry, I am going to cut it off right here. Hope you had a good break!

Blog Post 7
Hello again. First of all, here is a link to the 2nd language/Alzheimer's article. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the actual journal article that I am hoping goes along with all of the popular press releases, but I continue to search. For this week's blog, I would like to discuss the math and language lecture, since we are no longer covering it in class. I went through the slides that Dr. Newman has posted, and although some of them are vague without his explanations (I will listen to the podcast ASAP), I found most of the points to be thought-provoking. One of the "huh" moments I came across was in the table comparing the arbitrariness, grammar, and innateness of language versus math. It is well known that we as humans have an innate language learning capacity, but I am not sure that I agree with the term "innate number sense". I agree that we have the innate ability to differentiate between different quantities of concrete things, but I do not believe the capacity to assign numbers to things is innate. It is hard for me to believe that a child isolated from numbers and math would spontaneously create their own system as they would spontaneously create a homesign if isolated from verbal language input. That being said, how did numbers and mathematical operations come into being in the first place?? It hurts my brain a little bit to try to work out the logistics of this, but I believe (as is also reinforced in Dr. Newman's lecture) that language is what allows us to express our innate understanding of quantity. I also believe that language is what allows us to manipulate these understandings into more complex operations and abstract values. I think that math is dependent on language in the same way as any other thought process is: without language, we have no concrete way of expressing or communicating about math. In my mind, it is a one-way dependency: one can have language without having math but one cannnot have math without having language. Lastly, I have a question for you that you may or may not be able to answer: the last two slides in the math and language lecture have left me slightly confused as well as intrigued. What I THINK is being said is that the HIPs, which used for numerosity judgements, number comparisons, and calculations, is also the part of the brain which is used for pointing and grasping...and in light of that discovery, we can consider mathematical abilities to the be the internalization of representations of actions such as pointing or grasping, and that this internalization has occurred over the course of evolution. In simpler terms, perhaps our ability to mentally count things is a internalization of our ability to point at or grasp different numbers of objects in sequence. Is that what those slides are talking about?? If so, that is one of the neatest perspectives I have ever heard about the thought processes behind math.

Blog Post 8
Yaaaaayyyyyyyyy gestures!!!!!!! That was pretty much my sentiment during Wednesdays class. Gestures and gestural language have always been a personal fascination of mine. And Dr. Newman began the class with my other love: a Warner Bros cartoon!! I find it entertaining that this particular cartoon has achieved fame as a psycholinguistic stimulus for the study of gestures :) but it's true - there are a ton of visual events happening in a very short space of time, and to describe them efficiently to another person, it is natural to use gestures and pantomiming. Anyway, while I was listening to Dr Newman's lecture, my mind kind of went on a tangent. There are some researchers who assert that before primates acquired spoken language, they used gestures and some primitive form of signing to communicate.  I don't really agree with this - firstly, if you follow evolutionary pathways, many species that evolved earlier than primates use some sort of vocalization to communicate. It isn't language per se, but it is vocal and it does carry some meaning (think birdsong, lion roaring, etc). Also, early primate groups had to be able to communicate over long distances and in this kind of situation, gestures would obviously not work. I think vocal communication developed before gestural communication, although gestures may have been common when individuals were communicating in a group in a small area. However, it is interesting to think that maybe the ability to apply symbolic and abstract meaning to gestures came before the ability to apply symbolic and abstract meaning to vocal utterances. This again seems unlikely though, since even chickens can be shown to produce vocalizations that carry meaning (I wish I could remember where I read this! they separated two groups of chickens, one which was allowed to see a certain predator and another which could hear the first group but not see them or the predator. When the first group was presented with a fox and subsequently freaked out, the second group responded by trying to get to higher ground, like their perch. When the first group was presented with a hawk's shadow and freaked out again, the second group stayed on the ground this time and tried to find shelter under things. Clearly, the noises produced by the first group were communicating something about the nature of the predator.). Maybe, though...and this is stepping out a limb that has no actual factual support, i.e. is only slightly educated speculation...maybe it went like this: we evolve from Australopithecus into Homo erectus - our hands are now free. We can use tools, hold weapons and food. Our hands are also free to do other things, like point. We start using hand motions to accompany the limited number of vocalizations we can produce. Somehow (and this is where it is fuzzy), both the gestures and the vocalizations begin to acquire symbolic, abstract meaning. Maybe at one point they were used equally frequently and skillfully to communicate. But for some reason, vocal language is the half that continued to develop and grow. Maybe it made more "sense" for language to be something that did not preoccupy the hands, since the hands were so busy being useful in other situations. You don't want to waste time signing about a predator when you could be using your hands to escape while screaming "TIGER!!" to warn your buddies. I am obviously simplifying this and exaggerating in my examples but these are the kinds of things I was thinking about during lecture. I would love to observe a group of primates gesturing someday (and not my classmates!).

