 Hello, welcome. My name is Tracy to the home of Spinoza. I'm speaking to you from here in Quito, Ecuador Welcome to week seven language this week We're gonna be focusing on a lot of different topics or sub areas of language first We're gonna quickly review the goals of this particular unit and then talk about the origins and the evolution of human language Then we're gonna consider some of the different variations in human language as well as the development of language and children and in part Two we're gonna actually have a good look at Bilingualism and multilingualism which is a particularly favorite topic of mine This is a quick reminder the resources for this course the extra readings as well as the backup PowerPoints can be found within the course room To start what were the goals? What are the goals of this unit? Basically we have four key goals when Previous goal one is to understand basically where did human language come from in an evolutionary sense And then to understand how does a person's first language actually develop? Where does that come from? They're gonna look at clarifying the concepts of critical versus sensitive periods in language development And then on to identifying characteristics with specific language impairments What problems can occur and then from there part four which would be the second video We're gonna look at will be to explain the important features of bilingualism and multilingualism by sort of taking apart the myths of Multilingualism and considering key factors that do influence successful language learning To do this we'd want to look at some guiding questions Hopefully this will help sort of focus in on the types of the key elements or key concepts that we want to look at in this particular unit First we want to ask ourselves is learning language natural is it actually natural is it something the brain can't help But do and if that's so what what are the minimum requirements needed to actually stimulate language development? We also want to have a look at whether or not What is the context of the world right now is most of the world actually monolingual? When would it be recommended to learn a foreign language and for those of you who are already bilingual or multilingual? What have been the key factors that have actually influenced your own language learning? So basically to begin we'd like to actually have a look at what is the purpose? What is the purpose of language? Many people if you ask yourself this question might now you might have a first thing that it's actually just to communicate We're gonna look a little bit deeper into the idea that maybe language actually facilitates the way We can actually work together that we can actually Create as societies or as as a species So I'd like to take a take a little bit of an extension on this idea of just general communication and make it go a little bit further hopefully to define this Chomsky and colleagues they like to put language into the context of actually being Culturally specific system. It's basically set up with with a bunch of rules that are agreed upon by certain society a group of people in a cultural context so there's a very very strong link between Culture and language and later on we're also going to talk about Thought and how my thought be bound by the languages that you might know We're also going to have a little look at at this concept of inner language or inner speech Something that we saw on week three related to by Gotsky's concept of where How we use words to actually come up with the thinking or the the limits of our cognition Um, so let's start off with looking at the origins of human language We know that there's a general debate about whether or not other species other animals actually have language But let's sort of break it down and hopefully if I can try to convince you that all animals can communicate We know that's true But humans are actually the only animal that actually has language We can see this you know as far as you know chasing dr. Doodle or actually trying to think well Can we talk to the animals? I'm sure we can communicate with them But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are actually speaking back to us um to illustrate some of the key aspects of language that distinguish humans from other animals We're going to have a quick look at a video. Um, it's about seven minutes long. I hope you'll bear with me. Thanks As dr. Hurst was Showing us basically all in dr. Marcus as well We're showing a lot of how Other animals might be able to communicate, but they basically don't have Language in the way that we do is the way humans do and the second huge point is that the brain is basically wired to be able to conduct sophisticated Thought through language and using a whole a great variety of different mechanisms within the brain We know that this has absolutely nothing to do necessarily with size size isn't everything So you have elephant with huge brains, but they can't really speak This has something to do with something beyond brain anatomy That actually helps us or helps human beings be able to speak in the way they do There's this concept of um human beings as a third chimpanzee of their third age basically We know that after we branched off from orangutans and there was this general connection with um bonobos gorillas and chimpanzees Um, we're very very similar to them, but they still can't speak. Well, we can speak We have a different a much more sophisticated way of communicating Uh, even though we can transmit communicative Signals through visual expression. It's not the same as actually using words and if you look at how the mechanism Functions within vocal communication. It's pretty much the same in other primates, but um, you'll find differences in um In a very distinct way. It's something much more physical related to The larynx we actually know that the way um the human Mouth actually got shorter And actually the larynx got actually longer and so because of this the way that sounds are processed in the brain actually uses a greater A lot more Real estate in the brain to actually pronounce things or to talk We also know that because of the way that the the voice box developed In human beings humans here's uh jane goodell who can actually she can speak like the Ape but the ape can't speak like she can because she has the benefit of a specialized voice box So, you know because of this prolonged Parents here and then because of the voice box we are able to speak And to use and to have a greater variety of sounds than other other primates Um, I'd like to highly