FINALS – COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2 PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING WORD MEANINGS:

1. - meanings of
2. * PRINCIPLE OF words are
CONVENTIONALITY determined by
3. conventions—
LESSON 1: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION they have a
meaning upon
AND DEVELOPMENT which people
agree.
4. - different
5. * PRINCIPLE OF CONTRAST words have
6. different
meanings
ALMOST 7,000 LANGUAGES
3. REGULARLY STRUCTURED:
- Spoken in the world today (Lewis)
- Language has a structure; only
particularly patterned arrangements of
symbols have meaning, and different
NEW GUINEA arrangements yield different meanings.
- Particular patterns of sounds and of letters form meaningful
words. Random sounds and letters, however, usually do not.
- Country with most languages on the world Furthermore, particular patterns of words form meaningful
- Has more than 850 indigenous languages sentences, paragraphs, and discourse. Most others make no
sense.
which means that on average, each
language has just about 7,000 speakers. 4. STRUCTURED AT MULTIPLE LEVELS:
- The structure of language can be
analyzed at more than one level (e.g., in
LINGUIST (who traveled to SOUTHWESTERN sounds, meaning units, words, and
CHINA’S YUNNAN PROVINCE 2006) phrases).
- Any meaningful utterance can be analyzed at more than one
level. Let’s see at what levels psycholinguists study language.
- Discovered 18 languages They look at:
- Spoken by members of the PHULA - • sounds, such as p and t;
- • words, such as “pat,” “tap,” “pot,” “top,” “pit,” and “tip;”
ETHNIC GROUP that never before had - • sentences, such as “Pat said to tap the top of the pot, then tip
been defined and named (Erard). it into the pit;” and
- • larger units of language, such as this paragraph or even this
book.

PHULA LANGUAGE’ not having been discovered: 5. GENERATIVE, PRODUCTIVE:

- Within the limits of a linguistic structure,
- Why? Because speakers of the language language users can produce novel
live in mountainous areas that are hard to utterances. The possibilities for creating
access. new utterances are virtually limitless.
- PRODUCTIVITY refers here to our vast ability to produce
language creatively. However, our use of language does have
limitations. We have to conform to a particular structure and
use a shared system of arbitrary symbols. We can use
COMMONALITIES / PROPERTY OF LANGUAGE: language to produce an infinite number of unique sentences
and other meaningful combinations of words.

1. COMMUNICATIVE: 6. DYNAMIC:
- Language permits us to communicate - Languages constantly evolve.
with one or more people who share our - The evolutionary nature of language.
language. - For example, you may be familiar with the words netiquette (a
blend of “network” and “etiquette,” referring to appropriate
- may be the most obvious feature, but it is behavior on-line), emoticon (a blend of “emotion” and “icon,”
also the most remarkable one. referring to punctuation symbols used in emails to indicate
- As an example, you can write what you are thinking and feeling emotions), and webinar (referring to a seminar held on-line).
so that others may read and understand your thoughts and All of these words have been created just in recent years.
feelings. Yet, as you may know from your own experience,
there are occasional flaws in the communicative property of
language. Despite the frustrations of miscommunications,
however, for one person to be able to use language to
communicate to another is impressive.

2. ARBITRARILY SYMBOLIC:
- Language creates an arbitrary MAIN PURPOSE OF LANGUAGE:
relationship between a symbol and what it - to construct a mental representation of a
represents: an idea, a thing, a process, a situation that enables us to understand
relationship, or a description. the situation and communicate about it.
- Words are symbols that were chosen arbitrarily to represent - In other words, ultimately, language is primarily about use, not
something else, such as a “tree,” “swim,” or “brilliant.” just about one set of properties or another.
- For example, it provides the basis for linguistic encoding in
- REFERENT: The thing or concept in the real world that a memory. You are able to remember things better because you
word refers to.
can use language to help you recall or recognize them.
- By consensual agreement, these combinations of letters or
sounds may be meaningful to us. But the particular symbols - To conclude, many differences exist among languages.
themselves do not lead to the meaning of the word, which is why
different languages use very different sounds to refer to the same
thing (e.g., Baum, árbol, tree).
- Symbols are convenient because we can use them to refer to
things, ideas, processes, relationships, and descriptions that SOME COMMON PROPERTIES:
are not currently present, such as the Amazon River.
- Without arbitrary symbolic reference, we would be limited to
symbols that somehow resembled the things they are - communication
symbolizing (e.g., we would need a treelike symbol to
represent a tree). - arbitrary symbolic reference
- regularity of structure
- multiplicity of structure
- productivity
- change
BASIC COMPONENTS OF WORDS: that some estimates suggest that 90% of
the world’s languages will be
- Language can be broken down into many extinguished within the next generation
smaller units. It is much like the analysis
of molecules into basic elements by • MORPHEME
chemists. - The smallest unit of meaning within a
particular language. The word recharge
• PHONES contains two morphemes, “re-” and
- Smallest unit of speech sound which is “charge,” where “re” indicates a
simply a single vocal sound repeated action. The word “cable”
- A given phone may or may not be part of a consists of only one morpheme although
particular language it is made up of two syllables; but the
- A click of your tongue, a pop of your syllables “ca” and “ble” do not have any
cheek, or a gurgling sound are all phones. inherent meaning.
- These sounds, however, are not used to - Example: AFFIXES (3 morphemes because a-fix-es has
meanings)
form distinctive words in North American
English. 2 FORMS OF MORPHEMES:

