Lecture 2 The Human Brain and Language

Language Disorders
Brocas aphasia: Difficulty in language production.
Telegraphic speech missing function words
(articles and prepositions), only content words can
be produced. Intact comprehensive ability =>
Showing that production and comprehension of
speech are separated.
Wernickes aphasia: Difficulty in language
comprehension. Fluent but meaningless speech.
Conduction aphasia: Unable to repeat. Fail to
connect the Wernickes area and Brocas area.
Language Lateralization
Hypothesis 1: The left hemisphere is not
specialized for language at birth. Instead, both
hemispheres have equal potential for language
acquisition.
-> Biologically the brain has the plasticity
necessary for language learning before the critical
period. After that, the brain plasticity is lost.
Hypothesis 2: The left hemisphere has the adult
specialization for language from birth; nothing
about lateralization changes with development.
(Languages are localized to the left hemisphere)
Brain Development of Children
Dehaene team To examine the functional
organization of brain activity in 3-month-old
infatns when they were listening to speech.
fMRI: can study which part of the brain is more
active during some particular processes (check
which part consumes more oxygen)
Benefits - noninvasive; using magnetic based
technologies to image as opposed to radioactive
based is that there is no limit to the number of
scans that can be performed.
Drawbacks is more subject to motion artifact (if
subjects head moves, the images will become
blurred, thus hard to get images from children).
Scanner noise makes it difficult to use auditory
presentation.
Experiments result: Left lateralized brain regions
similar to those of adults, including the superior
temporal and angular gyri, were already active in
infants (which support the second hypothesis)
Perspectives of Language Development
Nature vs Nurture: The relative importance of an
individuals innate qualities and experience.
Nature: genertic, heritable: traits determined
mainly by genetic factors (e.g. blood type, eye
colour)
Nurture: environment / social effects: traits
determined mostly by environmental factors (e.g.
language use, religious practiced)
Competence versus Performance
Competence: The actual capacity / potential that
a person has; the knowledge of ones language;
inner knowledge of linguistic rules (used mainly to
check grammaticality)
Performance: The actual use if language in
concrete situations; the expression of linguistic
rules in every usage (susceptible to performance
mistakes).
Structuralism versus Functionalism
Structural description: Analyze the structure /
syntax of utterance produced. (focus on grammar)
Funtional description: Analyze the social context
in which an utterance is produced; consequence
of the utterance; pragmatic and social use of
language (syntactic form is ignored) focus on
social circumstances, e.g. where and when did the
child produce the utterances? Why did he produce
it?
Behavourist View
Focus on language performance - observable and
measurable aspects of language behaviour;
believe that language skill is not different from any
other behaviours; change in behvaiours occurs in
respond to the consequences of prior behaviour;
external reinforcement motivates language
production. => reinforcement of appropriate
grammar and language leads to a childs
acquisition of language and grammar (Wrong
grammar => negative reinforcement like
punishment or ignorant).
- Language acquisition is a function of external
environment and shaping
- Infants learn language through the monitoring
and management of reward contingencies
- No innate device and information is required
- Children were born as blank states
- They learn language through via shaping the
sounds they hear from their caregivers into
words and eventually sentences through
selective reinforcement.

Classical Conditioning training of animals
(correlate one thing with another) [First
unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response,
then combine unnatural stimulus and natural
stimulus to trigger out conditioned response.];
Operant Conditioning Give reward to animals,
then they will repeat the action in order to get the
reward; imitation
These are useful for animal training; shaping
childrens desirable behaviours; behaviour
therapy (e.g. electric chocks pair with a target
behaviour / word causes negative feelings
towards that behaviour / word); teaching
mentally retarded and autistic children learn to
speak through careful application of shaping
and reinforcement.
Supporting Evidence: Mothers who are more
responsive to their childrens verbal behaviour
typically have children who show more rapid
language growth; Conditioning processes may
alter the meanings of words, e.g. electric shocks
pair with words causes negative feelings towards
the words.
Contrasting Evidence: Children are not carefully
shaped and tutored in natural home environment.
Parents feedback on childs utterances is not
always based on grammaticality (will also be
based on meaning or content), e.g. they say yes
to an ungrammatical sentence with correct
information (how do they develop grammaticality?).
Children are also resistant to changes (maturation
determines language acquisition?). Definition of
reinforcement is problematic, and it cannot be
measured.