recommend that you watch the bvc video that's I mentioned on this particular side That's a little bit long for our video right now, so I'm gonna skip it But I hope that you do take the time to come back to it We also know that it has uh going back to the point about it not being necessarily related to um Brain space or size. We know that for example neanderthal men had a bigger brain than than um A modern man has so we know it doesn't have to do necessarily with the the mass of the brain But rather the connections that are occurring within the brain But something even more Interesting and maybe calls our attention to how is it that we were able to develop language and other primates weren't Might have to do more with a genetic makeup. We know that um other primates um have 48 chromosomes We have just 46 now you'd say well, how can having less be more? Um, there is a concept of basically a fusioning so there could have been a point where we had Um where we came from the apes we actually actually at some point there was a fusion of two different chromosomes into one And that could have potentiated What we know would to be language we have identified we believe that there's a gene for uh human language Or at least we recognize it in the absence of this gene. Um, there is no language. So we know that um When there isn't the presence of of fox p2 we we don't have language So we presume that because of that gene we are able to speak Okay, so now we're going to turn um from basically the origins of why we have human language in the first place To the variation in human language There's roughly 2,500 to 6,000 languages out there in the world. There's about 2,500 pure languages and then when you count Pigeon creoles dialects and it bumps up to more a bit over 6,000 different varieties They're divided into families. So you can see that for example in this coded color coded bar, there's Celtic languages There's italic languages There's different languages that are Germanic based. So these are only european languages, for example in this particular chart but we know that um There's something to the history of languages they can grow up together say for example, uh, latin based languages So italian spanish french if you grow up with uh, or these languages historically grew up together So they have a very very similar grammatical structures. They share verb bases. So basically we know that people who Know one of these languages. Sometimes they're mutually intelligible For example, if you know spanish, you can listen to italian. You can pretty much catch almost everything same thing with portuguese um We also know there's a second way that languages um are related and that has to do with um A linguistic categorization or um typologies, which we'll look at in just a second, but just to illustrate, um Basically around the world. They're uh of these 2,500 language or these 6,000 different languages and dialects and pigeons and creoles Um, we see that there's a dominance. It doesn't have to do with um, basically Where they are in the world because we know for example that mandarin is um, the most highly spoken First language, but uh, it's only spoken in china basically. So we realize that it's not a geographical necessary Limitation it's the more land you have the the more people speak the language not at all It has more to do with actually um popular use it has to do with economics commerce and a lot of other things social media But we'll look at that in just a second Some examples for example of families of languages Uh would be within the european range. So for example in within the latin-based languages You have french, spanish, portuguese, italian within the dutch or the germanic languages. You have german english dutch danish swedish So there's certain languages that are um connected to each other through historical routes Um to some other examples from all around the world. There's just different uh different groupings that we have And then we have a second type of grouping That are types of families of languages that have to do with linguistic typology All languages have verb objects subjects objects And if you have three things you can basically combine them in six different ways, right? But for some reason all human languages or most human languages fall into only three types um verb subject object languages subject verb object languages And subject object verb languages um english is a subject verb object language so the order of the The different types of words are used or put into that grammatical structure and basically we know that if Languages share typologies. They're also easier to learn. So People don't have this great confusion when they're actually trying to learn another language If they have a if they're learning a language that shares the linguistic typology Um just kind of a curiosity of the language that's spoken around the world. We know that um Basically as native language speakers, um andren Beats out all of them spanish then english But as far as second language learners more people speak english than any other language in the world And this is probably it's gonna it's projected to last at least for another 40 50 years. So um, yes Chinese mandarin is on the run, but it's actually not going to replace um english for for quite a while Okay, so now let's turn to the development of language and human beings And be careful all the information that we're sharing right now has to do with you know What typical or an average brain which you know, that's very hard to to actually qualify but This means that there's some outliers there. There's some people with you know, extremely Higher levels intelligence. There are people with some learning disabilities. So basically what we're talking about right now would be an average And um, so if we want we'll talk a little bit about um language problems at the end of this particular presentation So given an average brain, we know that about 90 95 percent of right-handed people And 70 percent of left-handed people have roca and vernicus area in the left frontal and parietal cortex. So basically, um, There's a lot of talk about the left hemisphere dominance for language and that that is true I mean the majority of people in the world do have um these key language areas in the left hemisphere However, five to 10 percent of right-handed people and 30 percent left-handed people don't so When we talk about um, we can't really just say yeah language is a left hemisphere Activity we know that's just definitely not true and we'll look at some examples of those exceptions at the