Neural Language Networks at Birth

September 30, 2011 in Abstracts, Linguistics, Science

I haven’t had chance to read this paper, but it throws up some interesting discussion points relating to this blog. In particular, it relates to a hypothesis I put forward last year on Domain-General Regions and Domain-Specific Networks. Here is the abstract:

The ability to learn language is a human trait. In adults and children, brain imaging studies have shown that auditory language activates a bilateral frontotemporal network with a left hemispheric dominance. It is an open question whether these activations represent the complete neural basis for language present at birth. Here we demonstrate that in 2-d-old infants, the language-related neural substrate is fully active in both hemispheres with a preponderance in the right auditory cortex. Functional and structural connectivities within this neural network, however, are immature, with strong connectivities only between the two hemispheres, contrasting with the adult pattern of prevalent intrahemispheric connectivities. Thus, although the brain responds to spoken language already at birth, thereby providing a strong biological basis to acquire language, progressive maturation of intrahemispheric functional connectivity is yet to be established with language exposure as the brain develops.

Paper Link: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/38/16056.short?rss=1

 

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Does a Smart Phone make Smart Science?

September 29, 2011 in Science, Science News

A new paper in plos one, published today, has shown that experiments on human cognition needn’t be confined to the lab.

Experiments on human cognitive abilities, such as language, often rely on testing small and homogeneous groups of volunteers (mostly undergraduate students) coming to research facilities where they are asked to participate in behavioral experiments. This arrangement is not ideal as your sample will not be representative of the population as a whole and will also be restricted as there is only so many participants that money and time will allow you to get into the lab to be tested.

This new research by Dufau et al. shows that the sampling limitations which laboratory experiments produce can be overcome by using smartphones. Using smart phone technology, data can be collected for cognitive science experiments from thousands of subjects from all over the world.

To illustrate how this can be done the authors carried out a large-scale study using  iPhone and iPads. This was a linguistic study looking at people’s ability to distinguish words from similar non-words.

The project, which began in December 2010 has managed to collect data from 4,157 subjects in just 4 months! This can be compared with the English Lexicon Project which acquired a similar volume of data using traditional methods which took more than 3 years.

The data was collected using applications which were produced in seven languages (English, Basque, Catalan, Dutch, French, Malay, Spanish). Smartphones can also support studies in alphabets other than Roman including Chinese, Greek, and Japanese. This creates the opportunity to create large-scale cross linguistic studies without even having to move from behind your desk.

Whilst the example here is linguistic there is every reason that smart phones can be implemented in looking at how universal other areas of cognitive behaviour are. Or even neurosceince and experimental philosophy.  I wonder if it would be possible to carry out experiments using transmission chains using smart phones.

However, I do worry that using things like iPhones will have the same problems as using things like mechanical turk, as it means that experimenters will not be able to make sure that participants are carrying out the tasks properly and removes quite a lot of control. Smartphones are also still a luxury and therefore only people within a certain socio-economic class will have smartphones, so maybe these methods may not reach such a wide audience, which seems to be why they’re being proposed in the first place.

The authors of the paper are hailing smartphones  ”a potential revolution in cognitive science” but only time will tell if this really kicks off!

Reference

Stephane Dufau, Jon Andoni Dun abeitia, Carmen Moret-Tatay, Aileen McGonigal, David Peeters, F.-Xavier Alario, David A. Balota, Marc Brysbaert, Manuel Carreiras, Ludovic Ferrand, Maria Ktori, Manuel Perea, Kathy Rastle, Olivier Sasburg, Melvin J. Yap, J (2011). Smart Phone, Smart Science: How the Use of Smartphones Can Revolutionize Research in Cognitive Science PlosOne, 6 (9) : 10.1371/journal.pone.0024974

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Stephen Fry’s Planet Word

September 26, 2011 in Uncategorized

Stephen Fry has embarked on a series of documentaries about language, beginning with the evolution of language which he calls ‘the final frontier’ of human understanding.  The typical documentary hype is all here:  Stephen Pinker sits in a gigantic fish tank with bits of taxidermied brain lying around like sandwiches; Michael Tomasello appears to live in a tropical primate enclose; Fry conducts his studies from a medieval study complete with quills, a CGI tree of languages and a talking parrot.

Despite this, it was actually a coherent and comprehensive review of topics in the field: Language versus communication in animals, phisological constraints of language, creativity and the desire to share information, the pragmatic origins of language, FoxP2 and the poverty of the stimulus. Bilingualism is even added to this cannon of interesting ways to approach the origins of language, somewhat tempered by Fry’s question “wouldn’t it be better if everybody spoke Esperanto?”.