Blog Post 9
My 22 year old friend had two strokes this weekend :( she lost language during the actual events but immediately regained it afterwards. She is very lucky to be alive and is on her way to a full recovery.

Blog Post 10
I finished up my learning exercise this week, and in doing some browsing of pidgin-related material, I came a across a website full of educator's materials related to Hawai'ian pidgin/creole (I have put a link to it in my learning exercise section). I decided that for fun, I would take their pidgin grammar quiz...and I scored 100%! It was simply a task of deciding whether a sentence was correct or not (not actually changing it to the correct form), but nevertheless...I don't speak pidgin, and my only exposure to Hawai'ian pidgin has been limited to the few phrases and information I have absorbed during my research for my textbook chapter. So, how was I able to do so well? Possibility: Hawai'ian pidgin/creole retains enough elements of English grammar for me to recognize when grammatical rules have been violated.
 * This blows the relexification hypothesis out of the water, because English has been identified as Hawai'ian pidgin/creole's superstrate, and therefore, lexifying language. According to relexification, this means that English vocabulary should be mapped onto the syntax and structure of the substrate languages (e.g., native Hawai'ian, Cantonese, Portuguese). It IS true that Hawai'ian pidgin/creole has a largely English vocabulary, but if this is the case then English grammatical structure should not also be recognizable. There is no room in the relexification hypothesis for both the vocabulary and structure of a particular language to dominate the final creole. I do not speak any of the substrate languages contributing to Hawai'ian pidgin/creole, so if it is their grammars and structures that make up the final creole then I would not be able to do so well on the grammar tests. I believe that, since the vocabulary is mainly English-based words, I am easily able to pick out when some English grammatical no-nos occur. For example, I can recognize when there is a double negative, or two words that indicate past tense, same as you would recognize the error in someone saying "We can't come not to your party." or "We went walked to the park."  The fact that I scored so well on these grammar quizzes indicates to me that both English vocabulary and grammar have been preserved in Hawai'ian pidgin/creole to a recognizable degree (although, obviously, not exclusive to other contributing languages).

To round out the week, I present you with an awesome and entertaining article entitled 20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback. My favorite is "freck: to move swiftly or nimbly" as in "I had to freck to get to school today" :D I think it's great how intuitive some of the words are, like "brabble" which I think is a portmanteau of brawl and squabble, while some are just weird ("kench: to laugh loudly"). At the end of the article you'll find more links to great untranslatable words from other languages - wait til you see what itsuarpok means! So useful!

Blog Post 11
Well, this week saw the beginning of our series of debates. On Monday was a fairly controversial debate about ebonics/AAVE, Wednesday was the debate presented by my group about the Fast ForWord program, and Friday's debate was about oral and total communication strategies for hearing impaired children. I'd like to make some comments on each of the debates for this week's post. I was dissatisfied with how the debate on ebonics played out. The position put forth by Dr. Newman were very specific: The resolution of the Oakland, CA School Board, stating that Ebonics (African American Vernacular English) should be the language of instruction in classrooms where this is the dominant language of the majority of children, should be implemented in schools where appropriate. I think both sides had their arguments blurred by the overlying tones of possible racism and belief in the supremacy of the English language. I'm not saying anyone in the groups held any of those beliefs, rather that there was definitely an effort made to avoid them and in doing so, they became the elephant in the room. I found it interesting that both sides agreed that AAVE is a legitimate separate language. If this is the case, then the question becomes how do you accommodate bilingualism in the public school system? I wonder if the groups would have had different arguments if we were debating the validity of, say, French being the language of instruction in classrooms where this is the dominant language of the majority of children. I felt that our debate on Wednesday went fairly well. We were a bit freaked out by the seriousness of the debate on Monday so we tried to give ours a more interesting, lighter approach. What made it fun for us is that none of us actually agreed with our position, which was that the FastForward program for dyslexia is an effective treatment, and superior to other therapies. We agree that it can be effective but not necessarily superior to other studies. There is a lot of research out there to prove otherwise. Because of this, we had to think outside the box and approach the notion of "superior" from angles other than cut-and-dry effectiveness, like the "fun" aspect, whether kids like it enough to stick with it, how pricey it is, how accessible and accommodating it is, etc. However, the "against" group had well formulated arguments backed up with good scientific evidence and we were happy to acknowledge that. We lost. :) Friday's debate was a bit unfortunate, because the position that deaf children receiving cochlear implants should receive only oral communication and not be given training in Total Communication/Sign Language had to be defended by only one person! He was at a clear disadvantage, having to introduce and explain the topic as well as make a good argument in a maximum of two minutes. That's nearly impossible. However, he did a very good job, especially in the rebuttal, at which point he was able to make use of the full five minutes and get some more arguments out. I have to say though, I agree with the opposing position, that deaf children receiving cochlear implants should receive only oral communication and not be given training in Total Communication/Sign Language, but that is based on my own prior knowledge, not just because the opposite team was convincing. As well, I think both teams lost sight of one of the crucial details in their positions: that we were discussing deaf children receiving cochlear implants, which is not ALL deaf children by any means. I forgot that this was even part of the argument until I looked back at the topics after the class, indicating that the groups didn't make it very clear. I think that if the groups had made this detail more of a central topic, both sides could have had more specific arguments and presented a better debate.