end um, basically now Babies who just who are born premature babies We can actually even scan and and estimate how they've already they already perceive phonemes And they can hear different voices So we know that language perception happens probably around the fifth month of gestation As hearing actually kicks in in the womb And we need to clarify here's something about critical versus sensitive periods for for language We here's a question for you. Um true or false. Are they critical? They're critical periods for first language Are they critical periods for second language? And if there are or there aren't um Does this apply to all the aspects of language for example understanding language being able to speak and reading and writing um, are there critical periods for any of those elements? And basically yes and no, okay So there's not such thing as a critical period for a second language or a third language or a fourth language Just as there's no critical period for any other academic subject There's sensitive periods for that and we know that the order in which skills are learned is far more important than the age of the individual However, we do know that um We can presume that there is probably a sensitive period for one's first language We're not really really sure because there's so few um studies out there Death populations stroke victims, feral children, Romanian orphans There's very few of these incidences. Thank goodness. Um, but it doesn't give us, uh, you know 100 proof to say that there is a Critical period for your first language. However, the evidence that's out there is rather strong We know that then so there's no critical period for learning something like math or for reading or for writing But there may be a critical period for um speaking your very first language to illustrate that I'd like to show you a quick video of of uh, a girl who was brought up by um dogs And to see exactly so you can get a sense of where her language abilities are after having spent almost 60 years Only um in the company of of of animals. Hang on just a sec We presume that cases like this one indicate to us even if the child has had human language This child for example had language for three years then she was isolated from almost six And then was reintegrated into society. So it's fascinating to see that With that early exposure, she was able to learn basic language There are other feral children cases where they actually find that um If they were banded from birth, they didn't have these initial years of early contact they never managed to um Come up with language even if they're only away or separated for shorter amounts of time But apparently there is a key moment or key moments in these early years where there needs to be early language exposure um sensitive periods Are now basically replacing almost all aspects of what we consider is Human development except for probably what would be this first language and some gross motor skills We also know that learning occurs throughout the lifespan But we can if you haven't learned to read when you're um, you know seven you could do it when you're 17 or 27 Or even cases of people who are 70 who learn to read so we know that you can and do learn across the lifespan Okay, so let's look at some key Learning or language milestones for children. We know that there's first signs of communication And this is not language or is it language? Okay first signs of communication or when a child will cry Communicate to the parent their needs. They're hungry. They're wet They're tired. They're cranky and then children begin to actually poo and to imitate others and by six months of age We know that babies can actually recognize the sounds in their native language as compared to other Languages. There's a wonderful video a bit too long to watch. It's about an hour long lecture It's wonderful though if you have the time which is recommended here on the slide um Given these main milestones when a child will begin to speak around first words around um around a year old By around nine months of age a child will actually recognize their own name. Um, but this quickly multiplies and By the time the kid is around three you have more than 500 words and that's in spoken sense There's a far greater number of words that a child will understand but not actually use um, some of the milestones that are Suggested over the first five years and and five years is kind of like this This kind of bookends that we offer here because by the time a kid hits five years old You can really have a great conversation most kids five years old Know all parts of grammar in their native language or languages Um to actually illustrate that um, let's look at a couple of the main key stages of language development a little two-minute video for you mentioned In that short video, sorry for all the clicks back and forth Um, we hope that there's that the child has a few words And by about the first birthday one to three words We see that this actually goes and begins to actually Explode really quickly. Um by the time the child is two three years old. There's great communication happening Even if these are only in short sentences two three words together and what's fascinating um Atonson actually points out that there's some real the explosion of language is actually phenomenal. Um By the time a kid hits around three and a half years old they have over a thousand words in their vocabulary And by the time the kid is six years old, um, he'll be expressing Probably using, you know four to fourteen thousand words. That's a huge variety there But um, this has a lot to do with language stimulation in the home as well as in early school contexts and other social contact The kids have um, but they actually understand um Almost twice or more than twice as many Words as they actually use. Uh, this is actually Quite quite impacting and and most kids actually uses Use far fewer words than they actually know because they can get away with it. Uh, kind of a law of minimal effort kind of a thing They don't need, um more words. They can communicate their needs. Um, and that's enough. So they basically don't use that many Um kids who basically get through high school. This is a um a figure for British Kids they'll have around 40 000 words And then if they do University if they go through university they can have between 50 and 100 000 words Um, and those are actually used words. Um, we know that there's almost a twice as or there are twice as many around 200 000 words actually used by an average college graduate, okay um We're going to look at