ROOT WORDS -Portions of words that contain

• PHONEMES the majority of meaning.
- Smallest unit of speech sound that can be -These roots cannot be broken
down into smaller meaningful
used to distinguish one utterance in a units. They are the items that
have entries in the dictionary
given language from another AFFIXES -Second form of morpheme
- In English, phonemes are made up of that is added after the root
words
vowel or consonant sounds, like a, i, s,
and f. • PREFIXES
- Precede the root
- For example, we can distinguish among “sit,”“sat,”“fat,” and word
“fit,” so the /s/ sound, the /f/ sound, the /i/ sound, and the /Æ/ - EXAMPLE: “de”,
sound are all phonemes in English (as is the /t/ sound). These “re”
sounds are produced by alternating sequences of opening and • SUFFIXES
closing the vocal tract. - Follow the root
- Different languages use different word
- EXAMPLE: “ist”,
numbers and combinations of phonemes. “ed”
North American English has about 40
phonemes. Hawaiian has about 13
phonemes. Some African dialects have up • CONTENT MORPHEMES
to 60. - the words that convey the bulk of the
meaning of a language.
• FUNCTION MORPHEMES
• PHONEMICS - add detail and nuance to the meaning of
- In English, the difference between the /p/ the content morphemes or help the
and the /b/ sound is an important content morphemes fit the grammatical
distinction. These sounds function as context.
phonemes in English because they
constitute the difference between
different words. For example, English • LEXICON
speakers distinguish between “they bit - the entire set of morphemes in a given
the buns from the bin” and “they pit the language or in a given person’s linguistic
puns from the pin” (a well-structured but repertoire.
meaningless sentence). The study of the - the average adult speaker of English has a lexicon of about
80,000 morphemes.
particular phonemes of a language is - Children in grade 1 in the United States have approximately
called phonemics. 10,000 words in their vocabularies.
- By grade 3, they have about 20,000.
- - By grade 5, they have reached about 40,000, or half of their
• PHONETICS eventual adult level of attainment

- The study of how to produce or combine

speech sounds or to represent them with
written symbols FACT:
- Whereas phonemes are relevant to a
- One of the ways in which English has
given language, phones, as studied in
expanded to embrace an increasing
phonetics, are differentiable sounds
vocabulary is by combining existing
irrespective of language. Linguists may
morphemes in novel ways. Some suggest
travel to remote villages to observe,
that a part of William Shakespeare’s
record, and analyze different languages.
genius lay in his enjoying the creation of
The study of phonetic inventories of
new words by combining existing
diverse languages is one of the ways
morphemes. He is alleged to have coined
linguists gain insight into the nature of
more than 1,700 words—8.5% of his
language
written vocabulary—and countless
- LANGUAGE DEATH: occurs for a variety
expressions—including the word
of reasons, including members leaving
countless itself, but also other words like
tribal areas in favor of more urban areas,
inauspicious, pander, and dauntless.
genocide, globalization, and the
introduction of a new language to an area.
It is occurring at such an alarming rate
BASIC COMPONENTS OF SENTENCES: record the times when their children first use a given sound or word or first
make some basic types of child errors. Each of these methods has different
goals, and each also has unique possibilities and pitfalls associated with it.
• SYNTAX Having obtained a set of data from children or their parents, researchers
next need to group these data into measures of particular types of language
- refers to the way in which we put words skills, such as vocabulary, sentences, concepts, or conversational abilities.
together to form sentences. It plays a
major role in our understanding of
language
- Linguists consider the study of syntax to
be fundamental to understanding the
structure of language

2 MAJOR PARTS OF A SENTENCE:

1) NOUN PHRASE
- which contains at least one noun (often
the subject of the sentence) and includes
all the relevant descriptors of the noun
(like “big” or “fast”).
2) VERB PHRASE
- (predicate), which contains at least one
verb and whatever the verb acts on, if
anything.

UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF WORDS,

SENTENCES, AND LARGER TEXT UNITS:

- When we read and speak, it is important

not only to comprehend words and
sentences but also to figure out the
meaning of whole conversations or larger
written pieces.
• SEMANTICS is the study of meaning in a
language. A semanticist would be
concerned with how words and
sentences express meaning.
• DISCOURSE encompasses language use
at the level beyond the sentence, such as
in conversation, paragraphs, stories,
chapters, and entire works of literature.

METHODS FOR STUDYING LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION:

- Mostly quite straightforward

PRIMARY METHOD (simply recording and

transcribing what children say)

- This method can be applied even from

birth.
- TAPE RECORDINGS become particularly
interesting, however, when the child
begins systematic babbling and the first
productions of words.
- Using VIDEOTAPE, researchers can link
up the child's use of verbal means with
their use of gesture and nonlinguistic
cries to draw attention to their desires
and interests.

NOTE:
Methods for studying comprehension are a bit more complicated.
During the first year, researchers can habituate the infant to some pattern
of sounds and then suddenly change that pattern to see if the infant notices
the difference. From about nine months onward, children can be shown
pictures of toys along with their names, and then researchers can measure
whether the children prefer these pictures to some unnamed distracter
pictures. Later on, children can be asked to answer questions, repeat
sentences, or make judgments about grammar. Researchers can also
study children by asking their parents to report about them. Parents can
LESSON 2: LANGUAGE AND - However, some of its implications appear
INTELLIGENCE to have reached mythical proportions.
- “LAURA MARTIN” who has done more than anyone
else to debunk the myth, understands why her colleagues
LANGUAGE THOUGHT might consider the myth charming. But she has been quite
“disappointed” in the reaction of her colleagues when she
pointed out the fallacy. Most, she says, took the position that
- One of the most interesting areas in the true or not ‘it’s still a great example’”
study of language is the relationship • LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY
between language and the thinking of the - refers to the assertion that speakers of
human mind. different languages have differing
- Many people believe that language cognitive systems and that these different
shapes thoughts. It is for this reason that cognitive systems influence the ways in
the Publication Manual of the AMERICAN which people think about the world.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION places - RELATIVITY VIEW: the Garo would think
big value on political correctness in about rice differently than we do.
researchers’ writings. And for this reason - For example, the Garo would develop
politicians and media use labels like more cognitive categories for rice than
“freedom fighters” versus “terrorists,” or would an English-speaking counterpart.
“surgical strikes” versus “bombing What would happen when the Garo
raids”. contemplated rice?
- They purportedly would view it
differently—and perhaps with greater
complexity of thought—than would
DIFFERENCES AMONG LANGUAGES:
English speakers, who have only a few
- different languages comprise different words for rice. Thus, language would
lexicons. shape thought.
- they also use different syntactical • MILDER LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM
structures. - it is that language may not determine
- these differences often reflect variations thought, but that language certainly may
in the physical and cultural environments influence thought.
in which the languages arose and - Our thoughts and our language interact in
developed myriad ways, only some of which we now
- IN LEXICON: one country may distinguish understand.
many kinds of rice because they are a - language facilitates thought; it even
rice-growing type of country, or a person affects perception and memory
that is not knowledgeable of computers - For some reason, we have limited means
wont need many words to describe it. by which to manipulate non-linguistic
- IN SYNTACTICAL STRUCTURES: What images. Such limitations make desirable
differs across languages is the order of the use of language to facilitate mental
subject, verb, and object in a typical representation and manipulation. Even
declarative sentence. Also differing is the nonsense pictures (“droodles”) are
range of grammatical inflections and recalled and redrawn differently,
other markings that speakers are obliged depending on the verbal label given to the
to include as key elements of a sentence. picture.
- Psychologists have used other
ambiguous figures that can be given
alternative labels. When participants are
given a particular label, they tend to draw
LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY & LINGUISTIC their recollection of the figure in a way
UNIVERSALS: more similar to the given label. For
example, after viewing a figure of two
• THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS circles connected by a single line, they
(LINGUISTIC-RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS) will draw a figure differently as a function
- named after the two men who were most of whether it is labeled “eyeglasses” or
- “EDWARD SAPIR” said that “we see and hear and “dumbbells”
otherwise experience very largely as we do because the
language habits of our community predispose certain choices
- Language also affects how we encode,
of interpretation” store, and retrieve information in
- “BENJAMIN LEE WHORF” stated this view even memory.
more strongly: “We dissect nature along lines laid down by our
native languages. The categories and types that we isolate
from the world of phenomena we do not find there because
they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the
world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which LANGUAGE & INTELLIGENCE:
has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by
the linguistic systems in our minds.”
• LANGUAGE
- The concept relevant to the question of
- is a cognition that truly makes us human.
whether language influences thinking is
Whereas other species do communicate
linguistic relativity.
with an innate ability to produce a limited
- forceful in propagating it.
number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g.
- has been one of the most widely
bonobos), or even with partially learned
discussed ideas in all of the social and
systems (e.g. bird songs), there is no
behavioral sciences.
other species known to date that can
 express infinite ideas (sentences) with a - This Chomskian (1965) approach to
limited set of symbols (speech sounds language acquisition has inspired
and words). hundreds of scholars to investigate the
nature of these assumed grammatical
categories and the research is still
ongoing.
INFANTS (12 MONTHS OLD)