Blog Post 12
Final blog post! For this last entry, Dr. Newman expressed interest in us evaluating the course's pros and cons of the course this year. I provided some feedback on my written course evaluation, but I will elaborate on it here. Firstly, I think running a paperless 3rd year course was a ambitious undertaking. However, one of the pitfalls of the course design was that there were no exams, and therefore students were not responsible for any of the material covered in lecture. This means that a good portion of students chose not to attend lectures, and this was probably not even reflected in their grades. Adding to this is the fact that Dr. Newman posted podcasts and presentation slides for all of his lectures. While it is standard for profs to post lecture slides, adding podcasts means that this might as well have been an online course. For those students who chose to attend lecture, like me, there was still little, if any, motivation to pay attention. Why would anyone focus on a slough of information that they will never have to remember again? Before you go thinking "for the love of learning and genuine interest in the topic", I can assure you that my love of learning is profound, and I am genuinely interested in the neuroscience of language, but I used lecture times to mostly brush up on my solitaire skills on my computer.I believe that one of the main purposes of testing students is to make them liable for regurgitating information from their classes at some point, which ensures that they will at least memorize parts of it and hopefully, with proper test design, go beyond that into the realm of understanding and long term memory. In past years I think that Dr. Newman had a better approach with assignments such as the ones he posted as guidelines for our learning exercises, which required students to use critical thinking about the information presented in lecture. My main disappointment from this class is that I really only learned about the topics covered in my textbook chapter and the topics covered in the debates. While I recognize that at this level, I should be taking responsibility for my learning and paying attention in class no matter what, it is too easy to use this class as a "break" when I am not being help accountable for learning the information. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Newman as a lecturer. I think the debates were a novel and interesting way to get students more involved in the topics covered in this course, and helped people to apply psycholinguistics to "real life". I found Wikiversity to be a bit frustrating since I am not internet-savvy or computer-inclined, but I think Dr. Newman and Sarah took pains to avoid penalizing people based on their knowledge of computer-related stuff. I know a lot of people complained about some of the marking from the chapter and learning exercise assignments but in my opinion that reflects laziness and a lack of effort on their part. All in all, I enjoyed the course, but I feel am leaving it rather empty-handed, in terms of knowledge. I applaud Dr. Newman's forward thinking but I believe some changes are needed in order to assure students are still motivated to put effort into this course. All the best!

title: User:Emilypmcguire


text:
User talk:Srahman01

 Hello Srahman01, 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) 01:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Srahman01


text:
User talk:Emilypmcguire

 Hello Emilypmcguire, 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) 01:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Emilypmcguire


text:
User:Michellejansen

I am a third year Psychology student. I am really looking forward to the content and design of this course. I am not too familiar with the subject matter but find it quite fascinating and hope to learn alot!

Jan, 17, 2011 I was particularity interested In Kanzi the bonobo. I had previously learned about non human primates being taught language but had misconceived notions that it was not very successful. However, in the Youtube video shown in class demonstrated quite the opposite. Kanzi showed several aspects of human language. The researcher would ask her to do tasks that were quite obscure tasks to show that she could understand each individual part of the request and that it was not something learned. In a way that showed generativity because although Kanzi wasn’t the one uttering the strange request, she was clearly able to understand and carry it out. I am now curious about the language development in non human primates and what the anatomical differences are and why such differences lead to either spoken language or not. In fact my roommate, a Biology student, was telling me that in one of her classes last week she learned that the difference has been characterized by the difference in only two amino acids. That seems so insignificant, could that really make all the difference? I would also be curious to learn if Wernick’s and Broca’s area are only in Humans. If you do not orally communicate do you till have an area of the cortex devoted to the comprehension of sounds? I am excited to see where the rest of this course takes me!

