We have a talking ape now! Baby's First 'Real" Word

Today Baby Field Notes said her first 'real' word: UP.

Previously she has said 'BIG,' which blew me away because, a) she's a very quiet child who doesn't really babble on and on so we've rarely heard vowel and and even fewer consonant sounds, b) was late to giggle, c) was only about 8 months old, and d) perfectly enunciated the word: BIG. It really surprised me. She's certainly heard that word a lot, what with two enormous dogs keeping her company!

This time was different though, because she used UP in the right context, intentionally, and along with the right gesture. When she said BIG it probably was unintentional. I think she was just experimenting with her tongue and mouth and voice. It wasn't in the right situation, at least not without making up a story, and wasn't coincident with any meaningful gesture, so it really can't be considered language.

But what is language? It's complicated but you can glean a lot from this excellent discussion, if you click here.

Learn to Count Auf Deutsch

While I was looking for a version of "Eins Zwei Polizei" on YouTube, I stumbled on this stop-motion animation that teaches you how to count in German, at least up to funf (5). It's amusing and charming. At the end, the groundhog stacks several pretzels and munches one.



Here's "Eins Zwei Polizei," a really catchy techno song that Mr. Field Notes discovered recently on YouTube. He says it's a traditional bed time song, although this particular song's beat is not exactly soporific! In any case, it combines counting, rhymes and repetition — perfect stuff for kids — and is really catchy.

Click here for "Eins Zwei Polizei."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frgIofVHJ08

Alexandra enjoyed listening to it the other night.

Don't talk to your baby! Blackberry instead.

She's just a little monkey at this point anyway.

The guilt trips that new mothers give themselves for not talking or playing enough with their infants is ridiculous — an unwarranted. Take for instance a mother of a 2 month old I know who put a sign up over her TV reminding her to talk to her daughter instead of watching TV while she breastfeeds her. Today I was reminded of this while reading a New York Times opinion piece, 'From Birth, Engage Your Child With Talk,' on my iPhone while sitting next to my baby, who was alas, not asleep. While I could have spent the entire time talking to her while I was in the car waiting for Mr. Field Notes to return with a new supply of bulk nuts from the grocery store, I instead chose to read news on my NYT's iPhone app. I admit, I felt a twinge of guilt, but it quickly dissipated.

A 2-month-old is developmentally incapable of attaching meaning to what you say; it's far more important to just interact, which you can certainly do when your baby is in the mood. Babies don't always want to interact with their parents, and they definitely let you know when they are interested. The first sign is that they return or hold eye contact. Sometimes they just want to observe stimuli around them and sad to say it, but your face isn't always the most interesting thing in the room and certainly isn't when you're breastfeeding — then it is 99% about the boob.

When not eating, Baby Field Notes finds the overhead fan appealing. The dark blades stand out in stark contrast to the white ceiling. Ditto for the shelves on the wall. She will look at them, relaxed and attentive, after she's eaten, that is if she's still awake. I rarely talk to her while I feed her. She can't respond back anyways. Bonding over a meal while talking is something reserved for a later developmental stage. There's time enough to talk during other activities (like during diaper changes), so I say, go ahead and Blackberry or iPhone or text or do whatever you do while breastfeeding baby and don't feel guilty about it.

I don't spend much time 'talking' to Baby Field Notes and when do, I often make the sounds an ape would make to her infant — soft oooohs and aaaahs, some high pitched squeals and staccato giggle grunts too — because those are the sounds she responds to. I don't think that's an accident. At this stage, she really is more simian than human. I do speak to her, but I don't always enunciate, e.g. "I wub you," and I don't always use perfect grammer, e.g. "Oh, you so cute, cute, cute, so cute you!" As long as they are exposed to language during the critical period from birth to age 7 or so, children can speak and can acquire perfect grammar and syntax — the hallmarks of language. In fact, studies have shown that this "motherese" language pattern of using short, simplified sentences, repeating words often, and using high pitched intonation is a human universal, probably because it helps in language acquisition.