Criticisms: Noam Chomsky the claim of
acquiring and maintaining verbal behaviours
through reinforcement is quite empty, as it has no
clear content in reinforcement only as a cover
term for any facto, detectable or not, related to
acquisition or maintenance of verbal behaviour;
this grammar is of an extremely complex and
abstract character, and that the young child has
succeeded in carrying out a remarkable type of
theory construction => This suggests that human
beings are somehow specifically designed to do
this.


The nativist view
Chomsky: Language learning is not really
something child does; it is something that happens
to the child placed in an appropriate environment,
much as the child body grows and matures in a
predetermined way (about genetic build-up) when
provided with appropriate nutrition and
environmental stimulation (cannot change your
language behaviors => just like daily supplements
cannot affect your eye colours)
Steven Pinker: Language is an instinct. It is not
learnt but determined by a biological basis.
The development of language is more like the
development of an organ (heart, liver) than the
development of a skill (throwing a ball)
Language development follows its own schedule.
=> The language instinct
Utterances produced by parents are ambiguous.
- Children are able to construct their own
syntactic rules based on utterances from
examples in life. But they may fail to realize the
grammatical mistakes
- The child needs to hear about 25 different
kinds of noun phrases and learn nouns one by
one, and would be able to produce millions of
sentences automatically.
Poverty of stimulus there was not sufficient
language input to children in their environment.
If children had to learn all the combinations
separately, they would need to hear about 140
million different sentences => Thus it is impossible
to learn from environment.
Language ability must rely on innate abilities or
structures
Language development is more like maturation
than like learning something.
The environment merely triggers the
maturation of the faculty of language. It does
not shape or train verbal behaviour (just like
babies and nutrients to grow healthily)
Nativist mainly focuses on language competence
(actual knowledge / ability) -> Language
development is a result of human nature
Some inner device in the human infant to acquire
language a language faculty [LAD Language
Acquisition Device] (a component of the brain
devoted to language) => Children develop
language rapidly, effortless and without directly
instruction or imitation
Chomsky: The human capacity for language is a
device residing in the human brain that takes as
its input certain information from the environment
and produces as its output the ability to speak and
understand a language.
The initial state of language faculty is determined
genetically and similar across human species.
The initial state of language faculty: contains
grammatical rules and linguistic categories
common to all the worlds languages (Universal
Grammar, UG). [Parameters are not restricted to
specific languages (so a French may learn
Chinese innately). Learning a new language is just
adjusting the parameters]
Evidence: (1) The phenomenon of
overgeneralization children are rule learners.
(e.g. go -> goed) (2) Similar rule uses at about the
same time across cultures. (3) The infants brains
responded asymmetrically to speech versus
nonspeech [they use the left hemisphere when
hearing speech, right hemisphere when hearing
nonspeech -> they can distinguish speech or non-
speech] (4) A critical period for language learning
[Lack of early development leads to inability to
pick up language normally]
Studies by Goldin-Meadow and colleagues: 10
deaf children born to hearing parents elected not
to sign with their children but to teach them
spoken language (failure) -> loving environment
without language input.
These children were found to produce different
types of gestures that were similar to signs of sign
languages to communicate with others [even if
children are not taught, they are able to develop
their own communicative tool]
Criticisms: (1) Bohannon and Stanowicz: Adults
did provide grammaticality feedback to childrens
utterances. -> If children produce well-formed
speech, adults would imtate their speech
immediately; If children produce language errors,
adults would recast or expand their speech.
Once children have received a corrective
recast, they are more likely to repeat the
grammatical sentence later [so environment
does play a role]
Moerk: corrections do indeed play a role. From his
research, corrections are not only abundant but
contingent on the mistakes of the child.
(2) Passive exposure to language does not
produce normal language skills (watching TV).
Sachs, Bard, Johnson: Let some listening children
(with deaf parents) expose to spoken English only
by watching TV => The oldest child had little
productive speech, severe articulation problem,
and no syntax. After interacting with native English
speakers and with the help of speech therapists,
the child could soon learn to speak normally
The Interactionist view
Language development is an interaction of the
innate features of the mind and childrens
language learning experiences.
There is some innate device that allows children
to develop language based on experience (but the
device may not be specific to language)
Emphasize on the importance of interaction
between the mental skills and environment.