Jan, 31, 2011 This week I was especially curious as to how we read. I have often thought about it because I know when I read I’m not actually reading all the words. Most of it, I am sure is recognition and not actually reading. I have developed into quite a fast reader but I bet, if I were given words I had not seen before it would take me much much longer to read! In the lecture we learned that this is true, real words are processed fasted than pseudo words. I also found it interesting, when discussing eye movements that 15% are going backwards in corrections. Does that mean if we read a words wrong our brain knows and our eyes go back to it? Even in a perfectly read sentence, is 15% still designated to regression? Another thing I was thinking about when talking about reading and that I thought of now as I just typed in “read”. How do we learn to read words that are spelled the same differently? For instance “read”. It can be past and present and annunciated differently. Words like, “polish” are completely different when in different contexts. When do we start being able to discriminate them so that we read then differently dependant on the context? It is quite incredible that our brains can make the distinction without a second thought. I think English would be a hard language to learn if it was no your first, every rule is an exception!

Feb, 4, 2011 (blog post #4 This was a short week, with only one lecture due to a snow day and Munroe day. This weeks lecture was about morphology and ASL. I have always had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that other languages use entirely different sets of rule and syntax’s. For some reason the concept goes a bit over my head and I find it remarkable that children will learn the language that they are exposed to. I admire people who can easily pick up other languages. The hardest course I have taken in my three years at Dalhousie University was beginner Italian. In the lecture I found the example of Arabic quite fascinating how, rather than prefixes and suffixes like we have in English, their consonants were the base and depending what vowels they placed, the meaning changed. Also, the “past tense debate” got me thinking how I use past tense. The other day I was driving with one of my roommates and she said an unusual verb that she then tried to put in the past tense. It took us a good 7 or 8 minutes to decide which was correct. I feel like I go by how it sounds, but I wonder if there are rules instilled in my brain that allow me to hear the right conjugation? Because when I do conjugate somewhat irregular verbs I do so by how it sounds. It seems amazing that children don’t over generalize more often. Each week in the course makes me think how it is quite remarkable that everyone can use proficient language so easily and I think it is a good thing that there is an innate aspect because I believe if we had to use an effort to learn it, it would be extremely hard! One other thing I was curious about when talking about ASL (which I really don’t know much about) is how many people use it? What us the prevalence within the Deaf community? I found what Dr. Newman showed us about it very interesting, how you refer to people who aren’t there and give them a spot in the space. I would love to learn more about ASL!

Feb, 11, 2011 (blog post #5) Sitting in class this week while talking about what a word really made me think about it. Even the very first slide, explaining that when describing a word we are not actually describing the word but the meaning associated with it. I have never really though about how arbitrary words are, but they really are. During this lecture I couldn't help but thinking about how and who developed the first set of symbols that would adequately describe a word. I figure words that describe a physical attribute must have come first, but i'm not really sure, i've never taken the time to learn. Would an orange been more prevalent at the time than an apple? How did the first words, like apple develop, who assigned specific letters of the alphabet to represent that word? I'm not sure if this an obvious question that I have learned about, but thinking about it like this, the answer escapes me. I know that the english language and many others came from latin and that before, there were letters, words were represented with pictures and hieroglyphs, but how then later did humanity decide which item would be called what? It's really quite remarkable that we have words for pretty much everything! I remember taking a SOSA 1000 in my first year and we learned that depending on the culture, people have many different words to describe something that another culture may not. One example of this was in Inuit, where they have many different words for snow that we don't have in english. I guess this is because we wouldn't have reason to describe snow in so many ways, but for the Inuit, it is necessary to have many different descriptions.

title: User:Michellejansen


text:
User talk:Michellejansen

 Hello Michellejansen, 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) 01:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:Michellejansen


text:
User:Egm6321.f09.mtg37

=EGM6321 - Principles of Engineering Analysis 1, Fall 2009=

title: User:Egm6321.f09.mtg37


text:
User:Egm6321.f09.mtg39

=EGM6321 - Principles of Engineering Analysis 1, Fall 2009=

title: User:Egm6321.f09.mtg39


text:
User:Egm6321.f09.mtg41

=EGM6321 - Principles of Engineering Analysis 1, Fall 2009=

title: User:Egm6321.f09.mtg41


text:
User:Jchetwynd

I am a 4th year Psychology student with an interest in completing a masters degree in Speech Pathology. I also have a BAA in Information Technology with a certificate in Business Administration and have worked for 4 1/2 years in Public Relations in between university degrees.