For some evidence that infants are more simian than human at this early stage of development, one need only look at the shape of their vocal tracts. Apes and adult humans have a noticeably different layout of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat) and tongue, as you can see in the diagram that I colored so you can more easily make them out. Compared to other apes, humans have an elongated pharynx (red) and a lower larynx (purple) that is situated below rather than behind the tongue (pink). The image to the right shows the layout of a human infant's vocal tract. You can see that it more closely resembles the nonhuman ape anatomy. As an infant matures, these parts shift toward their final, adult human form — and with it, the ability to make the full range of human sounds. Similar structural changes occur in the infant's developing brain. As the infant's tongue develops more coordination and control, so too do parts of the infant's brain related to speech.

At the tender age of 2 months and for several months more, babies can't understand speech, let alone what the heck you're carrying on about when you name all the random stuff in your field of view (as the woman in the NYT article did). Babies can only judge whether or not you respond in a timely and appropriate fashion to their calls for help — so go ahead and take care of that email, get caught up on those TV shows you enjoy, read that magazine article — and tend to that crying baby by feeding her when she's hungry, changing her diaper when it's wet and saying silly things to make her smile when she's bored. There will be plenty of time later for conversations.

Easy Early Language Immersion

Developmental psychologists say people must be exposed to (hear and speak) all the sounds of a language in order to be able to speak it without a discernible accent later in life. People who learn a second language as an adult miss out on the important early sounds so they always speak with an accent, it is said. I don't know if I completely 'buy' that or not. But, I still want Baby Field Notes to grow up with some foreign language familiarity so she's confident in learning new languages.

At the FN's house we speak English and ... newfie. Which is to say, barks and groans and yowls and yelps are regularly heard and we're pretty good at communicating back. I really don't want newfie to be her second language. If all goes well, and we get to stay living here in this awesome town, Baby Field Notes will grow up being exposed to lots of Spanish — mainly in elementary school where the school she'd attend has a funky dual language immersion program. Mr. FN and I both know a smattering of Spanish from having taken it in high school and college so that will help us learn with her, theoretically at least. Mr. FN also speaks some German and although I can no longer speak it very well, I can still read French and plan to improve my speaking and reading skills over the coming years. Mr. Field Notes also does reasonably well with Japanese and me with Arabic.

One of the first ways Baby FN will be introduced to foreign language is through music. She's already started listening to Outlandish, a hip hop group from Denmark that performs in English, Spanish and Arabic. I've also got a good collection of French pop music: Mister Gang, Isabelle Boulay, and Teri Moise.

We've got loads of kids books too, mostly in French for later and for me now. Some are from the series Le Petit Ours Brun (The Little Brown Bear), another is Les Oeufs Verts au Jambon (Green Eggs and Ham) and of course, Antoine de St. Exupery's Le Petit Prince. We've got that on audio too — an unabridged version. Dessine-moi un mouton! I've already been having fun with that.
We'll have no lack of language resources. We just need to find some native speakers and travel a lot along the way.

Our supply of Japanese immersion material is pretty limited, but what we do have is awesome — some flash cards, dictionaries of kanji, a neat iPhone app, and a conversational language learning program by Pimsleur. I found it was very helpful for learning some Arabic. I also commissioned a special quilt with letters from the Japanese hirigana alphabet from a Japanese quilt maker I randomly found on etsy. When I saw the alphabet quilts she was making, I knew I had to have one for Baby Field Notes to use as a play mat. Here's what we came up with:


Hirgana is used for Japanese words for which there is no kanji. EmiShimosato is the place to go to get your own quilt. She has excellent craftsmanship, is very friendly and also makes non-Japanese quilts. Perhaps eventually I'll have her make us a katakana quilt too. I am still kicking myself a bit for not buying the magnetic alphabet set I saw in a dollar store in Japan. I should have. Every kid needs magnetic letters for the fridge and Japanese ones would certainly be unique. I figure she'll have this in case she wants to learn Japanese.