how social context school settings um actually does Change the brain and what would be the stimulus that we'd ask You as parents or also you as um teachers who are working with small kids What can you actually do to actually fortify? language in small children Here for the kid in the video so the earlier the better Especially for foreign language introduction the earlier the better. Um, we know of studies of kids Brought up in trilingual environments for languages five languages Just fine. So we'll talk about that in the second video to come um, basically very important, um element to understand especially when choosing books to read with kids. Um, we know that in the early years The type of vocabulary that's developed With really younger kids below two more or less Is heavily reliant on nouns. They spend a lot of time learning nouns It's fascinating to see that basically with parents or adults this actually switches and the emphasis goes to verbs Um, equally balanced with nouns and pronouns So there's a change in the type of language that's used across the lifespan and that Age-appropriate books are actually very important. Um, when parents are selecting or teachers are selecting the types of things to read with kids Um, okay, so shifting gears a little bit. Let's look at how we um The concept of actually inner speech or inner language Thinking about words to thinking in words. Do you really think in words or do you actually think um In concepts or in blobs or images? um The concept of using inner speech as a way of Developing consciousness is actually something that's um been discussed for for well for centuries even There's a talk of Plato or there's writings of um related to Aristotle that actually make reference to that Is little voice in your head actually something that is um equal to your conscious how you talk to yourself about different things um This has been written about a lot. Um by gotzky probably One of the better known people on this more recent work by steven pinker also shows um the the importance of Of um inner thought or inner um language Some of the other points um more recently there's been um an attempt to try to understand whether or not um meaning is understood before um There's an understanding of the syntax understanding the structure and then how word strings come together to produce speech Or is that a whole loop that goes backwards and forwards? And we do know that as well that there is speech and then there's word strings and that's understood by other people And the meaning is is gleaned. So this is a is a two-way street we also know um going back again to by gotzky is that um There's a belief that in age wise that um first there is a Speeches used actually to make a link with others. It's a social connector, right? So the mother goes blah blah blah and the baby goes blah blah blah So there's a a link there and then um apparently this this dies down And you don't see the kids um talking so much out loud Which is what's very interesting is that um pg actually thought that this was sort of a maturation, you know the brain Gets connected enough. We don't need to say things out loud to basically understand ourselves. Whereas by gotzky had this other vision is that basically You go from uh, there's an inner development of concepts an external speech to society And then actually this gets internalized and becomes actually more and more sophisticated The older one gets and so um by gotzky and perhaps this is the benefit he had of having russian He actually made a big distinction between What is sense what is sense of the word and what is the meaning of the word and what he um basically Conceived is is that we might be using the same words But as we mature and as we see different uses for that same word Are our general understanding the sense of that word actually grows? And so we might make reference to the same single word But it's not just that word that we mean when we're connecting things. So some people actually say well, they They don't think in words. They think in concepts Well, this is very much coherent with by gotzky's idea is that basically That sophistication of the understanding of that word has grown so much that yes, you are using that word But it's related to a lot of other Concepts as you as you grow older and you actually link that word to other meanings um, so basically by gotzky Believe it. There was a egocentric speech. We start off internally. We become more aware of others We begin to speak externally and then we stop Speaking out loud every time we need when we're thinking and we actually have this inner speech which he believes Continues to develop throughout the lifespan This means basically this idea of this concept the sense versus meaning idea is that not necessarily Are you actually thinking in a word? But you're thinking of all the meanings attached to the word So many people might say, oh, no, I don't think in words. I do think in concepts But basically, um, this is coherent with this idea that you actually are thinking in those words Which have expanded to embrace a lot of other concepts um In general by gotzky related to language There's a lot of great things that we can take from from his studies You know the children construct their own knowledge We know that the development can't be divorced from social context as we saw in the case of The poor world was brought up by dogs if there is no social context Then there is no development of language or at least appropriate development Prior concepts influence how we learn new concepts and that language plays a central role in mental development and this great belief that perhaps The limits of your knowledge of what you can know is it might be Constrained by the words that you have to actually express What you know about your world um We're going to have a look a quick look about five minutes of what by gotzky thought of related to language And then about three minutes of what um chomsky's online which right now Now we revisit speech and language development We have covered the basic assumptions of by gotzky's theory of cognitive development And now I want to focus specifically on the principles of speech and language development According to by gotzky speech begins as a means of communication and socializing And later becomes a tool of thinking His research led to the identification of four major stages of speech development The first stage is pre-intellectual speech This is the first major stage of speech development This begins with the infant's cry which expresses for example hunger or discomfort Soon the