General conclusions

Work on the present thesis was begun and intended as an unbiased attempt to investigate the
occurrence and role of feedback phenomena in language processing. Requirements of
objectivity and reliability positioned our inquiry within the framework of human physiology as
the very ground proper to consider human information processing. With Derwing's postulate to
build science on the known, conclusions were not drawn until physical data were studied,
experientially unconfirmed assumptions having been dismissed. Dependence on feedback has
been postulated a functional principle for human information processing. The principle has
been examined for validity across the human processing hierarchy.

The tenets of the discipline of the science of psycholinguistics have been preserved according to
dictionary sources such as the New Oxford Dictionary of English to define psycholinguistics as
the study of the relationships between linguistic behavior and psychological processes,
including the processes of language acquisition (ibid., 1998), or Encyklopedia Językoznawstwa
Ogólnego to comprise speech remedial in the field. Therefore, relevance of the posited
principle has been explored with regard to language acquisition, use, and deficit.

The outcome of the investigation has inclined the author to assume the evolutionary
perspective on language phenomena, this being already Lamarck to have proposed a theory of
organisms as transformed by their efforts to respond to the demands of the environment (The
New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998). Feedback processes have been qualified as genetically
mandated phenomena along with programmed aspects of human information processing,
neural communication as observed at the level of the single cell showing allowance and
dependence on feedback processes for functioning (Young, 1984).

Further, feedback phenomena have been found to mediate intercellular and interschematic
communication within the nervous system. They substantiate reflex arc and motor pattern
establishment, the pool phenomena to allow the dynamic balance to human internal controls
being also a feedback mediated aspect of human information processing. Thus, feedback
processes would not be limited to the all-or-none type of response as in a single cell. Our
postulation to view feedback as the backbone of the entire human information processing
structure has received confirmation, distortions to feedback capacities being capable of
rendering the human nervous system inoperational at all levels of its functioning.

This system as a live structure has been stated to program part its processing capacity for
swiftness of response. However, this capability also depends on feedback for initiation,

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program formation, execution, and sustained validation. Viewing language within
preprogrammed phenomena perspective, we cohered primarily with the neoconnectionist
approach to employ network models of memory. Language maturation has been found to rely
on circular reactions and the closed-loop behavior of egocentric speech, our general model for
language development to involve the notion of a feedback strategy to interact within an
environment. Sustained program validation has prompted our recognition of dependence on
feedback as resulting in orientation to it.

As for language use, it is definitely programmed in a considerable scope (Puppel, 1988).

However, speech production relies on feedback continually, alterations to the feedback
capacity influencing ongoing speech acts and permanent changes to it as induced by injury to
result even in a reprogramming of the speech faculty. The perspective allowed our viewing the
programmed scope of skills as conditional in character. Materially, a severe impediment to the
feedback capacity may render a language program inoperational. Finally, the fine details of the
coarticulatory adjustments in individual neurolinguistic strategies endorsed our stipulation on a
continued validity of feedback strategies throughout the lifespan.

Where considered plausible, projections of our looped model have been made into the social
dimension of language use. With the sustained homeostatic model for internal balance, some
of the universalist tendencies in semantics were found questionable. On the other hand,
language phenomena such as spatialization allowed our recognition of language grammar as
constructed of processed variables. Specifically, grammar was asserted to incorporate generic
aspects of human information processing and orientative strategy.

The context of feedback deficit showed the human need for feedback processes as a basic and
instinctive inner urge to stimulate response, incite or repress action. Deficit has been found of
relevance for a consideration of language skills (Crystal, 1976). It would not be yet prescriptive
of the overall language scope as in adept and unimpeded individuals. Our posited principle of
dependence on feedback has been validated for language learning, use, as well as deficit,
human dependence on feedback processes in language would be yet only approximate to a
drive, not a drive. The self-preservation instinct would remain our relevant reference in the
context.

Finally, with the role of the programming capacities arguably being to enhance the feedback
capabilities, the human behavioral priority to develop and refine a feedback strategy may be
thought to have stimulated development of language in man. Therefore, the role of feedback in
human processing of language indeed would be that of the initiating, mediating, and modeling
factor, language itself being a sophisticated tool to feed back within an environment

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