I think people not exposed as a child to a foreign language can learn, albeit with difficulty, to pronounce unusual sounds from a foreign language that are not present in their native tongue. But it takes practice, a good ear and a keen sense of muscle coordination between the mouth and tongue. It's much easier to just be exposed early and regularly to the sounds so they don't 'fall out' of the lexicon in the first place.

Spectacular Japanese Signs you have to see

Signs in Japan are nothing short of spectacular. Sometimes spectacularly bad. I think a good sign communicates an unambiguous message. The truly awful ones in Japan, and there are an impressive number and variety of them, all leave much room for interpretation. Here are two of the truly great signs followed by the most spectacularly awful sign I may have ever seen.

The Inscrutable Sign

Its meaning was the subject of much conversation. If you can provide a convincing interpretation of what the sign means, I have a green tea KitKat candy bar I'll send to you as a reward. We are still puzzling it out ourselves.

In case you have difficulty reading the sign as an image, here's the text:
Please do not see it while drinking drink. The PET bottle caps it and put it in a bag, and please carry it. Please see the thing which the chief does not have after finishing drinking.

And here is the sign in context, on a vending machine near a rest area on the grounds of Nijo castle in Kyoto.
And, just in case you come away thinking that only the dog-related signs in Japan are clear, here's one to dispel that notion:


To me, it looks like a dog giving a pair of cats a lecture about garbage, but really, your guess is as good as mine!

Improve your vocabulary: A Step By Step Guide That Works for the SAT/GRE

What follows is my plan for learning 1,000 new words in one month in 30 minutes a day.

Around this time of year college seniors start growing anxious about their impending GRE tests. The Graduate Record Exam is a roughly 3-hour long exam that tests a student's language, math, and analytical skills. Most graduate schools require the exam and admission depends on it.

One of the easiest portions of the exam to study for is also the most immediately beneficial: Vocabulary.

Now, when I took the exam for the first time I foolishly scheduled it on the same day I also took the other 3-hour long exam for admission specifically to psychology graduate programs. When my scores arrived in the mail I was relieved to see that I had aced the psychology exam but shocked to see that my verbal score was utterly abysmal. I'm not kidding. My score was at least 200 points lower than what it needed to be for graduate school. Sure, I could write well and express myself – at times eloquently according to one prof. However, the breadth of my vocabulary limited me.

I resolved right then to improve my vocabulary.

What follows is a step-by-step guide to doing what I did to expand my vocabulary. If you follow it, I am confident it will work for you too.

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RESOURCE
First, get your hands on a copy (or two!) of the Word Smart books published by the Princeton Review. They publish a "hit list" of the words that appear most frequently on the GRE and SAT exams.

FLASH CARDS
Prepare some blank note cards – make them 1.5 inches square. As you go through the Word Smart book, write down every word you don't know the definition of. Put each word IN ALL CAPS on one side and the definition in your own words on the other side. Be liberal. If you only sort of know a word, make a card. Don't assume you'll understand it later when you take the test and are short on time.

Writing the definitions in your own words is crucial. Learning is less effective if you copy definitions from the dictionary and word smart books. Keep your definitions short and simple. A word or phrase is enough.

PRIORITIZE
The Word Smart books are organized so the the most frequently appearing words are noted. I put a star on the upper right corner of the flash card to distinguish the high priority words. Learn them first.

ORGANIZE
I ended up making about 1,000 flash cards, but the number you make will depend on how many words you don't immediately know when going through the Word Smart books. You will need 4 containers to keep the cards. One holds the starred cards, another the un-starred cards. Another is for words you learn along the way that you keep 'in rotation.' The final container is reserved for 'retired' cards. Miniature gift bags about 3x3x2 inches work well; so do the ubiquitous large plastic dixie cups endemic to college campuses.