infant begins babbling laughing and gesturing These developments function as a means of social contact. The next stage is called autonomous speech At around 12 months of age the child begins to invent words The child's invented syllables are an effort to communicate with adults These pseudo words are useful because they indicate an object in plain sight And they can also facilitate limited communication with adults who understand the meanings For example, a child may initially say bah for bottle and then as she develops bah becomes the word bottle Our third stage is called naive psychology This stage of speech occurs between 18 and 24 months when the child first begins to use adult words The child learns that objects are referred to by name As the child begins to name things connections develop between words and objects During this period the young child's first expression is a simple word For example when the young child says dada it may mean daddy pick me up Or daddy i'm hungry and so on As the child's thoughts become differentiated she can formulate simple requests in the form of short and simple sentences The final stage is communicative and egocentric speech As indicated in the description of naive psychology the child between 18 and 24 months begins to use adult words And rapidly expands his or her vocabulary Subsequently at about age three the child's speech splits into two types of speech communicative and egocentric Communicative or also referred to as external speech Is for others and the child at age three is able to use simple sentences such as i won't milk In contrast egocentric speech is for oneself From about the age of three to seven There's a lengthy period of the development of egocentric speech Egocentric speech often occurs in the presence of other children involved in the same activity such as playing house together It also occurs when the child is engaged in a practical tool using activity An example is a child attempting to get a cookie from the top of a cabinet In these activities the child's talk is a monologue It is not intended to be a communicative form of speech For example, our child wants to reach a cookie from the high cabinet She may say to herself i'm going to push this chair and climb up to get the cookie She's not necessarily communicated with anyone. She is simply stating these directions for herself This is also referred to as self-talk Self-talk guides a child through a task During the preschool period egocentric speech becomes increasingly abbreviated Vocalization eventually ends and egocentric speech moves inward as inner speech or communicative speech This is defined as the process of talking to oneself mentally rather than out loud It is a silent form of verbal thinking However, it does not become fully functional until after age 12 The psychological nature of inner speech is important because it represents the most advanced level of the relationship between speech and thinking A quick three-minute video on Chomsky's view of um of language While Chomsky and others believe that basically um Well language appeared relatively recently in human history Um, there's a huge distinction that they all agree upon and that is that oral language Maybe there's a genetic disposition for speaking and all the rest of that but When it comes down to reading and writing these are less natural abilities This is there's nothing actually natural about this and people like Stanislas de Hané and Mary and Mary and Wolf point out that this is actually something that is I'm really recent in human history and really not a natural thing for the brain to be able to do um They well, Stanislas de Hané himself came up with this concept of neuronal recycling basically um There are new cultural tools that were faced with for example the ability to write is something that actually benefits um human beings so What could have happened? I mean is it is it possible that there was this um great um evolution? and being able to connect with written Or symbol systems very quickly and he believes well that would be Logical to presume that so a second theory might be that basically Due to great, you know the plasticity of the brain the brain is able to adapt really quickly to this But since it's actually taken much longer Remember we mentioned in week three something related to like the baltman effect basically it's something that's beneficial to A species that's repeated over time Then after many generations could actually be manifested in in genes and he Places this idea into a concept called um, uh neuronal recycling in which Parts of the brain that might have been used at some point, um You know a hundred thousands years ago millions of years ago to actually, you know scan the savannah for the enemy or for A tiger or lion running at you This is not necessarily needed um in today's world for most people So they're basically parts of the brain that might have been used to actually See that have actually been adapted now to uh for the use of reading. So This is a fascinating concept because it might mean that um since it's such a new Function in the human brain it could explain why there's so many Uh problems with or with reading difficulties or with symbol systems in general dyscalculia and all the rest of it Um, for those of you who have time, I would really highly recommend that you watch this video of um Sanasasihana's intervention and um in a wonderful Quite quick speech that actually explains um the brain and language especially as it relates to uh symbol systems and particularly reading There are many language circuits in the brain. Um as we saw in the very first room with dr. Hirsch um There are many overlapping uh neural pathways that are used to complete language in the brain There are different neural networks for viewing things That are different from listening to words which are different from speaking which are different from generating verbs Which are even more far different from what would be um reading and writing which we'll see in just a minute Um, let's just look at some the very first four stages really quickly a couple of really key examples of how um language development looks over the first few months of life so that we can actually As you watch this video, it's only about a minute long, but if you can think about The different things that are going on in that kid's head. It's just not one piece of the brain That's actually lighting up for language, but there's all of these very intricate networks which are developing during the stage At first sight these things look very normal natural these