Description: Is it accurate? Does it plagiarize? Does it lie? Is it dangerous? Can people use t to cheat? Is it alive? Is it sentient? Is it human? Based on these questions, what am I thinking and writing about? I am thinking about ChatGPT and other “bots” that answer questions and write essays in response… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Language Development
New View of the Brain – Its Everything All at Once
Description: A typical approach to talking about the brain taken in introductory psychology courses involves looking at the consequences of lesions or stroke damage (not the same things) in specific areas of the brain. Lesions in areas of the hypothalamus seem to be related to increases of decreases in appetite in rats, for example. But… Read more »
How are Tool Use and Speech Processing Related?
Description: Ok here is a question. What do tool use and spoken language syntax have in common? No idea? I do not blame you. What if I provided you with a hint (a bit of data) suggesting that the two are correlated AND that training in one of them (tool use OR processing complex spoken… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: More Zoom Fatigue
Description: Despite the social isolation imposed in order to help manage the consequences of Caovid-19 pandemic we are able to stay in touch and we are able to meet while we work from home (assuming we still have work). Internet connectivity and the free availability of apps such as Zoom are making it possible for… Read more »
Did Language Evolution Hijack Complex Tool Making Skills?
Description: The nature of our spoken communication skills is most certainly a big part of our adaptive evolutionary advantage as a species. Using language, we can break out of the ‘here and now’ and discuss past events and future possibilities and we can organize and coordinate complex individual and social tasks and strategies using our… Read more »
Why Watch Toddler TV?
Description: It is old news now, but do you recall any of the fuss about the Teletubbies TV show? When it first arrive to North American TV screens in 1997 there was an intense storm of media discussion about how very young children (2 and even younger) loved it and parents were perplexed as they… Read more »
Infant Hearing Deficits: Developmental Puzzles to Mysteries
Description: Malcom Gladwell, in various places writes and speaks about how in many areas of life but particularly in areas relating to health and wellbeing we have or are experiencing a shift in the task of figuring out how to make our lives and those of people around us better (healthier, longer, richer etc.). What… Read more »
Baby Strokes: Plasticity and Hemispheric Shifts in Loction of Function
Description: Two questions before we get into this topic. First, who has strokes? Second, if someone has a massive left hemisphere stroke what will likely happen to their spoken language abilities? Old people and language will suffer right? Well, not entirely. You see, infants, and in fact, newborns (about 1 in 4000) can have strokes…. Read more »
Infant – Parent “Conversations”: Synchronization of Vocalizations, Movements, AND Brainwaves!
Description: You may have heard in and an Introductory Psychology course or in a Child Development course that when a mother talks to her infant (fathers too) the parent changes their vocal patterns by exaggerating aspects of their speech in what we sometimes call “Motherese.” You may have also heard or even seen video examples… Read more »
Do Birds Learn to Sing the Same Way that Infants Learn to Speak?
Description: Before you read any further go and listen to these two YouTube linked videos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaC6D1cW1Hs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVuUMCLF48k). They feature birdsong, an specifically Zebra Finch birdsong. Now you have not likely thought of this but birds have to sing the right songs the right way if they are to get by in their worlds…. Read more »
Books for Success!