Blog Entry #1- January 17, 2011 -The use of language is a fundamental aspect of many of our lives that can easily be taken for granted, but for others it can be a challenging barrier to daily interactions. The class discussion of various forms of language, such toki pona and sign language was very intriguing to me. It is fascinating to examine the diverse means in which we communicate and the various cultural aspects affecting this communication. Language spoken in different areas of the world share many similarities in grammar or syntax but are composed of different gestures or vocabulary. It would seem that culture has a direct influence on the differences observed in various languages. Culture and language appear to be intrinsically linked and can impact the way we consider the world around us. In conclusion, a question arises from this discussion are language differences a direct result of cultural norms or does language influence culture?

Blog Entry #2- January 24, 2011- Can we think without language? Life without language is difficult to imagine for those that use it so frequently. Many of us cannot begin to understand the limitations to our daily interactions without the ability to use language as a communication tool. A question arose is class that really intrigued me; can we think without language? Clearly, it becomes challenging to view or think about the world around us without using language when we are involved in reasoning and rationalizing. I believe that without language we can still think on a more simplistic level. However, language allows expression of thought but it also constrains the manner in which we think. Take for example a biological instinctive response (the fight or flight system), which is initiated without the use language. The aforementioned example seems to indicate that we can think/respond to our environment without the use of language. In conclusion, it appears we can think without language but the grey area becomes: what level of thinking is permitted without language?

Blog Entry #3- January 31, 2011 - American Sign Language To continue on from my last post of “Can we think without language?”, it seems interesting to examine alternative methods of communication. Upon recently completing a Level 1 introductory sign language course it is amazing to me the depth of the vocabulary and expression used within this form of communication. When we think of language we typically think of it being acoustically conveyed sounds, but sign language is expressed through visually expressed signs. Communicating through sign language involves movement of the hands, arms, body or face to convey an individual’s message. In previous class lectures we have discussed American Sign Language. When using this form of communication it is easy for miscommunication to occur due to something as simple as a misdirected hand motion etc. Prior to completing the introductory sign language course I was under the impression that American Sign Language was the universal/globally accepted method. During the course I learned that there are many different forms of sign language that have very region specific signs in deaf communities across the world. From this brief discussion a question arises - Do individuals using sign language develop language in the same manner as someone learning an acoustically based language such as English or German?

Blog Entry #4- February 7, 2011-Do individuals using sign language develop language in the same manner as someone learning an acoustically based language such as English or German?

To follow up on the question I presented in my previous blog entry – Do individuals using sign language develop language in the same manner as someone learning an acoustically based language such as English or German? It is interesting to examine how language develops in an individual, regardless if it is an acoustically based one or not. The environmental situation in which the child is raised should be initially considered to begin answering this question. The point at which a child begins to first acquire language of any type depends on parental interaction, home environment, key stimuli, as well as developmental abilities of the child. If there are any learning disabilities or hearing impairments associated with the child then the natural learning progression will be delayed. If the aforementioned is removed from the picture then my hypothesis is that a child using either ASL or verbal communication should begin to communicate at roughly the same developmental stage, because this is the method of communication they have been exposed to. According to several studies discussed in the text book there are many similarities in language development stages for a child using ASL or a verbal child. A study by Brown (1973) found that speaking and signing language acquisition in a two-word stage form are relatively similar developmentally. To conclude, I believe that the development of either an ASL or verbal based communication system depends on key environmental stimuli, as well as the biological make up of the individual child. Also, an important consideration is if ASL and verbal communication are used in combination or as separate communication tools.

Blog Entry #5- February 14, 2011- How is the perceptual process both universal and individualistic for people?

During a previous class we listened to audio clips of various words and were then asked what we perceived the words to be. What I found interesting is that many people heard differing words and some heard the same. I began to think about individualized perception processes and how perception is both individualistic and universal for people. Everyday life situations inundate us with a perceptual plethora of words and images, which can be viewed either similarly or differently between individuals.

Perception is considered the way we interpret our worldly experiences and appears to be a very unique aspect of an individual even when people share similar experiences. Speech perception can be placed into two categories; either individual speech sounds or fluent speech. The concept of speech perception has been hotly debated for many years and as a result several theories have emerged; top-down/bottom-up speech processing, motor theory, cohort theory and the trace model. The theory that I found most intriguing is the motor theory of speech perception. This theory was developed by Liberman et al (1950) and hypothesizes that people perceive spoken words through vocal tract movements rather than the speech sound patterns themsleves. Liberman suggested that the perception of the vocal tract movements was a fairly innate process, specific to human cognitive abilities. The fundamental question underlying all these theories is how innate is speech perception? If speech perception is congenital in nature where does it evolve from and why do differences exist in how people perceive acoustic stimuli?