- months are reported to have sensitivity to

the grammar needed to understand • LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE (HOWARD
causative sentences (who did what to GARDNER)
whom; e.g. the bunny pushed the frog - is a part of Howard Gardner's multiple
- After more than 60 years of research into intelligence theory that deals with
child language development, the individuals' ability to understand both
mechanism that enables children to spoken and written language, as well as
segment syllables and words out of the their ability to speak and write
strings of sounds they hear, and to themselves. In a practical sense,
acquire grammar to understand and linguistic intelligence is the extent to
produce language is still quite an enigma. which an individual can use language,
both written and verbal, to achieve goals.
- high linguistic intelligence has been
EARLY THEORIES: linked to improved problem-solving, as
well as to increased abstract reasoning.
• BEHAVIORISM (SKINNER) - In many cases, only the verbal aspects
- One of the earliest scientific explanations are taken into consideration. This is
of language acquisition usually referred to as verbal intelligence
- As one of the pioneers of Behaviorism, he or verbal fluency, and is commonly a
accounted for language development by reflection of an individual's overall
means of environmental influence. linguistic intelligence.
- Skinner argued that children learn
language based on behaviorist
reinforcement principles by associating
words with meanings. Correct utterances
are positively reinforced when the child SPOKEN LANGUAGE (SPEECH PRODUCTION)
realizes the communicative value of
words and phrases. - Speech production is process by which a
- For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother will thought in the brain is converted into an
smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this
outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language understandable auditory form. This is a
development multistage mechanism that involves many
different areas of the brain.
- In most cases, speech production is
• UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (NOAM controlled by the left hemisphere.
CHOMSKY) - “WILDER PENFIELD” among others, ,
- Skinner's account was soon heavily probed the brains of both right-handed
criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's (generally left-hemisphere dominant) and
most famous linguist to date left-handed (generally right-hemisphere
- In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the dominant) patients. They discovered that,
1950's, Chomsky argued that children will regardless of handedness, the left
never acquire the tools needed for hemisphere was almost always the
processing an infinite number of speech controlling side. However, it has
sentences if the language acquisition been discovered that in cases of neural
mechanism was dependent on language stress (hemorrhage, stroke, etc.) the
input alone. right hemisphere has the ability to take
- Consequently, he proposed the theory of control of speech functions.
Universal Grammar: an idea of innate,
biological grammatical categories, such
as a noun category and a verb category
STAGES:
that facilitate the entire language
development in children and overall 1) PLANNING
language processing in adults. - where the brain constructs words and
- Universal Grammar is considered to sentences that turn the thought into an
contain all the grammatical information understandable form. This occurs
needed to combine these categories, e.g. primarily in the inferior frontal cortex,
noun and verb, into phrases. The child’s specifically in an area known as Broca's
task is just to learn the words of her area
language (Ambridge & Lieven). 2) APPLY (PLAN HOW TO PHYSICALLY
- For example, according to the Universal CREATE THE SOUNDS)
Grammar account, children instinctively - the brain must plan how to physically
know how to combine a noun (e.g. a boy) create the sounds necessary for speech
and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, by linking the planned speech with known
correct phrase (A boy eats). sounds, or phonemes. While the location
 of these associations is not known, it is different set of muscles to write, than
known that the supplementary motor area when speaking.
plays a key role in this step.
3) SIGNALLING
- Finally, the brain must signal for the
• GENETIC LINKS
words to actually be spoken. This is
- While the capabilities of the physical
carried out by the premotor cortex and
structures used are large factors in
the motor cortex
determining linguistic intelligence, there
have been several genes that have been
linked to individual linguistic ability.
- THE NRXN1 GENE has been linked to
general language ability, and mutations of
COMPREHENSION this gene has been shown to cause major
issues to overall linguistic intelligence.
• VERBAL COMPREHENSION
- THE CNTNAP2 GENE is believed to affect
(WERNICKE’S AREA)
language development and performance,
- is a fairly complex process, and it is not
and mutations in this gene is thought to be
fully understood. From various studies
involved in autism spectrum disorders.
and experiments, it has been found that
- PCDH11 has been linked to language
the superior temporal sulcus activates
capacity, and it is believed to be one of the
when hearing human speech, and that
factors that accounts for the variation in
speech processing seems to occur within
linguistic intelligence.
Wernicke's area.
• WRITTEN COMPREHENSION
(WERNICKE’S AREA)
- similar to spoken comprehension, seems
to occur primarily in Wernicke’s area.
However, instead of using the auditory
system to gain language input, written
comprehension relies on the visual
system.

