Author: bednar.48

Language Fun: Guess the Language

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There are so many different languages spoken and signed around the world!

There are around 7,000 languages, though that number varies a bit depending on who you ask and how we define a language. How well do you think you can identify some of the more populous tongues?

 

Find out with this week’s game: click here to play!

How many did you get right? Were you surprised by any? Tell us about it in the comments!

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**

Week 5: Design Vote

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Welcome back!

First, if you want to help us out even more, make sure you check out our sign up page and everything we’ve got posted over there. Feel free to vote and comment without officially signing up, though!

This week, we’ll ask for you to vote on two important parts of our experimental design, and we’ll reveal the results of last week’s vote, too.

 

First, CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S VOTE!

We’ll give you the pros and cons of each option there, so feel free to click on the link and vote right now.

Remember – to answer our question about internal language, we’re going to ask participants in our experiment to view a screen of images and try to remember the list while repeating them internally or out-loud (spoiler on the vote results!).

 

Now for the results from last week’s vote on experimental design!

Between Subjects won by a big margin, but we had a 50-50 tie for our Speech Condition vote! We did a tie breaker on our research team, and we’ve decided to skip the ‘no speech’ condition this time around and only have internal or out-loud conditions.

We’ll be using this information to help build the experiment that we’ll be launching in just a little while – and of course this week’s vote will help us figure this out, too!

 

Here are the questions we’ll be asking you to vote on this week…

Question 1: how easy should it be to name the images?

Should we give participants pictures of things that are really easy to recall the names of, like a dog or a pencil, or should we give them things that are a bit harder or less common, like a hyena or a quill? How might this difference affect our results?

Question 2: how many items should there be for people to remember?

Of course, we can’t ask participants to accurately remember 1000 pictures, and it wouldn’t be very challenging or helpful to our experiment if we only gave them 1 picture, either. So how many should we use? What’s the sweet spot where using language differently might help some people remember better or worse than others?

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

 

That’s it for this week!

These choices you vote for will shape our experiment and there is no right or wrong answer. Now that we’ve asked you all of the questions we had about building our study, is there anything you think we missed? Let us know about it down in the comments! Next week, you’ll help us finalize the stimuli we use in our experiment.

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**

Language Fun: Sign Language Iconicity

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Not all languages use spoken words!

Sign languages all around the world are used by people to communicate without verbal speech. But how can they pack so much information into just hand shapes and movements? What makes up a sign, and can we tell what it is just by looking at it?

 

Find out with this week’s game! Click here to try it out.

How did it go? Tell us how you did in the comments! Do you know anything else cool about sign languages that you want to share?

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**

Week 4: Pros and Cons. Vote here!

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We’ve got two major decisions to make this time around…

First, we have to decide whether our study will be within-subjects or between-subjects.

Within-subjects experiments have one participant complete multiple conditions and then compares the participant’s performance in one condition against their performance in the other condition.

Between-subjects experiments have one participant complete only one condition and then compares the performance of the two groups.

 

Second, we have to decide whether we want to include a third condition in our experiment.

The third condition under consideration would be a “no speech” condition. Participants would not name the object internally or verbally, instead trying to memorize the objects themselves. After looking at the objects, the participant would list as many objects as possible.

 

Think about which options you would pick. Then, click here to vote on what you think is best for our experiment!

After that, you can click here to head back to the main Week 4 post.

Week 4: Literature Review

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Check out some research articles related to the project! We’ll continue to add related articles as the project continues.