Blog Entry #6- February 28, 2011- Development of Language in Children With Down Syndrome

After doing the peer review I became more interested in the underlying mechanisms that cause children with Down Syndrome to have language development issues or delays. I volunteer extensively with children with Down Syndrome and other learning/cognitive disabilities and always appreciate gaining further insight into these areas.

Children with Down Syndrome are quite cognitively delayed in many areas compared to other normal functioning children. Specifically, language development rates are greatly delayed and may not begin to develop until twenty four months of age. The normal time frame for language development of first words is about twelve months. Many questions arise from this language delay observation/realization; what structural/functional elements are at work in the brain that greatly retards the language development of a child with Down Syndrome? Can they understand their world around them on the same developmental level as other children? Do children with Down Syndrome simply have strong receptive verbal capabilities but just do not have the verbal ability to express themselves in various linguistic ways?

In the peer review chapter it was cited that Cleland et al.,2009 noted that individuals with Down Syndrome have anatomical differences which make proper phoneme production more challenging. These anatomical differences include smaller oral cavities and low muscle tone around the periphery of the mouth, causing voice articulation problems. Another issue that contributes to the improper production of phonemes is that close to 75% of children with Down Syndrome have co-morbid hearing loss.

Along with genetic factors that contribute to the language delays there are also environmental factors that can be responsible. These environmental factors can include the individual's home or school life but also includes the parents or caregivers communicative interaction to their child with Down Syndrome. Many children with Down Syndrome are able to say single words and then in being able to produce sequences of words.

With all the life struggles and successes individuals with Down Syndrome experience, language development issues create even more of a struggle when trying to adapt to the world that surrounds them. From the discussion above we can conclude that one of the main contributors to these language delays is due to anatomical differences but also environmental and genetic factors. As with any disorder, there are many factors that contribute to the causation and ongoing issues faced by an individual. Mostly, it is important to recognize that disorders are multidimensional and are not always easily understood.

Blog Entry #7- March 7, 2011- Language versus Music Perception

Individually we are all similar, as well as unique, but one ability we share in common is that we can speak fluently in our native language. Even though we share some commonalities we do not all posses a natural talent for singing or playing a musical instrument. The other day in class the lecture addressed one theory about language and music. This theory proposed that we actually use similar brain systems or overlapping cognitive faculties for perceiving and comprehending the syntactic structures in both language and music.

Recently there has been growing research interest in the neural brain basis of music perception and how this is differentiated from normal language perception. This discussion prompts the question; does a cognitive/neural relationship exist between language and music? Do separate brain systems/areas operate in differing ways when perceiving language versus music or does significant overlap occur in the brain? Does syntactic processing in music perception share anything in common with syntactic processing of language perception?

As research progresses and new findings add to our current knowledge base we can better understand the connection between language and music perception in various brain regions. Are certain individuals “hardwired” with the ability to play a musical instrument or to sing in tune? Do they have the capacity to perceive music on a different level? Music and language perception seem related in so many ways and much debate is centered on whether music is in itself a language. Music clearly conveys information to some degree and invokes a variety of differing moods and sensations within an individual. The true debate becomes what exactly is the nature of that conveyed information and how is music coded in our brain; is it different than verbal language? Can we define music under the same categorization as language, in that it can be held to a set of symbols which represent the world around us while still confined to grammatical rules?

Research is now suggesting that language and music are more closely related than previously believed. This increasing body of research has the ability to redefine our understanding of relevant brain regions and the role they play in processing music versus language.

Blog Entry #8- March 14, 2011- How do we get from a thought to a vocalized speech pattern?

Is the human ability of forethought directly connected to blended speech errors?

In many of my previous psychology classes we have discussed the concept of how forethought, rather than simple intuition, separates human beings from the rest of the mammalian kingdom. We have the advantage or sometimes disadvantage; depending on what angle you address the issue from, of planning days, weeks, or months in advance of an event. In a recent psycholinguistics class we examined speech error types and I began thinking about the connection between our ability of forethought and speech errors. Specifically, I am interested in blended speech errors because they occur commonly in the English language and always have an inherently humorous aspect to them. Take for example the statement “At the end of today’s lecture”. A blended speech error for this sentence could be “At the end of today’s lection” because we may be thinking about the dual meaning of lecture/lesson and then the combination of the two emerges vocally.

