PSYCHOLINGUISTIC

We have spent one semester in Mr Budi’s class in INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS. After we learned about PURE LINGUISTICS, namely : Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Lexicology, and Semantics, he commanded us to look for one of all applied linguistics as the last exam in his class. Up to us what we want to choose. About that, I am thinking about “PSYCHOLINGUISTICS”. I do not know exactly what it is, but I will try to learn about that.

I am interested with Psycholinguistics caused by some reasons. I ever watched K-Drama, it was about Psychiatrist. I do not know if there is relating with psycholinguistics, but it makes me have idea to choose psycholinguistics and want to know more about it. Another reason, I have a friend in social media who is majoring Psycholinguistics. He said so fun with that, you would know what you would not ever know. You know, I am so curious.

As you know Linguistics is study about language and Psycho, we often heard it is something that crazy, weird and so on. But in this topic, it is Psychology. I think Psycholinguistics is related between brain and language. Maybe, how we produce one or more languages. For me,  I am learning English now. English as foreign language in Indonesia. It can be an example, how  I am learning English that foreign for me, how my brain receives and process it. It will be same if you learn other languages, such as Mandarin, Japan, Korean, and so on.

Ok, I take some references about Psycholinguistics, before that

You can read this poem and see how it describes the brain.

The Brain is Wider

Emily Dickinson

The brain is wider than the sky,

For put them side by side,

The one the other will include

With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sky,

For, hold them blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb

As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of  God,

For lift them, pound for pound,

And they will differ, if they do,

As syllable from sound.

Psycholinguistics investigates the mental mechanisms underlying language processing. (Cognitive)

How to perceive words and store them in the mind, how to understand a sentence, how to learn to read, how language and writing systems influence mental organizations.

There are three aspects :

1.Language Comprehension –how we understand the meaning of words and sentences (receptive process)

2.Language Production –how we speak and use language (productive process)

3.Acquisition – how people learn language

In other words, the studies done in psycholinguistics helps us to understand the psychology of how we learn and understand language, whether it is our first, second, or even third language.

Much psycholinguistic work has been devoted to the learning of language by children and on speech processing and comprehension by both children and adults. Traditional areas of research include language production, language comprehension, language acquisition, language disorders, language and thought, and neurocognition. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Psycholinguists investigate the relationship between language and thought, a perennial subject of debate being whether language is a function of thinking or thought a function of the use of language. However, most problems in psycholinguistics are more concrete, involving the study of linguistic performance and language acquisition, especially in children.

Language acquisition is a process to develop language skill in human. Some language experts (often called nativist) said that  Human language must be innate, that children are born with special talent, uniqu, that possible for human to undersand a language without lesson ( Noam Chomsky is one of nativist)

CHILDREN VS ADULTS IN SECOND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Actually, I do not really understand about this picture or read about its explanation.

But the points that can I get who is better adults or children is depends on whether we are dealing with the natural or the classroom situation, each situation must be considered separately in relation to the psychological factors which affect the learning of language.

LANGUAGE AND BRAIN

You can see this picture, the simple way to  understand our brain functions.

Language Processing : the Left Hemisphere

Broca’s area: speech production

→ if damaged: non-fluent speech and difficulty in processing complex syntactic patterns

Wernicke’s area: language comprehension

→ if damaged: comprehension disturbances

Angular gyrus: reading

→ if damaged: reading impairment

Language Disorders Caused by Brain Damage

1.a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language

→ for most people, these are parts of the left side (hemisphere) of the brain

2.usually occurs suddenly, often as the result of a stroke or head injury, but it may also develop slowly, as in the case of a brain tumor

3.impairs both the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing

4.may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage.

Symptoms

*inability to comprehend speech

*inability to read (alexia)

*inability to write (agraphia)

*inability to speak, without muscle paralysis

*inability to form words

*inability to name objects (anomia)

*poor enunciation

*excessive creation and use of personal neologisms (jargon aphasia)

*inability to repeat a phrase

*persistent repetition of phrases

*other language impairment

APHASIA

Who has Aphasia?

*anyone can acquire aphasia, but most people who have aphasia are in their middle to late years

*Men and women are equally affected

*approximately 80,000 individuals acquire aphasia each year

*about one million persons in the United States currently have aphasia

Aphasia can be caused by

1.Damage to one or more of the language areas of the brain

2.Many times, the cause of the brain injury is a stroke. A stroke occurs when, for some reason, blood is unable to reach a part of the brain. Brain cells die when they do not receive their normal supply of blood, which carries oxygen and important nutrients.

3.Other causes of brain injury are severe blows to the head, brain tumors, brain infections, and other conditions of the brain.

Aphasia can be divided :

A.Broca’s Aphasia

-Non fluent aphasia

-Damage to the frontal lobe

-Individuals frequently speak in short, meaningful phrases produced with great effort, often omit small words (is, and, the etc)

e.g. Walk dog

→ I will take the dog for a walk.

→ You take the dog for a walk.

→ The dog walked out of the yard.

Individuals with Broca’s aphasia are able to understand the speech of others to varying degrees (often aware of their difficulties and can become easily frustrated by their speaking problems)

Often have right-sided weakness or paralysis of the arm and leg because the frontal lobe is also important for body movement.

B.Wernicke’s Aphasia

-Damage to the temporal lobe

-Individuals speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new “words”

-Known as receptive aphasia

→ difficulty in understanding spoken or written language

→ hear the voice or see the print but cannot make sense of the words

e.g. You know that smoodle pinkered and that I want to get him round and take care of him like you want before.