 

Inner Speech and Consciousness – Morin (2009)

The characteristics of inner speech

The most important characteristic of inner speech is that it is predicative – syntactically crushed, condensed, and abbreviated. Since the context of speech is always implicit to the talking agent, the subject of a thought does not need to be explicitly stated. This predicative quality of inner speech is responsible for individuals experiencing it not as a sequence of fully formed utterances, but instead as a fragmentary series of verbal images. This explains why the rate of internal speech is much more rapid than that of overt speech. There is also a prevalence of sense over meaning in inner speech, which refers to the way that the personal, private significance of words takes precedence over their conventional meanings. (Pg. 393)

Tasks that require the elaboration of complex behavioral sequences and the simultaneous appreciation of multiple behavioral options are usually better performed with the aid of self-talk. Four effective categories of problem-solving self-verbalizations have been identified: (1) a precise definition of the problem (‘‘Ok. What’s the problem? What am I supposed to do?’’); (2) an effective approach to the problem (‘‘I must think of ways to solve this problem’’); (3) a sustained focus on the problem (‘‘No. That’s not important, I must not focus on this. I must work on that’’); and (4) a progress evaluation that includes praise or strategy readjustment (‘‘Good! I did it!’’/‘‘No. That’s not it. That’s OK. I must try again and take my time’’). (Pg. 394)

Inner speech is intimately associated with memory functions, especially working memory. Working memory is a system that allows us to maintain a limited amount of information (1–10 items, e.g., a phone number) in an active state for a short period of time (up to 60 s) and to manipulate that information. It is considered to be necessary for higher cognitive processes such as reasoning, decision making, problem solving, and language understanding. (Pg. 396)

Inner speech represents a phenomenon not only central to consciousness but to psychology in general. The multifunctional dimension of selfdirected speech suggests that it plays a fundamental role in initiating, shaping, guiding, and controlling human thought and behavior. (Pg. 400-401)

The development of inner speech

In essence, Vygotsky suggested that inner speech has its origins in social speech and that it serves an important self-regulatory function – a notion that has received much empirical support. For instance, the internalization process entails that children will first talk to themselves aloud (private speech) and that this self-guiding talk will gradually go underground as inner speech. (Pg. 390-391)

[T]he frequency of children’s private speech follows an inverted-U relation with age, peaking at 3–4 years of age, decreasing at 6–7 years of age, and virtually disappearing at age 10. The reduction in private speech is accompanied by corresponding increases in the frequency of partially internalized manifestations of inner speech, such as whispers and inaudible muttering. Private speech of bright children gets internalized into inner speech earlier, with girls usually showing a faster private speech development than boys. (Pg. 392)

Dysfunctional inner speech

All aspects of normal language functions (e.g., reading, writing, speaking, and calculating) require intact inner speech, and indeed, loss of inner speech following brain damage invariably leads to aphasia, agraphia, alexia, acalculia, and impaired verbal short-term memory. Recent experiments show that speakers monitor their own inner speech in order to detect and repair phonological, lexical, or grammatical errors before they are spoken. (Pg. 395)

Inner speech can be compared to a double-edged sword: on one hand it is associated with very constructive consequences such as self-regulation, and on the other hand distorted self-talk may lead to – or at least maintain – psychological disorders. Conditions such as test anxiety, bulimia, anorexia, lack of assertiveness, insomnia, social anxiety, agoraphobia, compulsive gambling, male sexual dysfunctions, low self-esteem, and depression have been shown to involve frequent repetitive negative and interfering cognitions. More benign transitory negative states such as worry, guilt, and shame are most likely mediated by inner speech. (Pg. 396-397)

This paper had a lot more information in it! Click here to read the full paper.

 

Want to learn even more?

Try this extensive review of inner speech research by Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015).

 

Once you’re done, click here to head back to the main Week 4 post!

Week 4: Beginning the Experiment

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Welcome back!

First, if you want to help us out even more, make sure you check out our sign up page and everything we’ve got posted over there.

This week, we’ve got a lot to talk about. Here’s a quick guide to what you can expect; click on the link you’re interested in to zoom right to that part of the post!

Whew! That’s a lot of work, but we believe in you, Citizen Scientists. This is all important stuff to get started on our experiment, and pretty soon we’ll have a good idea of where we’re headed and be able to build our study.

 

Check out the results of the vote!

Our winner: When we “talk” to ourselves inside our own heads — our internal dialogue — are we really using our language?

