[language] [Fwd: [evol-psych] From Mouth to Mind]

[H.M. Hubey]

<><><><><><><><><><><><>--This is the Language List--<><><><><><><><><><><><><>




-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [evol-psych] From Mouth to Mind
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 16:56:45 -0600
From: Ian Pitchford <ian.pitchford at scientist.com>
Reply-To: Ian Pitchford <ian.pitchford at scientist.com>
Organization: http://human-nature.com/
To: evolutionary-psychology at yahoogroups.com



Scientific American
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008A2EF-23D7-1D2A-97CA809EC588EEDF&catID=2>

 From Mouth to Mind
New insights into how language warps the brain

By W. Wayt Gibbs

"Liver." The word rises from the voice box and passes the lips. It beats
the air, enters an ear canal, sets nerve cells firing. Electrochemical
impulses stream into the auditory cortex of a listener's brain. But then
what? How does the brain's neural machinery filter that complex stream of
auditory input to extract the uttered word: "liver"--or was it "river," or
perhaps "lever"?

Researchers at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in June reported
brain imaging studies and clinical experiments that expose new details of
how the first language we learn warps everything we hear later. Some
neuroscientists think they are close to explaining, at a physical level,
why many native Japanese speakers hear "liver" as "river," and why it is so
much easier to learn a new language as a child than as an adult.

At the ASA conference, Paul Iverson of University College London presented
maps of what people hear when they listen to sounds that span the continuum
between the American English phonemes /ra/ and /la/. Like many phonemes,
/ra/ and /la/ differ mainly in the three or four frequencies that carry the
most energy. Iverson had his computer synthesize sounds in which the second
and third most dominant frequencies varied in regular intervals, like dots
on a grid. He then asked English, German and Japanese speakers to identify
each phoneme and to rate its quality.

Full text
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008A2EF-23D7-1D2A-97CA809EC588EEDF&catID=2
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008A2EF-23D7-1D2A-97CA809EC588EEDF&catID=2>


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--
M. Hubey

hubeyh at mail.montclair.edu /\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey



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