→ The dog needs to go out so I will take him for a walk.

Individuals usually have great difficulty in understanding speech and often unaware of their mistakes. Usually have no body weakness because their brain injury is not near the parts of the brain that control movement.

C.Global Aphasia

-Results from damage to extensive portions of the language areas of the brain

-Individuals have severe communication difficulties and may be extremely limited in their ability to speak or comprehend language

-Lose almost all language function, both comprehension and expression

-Cannot speak or understand speech, nor write or read.

D.Anomia (Amnesia Aphasia)

-Essentially a difficulty with naming particular objects, people, places or events

-Usually because of an accident that hits the maxillary breasts

-The sufferer may have difficulties naming certain words, linked by their grammatical type

(e.g. difficulty naming verbs and not nouns) or by their semantic category  (e.g. difficulty naming words relating to photography but nothing else) or a more general naming difficulty

-Sufferers are usually aware and it is comparable to a 'tip of the tongue' sensation experienced by most people.

E.Other Types of Aphasia

Pure Word Deafness (all understanding impaired, but expressive channels intact)

Conduction Aphasia (speech, writing and silent reading intact, but repetition, reading aloud and dictation impaired)

Apraxia (now considered a separate disorder in itself)

Transcortical Motor Aphasia (Understanding of speech, writing, repetition and reading intact, but impaired voluntary speech and writing)

Transcortical Sensory Aphasia,(Impaired comprehension of speech and writing, but writing, reading aloud and speech spared)

DYSLEXIA

*characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities

*These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language in relation to other cognitive abilities

*problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge

*reading is the primary problem, some definitions of dyslexia also include difficulties with: Writing, Spelling, Listening, Speaking, Math

*the problem in reading is not the result of emotional problems, lack of motivation, poor teaching, mental retardation, or vision or hearing deficits

*Dyslexia is a persistent, lifelong condition. There's no cure for it, but there are ways to approach learning and be successful

*Although kids with dyslexia have language processing and learning difficulties in common, the symptoms and severity can be quite different

*Kids learn some academic skills at a level lower than others their same age and intellectual peers, but they can do other things quite well. They may be talented in the arts, skilled in technology, or adept with spatial relationships

Facts about Dyslexia

1.not limited to reversing the order of letters in reading or writing or a visual perception deficit that involves reading letters or words backwards or upside down, as is often implied in popular culture

2.dyslexia stems from a deficit in processing the phonological form of speech

→ reading problems in dyslexia stem from difficulty decomposing spoken words into discrete phonemes

e.g. CAT → [k], [æ], and [t]

3.As a result, affected individuals have difficulty associating these sounds with the visual letters that make up written words

→ phonological awareness can improve reading scores in children with reading difficulties

Dyslexia: Age 6-11

*Has difficulty pronouncing words, may reverse or substitute parts of words

*Has difficulty carrying out a sequence of directions

*Doesn't hear fine differences in words; e.g., writes "pin" for "pen"

*Has problems stating thoughts in an organized way

*Confuses the order of letters in words

*Doesn't recognize words previously learned

*Spells a word several different ways; doesn't recognize the correct version

*Has poor reading comprehension

Age 12-adult

*Has difficulty remembering what he just read

*Has difficulty concentrating when reading or writing

*Is unable to tell important information from unimportant details

*Spells poorly; misspelling is not phonetic

*Has problems taking notes accurately

*Has difficulty organizing and completing written projects

DYSGRAPHIA

Symptoms :

= A mixture of upper/lower case letters

= irregular letter sizes and shapes

= unfinished letters, struggle to use writing as a communications tool

= odd writing grip, many spelling mistakes (sometimes)

= pain when writing

= decreased or increased speed of writing and copying

= talks to self while writing, and general illegibility

= Reluctance or refusal to complete writing tasks

Characteristics of it are :

*a difficulty to write coherently

*People with dysgraphia often can write, and may have a higher than average IQ, but lack co-ordination, and may find other fine motor tasks such as tying shoes difficult (It often does not affect all fine motor skills)

*They can also lack basic spelling skills (having difficulties with p,q,b,d), and often will write the wrong word when trying to formulate thoughts (on paper)

*In children, the disorder generally emerges when they are first introduced to writing. They make inappropriately sized and spaced letters, or write wrong or misspelled words despite thorough instruction

*Children with the disorder may have other learning disabilities; however, they usually have no social or other academic problems. Cases of dysgraphia in adults generally occur after some neurological trauma or it might be diagnosed in a person with Autism

Types of Dysgraphia

1.Dyslexic dysgraphia

→ spontaneously written work is illegible, copied work is fairly good, and spelling is bad

2.Motor dysgraphia

→ is due to deficient fine motor skills, poor dexterity, poor muscle tone, and/or unspecified motor clumsiness

→ written work is poor to illegible, even if copied by sight from another document

→ Letter formation may be acceptable in very short samples of writing, but this requires extreme effort and an unreasonable amount of time to accomplish, and cannot be sustained for a significant length of time

3.Spatial dysgraphia

→ due to a defect in the understanding of space

→ has illegible spontaneously written work, illegible copied work, normal spelling

References : Sudartinah, Titik. (2012). English Language and Literature Study Program : Psycholinguistics.Yogyakarta State University.[pdf]

https://takberhentiberharap.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/pengertian-psikolinguistik/

I think just it, I have read more than 400 pages but just it I get the points. Actually so many discussions about Psycholiguistic and I lack of  understanding, still need learning.  Pscholinguistics is not my area, but I am interested with that. I will try to learn it, if I have new, I will post it, share information : )