Inner speech, also known as internal dialogue, self-talk, or verbal thinking, is the running voice inside someone’s head. This mental process is what is commonly referred to when people say ‘thinking,’ but scientific terms such as inner speech differentiate it from other types of thinking such as thinking creatively or remembering events. It plays a role in a variety of skills, but is especially vital to critical thinking, problem solving, language, and emotional regulation (the ability to control your emotions). Because of its role in emotional regulation, internal dialogue is especially important to understand in relation to depression and anxiety disorders.

To start to get a better idea of what inner speech is and how it works, check out this news report.

Memory rehearsal is the memorization technique of repeating the to-be-memorized list. To address our question of how inner speech differs from normal language use, we can examine memory performance (how much of the list the participant remembers) after participants rehearse the list either internally or out loud. Start reading up by using the Wikipedia pages for internal dialogue and memory rehearsal so you can research any questions you have.

If you want more information, check out the literature review page!

Click here to head back to the top of the page and pick another section for the week!

 

 

Now, it’s time to think about our project design!

We already talked a little bit about memory rehearsal, but let’s get into the specific of how we’ll use memory rehearsal to test the difference between internal dialogue and spoken language. Participants will be shown several pictures (one at a time) and will be asked to name the object in the picture. Participants will name the object either out loud (verbal speech condition) or in their head (inner speech condition). Once they’re done, they will have to list every picture they remember. Based on the possible results, we have formulated three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: There will be no difference in the number of remembered objects between the verbal and inner speech conditions.

Hypothesis 2: Participants in the verbal speech condition will remember a higher number of objects than participants in the inner speech condition.

Hypothesis 3: Participants in the inner speech condition will remember a higher number of objects than participants in the verbal speech condition.

 

The first hypothesis would represent a null result, meaning there was no difference between the two groups and suggesting that there is a rough equivalence between verbal and inner speech in terms of memory retention. If hypotheses 2 or 3 are correct, it would suggest that either verbal or inner speech is better for memory retention.

Next week we’ll vote on some specifics like what the pictures will be and how many there will be, but first, we have some big decisions about the structure of the experiment! As you’ll see, there are pros and cons for each of our options. Some of these are theoretical concerns, but others have more to do with the logistics of collecting the data. You’ll have to decide for yourself which pros and cons are most important.

Click here to head to our pros-and-cons page, where you can vote for your design choices! These decisions will shape our experiment, but there is no right or wrong answer. Leave a comment below about the choices you think are best!

Click here to head back to the top of the page and pick another section for the week!

 

Explanations for the other questions!

We’re sorry that we can’t build an experiment for these, too, but we do have some ideas on what we might have seen…

Question: Does the way a word sounds suggest emotions or meanings beyond what the word actually means?

Words have an arbitrary connection to their meaning, but at times it seems like there is meaning in the sound that makes up the word. Onomatopoeia is a good example, where words like buzz, roar, or bang sound like the noise they are meant to represent. But what about other words? A famous experiment asked participants to draw a “kiki” or a “bobo.” Despite never having heard the made-up words before, participants drew sharp, spiked images for the “kiki” and round, circular images for the “bobo.” The researchers argued this showed a clear connection between the sounds and a specific meaning.

Check out this and this to learn more!

 

Question: How does texting influence the words we type?

One of the most important features of language is that it continually evolves, and texting, emailing, and the internet has certainly created changes. While there is always someone saying “kids these days,” languages spoken today are different (but not better or worse) than they were 100 years ago, and in 100 years from now they’ll be different than today’s languages. The flexibility of language allows it to adapt to the needs of its speakers.

Check out this, this, and this to learn more!

Click here to head back to the top of the page and pick another section for the week!

 

That’s it for this week!

These choices you vote for will shape our experiment and there is no right or wrong answer. Make your argument below! Next week, we’ll vote on the specifics of the experiment.

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**

Language Fun: What’s in a Dinosaur Name?

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How do scientists come up with the really complicated names that dinosaurs have?