3 Approaches
1. Jean Piagets Cognitive Approach
(Constructivism)
Language development is a result of the
continuing interaction between the child current
level of cognitive functioning and environment
(linguistic and nonlinguistic)
Cognitive development determines language
development [learn the symbols (signifier)]
From birth to 24-months of age: the period of
sensorimotor intelligence. Children have not yet
received object performance during this stage:
Out of sight, out of mind [due to a lack of
sufficient memory memory working capacity]
Children have to achieve object performance
before they could use symbols to represent
objects. When children can perceive semantic
relations among objects and people in the world,
they will start producing word combination that
depict these relations. (e.g. Knowing that animate
beings act upon inanimate objects -> Start using
word combinations with SVO sequence)
Evidence: (1) The occurrence of the vocabulary
spurt (a sudden rapid gain in vocabulary) and the
appearance of two-word combinations coincide in
most children with their attainment of the last
stage of sensorimotor development.
(2) Children are not able to use past-tense
morphemes until they have grasped the concept
of past [Have to know what happened before]
Criticism: (1) Co-occurrence is not equivalent to
causality [does not have cause-and-effect, since
human IQs may not be manipulated]
(2) Child learn to sign from their deaf parents long
before they achieve full object permanence. [they
can sign before speaking, may due to the limit of
vocal system development]
(3) Language and cognitive skills may be
separable. Semantics and cognitive development
are parallel, but syntax and morphology are quite
different.
2. The Information Processing Approach
A mechanism that encodes, interprets, operates,
stores information from the environment and
retrieves information from the memory. [Imitate the
neuron units, each unit represent a feature of
language; think of different features of words like
length, shape] Language is no different from any
other information.
The Connectionist Model
[The nodes become stronger when more
frequently used.]

[a feature of a
letter is broken
into very small
units (strokes);
familiarity /
frequency
effect: when
exposed to the same word the second time, faster
response is achieved]
Nativist versus Interactionist: (1) Piaget saw the
human child and his mind as an active,
constructive agent that slowly inches forward in a
perceptual bootstrap operation; Chomsky view the
mind as a set of essentially preprogrammed units,
each equipped from the first to realize its full
complement of rules and needing only the most
modest environmental trigger to exhibit its
intellectual wares.
(2) Scientists in general agree that there must be
an internal faculty of the human mind for language
acquisition, but they disagree about the nature of it.
Species specific versus Non-species specific
(language acquisition is also possible to other
animals)
Domain specificity (knowledge of language is
innate) versus Domain Universality / general
(cognitive skills for language acquisition also
responsible for other processing
interactionists belief)
Domain specific theory
It assumes that the internal contribution to
language is domain-specific. The human mind has
language-specific module, besides other module
such as the number module, the perception
module, etc. Information from other modules
cannot be used to help the language module. (The
modularity thesis) -> It dismisses the concept of a
general mental ability.
Domain general theory
It supposes that it is domain-general cognitive
skills that contribute to language acquisition. This
domain-general faculty also contributes to the
development of many other human behaviours.
Empirical Evidence: Markson and Bloom:
Investigate whether fast mapping (the ability to
learn aspects of the meaning of new words on the
basis of only a few incidental exposures and can
retain knowledge for a long period [Lean quick,
remember for long]) is limited to word learning or
not.
Experiment: Subjects exposed to 10 kinds of
objects, 4 familiar and 6 unfamiliar. They were
asked to use some of the objects to measure
other objects.
- A new word koba was used to refer to one of
the six unfamiliar kind of objects [give the
name]
- They were also told a new fact about objects of
another kind [give the fact]
- They were tested for comprehension
(i) immediately after the training;
(ii) 6-8 days later
(iii) 1 month later
Results: [learning mechanisms apply to both
information and language (i.e. fast-mapping for
information processing)]
Their findings reveal that subjects were equally
good at remembering which novel object was
given to the experimenter by her uncle, suggesting
fast mapping is not special to word learning.
Infants as statistical learners
Word segmentation: How do infants segment
fluent speech into words?
One important source of information that can
define word boundaries in any natural language is
the statistical information contained in sequence of
words
The transitional probability from one sound to the
next will generally be highest when the two
sounds follow one another within a word, whereas
transitional probabilities spanning a word
boundary will be relatively low.
Transitional probability is one sort of statistical
information.