Mercifully, Fry seems to be actually interested rather than trying to build up the conspiracy plot format endemic in other science documentaries.  There are some odd diversions to a Klingon version of Hamlet, a trip to a German Christmas market and a slightly awkward re-enactment of a feral child case, but all in all the message is not objectionable: There is a graded difference between non-human and human communication, it’s partly genetic and partly cultural and languages continually change under pressures to be learned and to express new ideas.  There are also welcome additions of the original Wug test and, of course, Fry & Laurie’s seminal sketch about language.

Overall, I’d say it was the second best documentary the BBC have made about the origins of language.

Here’s a clip:

 

Also a clip of Fry talking about the series:

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Language is not necessary for analogy

September 24, 2011 in Science

Analogy is a trait thought to be uniquely human and the origin is largely unknown. Recent studies have suggested that some language trained apes can find relations between relations, which is thought to be what is at the root of analogy. However, a new study in the journal  Psychological Science  has tested baboons using shapes with matching features. These baboons were able to match pairs which had matching features and pairs which had no matching features.

The study was run by Joël Fagot of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Université de Provence) and Roger Thompson of the Franklin & Marshall College (United States).

It has been hypothesised in the past that finding relations between relations is an ability only accessible by language, but these new findings with baboons cast doubt on this assertion.

The experiments were carried out on 29 baboons. The baboons were first shown two shapes on a screen. The baboons then touched one of these shapes and two other pairs of shapes appeared on the screen. To be successful at the task the baboons had to touch the pair representing the same relation as the initial pair. So if the first pair matched in a feature the baboon had to choose the pair which also had a matching feature, and avoid the pair where there was no matching feature, in order to gain a reward. This shows the inherent abilities behind analogy.

6 baboons correctly performed the task after thousands of trials of training showing that it is definitely within the abilities of old world monkeys to resolve analogy problems.

The researchers also revisited the same baboons with the same task a year later and the monkeys were much quicker at acquiring the task showing that they remembered what to do.

These results show that language is not necessary for analogy and leaves questions as to what might make this ability adaptive.

Reference

Fagot J, & Thompson RK (2011). Generalized Relational Matching by Guinea Baboons (Papio papio) in Two-by-Two-Item Analogy Problems. Psychological science PMID: 21934135

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The evolution of computer science: Connecting top-down and bottom-up

September 23, 2011 in Uncategorized

David Krakauer from the Santa Fe Institute asks “what is intelligence?” and discusses the rift in the field of computer science between the top down, symbolic approach to cognition (how can we make a machine play chess?)  and the bottom-up, inferential approach (how can we evolve a general-intelligence machine?).  He suggests that the singularity – when machines will outpace human beings – will occur only when machines master both aspects.  But is it a good idea to trust them?

This is a typical SFI talk, sweeping over evolving brain size, poetry, the Turing test, Evolution, the Matrix, Blade Runner and Doctor Strangelove. Fantastically, Krakauer mentions my work on a cultural singularity that I blogged about here!

Ultimately, his point is very similar to Adam Curtis’ documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which is also brilliant.

See Krakauer’s talk here.

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Degeneracy, Evolution and Language

September 22, 2011 in Evolution, Linguistics, Science

Having had several months off, I thought I’d kick things off by looking at a topic that’s garnered considerable interest in evolutionary theory, known as degeneracy. As a concept, degeneracy is a well known characteristic of biological systems, and is found in the genetic code (many different nucleotide sequences encode a polypeptide) and immune responses (populations of antibodies and other antigen-recognition molecules can take on multiple functions) among many others (cf. Edelman & Gally, 2001). More recently, degeneracy is appreciated as having applications in a wider range of phenomena, with Paul Mason (2010) offering the following value-free, scientific definition:

Degeneracy is observed in a system if there are components that are structurally different (nonisomorphic) and functionally similar (isofunctional) with respect to context.

A pressing concern in evolutionary research is how increasingly complex forms “are able to evolve without sacrificing robustness or the propensity for future beneficial adaptations” (Whitcare & Bender, 2010). One common solution is to refer to redundancy: duplicate elements that have a structure-to-function ratio of one-to-one (Mason, 2010). Nature does redundancy well, and is exemplified by the human body: we have two eyes, two lungs, two kidneys, and so on. Still, even with redundant components, selection in biological systems would result in a situation where competitive elimination leads to the eventual extinction of redundant variants (ibid).

Read the rest of this entry →

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Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation

September 20, 2011 in Abstracts

New language/cooperation paper by Bickerton and Szathmáry today. What a dream team. The best news is that it’s open access. WOO! GO OPEN ACCESS!

Here’s the abstract:

The emergence of language and the high degree of cooperation found among humans seems to require more than a straightforward enhancement of primate traits. Some triggering episode unique to human ancestors was likely necessary. Here it is argued that confrontational scavenging was such an episode. Arguments for and against an established confrontational scavenging niche are discussed, as well as the probable effects of such a niche on language and co-operation. Finally, several possible directions for future research are suggested.

Here’s a link:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-11-261.pdf

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The USA: Most linguistically diverse country on the planet?

