LING 1010 1st EditionFinal Exam Study Guide Genetics1. What is environmental determinism?This idea states that the genome isn’t a ‘blank slate’ which in other words would mean that the environment would determine if an organism is an ant or an elephant which obviously isn’t true. Organisms aren’t only shaped by their environment.2. What is genetic determinism?Genes don’t fully determine the physical structure of the body either. One species can develop differently in different environments because epigenetic changes in the DNA can turn on or off genes. An example of a trait like this is skin color because skin color genes have become different over evolutionary time.3. What are the facts about Christopher the language savant?Christopher was able to master over 15 languages despite having autism. This is evidence that all cognitive abilities aren’t related.4. What are the facts about KEs family?The family has a language impairment caused by a mutation in the FOXP2 gene which showed that language has some genetic component even though this gene may not be the only gene involved in language.5. What is SLI?SLI stands for Specific Language Impairment which is a language disorder that can’t be attributedto physical defects, independent psychological-emotional problems or overall mental problems. 6. What are the facts about studies of monozygotic twins?Monozygotic twin studies show that identical twins display a lot of the same language characteristics and because they share the same genes this shows that language has a strong genetic component.7. What is localization of functions?It means that each function is carried out by a specific location in the brain.8. Where is Broca’s area located and what function does it carry out? What symptoms do Broca’saphasia patients show?Broca’s area is in the frontal lobe. It is responsible for speech. Patients with Broca’s aphasia have impaired articulation and slow, telegraphic speech. Basically everything is there except syntax.9. Where is Wernicke’s area located and what is its function? What symptoms do Wernicke’s aphasia patients show?Wernicke’ area can be found in the temporal lobe and it is involved in language comprehension. Patients with Wernicke’s aphasia have impaired auditory comprehension and sound fluent but what they say is meaningless because they are unable to form a sentence appropriately.10. What is plasticity?Plasticity has to do with the critical period effect. Younger people’s brains are able to change more to compensate for parts of the brain lost. Regions can take on additional functions in addition to their default function. One example of plasticity of the brain was in a really young girl who had half of her brain removed because she was having a lot of seizures and now she is almost perfectly normal because her brain was able to build back up. 11. What is lateralization?Lateralization is the specialization of the different hemispheres of the brain. 95% of right-handed people have their language center on the left side and 60% of lefties do as well. 12. What do split brain patients show regarding language?Split brain patients show a halt in transmission between the two hemispheres of the brain. In the video we watched in class a man saw a hammer but drew a saw with his left hand instead because his right brain made him, but he isn’t conscious of it.13. What is dichotic listening and what do these types of studies show?Dichotic listening studies involve participants to wear stereo earphones that have different stimuli in each ear. When it comes to linguistic input those being studied report what they heardin their right ear with more accuracy. However, when it comes to dichotic pairs of sung melodiesit switches and participants are more accurate in reporting back what they heard in their left ear.Overall, these findings support that language areas are in the left hemisphere Animal Communication1. What are the facts about the ‘bee dance’ and what conclusions can be drawn from them?In the bee dance when one bee finds food he goes back to the hive and tells other bees where the food is by dancing and touching them. Even when there were two food sources right next each other the bees who saw the bee dance of the one on the left went to the one on the left. This shows that bees have a communication system with infinite possibilities.2. What is the difference between the infinite bee dance and the infinite human language?Human language has recursive syntax whereas the bee dance has an infinite number of possibilities for each part that the dance is made up of.3. What are vervet monkey calls and what can be concluded about them?Vervet monkeys have three types of calls and they use specific calls for different types of predators. This shows that their communication system while complex compared to many animals is much simpler than human communication because it only has three ‘words’4. What has been shown in regards to dolphin communication?Dolphins are able to listen to commands from humans and carry out complex tasks that consist of words they have learned previously like going over to a ball and bringing to the hoop. Dolphins are very intelligent and their brains are equally as large as human brains in proportion to their body weight.5. What are the fat about primates learning spoken language (English)? What has been concluded from these facts?Primates are unable to learn spoken language because they don’t have the proper language body parts. For example their larynx is higher and they have no pharyngeal cavity. Also their tongue isn’t very mobile. 6. What has been shown about primates learning sign languages? Primates such as Nim Chimpsky have been shown to learn many signs but none have been shown to fully learn sign language. Hervert Terrance concluded that Nim could not do syntax. Another primate, Kanzee was spoken to like a child and could understand English sentences suchas “go get the ball outside” and passed the ball inside to get the one outside showing he understood. It is also important to remember that the questions being asked in these experiments have a more simplistic view of language because they aren’t being performed by linguists. 7. What has been observed in regards to European Starlings learning recursive rules?They have recursive patterns however their patterns aren’t as complex as humans and in fact some researchers do not