(e.g. pretty#baby, the transitional probability from
pre to ty is greater than that from ty to ba)
Experiment: 24 8-month old infants listened to
continuous stream of 3-syllable nonsense words
for 2 minutes. Four nonsense words were
repeated in random order for two minutes.
The transitional probabilities between syllable
pairs within words is 100%, while between words
will be about 33%.
Results: Infants spent more time listening to the
novel stimuli (nonword strings) compared to
familiar ones (word string)
This suggests that 8-month-old infants could
detect the transitional probability and used it to
segment word boundaries.
The babies were capable of statistical learning.
Infants as rule learners
Rule learning by 7-month-old infants
Algebraic rules: Open-ended abstract
relationships for which we can substitute arbitrary
items.
e.g. Correct sentence = plural noun phrase + verb
phrase with plural argument => The three little
kitties + lost their mittens.
Experiment: 16 7-month-old infants randomly
assigned to either an ABA (ga ti ga) condition or
an ABB (la li li) condition. They heard sequences
of syllables for 2 minutes. In the test session, the
babies heard sequences of entirely new syllables
that either matched the pattern they heard or
matched the other pattern.
Results: Listening time to sequence of new sound
patterns was much longer than the listening time
to familiar ones. The finding indicates that 7-
month-old infants were capable of learning sound
clustering rules. => Infants possess at least two
learning mechanisms: rule learning and statistical
learning.
Statistical learning (central to the nativist view)
or rule learning?
Language acquisition depends on the ability to
learn rules. Linguist knowledge consists of a
system of rules that operate over symbols. Once
we learn the rules, we would be able to apply the
rules to form new sentences.
The connectionist view dismisses the importance
of rule learning: They emphasize on the
importance of statistical mapping, weight settings.
3. Social Interaction Approach
Emphasizes the mothers role
Motherese: (or child-directed speech, CDS): the
mothers unusual vocal behaviour when talking to
her baby.
Motherese helps children to:
- segment the sound stream appropriately;
- produce sounds by watching their mother
produce the exaggerated sounds;
- understand turn taking [social communicative
behaviour]
Some early language may be taught by the
parents and children learn through rote or imitation.
For example, children learn the social use of
language through parents
- Important for learning vocabularies
- May also help children acquire mature form of
utterances
Supporting Evidence:
- Infants prefer listening to child-directed
speech; infants prefer listening to their mothers
CDS over other mothers CDS; Children may
control the speech addressed to them if
adults produce long complex sentences that
children cannot understand, they will signal
such failures and the adults will tend to shorten
and simply their utterances.
- Neglected children scored much lower in the
measures of language comprehension than
other maltreated children or control-group
children [exposure to languages drop, drop in
rate in language acquisition]
The neglected children were 6 9 months
delayed in language development.; Children
who were abused and neglected were 4 8
months delayed; Children who were abused
but not neglected were 0 2 months delayed.
Contrary Evidence:
[There are places where CDS does not exist, but
still children can acquire language well; it touches
more on the vocabulary aspects]
The complexity of CDS was unrelated to the
childrens language gains [although it can attract
infants attention, it cannot account for childrens
language competence].
Problems in making conclusions based on the
correlational studies [Nativist argues more for
grammar; Nurturist argues more for vocabulary,
phonological development]
Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
Certain behaviour is developed more quickly
within a critical period than outside it. This period
is biologically determined. For language
development, a biologically determined period
exists during which language acquisition must
occur, if it is to occur at all. This sensitive period
is termed the critical period.
Examples
Imprinting some birds walk as soon as they
hatch. Chicks or ducklings will follow the first
moving thing they view, and they will follow it
forever. Normally, the 1
st
thing a baby chick sees
when it hatches is its mother. As a result, the chick
follows its mother everywhere. When this occurs,
the chick is said to be imprinted on its mother.
Imprinting cannot happen any time. It must occur
within hours after hatching.
Human examples: Some cells in the brain
respond input from both eyes in normal adults.
If these cells fail to receive input from two eyes
during the 1
st
year of life, they lost this capacity. [If
infants eyes are covered for years (due to injury),
they will lose the ability to see. => adequate visual
input is required]
Features of critical period
Some environmental input is necessary for normal
development, but biology determines when the
organism is responsive to that input.
The period of responsibility is the critical period.