look like things that look seem very easy However, if you think about the intricacies that are happening in the brain Uh, it's very very complicated. Um, the way that these circuits are actually Solidifying the way that this network is actually growing. Um Very very difficult. Um, if you rather actually look at actually what's going on inside the brain Not just the way it's manifesting behavior Um, so we know that there's different stages. We know there's different things that are going on We know that there's different networks that are actually getting together to actually produce language speech and then moving on to a Bigger stage which would be reading and writing Well, we know and this also goes for multilingualism. Um, it's quite easy to learn to speak It takes between one and two years to actually learn to speak Another language, but when it comes down to reading and writing, it's a very very different, uh network We now know because technology is actually advanced. We're able to actually see that it's not just um We once believed that there were simple circuits that were happening You could see a word and then you would actually identify the symbol system And then you would actually be hearing this. Um, even if you're not saying anything out loud, you're you've got a Phonological loop going on in your head. We're actually hearing something and you're able to produce this and this comes out as as speech we now now know because of Imaging technology that it's a far more complicated tasks the things that are going on in your brain as it reads Another language and this again is done. It's not the honey's work So the neural pathways for reading can actually be broken down into um Up to today and I would say that this is probably going to change. Um, there are about there are 12 neural pathways that are necessary for reading Plus four affective pathways That I was able to identify based on the work of all these other wonderful researchers Um, first we need to be able to have um, to pay attention the use of executive functions to pay attention to what is being read Um, there's a need for a physical ability actually see the word The ability to generalize a conceptual understanding which has to do with different symbol systems Which represent the same concept for example the different representations of three or the roman numeral three or the arabic three or three dots The ability to mentally sound out words in one's mind verbal coding The ability to convert phonemes into words so the cat into cat The ability to search one's memory for the right word. Um, so vocabulary recall The ability to understand the meaning of the word so semantic understanding or semantic memory The ability to correctly order the words Um, so this is a syntactic structural design of the word so that actually makes sense to other people The ability to associate context with appropriate prosody and intonation So, um being able to say if you say no, I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant You know same word, but the intonation actually changes the the concept there Number 10 the ability to unite all of those pieces and put it into a coherent sentence either written or spoken The ability to unify sentences into a whole paragraph and then take those paragraphs and to create What would be something long written text? We also know that there's a big influence In the affective nature of learning anything so The way the child feels about the learning process if he's meant if he's made to feel Badly about his attempts to read We know that that has a huge influence and delays and learning to read How learning to read might impact his or her social status So if they're prized for that or if they're given a Recognition of the local library or something like that. We know that that's very positive Reinforcement to get kids to actually read more We also know that there's a really huge ping-pong relationship between The teacher and the student what the student perceives the teacher is feeling with the teacher is now, you know Engaging as as they go along the teaching process. Well, what could I how far can actually push the student? What does the student really need for me to actually, you know, take on the the learning? So we know that there's a huge Influence on the way that the students and the teacher's relationship influences learning and finally motivational factors Which also impact his ability to read well So if you're told these can be extrinsic motivating factors or internal intrinsic motivating factors But we know that different kids will learn at different paces for different reasons and all very personalized So we know that there's at least in each of these 16 different Concepts here relate to a different neural pathway So we know that there's a huge complexity of things happening in the brain As it's learning to read and they include a lot all of these different elements simultaneously Um, we know that we count on for example different types of memory systems declarative knowledge procedural conceptual um We also need to have different types of estimation skills. Um symbol interpretations um, and also, um physical skills either Graphomotor skills or things that have to do with speech. So all of these different things combine to make reading Incredibly difficult or incredibly complex in the brain um But not nearly as complex as writing writing is even one step further. Um, so we know that reading circuits of the brain are Are highly complex. They're they're um They are highly interactive and if even just one of these pieces isn't you know working At top speed we do have um either delays in reading or we do have actual reading problems that will occur um Lots of work here that actually identifies and all of these are showing As I said before the typical brain, you know, this is all left hemisphere Imaging here that we're showing but not necessarily This won't actually be the case for all all readers um See here. Okay. So we also know That the brain um is reacting differently when it hears high frequency words or low frequency words or words that it's actually used to so um as as you've seen in other um other things with dr. Mahatzin, they're uh, the brain actually works less when it's used to doing something once it's learned something It actually slows down and there's less activity. Um, for example, you'll see here in the middle. Um The brain is kind of going crazy trying to figure out when it reads Non words when there are words that aren't real words, but the brain is trying to put it together and figure out Well, how