• AUDITORY FEEDBACK AND

FEEDFORWARD
-
Hearing plays an important part in both
speech generation and comprehension.
When speaking, the person can hear their
speech, and the brain uses what it hears
as a feedback mechanism to fix speech
errors. If a single feedback correction
occurs multiple times, the brain will begin
to incorporate the correction to all future
speech, making it a feed forward
mechanism. This is apparent in some deaf
people. Deafness, as well as other,
smaller deficiencies in hearing, can
greatly affect one's ability to comprehend
spoken language, as well as to speak it.
However, if the person loses hearing
ability later in life, most can still maintain
a normal level of verbal intelligence. This
is thought to be because of the brain's
feed forward mechanism still helping to
fix speech errors, even in the absence of
auditory feedback.

• WRITTEN LANGUAGE (BROCA’S AREA)

- Generation of written language is thought
to be closely related to speech
generation, relying on Broca's area for
early processing and on the inferior
frontal gyrus for semantic processing.
However, writing differs in two major
ways. First, instead of relating the thought
to sounds, the brain must relate the
thought to symbols or letters, and
second, the motor cortex activates a
LESSON 3: INDIVIDUAL AND
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN
LANGUAGE USAGE LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL CONTEXT:

• PRAGMATICS
- The study of how people use language.
ACCORDING TO THE DICTIONARY OF • SOCIOLINGUISTICS
EDUCATION: - How social factors like culture affects the
language or how their language changes
- individual differences stand for the depending on the situation or person they
variation or deviations among individuals are speaking with.
in regard to a single characteristic or • COMMON GROUND
number of characteristics. It is stand for - Shared background, knowledge, motives,
those differences which in their totality or goals, which makes it easier for
distinguish one individual from conversational partners to understand
another. So, we can say that individual each other.
differences is the differences among
humans that distinguish or separate them
• NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
from one another and makes one as a
- “GESTURES & VOCAL INFLECTIONS” are
single unique individual.
forms of NV communication
- “PERSONAL SPACE” is one aspect of NV
communication, which refers to the
distance which the person might feel
comfortable with.
MAIN CAUSES OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES:
- “PROXEMICS” is the study of
interpersonal distance or its opposite,
1) HEREDITARY (NATURE) proximity. It concerns itself with relative
- Individuals have various endowments, distancing and the positioning of you and
abilities, and capacities provided by your fellow conversants. (Within a given culture,
hereditary. Which decide the path of greater proximity generally indicates one or more of three
things. First, the people see themselves in a close relationship.
progress and development of an Second, the people are participating in a social situation that
individual. Hereditary also put limits upon permits violation of the bubble of personal space, such as
close dancing. Third, the “violator” of the bubble is dominating
individuals’ growth and development in the interaction)
various dimensions. Hereditary also
contributes to sex, intelligence, and other • NEGATION
specific abilities. - speakers of Asian languages are more
likely to use negation than English
2) ENVIRONMENT (NURTURE) speakers. Our goal in this work is to
- Environment also plays key role in explore this theory using empirical data
individual differences. No person from from news stories.
birth to death gets the same environment. - Negation means “INDIRECTLY” saying
Individual differences occur on the basis what you want like how Asians do.
of simulation received by individual from - Example: “it doesn’t seem suitable to the
his or her internal and external theme” might mean, “I don’t like that”.
environment. This may include family set
up, peer group, economic statues,
education etc.