In order to address the aforementioned question we must look also at lexical selection. With lexical selection an incorrect word selection can be made based on partial meaning similarity(lecture/lesson = lectson). When thinking about vocalizing a thought pattern we select certain words to express our thoughts but sometimes we may select one or two with a similar meaning and this leads to the use of a combination of the two. Perhaps it is the speed in which a thought turns into a vocalized speech pattern that lends to the tendency to create these blended speech errors. One research study found that it takes approximately half a second to transform a thought into something we vocalize, with three types of speech processing occurring in Broca's area in order for this to occur (Sahin et al, 2009). So, in light of the aforementioned research study it would seem that there is an immense amount of “neural” work being performed in order for a simple thought to then become vocalized. We are only beginning to scrape the surface of the underlying mechanisms that allow our brain to function on a variety of levels. It is only with further exploration and research into these neural pathways that we will begin to find the appropriate answers.

Blog Entry #9- March 21, 2011- What/if any are the neural/structural brain differences in individuals who are bilingual?

Individuals who are fluent in two or more languages have always intrigued me. I am not simply referring to the ability to converse minimally or recognize a few words in another language, I mean the ability of being fully fluent (read or converse in that language for an extensive period of time). For the purpose of this discussion bilingualism will be considered the aptitude to write or speak fluently in two languages, anymore than will be considered multilingualism. What intrigues me about the ability to speak multiple languages is the potential neural benefits this poses for the individual. What are the neural brain differences in an individual who speaks more than one language and what are the potential benefits as a result of being bilingual?

After completing a significant portion of the Psycholinguistics course, I have learned about the various effects of learning on brain structure and neural pathway development. As a result, we can assume that learning more than one language will have an effect on the “neural wiring” of the human brain or certainly the cognitions. While I was doing some reading in regards to this topic I came across a study that discussed very interesting and relevant results. A study conducted by Jay et al., 2003 found that a language learned in adulthood that was not the participant’s native language was spatially separated in the brain as a result of the acquisition. As information and sensory processors, humans are continually filtering stimuli and learning new abilities. It was quite interesting to discover that the brain had spatially separated a new language from the participant's native language.

Learning another language enages the individual to think in a conceptually different way. This is because many languages outside of English have words that represent dual meanings. For example, the word Himmel in German is used to refer to not only sky but to heaven. In previous courses I have learned that it is much easier for a child to learn a new language than an older individual. There is a significant amount of research that deals with the concept of a critical period, which suggests that language acquisition is restricted by a certain time frame during development. However, the concept of a critical period is still hotly debated among researchers. It is clear that many factors influence the neural organization of language such as the age of the individual and the ability to speak the specific language.

Blog Entry #10- March 28, 2011- TOT (tip of the tongue) Phenomenon

After discussing the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon I began thinking about the occurrence rates in various demographic populations. From what I have learned in this class and from previous classes, I can only hypothesize that this phenomenon happens to every individual of any cultural origin at some point in their life. This aforementioned thought pattern led to the inquisition: if TOT is relatively common and not isolated to a specific demographic population, what are the neural workings underlying this phenomenon? What is the commonality in the TOT phenomenon that makes it observable in so many individuals? In order to discuss this linguistic phenomenon we need to define TOT. When a tip of the tongue (TOT) error occurs an individual is trying to recall/retrieve a word from memory but simply can not no matter how long they allocate conscious cognitive resources to the task. This phenomenon has been reported in the various languages located in France, Portugal and Romania etc. It is also a phenomenon that appears to be age dependent, with seniors experiencing TOT twice as frequently as a younger sub population of university students (Brown, 1991).

It is intriguing that when the word itself will not come to mind we still have the cognitive ability to describe certain characteristics or elements of information in regards to the word. One aspect of the TOT phenomenon I find so interesting is that minutes or hours later the word(s) suddenly comes to you, seemingly out of the blue. Perhaps this all relates to the human ability of forethought. As we are speaking we are continually using extensive neural capabilities and thinking of the next word(s) and sentences. Seemingly, it is possible that if we activate too many of these neural networks in advance all you will get is a retrieval block or a synaptic pattern that cannot emerge due to the overload occurring. Also, TOT could have increased occurrences when we are placed in uneasy or anxiety provoking situations. TOT is such a frustrating aspect of the brains inability but it does provide a good example of how there is a limit to cognitive resources and neural networking.

When discussing the TOT phenomenon a question came to mind and seemed to connect to my last blog post. Since bilingual individuals communicate in more words than monolingual individuals, is there an increased chance for TOT occurrences?

Brown, A. (1991). A review of the tip of the tongue experience. Psychological Bulletin, 109 (2), 204-223.

Blog Entry #11- April 4, 2011- Brain & Autism

How is the neural networking in the brain of a child with Autism different from a typically developing brain?