METHOD
From your high priority pile, select about 25-30 cards at random. This is your short stack. You can go up to 30 but I wouldn't advise any more unless you can devote more than a half hour each day to this. Read each word and attempt to define it in your head. If you can't after thinking about it for 2 seconds, flip it over and check the definition. Use it in a sentence. Do this with all of the cards in your short stack and repeat as many times as you can in one sitting. Always shuffle before repeating. You should spend about 30 minutes going through your cards. When you're done, set them aside in your 'in rotation' container.

The next day, or better yet, later that day – go through your short stack from the previous study session. Each word you 'get right' – make a little hash mark in the lower corner of the card in pencil. Put them in your 'in rotation' container. Your learned container will be nearly empty for awhile. Your goal is to fill it with all of your flash cards.

With each new study session, add new cards from the starred pile to equal the number of cards you put in your rotation cup the previous day. Always choose them at random. Go through the cards and hash mark the ones you know. You'll recall a few from the previous session. Remember to put the hash marked cards in your 'learned' pile. Eventually you'll run out of the starred cards and you can replace with the un-starred ones.

REFRESHER
When you have about 25-30 cards in your learned pile – go through them. If you don't get a definition right, put the card back in your short stack. It goes back into rotation. If you get it right, put another hash mark on the card. You'll need to do this refresher step every couple of days to make sure you retain the words. When a card has 5 hash marks, consider it learned and retire it. Put it in the 'retired' container for as long as you want.

**********************

Use the words you learn in conversations. Insert them in place of more mundane adjectives. Play the alphabet game, vocabulary word category. I play the alphabet game frequently with Mr. Field Notes to stay alert on long car trips or whenever we're bored and trapped with nothing better to do. Someone starts with A and says an oddball vocab word that starts with A - but only if they know the definition. If the other person doesn't know it, you have to define it. The next person takes B and so on until you reach Z.

Amity Bombastic Canard Diffident Effluvium Fetid ... and so on.

I bumped up my GRE verbal score 200 points by doing this and am happy to report I recall many of those words I learned some twelve years ago.

Kudos to those who can define the words in the cards pictured above or know the words given the definition. You are a step ahead already.

Sign-language chimp Washoe dies at 42

Washoe, a female chimpanzee who for years has been living right up the road from me at Central Washington University's Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, was widely regarded to be the first chimpanzee to ever show scientifically verified language production and comprehension. She's a very special girl, a celebrity ape, if you will.

According to a press release, she died of natural causes last night at the age of 42. Three younger chimps who also know some sign language remain at the institute: Tatu, 31, Dar, 31, and Loulis, 29, Washoe's adopted son. Washoe was the matriarch of the family.

Washoe was the only chimpanzee who participated in the language studies at CHCI who was born in the wild. She was named for Washoe County, NV, the place she lived for the first four years of "Project Washoe," an ambitious experiment begun in the 1960s by Beatrix and Allen Gardner, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada.

Previous attempts to teach chimpanzees to say words had failed. Only later did it come to be recognized that the vocal tracts of chimpanzees and humans are sufficiently different to prevent chimpanzees from articulating distinct sounds like humans can. Chimp hands are almost as dexterous as human hands though, so the Gardners embarked on the painstaking process of teaching Washoe to mould her hands in the form of signs from the lexicon of American Sign Language.

Roger Fouts, director of the CHCI, started out as a graduate student working with the Gardners. Eventually he took over for the Gardners and added more chimpanzees to the sign language studies. His best-selling book, Next of Kin, chronicles the history of Project Washoe and his personal experience working with Washoe.

According to the book, Washoe had a working vocabulary of about 250 words. She could follow spoken directions, communicate her wishes, and also string words together in a meaningful sequence - something that is considered to be the hallmark of language.

Although the question of whether chimpanzees can understand and use language remains open for debate, the fact remains that Washoe is a pioneer. She was the first chimpanzee to show that the question is even worth considering.