come I don't recognize this? um So there's a lot more activity going on when it reads non words um And also, um, there's activity going on when there's low frequency words that they the brain isn't used to seeing But the top picture you'll see where with those high frequency words There's less activity happening because basically the brain's more use to what's what's it's perceiving We know that um reading lexical access frequency of exposure. All of these things have different impact On on um on the way the brain scans look so if you have the word in your In your lexicon, you know, there's going to be less action going on If you are frequently exposed to the word then it goes down Also, the activity goes down with a higher frequency We know that there's different areas of the brain used for listening as opposed to reading So these are different um different types of scans that will occur And we also know that just listening to other things versus reading you'll see this um Ball it's also right and left hemisphere will also be um Lit up, but there's also overlapping pathways So one of the things that's very important to take away from this is that while we say that there might be 16 different neural pathways There are many that are very similar and somewhat overlapping, especially in memory systems, for example Um writing is even more difficult than reading. We know that writing um occupies more brain Real estate than almost anything else and we don't know for sure Which exact areas of the brain are actually executing a lot of the writing, but we do know for example In the absence of certain areas of the brain, we know that there is a lack of writing So we're going to presume that area of the brain is very important for writing, but we're not actually sure yet Um spelling is different from writing spelling is kind of a sub element of being able to write um We actually know that when somebody has a problem um, for example on the left hand side Um two individuals there's damage to different regions of the brain the brain on the left There's a difficulty in recall between letters and sound And the person on the right has difficulty in actually spelling the mechanical spelling of the word So we know that even though they seem like they might be they should be the same um Execution in the brain. We see that they're actually different things happening in the brain between spelling and actually writing the brain We know also that emotionally charged words stimulate other parts of the brain in addition to semantic recall They also have um emotional element to them. So basically with all of these different pieces in line Well, there's this question that was posed by And Jeffrey and goldenberg that was actually, you know Well, so what parts of the brain are used in in language and they said, you know Why don't we just say what parts of the brain are not used because that would be easier because almost The entire brain is lit up as you're going through these different language processing Especially in the writing mode. Um, and as we'll see in the in the second video Um writing in a foreign language actually uses more parts of your brain simultaneously than almost any other activity That's been documented to date Um, the last section we look at right now has to do with specific language impairments or what problems can happen or um related to language To do this, um I'd like to sort of give you a quick introduction through a bbc video And we're only going to look at the very middle section of this video Um, but to give you a general global idea of the importance of language And especially as we start to have looked towards um foreign languages We are taking so much for granted. What are the things that can actually go wrong? So we know that there are certain types of language impairments Uh, things that can be auditory discrimination problems, kids can distinguish different sounds receptive problems, expressive problems, um dyspraxia, phonological programming deficit syndrome Lots of things that can come up that would be difficulties for children or for adults Into their into lifespan, which can be either caused by You can be born congenital problems or they can be things that are acquired afterwards Um, some specific language problems in order to actually identify them, you know, it's not a temporary thing It's basically you have to be interferences It's a language problem that interferes with daily processes um We've excluded things that could be actual sensory perception problems and that they actually have an impact on um Learning in other contexts these would be sort of characteristics that we'd look for for something that would be labeled a specific language impairment um causes can be A huge variety. Some things can be genetic We can have um some other problems that are cognitive defects. You can have other things that were our auditory Deficits, there's different routes to these types of problems. Um, some language impairments That are not related to for example the left hemisphere typically If you do have broken and vernicus area in your left frontal and parietal lobes You can still have other types of language impairments caused by difficulties in in, you know, right frontal lobe processing things. For example loss of prosody and perception you can't difficulty in identifying emotions You can't understand humor or metaphors. So there's a lot of other things that happen in different areas of the brain that are not purely left Hemisphere related Um, we know that there is and this is a great area for dr. Peabody. She knows quite a lot about traumatic brain injury Uh, especially as it relates to language difficulties things can happen with a bump on the head You saw some things in dr. Haman's presentation related to football injuries, but A good bang on the head can actually cause a lot of these different language problems that we're talking about Um One specific area of language deficit that's been documented for hundreds of years relates to aphasias Phasias are communication disorders. They can have to do with Expressive aphasia receptive aphasia. They can have to do with production of language or they can have to do with actually finding or identifying the right Words To actually produce language. We know that strokes can cause this You know, uh, blood vessel in the brain that that can break that can actually cause Uh, language difficulties. Um, so In general, we associate aphasias with strokes. So they can also be caused by other things like tumors that we'll see in a minute Most common aphasias broke as aphasia