NOTE:
- It is debatable that whether nature or
nurture play vital or stronger role in
development of an individual in specific
direction. Both are strong contenders in
order to distinguish one individual from
other.
- Individual differences play a crucial role
in language learning and usage especially
among children. The level of intelligence,
motivation or interest, attention span,
physical and physiological conditions
(also medical condition), degree of
experiences and exposure to language,
degree of support by the family and many
more factors are taken into account by
the learning provider (teacher) when
teaching a language to a child.
LESSON 4: RESEARCHES IN AI promises to take humans and our flawed intelligence
out of machines. Machines are meant to replace us — but only where they
LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE can do better, of course! Sometimes we program them to do certain tasks,
but increasingly machines can learn on their own, faster than we could ever
DEVELOPMENT teach them.

Why, then, do I think we should put babies and their inchoate

intelligence into machines? I am a cognitive scientist who studies human
cognitive development, and my research in CogSci (Cognitive Science)
convinces me that babies — like the one in the back of the car — have a lot
LANGUAGE AND PSYCHOLOGY to teach machines and will help them learn better. Indeed, one of the most
exciting collaborations in the coming years will be between CogSci and AI.
- two fields which have been studied for
centuries to uncover the building stones Not only will babies help us build better machines, but
machines will help us build better babies! OK, that’s a bit of an
of them and find out how human mind exaggeration. Still, AI promises to help us scientists better probe the
processes. It is an apodeictic fact that origins and development of human thought. With what scientists learn, we
may then design educational programs that, in a sense, help us build better
language and psychology are babies.
interrelated, and these fields influence
one another. Putting the baby in the machine
Contemporary cognitive science understands a baby’s
intelligence as founded on at least three cognitive capacities. The first is a
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS series of domain-specific knowledge systems that allow us to recognize
- the title of the field where you may study and interact with particular facets of human life, such as physical
objects, other agents with their own goals, and the spaces we navigate. The
how language and psychology affect second is a set of learning mechanisms that enables us to build efficiently
each other. and effectively on this rudimentary knowledge. And finally, there is our
readiness for language.

These three capacities emerge early in human development —

Read the following article: they may even be innate — and are the foundation of our intellectual and
cultural flourishing. I suggest using them as a starting point to develop AI
“Exams may damage teenagers’ mental health and restrict their potential” from CogSci.
by Kathryn Bates, August 22, 2019
Why? Well, one of the challenges of building AI from scratch is
All around the UK, teenagers face an extensive set of exams at deciding what knowledge to start with. Some believe that AI is most elegant
a critical time in their social, emotional and cognitive development. or powerful when it emerges from nothing, written on a blank slate, coded
Researchers and educators are questioning whether the stress of national only with ideal learning mechanisms. When humans learn, we sometimes
exams may be detrimental to teens’ future success. use something like Bayes Rule, a mathematical way to update our
understanding of the world given new information. Even babies do this! This
algorithm exists in every human mind but also in the abstract realm of
Sitting an exam is nothing short of an emotional rollercoaster: mathematics, which means it can be programmed into a computer. With
the weeks of anticipation, sweaty palms, racing heart, self-doubt… a burst such mathematical tools, the best AI should be able to learn anything and
of courage! And finally, exhaustion. Children and teenagers face this everything … and simply.
common experience throughout their development as educators seek to
measure students’ knowledge and understanding of subject matter. But our most foundational knowledge isn’t learned; it has
Although exams may be important, it could be time to rethink the pressure
they place on young people. already been “learned” for us through evolution. Our evolutionary
inheritance is a gift of knowledge — knowledge about objects, agents, and
Ground-breaking discoveries in developmental science have spaces, for example. As babies learn, their starting point is this common
shown that the brain develops extensively during adolescence. For sense human intelligence. If we want AI to have human intelligence, it too
instance, research has shown brain regions that underpin social cognition,
should start with our inherited knowledge. We should give AI both
including reasoning and interpreting others’ feelings and emotions, are still
developing structurally and functionally during adolescence. In addition, mathematical and cognitive tools.
areas of the brain supporting high-level cognitive functions such as
inhibition and decision-making are maturing. Thus, teenagers learn to form
more complex relationships, as they become increasingly aware of how Building better machines
they are viewed by those around them and begin to delve into the But wait: Is our goal really for AI to have human intelligence? In
complicated world of love and lust. some cases, no: We want machines to perform better than humans, like
self-driving cars with infrared vision and perfect traffic prediction.