Lenneberg: It assumes that language acquisition
must occur before the onset of some period [they
cannot learn the grammar normally after the
critical period]
Wild or abused children [not ethical to alter
childrens surrounding environment]
The wild boy Victor: He was 12 years old when
found [no language exposure at early age]. He
had been living wild in the woods in France. He
was capable of making sounds but had no
language.
He was placed at the National Institute for Deaf-
Mutes in Paris for training.
The boy was able to learn some socially
appropriate behaviours, but he never learnt more
than a few words.
The case of Genie: Genie grew up in Los
Angeles. From the time she was 20 months old
until her discovery at the age of 13, she spent her
time alone, strapped to a potty chair in a small
bedroom. She was fed hurriedly, with minimal
interaction and no talk. If Genie made any noise,
her father would bear her with a large piece of
wood. She had no language when she was
discovered.
- At 13 years old (when she was first
discovered)
She did not talk at all.
- At 17 years old (after she had got 4 years
training)
Her language age was about 5 years old on
vocabulary tests. She combined words into
complex sentences and could express
meanings. Vocabulary skills were much better
than syntactic skills. Her grammar was
deficient in both production and
comprehension. [Meanings were expressed
ungrammatically]
Genies brain activity in language processing
The right hemisphere was responsible for Genies
language (listening skills). The left hemisphere,
which is relevant to normal language users
language functioning, was not involved in Genies
language processing. -> Suggest that by age 13,
the left hemisphere that has never been used for
language has lost that capacity. [Dont know
whether the abnormal brain activities cause the
language deficiencies (or due to mental
retardation)]
The case of Isabelle
Found in the 1930s at 6-year-old (The child was
found at the critical period). She lived in a dark
room with only the deaf-mute mother for contact
[no exposure to language].
She was trained intensively to speak, and she did
learn to talk. [Rather normally]
It was documented that she had normal IQ and
language skills at age 8.
Late Acquisition of American Sign Language
(ASL)
Many children born deaf to hearing parents. They
have no language input at home because they
could not hear, and their parents do not know sign
language.
They exposed to sign language later.
Newport: studied three groups of adults:
Acquired ASL as infants, between 4 6, after 12.
[parents learn ASL and teach / interact with the
children]
He tested the grammar of ASL. Adults who
acquired ASL after 12 did not perform as wel as
those who acquired ASL since infants.
Early learners of sign had an advantage over late
learners in recalling and reproducing ASL
sentences that were presented to them. [Some
people can still acquire languages after the critical
period]
Second Language Development
Early bilinguals (before age of 6) as good as
native speakers
Late bilinguals (after age 12) accent
(phonology) and syntax are not as good as native
speakers [There is at least a sensitive period
which lets humans acquire language more easily]
Evidence: Johnson and Newport
Participants were native Chinese / Korean
speakers, manipulated age of arrival in the U.S.
Task: listened to sentences and judge whether or
not they are grammatically correct (grammaticality
judgment)

Gradual declining relationship between language
proficiency and ages
[Problem: why not a sudden drop if critical period
is present?]
Is there a biologically defined window during which
language acquisition must occur? If so, when will
language acquisition be automatically shut off?
Lenneberg: end after puberty.
Bates: capacity for recovering from aphasia
begins to decline after age 5. [chance for recovery
drops after 5 years old]
Newport: A continuous drop in second language
proficiency from age 6 to adults; but not
discontinuity of language proficiency is produced.
Patricia Kuhl: 6-month-old infants can detect
phonetic changes in both native and nonnative
contrasts, 12-month-old infants can only detect
such changes in native contrasts; Japanese native
speakers, even after training, have difficulty of the
/r-l/ distinction. [Two different phonemes of
Chinese => even infants in other languages can
recognize them; After acquiring the native
language, the flexibility in language learning drops,
but ability to recognize phonemes in the native
language increases]
There is no doubt that children can learn language
more naturally and efficiently than adults, a
paradox given adults superior cognitive skills.
[The language system has adopted the native
language]
Neural commitment to a learnt structure may
interfere with the processing of information that
does not conform to the learnt pattern. On this
account, initial learning can alter future learning
independent of a society time period.
The critical period for language learning depends
on experience, not just time.
[If second language is similar to the native
language, the difficulty acquiring the second
language will drop.]
What we argue for is, there is a biological
preparedness for language acquisition that is
maximal in early childhood.
Second language development:
Evidence: Johnson and Newports study (1989) of critical
period effects in L2 learning.