Tyrannosaurus Rex. Triceratops. Velociraptor. Someone had to decide what to call them! But why does each dinosaur have the name that they have?

 

Find out in our Dinosaur Name game! Click here to test your knowledge.

How many did you get right? Tell us about how it went in the comments! Was it easy or hard? What would you name a dinosaur?

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**

Week 3: Final Question Vote

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Welcome to Week 3!

This week, we’re going to be voting on the final research idea. Anyone can vote whether or not you’ve signed up or commented so far!

 

First, if you want to help us out even more, make sure you check out our sign up page and everything we’ve got posted over there.

Next, vote for your favorite research question in the survey below!

Then, we picked some of our favorite questions and ideas that we aren’t able to do. We’ll be doing online data collection this year which changes what we’re able to do. We provided some short explanations and links if you want to learn more about any of the ideas!

 

Now, check out the three ideas you’ll be able to vote on!

A) When we “talk” to ourselves inside our own heads — our internal dialogue — are we really using our language?

B) How does texting influence the words we type?

C) Does the way a word sounds suggest emotions or meanings beyond what the word actually means?

 

Click on this link to vote!

 

We really liked some of your ideas, but they would be difficult to do because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of our lab in the COSI museum. We’re excited to collect our data online though! We have a great way to do online data collection and look forward to using it with you.

We gave a little explanation of what we know about some of our favorite questions and some links you could check out if you want to learn more!

 

Eshmoney said: I am fascinated with child language acquisition, especially in languages besides English. It leads me to wonder, are there different time frames for different languages for when a child, on average, should be able to perform certain language tasks? Do the sound-making capabilities of children come at different times depending on the phonetic system of the language, such as different “clicks,” “tones,” and even vowel and consonant sounds of non-English languages? Do different cultures have unique expectations for when their children’s speech should be able to be comprehended by others?

That is a very interesting idea! Children definitely have an easier time picking up their native language, especially when they’re younger than 5. This ideal age to learn language is called a critical period. During this time, children begin to get used to the sounds used in their language(s). Once children have familiarized themselves with their native languages, it can be difficult to hear all of the sounds used in other languages.

Check out this TED talk from Particia Kuhl to learn more about the critical period in language acquisition.

 

Ana said: From the day I was born I was immersed in two languages simultaneously. I was learning English in the outside world and at school (my parents just moved to the US and didn’t know much English) and Russian at home. I am now fluent in both of these languages. If I tried learning two languages at once right now, I would have a very hard time doing that; which leaves me wondering on how a child’s brain works and manages to master and learn two very different languages so easily, yet a more developed brain would have to work much harder to do that.

You raise a very interesting question about learning multiple languages! Not only are there different words, the languages have different structures that you have to figure out during learning. The critical period in language acquisition also plays a role in your question. Children are constantly monitoring the adults around them to learn more about their language, which is part of what helps them learn the language so quickly. Brain scans of babies during this period have told us a lot about how bilingualism impacts a child’s development.

Check out these talks from Dr. Ellen Bialystok and Dr. Naja Ferjan Ramirez to learn more about bilingualism.

 

Arjun said: I am interested in the role of internal dialogue in feelings of self worth. What linguistic elements of internal dialogue are most predictive of shame, anxiety, and depression?

Another interesting area to look at is emotion in language. We can communicate emotions both through the words we use and the tone of voice we use while speaking. This is often studied by comparing between different cultures (comparing cross-culturally) as the emotional message might not always translate to someone from another culture or a non-native speaker. We could use the same idea to look at how that emotional messaging, both internally and externally, relates to the negative feelings you listed.

Check out this 3-minute thesis from Pernelle Lorette to learn more.

 

If you want to share, tell us which question you voted for in the comments below! Next week, we’ll reveal the final voting tally and ask you to learn a little more about what we already know on the research question and to start coming up with ideas around the experiment design.

**Although we moderate every comment before it gets posted, please remember to be kind to others and mindful of your personal information before you post here!**