September 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

When asked to name a linguistically diverse place, I would have said Papua New Guinea, and if asked to name a stereotypically monolingual country, I would have named the USA.  However, this recent report from the New York Times suggests that, due to its large immigrant population, New York harbours more endangered languages than anywhere else on Earth (tipped off from Edinburgh University’s Lang Soc Blog).  From a field linguists’ point of view this may make discovery of and access to minority languages much easier (although may mean the end of exotic holidays).  From a cultural evolution point of view, a more global community may mean a radically different kind of competition between languages.  Nice video below:

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Mr Crusoe’s Trained Parrots

September 16, 2011 in Irreverant and Irrelevant

In the magazine section on the BBC news website today is a feature on wild parrots picking up phrases from domesticated birds.

The article begins:

Wild parrots in Australia are apparently picking up phrases from escapee pet cockatoos who join their flocks. Why – and how – can some birds talk?

Those strolling in Sydney’s parks are being startled by squawks of “Hello darling!” and “What’s happening?” from the trees.

Wild birds such as galahs, sulphur-crested cockatoos and corellas are repeating phrases passed on by domesticated counterparts that escaped or were released, says naturalist Martyn Robinson, of Sydney’s Australian Museum.

The museum has received numerous reports of talkative wild birds from startled members of the public.

You can continue reading the article here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14930062. It talks a bit about how parrots can produce human like sounds but I posted the story here because I found it interesting that wild birds would pick up human phrases through social learning and wondered how far these phrases could go through a process of cultural transmission.

It reminded me of this figure from Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb’s book “Evolution in four dimensions: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic” inspired by a story by Spalding (1876). The story tells of Robinson Crusoe landing on his island and teaching 2 parrots the phrase “how do you do sir?”. He continues to teach the phrase to the offspring of these parrots for some generations.  Crusoe then (because he’s on a dessert island and he’s bored) breeds the parrots who say “how do you do sir?” the best.  After a while the young parrots start to repeat the phrase so early it is not known if it is learned behaviour or instinct. It is found to have become instinct because Crusoe selected for the best learners and the parrots will presumably continue this behaviour long after Crusoe has died. Spalding then hypothesises that should the parrots acquire a taste for good English this behaviour should continue to be selected through sexual selection. Taking figure 8.1 at face value it seems the parrots are also selected for fine taste in hats and ability to sit properly on chairs.

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Should Mother Tongue be Father Tongue?

September 15, 2011 in Genetics, Linguistics, Science

A new paper, published in Science last week, has reviewed some of the correlations which suggest that language change may be subject to sex-specific transmission. This has been discovered through looking at Y-chromosome DNA types. Modern male DNA (Y-Chromosome) is found to be the DNA from the population who originally spoke the language which has survived, whereas modern female DNA is often not the DNA of the population which spoke the language which has survived.

This evidence has come from, among others, a study by Chaubey (2011) with evidence for the Indian subcontinent. Austroasiatic languages are spoken by tribes with a high proportion of immigrant Y-chromosome DNA from East Asia, but with a high percentage of local female (mitochondrial) DNA. This pattern was also true of the Tibeto-Burman language family in northeastern India.

Other studies found matching correlations in Africa and found that Niger-Congo languages correlate with Y-Chromosome types, but the female DNA, which correlated more with geography (Wood et al. (2005) and de Filippo et al. (2011)).

Sex-biased language change can also be seen in the expansion of the Malayo-Polynesians in New Guinea. New Guinea has populations of Malayo-Polynesian speakers and also populations of Melanesian speakers. Malayo-Polynesian female DNA is about the same in both Malayo-Polynesian speaking areas and Melanesian speaking areas. However, the Malayo-Polynesian Y-Chromosome is found way more in the Malayo-Polynesian speaking areas than the Melanesian speaking areas.

This pattern is also seen in Iceland where the female DNA is mainly British, but the Y-chromosome is mainly Scandinavian. This follows the pattern because the Icelandic language is also Scandinavian.

Forster and Renfrew (authors of the Science paper) show that these findings complement studies such as Stoneking and Delfin who found that in East Asia, it is women who move after marriage rather than men. This means that if a man and woman migrate to a populated area their female offspring will move to other villages when married but their male offspring will remain static meaning that their language will stay in the same place as their Y-Chromosomes.

Is this the only mechanism at work when correlations of sex-specific language change can be seen? Others have hypothesized things such as farming and trade might be a factor. Groups of emigrating agriculturalists may also contribute where men outnumber women and take wives from the local community they were moving to. Men are also biologically capable of passing on and spreading about much more of their DNA than women can. It may also be the case that it is the father’s language rather than the mother’s which will be dominant within a family but I think more research would have to be done on this.

Interestingly the opposite correlation to the ones seen above is seen in Greenland where both the language and female DNA is Eskimo but the Y-Chromosome DNA is European.

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