Participants were native Chinese/Korean speakers
Manipulated age of arrival in the U.S.: 4 groups (3-7, 8-10,
11-15, and 17-39)
Task: listened to sentences and judged whether or not
they were grammatically correct (grammaticality
judgment)
Johnson & Newport, 1989, Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60-99
Johnson, 1992, Language Learning, 42-2, 217-248
The critical period hypothesis (CPH)
of language acquisition
Second language development:
Evidence: Johnson and Newports study (1989) of critical
period effects in L2 learning.
200
215
230
245
260
275
native 3--7 8--10 11--15 17--39
Age of Arrival
mean score
S
e
c
o
n
d

l
a
n
g
u
a
g
e

p
r
o
f
i
c
i
e
n
c
y
The critical period hypothesis (CPH)
of language acquisition
Is there a biologically defined window during which
language acquisition must occur?
If so, when will language acquisition be automatically shut
off?
Lenneberg (1967): after puberty.
Bates (1993): capacity for recovery from aphasia begins to
decline after age 5.
Newport (1990): A continuous drop in second language
proficiency from age 6 to adults; but no discontinuity of
language proficiency is observed.
The critical period hypothesis (CPH)
of language acquisition
Patricia Kuhl (2000):
6-month-old infants can detect phonetic changes in both native
and nonnative contrasts; 12-month-old infants can only detect
such changes in native contrasts (Cheour-Luhtanen et al., 1996).
Japanese native speakers, even after training, have difficulty of
the /r-l/ distinction (e.g., Yamada & Tohkura, 1992).
The critical period hypothesis (CPH)
of language acquisition
Language acquisition also depends on other
factors, including general cognitive processes,
social environment and motivation.
The benefit of these other factors typically decline
more gradually than the biological advantage and
are more variable after puberty.
Phonological Development
Phonological perception: how children receive
speech sounds receptive language
Phonological production: how children produce
speech sounds productive language
Prelinguistic Speech Perception
Newborn: Prefers mothers voice to a stranger
[because they were able to hear mothers voices
before birth]
3 7 months: Respond differently to different
intonations [different emotions]
8 12 months: some understanding of simple
words (no, yes)
The auditory system is functioning in the fetus
even before birth.
Fetuses remember their mothers voice and show
a preference for their mothers voice after birth.
Measurements of the infants perceptual
abilities
3 characteristics of babies:
Babies like to hear sounds; Babies lose interest in
a sound when it is presented repeatedly; Babies
who have lost interest in a previously presented
sound will become interested if a new sound is
presented.
High amplitude sucking (HAS): An experimental
procedure used to test if infants perceive two
sounds as different.
- Used with infants after 4 5 months old.
- Infants are given a pacifier to suck on that is
connected to a sound generating system.
- Each suck causes a sound to be generated.
- When infants show habituation to one sound
[when they get bored] (slower sucking rate), a
new sound will be generated.
- If infants show dishabituation to a new sound
(suck faster), we may infer that they could
discriminate the sound change.
Limitations: 1. If the baby does not increase her
sucking rate, it is uncertain if the baby was unable
to make the discrimination or was just
uninterested in the new sound.
2. Doesnt work well with babies older than 4 5
months.
Head turn technique: An experimental procedure
used to test if infants perceive two sounds as
different.
- Used with infants between 5 and 12 months
old.
- Infants are trained to move their heads when
they hear a change in a sound being presented.
1. A sound is played over and over and then the
sound is changed, followed by activation of a
hidden moving toy. [to classical conditioning,
habituation stage]
2. The babies turn to look at the toy when it is
activated.
3. After several trials, when the sound being
presented changes, the babies turn their heads
toward the place where the toy will appear
even before it is activated.
Infants are capable of discriminating minimal pairs
[differ only in one phonetic feature, little different in
sounds]
Infants are able to discriminate contrasts not used
in their own language.
Categorical Perception (CP) [perceptual ability to
differentiate categories, may be colours]: When
people listened to sounds that vary along an
acoustic continuum, they hear them categorically.
The difference between /b/ and /p/ is in the
duration of the time lag (voice onset time, VOT)
between air passing through the lips and the vocal
cords vibrating when producing a syllable.
- Sounds are created artificially that vary along
this VOT continuum
- When these sounds are played to adults, they
perceived sounds with VOT less than 25 ms as
/b/ and those with a VOT of more than 40 ms
as /p/.