basically in broke as area in the Left frontal lobe and you can find and This was identified in the first patient that broke ahead We could only say the word hand hand hand hand hand Basically, he was unable to produce language. Whereas a couple years later Grand aphasia, which is part in the posterior area Found that basically this People will talk fluidly, but they speak gibberish. It means what they're producing actually doesn't make any sense at all So they'll have a conversation with you and they'll think that they're speaking perfectly But what's coming out is a lot of mixed words There's also recently been identified in an area versus aphasia is actually the area linking Broca and vernicus area that actually has to do with speech production as well Tumors can also cause aphasia. It's not just strokes that that are That the cause of of aphasias and the most common are basically broke as aphasia expressive aphasia and also receptive aphasia and These are different types of aphasias that have been identified The inability to produce language and Now we'll move from aphasias to basically dyslexia Shameless has kind of been like slimed a couple times because of you know, this idea of overcoming dyslexia You can never get rid of dyslexia, right? You can you can find some coping mechanisms, however Um, so what suggested in her work has to do with a lot of coping mechanisms We do know that there's differences in the way. Um, the brains are working basically There's an overuse of certain areas of the brain because there's a lack of activation in other areas There's also presumption that the communication the natural communication between these areas is blocked. So, um Dyslexics can they do learn to read and write however, they are probably using other systems We also there's tons of Literature out there basically showing how not in dyslexic cases, but nice basically in aphasics That um, there's a far greater use or recruiting of different areas of the brain basically write hemisphere basically in symmetrical areas to recuperate language when it's lost in terms of Dyslexia, that's not the same the same case But it's basically trying to find a different way to get the information into the brain because the natural Pathways are blocked and so you're having to find a new way to find to get literacy into your head we know that um Plasticity is fabulous. We're not actually sure how what the extent of this is There's a lot of research going on related to people with just half a brain who Can speak just fine and they you know externally you don't see A lot of great difference and and even in some cases for example, they find This girl for example having lost She was born with with uh without um without her left left hemisphere But her language was fine. Her reading was fine, which I thought would be impossible But so we know that other parts of the brain can be recruited for what would be a normal pathway We don't know to what extent this occurs. We don't know how frequently it can occur There's tons of studies that are being done to actually try to understand Why can this person not have Be able to speak clearly and why can this person without even more of the brain be able to speak clearly? We just don't know that yet So there's a lot still going on that needs to be answered But um, but it's very important to actually identify that there are very big distinct Areas of the brain that are being used. There are no two brains Identical in the way that they are connecting language though There are clear pathways that are typically used for these different elements of language Um The last little piece we're going to have here is we transition into the next video about bilingualism and multilingualism has to do with bilingual dyslexic for example Fascinating cases in japanese you have four alphabets, right? You have romanji, which is the roman alphabet. It's abcd, right? Then you have katakana, which is basically used for things that are foreign words Hiragana, which is kind of like a script and you have kanji Which are more like pictographs Um, and it's fascinating to find with japanese phasics people who typically should be losing language They might lose one of these alphabets or another or they might use all of them But sometimes generally if they're going to lose The kanji they didn't lose the Hiragana katakana and romanji and vice versa Which is actually fascinating, but it makes us think that Probably that the kanjis might be stored in a different area of the brain because they are related more to Conceptual imagery as opposed to symbol systems that we don't you know have a good reason why You know a should be a that that the physical drawing of that doesn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people Whereas you know if you have you know ni hon, which is ni is the sun and it looks like the sun coming up in your window So it's a pictograph. It might be stored. It is stored in a different place in your brain But we do still don't really know that um for sure The dyslexic brain presuming that there's reduced activity in the posterior area of the brain related to dyslexics We're not exactly sure why or how and it's not true in all cases um When you're reading in different languages, we do see that there's different use of different parts Of the brain sometimes depending on whether in the pictographs or not And for example in some recent studies on chinese dyslexics, which also use the japanese use the symbol system of the chinese, right? We sort of sold that from the chinese There are some people actually say that uh dyslexic chinese brain is different from a dyslexic um Anglo Anglophone brain It's very curious that the use of the japanese brains is interesting because they do have both symbol systems as well as the The pictographs so still a lot of exciting research going on in that area, but we don't have all positive answers Okay, so now we're going to close this section. What did we try to do? We tried to look at the historical or evolutionary perspective of why humans have language in the first place We looked at some definitions of language and we looked at the developmental processes of language And some key milestones and we also looked at certain language problems Including dyslexia and and aphasias now we're going to turn to this second video Which has to do with multilingualism and we're going to look at a lot of the myths Um about multilingualism as well as at least 10 key factors that influence successful multilingualism or bilingualism In school contexts as well as within the home. Thank you very much