This concoction of functional and structural brain development Other cases are not so clear. What if a self-driving car faces
coincides with a crucial time in young people’s education when they are the moral dilemma known as the Trolley Problem? Perhaps an impersonal
deepening knowledge and learning new skills. However, the period is also algorithm would provide consistent fairness in such impossible situations.
one of vulnerability because of the brain’s heightened adaptability to Or perhaps cold calculations are too inhuman, or at least inappropriately
environmental experiences and physiological changes. A recent review non-human, for moral decisions. If so, modeling human moral reasoning will
noted that over 70% of mental health illnesses are diagnosed before 18 be just as important as modeling impersonal physics.
years of age, and evidence suggests that exposure to stress during
childhood and adolescence greatly increases the likelihood of developing I argue that there are at least two areas where it’s clear that
psychiatric disorders later in life. we should want AI to look like human intelligence, allowing AI to better
understand us and us to better understand AI.

At age 16, students in the UK are required to take General AI that understands us could better capture the complex
Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams in both core and elective behavior of human societies, from business transactions to international
subjects, which could amount to as many as 16 national exams in just a few relations. This AI could predict more precisely what markets or nations and
weeks. Until 2013, GCSEs represented the end of school qualification in the the humans who make them run will really do. Likewise, AI that we can
UK; however, under new requirements students must continue their understand could better explain such complex behavior to us. The goal of
education or training until age 18, when they face additional required science has traditionally been to explain the world rather than just predict
exams. its behavior. AI can do all the complicated computation it wants, but without
a common vocabulary grounded in a common intelligence, we may not be
able to understand its results.
Educators and researchers alike have questioned this
extensive testing of adolescents in the midst of this period of amplified brain Building better babies
development. For example, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor in Cognitive AI modeled after human intelligence may allow us to better
Neuroscience and leading expert on the adolescent brain, has argued that understand and perhaps improve human cognition. By taking theories from
GCSEs impose unnecessary stress on adolescents, and head teachers and basic research, like the three capacities I outlined above, cognitive
union leaders have called for this outdated procedure to be replaced by scientists will be able to actually test whether human knowledge can be
more “light-touch” assessments. built from the foundations our developmental theories postulate.

Our efforts will be most effective if we test CogSci-based AI

Adolescence is characterized by heightened brain and babies’ natural intelligence in tandem on a large-scale, with nearly
development, which may have lifelong implications for an individual’s identical stimuli and outcome measures. A first step will be to move beyond
mental health and learning potential; therefore, subjecting 16-year-olds to controlled laboratory settings to the environments in which human
national exams may be more harmful than beneficial. The cumulative knowledge actually grows. With portable or online developmental labs like
findings in this field of research call for a review of current national Lookit, we can also overcome the challenge of large-scale data collection
examination systems to improve the overall well-being of young people and with babies and reach larger, more diverse populations.
to support them in fulfilling their potential.
As we refine our knowledge of foundational human cognitive
capacities, we can build those capacities into AI, generating tests for both
Read the following article: machine and baby. And we can use results from one to understand the
other. Let’s encourage AI and CogSci to toddle together, driving each other
“Cognitive Artificial Intelligence: Building better machines (and babies!)” forward.
by Moira Dillon, September 24, 2019

Imagine a car travelling 60 mph. In the back seat, a baby sound

asleep, and in the front, the baby’s parents — also asleep. One day soon
such a scene will not make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up.
Instead, we will rest just as easy as these parents, knowing that AI (Artificial
Intelligence) has given us self-driving cars and the safest roads in human
history.