Categorical perception is taken as an evidence
that speech perception is special.
Why CP is important in language development?
A phoneme: a set of non-identical sounds that
vary on the speakers, contexts, etc.
Infants have to learn to categorize sounds with
different acoustic features into the same category.
Computers are unable to categorize sounds in this
way.

Where do we perceive speech categorically?
The motor theory of speech perception [We
perceive because we produce that way]
- Speech perception is influenced by speech
production
- We produce /ba/ and /da/, but nothing in
between; thus we perceive /ba/ and /da/,
nothing in between.
- Categorical perception is a result of learning to
produce speech
[Impossible for infants to show categorical
perception because infants perceive sounds
earlier than producing sounds]
Eimas et. al: using the HAS procedure
- 1- and 4-month-old infants
- 3 conditions:
Listen to a 20-ms VOT sound and then a 40-
ms VOT sound
Listened to a 60-ms VOT sound and then a
80-ms VOT sound [except same as control
condition (CRUCIAL: If infants and adults
perceive sounds in the same way) since adult
studies show there are no differences]
-> If infants perceive sounds based on
acoustic properties, infants can differentiate
the differences
Listened to a same sound (control condition)

[Result shows that they do not perceive two
sounds differently.]
Infants are capable of categorical perception.
Language taps specific human capacities and
humans have evolved mechanisms that
specifically serve this ability.
Categorical perception is not domain specific
- Innate sensitivity hypothesis: we are more
sensitive towards some physical attributes [e.g.
boundaries between words] (prototypes;
boundary; boundary effect)
- Label learning hypothesis: we learn labels,
names of labels / categories affect our
perception
- CP is also found in nonspeech domain, such
as musical tones, colour perception, and facial
identification.
- CP is also found in non-speech sounds that
mimic the acoustic properties of speech
- Not all speech sounds show CP
CP are more commonly found in consonants
than in vowels.
Among consonants, liquid, semi-vowels, and
fricatives are less categorically perceived than
stops
CP is NOT species specific
- Other animals, like chinchillas and monkeys,
also perceive VOT categorically.
CP is not speech-specific, and could be influenced
by learning
Cheour et. al.: Newborns cam be taught to
discriminate between similar vowel sounds
Method: Recorded electrophysiological brain
responses of newborns as indexed by mismatch
negativity (MMN), which is elicited by infrequent
discriminate changes in auditory stimuli. Cheour
wanted to see responses of sleeping newborns to
the vowel sounds /y/, /i/ and /y/i/
Subjects: Experimental group; two control groups
Procedure: All groups had 2 MMN recording
sessions, 1 in the evening and session 2 in the
next morning. Each MMN session lasted for < 1
hour. [whether they can learn new sounds while
asleep]
Experimental group: received auditory training of
over 2.5-5 hours between session 1 and 2.
Control group 1: no training
Control group 2: received auditory training with
/a/ & /e/ [use this control group since it can reduce
the self-fulfilling prophecy induced]
Conclusions: Experimental subjects learnt to
discriminate both deviants from the standard after
training. For this group, the MMN elicited by /y/i/
was not significantly different in session 1 but it
was in session 2.
Linguistic sounds can be learnt by newborns.
Newborns can differentiate between their native
language and an unfamiliar language.
Mehler et. al: A 4-day-old infants born to French-
speaking mothers showed more arousal when
they heard French than when they heard Russian.
Babies of mothers who spoke a language other
than French or Russian showed no difference in
arousal to French or Russian.
Werker and Tees: 6- and 8- month-old English-
learning infants could discriminate between
consonant contrasts of unfamiliar languages. 10-
to 12- month-old infants lost this ability.
[When infants develop their native languages, they
will filter out the sounds that they dont need.]
The decline of perceptual abilities occurs at
different ages for different types of contrasts:
- The ability to perceive non-native vowel
differences decline from 6 to 8 months.
- The ability to perceive non-native consonants
differences decline at or after 10 to 12 months.
Does not mean that infants fail to perceive
differences among all non-native contrasts;
they only fail to perceive differences of those
foreign sounds that are phonetically similar to
sounds of the native language. [If not
contrastive in native language => gradually
lose ability to differentiate]
At what point in development does linguistic
experience alter speech perception?
Kuhl et al.: 6-month-old infants, 32 in USA, and 32
in Sweden
Test infants sensitivity to two vowels: /i/ (English),
/y/ (Swedish)
Prelinguistic Speech Perception
Where do we perceive speech categorically?