I am always intrigued to learn more detailed information about differing brain networking or structural abnormalities in various individuals with specific disorders. With the range of volunteer work I have been involved in I have had the opportunity to interact with a specific demographic population of children. These children have had various psychopathologies such as autism, down syndrome or ADHD. When researching this question I came across a recent research study that examined the pattern of brain activity in children with autism spectrum disorder and found that it is quite different from that of children without the condition (Kaiser et al, 2010). This research is fascinating because it provides insight into the brain of an individual with autism and a better understanding of which parts of the brain are affected due to the development of autism. A genetically influenced condition, autism spectrum disorder, affects brain development and has identified symptoms including social communication difficulties and interaction.

A typically developing brain experiences significant growth between the time of birth and age two. Approximately one-third of children with Autism have a disproportionately large head and brain, which is the result of excessive brain tissue growth(Kaiser et al, 2010). This excess brain tissue is believed to alter the neural networking of the brain, but environmental and genetic factors are also key contributors in the developmental pathway of autism. A child with autism has extremely delayed brain development; approximately three years delayed compare to a “typical” child and lends to the theory that this disorder is a result of developmental delays and not bad behaviour tendencies (Kaiser et al, 2010). The research study also found that these developmental delays were most significant in the lateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for suppression of inappropriate thoughts and actions, attention etc.

Advances in neuro imaging have provided the ability to gain further insight into the inner neural workings of the brain. The aforementioned research study has provided significant insight into the neural pathways of the autistic mind. Advances not only in neuro imaging but in medicine in general have provided the ability to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment methods for a variety of disorders, such as Autism.

Kaiser, M. (2010). Neural Signatures of Autism. PNAS, 107 (49), 21223-21228.

Blog Entry #12- April 11, 2011- Gestures

Are gestures as individual as our personalities? Do we each have unique gestures or are there universal gestures?

In a recent psycholinguistics class we touched on gestures when speaking. Many of us gesture unconsciously and out of habit, with different individuals gesturing more frequently than others. Gestures have several categorizations but may be subcategorized as cohesive, iconic, beats etc. What is interesting to me is why we gesture when speaking and really how unique are the gestures to the individual? Do gestures aid in the communication of meaning or information or are they transferring additional information? Sign language is an entire method of communication that is based on gesturing and is very effective in a specific population. Many gestures are made when we are communicating size of an object or even a specific shape and add to the value of the verbal description of something. Take for example a situation in which there is too much background noise, a listener may look to gestures to interpret something they may have missed on an acoustic level to provide the extra information.

Across age demographics gesturing seems to be very important and even for very young children it becomes a very integral part of their communication methods. This relationship between gesture and vocal language seems to be quite significant and widespread in our culture. Gesturing could have a significant role in the way an individual remembers a situation or an interaction. In conclusion, gesturing seems to be a very significant component of human communication and would be a very interesting component of psycholinguistics to study in depth.

title: User:Jchetwynd


text:
User:Efesseha

= Short Bio = I am a 4th year psychology major at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I can't really say I know a lot about psycholinguistics, but a friend of mine took PSYO 3190 at Dal as well and found it to be a very fun class, so I'm hoping I find as much interest in it as she did!

= Blog Posts =

Blog 1: Week ending January 17, 2011
The first week of classes was all about getting acquainted with all things language. Various theories were covered, including the Associationist School, which I found myself most interested in. Within this school was the practice of phrenology, a method of studying that brain used the bumps on the human head to determine the localized areas that the brain was once thought to be made up of. Another theory that has always peaked my interests is that proposed by B. F. Skinner. I have always thought that Skinner and his behaviourist models were a bit against the grain. To me, thinking that everything, including language is learned through conditioning is a bit close-minded. This leads me to lean more towards the ideas/criticisms of Noam Chomsky. I find myself strongly interested in Chomsky's nativism theory. Being a Canadian born child of two immigrants, this theory makes the most sense to me. If language was only learned through conditioning, then my ability to speak/ understand the native language of my parents home wouldn't make much sense because there was no conditioning in my childhood that would lead me to learn this other language. This leads me to believe that there is some extraneous factor that helped me learn their language.

Another topic that peaked my interests was that surrounding Kanzi the Bonobo chimp. Kanzi is a chimp, studied by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who has exhibited extremely impressive linguistic ability. Kanzi was taught through the use of lexigrams, and can hear spoken words and understand what is being said. Being an animal lover, I found my self greatly interested in the idea that an animal could learn a language. I have two pets at home and to think that there is some chance they could learn a language is very cool. All in all, the first week of classes went well. I am pretty optimistic with the level of interest I find myself having for the material in this course!

title: User:Efesseha