The motor theory of speech perception (by Liberman):
Speech perception is influenced by speech production.
We produce /ba/ and /da/, but nothing in between.
Thus we perceive /ba/ and /da/, nothing in between.
Categorical perception is a result of learning to produce
speech.
Do infants show categorical perception?
Prelinguistic Speech Perception
A study by Eimas et al. (1971), using the HAS procedure:
1- and 4-month-old infants
3 conditions:
1. Listened to a 20-ms VOT sound and then a 40-ms
VOT sound
2. Listened to a 60-ms VOT sound and then a 80-ms
VOT sound
3. Listened to a same sound (control condition)
Categorical Perception in Infants
VOT=20 VOT=40 VOT=60 VOT=80 No Change
Eimas et al. (1971), using the HAS procedure, suggested
that infants are capable of categorical perception.
Prelinguistic Speech Perception
Are infants capable of categorical perception?
Yes.
Language taps specific human capacities and humans have
evolved mechanisms that specifically serve this ability.
Is this innate skill specific for language?
Findings: Swedish infants were better in
categorizing /y/, while American infants were
better in categorizing /i/. [CP can be affected by
experience]
Newborns are sensitive to repetition sequence
(Gervain et. al)
22 newborns listened to syllable sequences (with
repetitions ABB; intermixed ABC)
ABB versus ABC: Stronger brain activity in the
temporal and left frontal areas, when listening to
ABB sequence [they prefer ABB more]
There is an automatic perceptual mechanism to
detect repetitions, which may help the acquisition
of the structural regularities of speech.
Babbling: sounds similar across different
languages
In the first 6 months, there are more vowel
articulations; occasionally there are some
consonant articulations, mostly at the back of the
mouth.
At the onset of canonical babbling, consonant
articulations shift to the front. Stop consonants
dominate.
At later stage (11 months and later), more
consonants are produced stops, nasals, glides,
the fricative and the glottal.
Locke: 12 of the 24 consonants sounds of English
accounted for about 95% of the consonants
produced.
It is likely that the sound of late babbling may
serve as the building blocks for later production of
words.
The quality and complexity of canonical babble
may serve as a predictor of early language
development: frequent use of canonical syllables
correlates with earlier onset of words, large
productive vocabulary, and more accurate word
production at 24 to 36 months.
Why do infants produce babbling sounds?
- The motor account: Babbling is a purely non-
linguistic motor activity [excluded possibility
that external stimuli play a role] that results
from the opening and closing of the mouth and
jaw. [not related to language] (Babies play this
for fun)
- The linguistic account: Babbling is a
linguistic activity that reflects babies sensitivity
to specific patterns at the heard of human
language and their capacity to use the brain
particularly, the rhythmic patterns that bind
syllables into baby babbles, and then into
words and sentences.
Supporting Evidence for Linguistic Account:
Petitto et. al.: studied the hand movements of
hearing babies born to profoundly deaf parents.
[Infants would imitate / learn the sign language]
Subjects: 3 hearing babies who received no
systematic exposure to spoken language and who
instead saw only signed language from their
profoundly deaf parents. Another 3 hearing babies
were exposed to spoken language. [one by hand,
one by mouth]
The two hearing baby groups were equal in all
developmental respects, with the only difference
being in the form of language input they received
(by hand or mouth).
Prediction 1: Because hearing babies exposed to
sign language do not use their mouth and jaw to
learn speech, the motor hypothesis predicts that
their hand activity should be fundamentally similar
to that of hearing babies acquiring spoken
language.
[If motor hypothesis is true, two groups should
have similar gesture / babbling patterns]
Prediction 2: If babies are born with sensitivity to
specific rhythmic patterns that are universal to all
languages, even signed ones, then the linguistic
hypothesis predicts that differences in the form of
language input should yield differences in the
hand activities of the two groups.
Petitto et al.: recorded all babies hand activity in
three dimensions at age 6, 10 and 12 months.
They found that hand movements made by babies
with profoundly deaf parents have a slower rhythm
than ordinary gestures (corresponds to the
rhythmic patterning of adult sign-syllables) and
were restricted to space in front of the body.
The findings support the idea that babies are
sensitive to rhythmic language patterns and that
this sensitivity is key to launching the process of
language acquisition.