Project Washoe helped launch other ape language projects, namely Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's work with bonobos and Penny Patterson's work with Koko the gorilla.

... para El Dia de Los Muertos, Washoe, R.I.P.
Her memorial will be Nov. 12 and I am seriously considering going.

Getting the language right

When the press says we've found a gene "for" something, what it ought to say is that we've found an allele that affects something.

I could not agree more.

Anthropologists may want to read a story from John Hawks Anthropology Web about the latest research on one of my favorite genes, FOXP2, which affects language.

The Gift of Language

One of the benefits of sticking around the college (and specifically sitting in on a colleague's class) even though I'm not teaching this semester, is that I still get to have engaging conversations with bright students. These conversations truly are gifts. Oh man, it also reminds me of what I miss out on by not teaching. Well, I'll be back into it soon enough! That's what I remind myself in moments of doubt.

This morning's conversation evolved from a simple comment at the end of class about how a video of Washoe, a sign language trained chimp, which was shown in a different class was not as impressive as the one I showed in class last year. Here I had to negotiate the murky territory of being this student's prof last year, sitting in a class as a 'student' with him, and hearing comments about my colleague and how he should have used some other (better) video.

First, I asked the student to defend his statement that the video I had shown was in fact more impressive. I simply responded, "Oh yeah? What part?" To which he gave a typical student response, "Oh uh, mmmm, the whole thing." He conveyed his enthusiasm for the video nonverbally.

We then proceeded to have a wonderful conversation that brought up some core issues in the evolution of thought on language evolution. I was even able to impart a bit of information that he found utterly fascinating. It was all so very rewarding, and just what I needed. I'm finally beginning to understand what Henry Gleitman meant when he told me "Research is your bread; Teaching is the cake."

I shared with this student that for me, what excited me the most was the scene where Sue (Savage-Rumbaugh) cooks alongside Kanzi in a kitchen. He follows her spoken directions to rinse off a knife, turn on the burner, and other actions involved in preparing a meal with such seemlessness that it appears he must for certain understand language. I added - "BUT my scientific mind remains critical off this. They could have gone through these motions so many times and be so well rehearsed that all Sue does is add labels to his actions."

I don't really believe this because I have seen the results of many double blind tests that show definitively that Kanzi understands spoken language, can produce language with lexigrams, and shows evidence of understanding syntax. He can tell the difference between "Pour the water into the Coke" and "Pour the Coke into the water" for example. But I wanted the student to think critically about the possibility that Kanzi has been conditioned to do what he does. Incidentally, the topic for the intro psych class was classical conditioning so we had a perfect prime for our discussion.

"Couldn't we say then that human language is learned conditioned associations?" He asked.

"Oh yes, indeed! You've just hit on one of the great debates of psychology," I said. "B.F. Skinner proposed that very idea in his book Verbal Behavior."

So then is it all learning? he ponders aloud. "Well that is the age-old debate," I added.

At this point we transitioned into a conversation about how one system of communication (human language, chimp gestures, dog signals, squirrels squeaks, etc) is not inherently superior to another and that really they all exist because they solved some problem or conferred advantages. I asked him to consider what language does for us that chimps miss out on - the ability to share information, talk about what's not present, and plan ahead. This gives us a tremendous advantage and may explain why humans took the evolutionary trajectory they did rather than go the direction chimps did.

Here the student asked a terrific question: "But why did we develop language and not chimps when it's so beneficial?" He adds, "And why does Kanzi have what he has; what does that say about bonobos?"

I told him that Steven Pinker writes about this and his theory of language evolution in his book The Language Instinct. Pinker proposes that Language is the product of a freak genetic mutational accident. I even called it a gift.

At this point my student, who is now trying to wrap his head around the idea, asks or comments on something that prompts me to say:

"Ah! But yes there is - it's the FOXP2 gene."

I told him about how deficiencies in this area of genetic code are associated with deficiencies in language that mimic Broca's aphasia, a condition remarkable for the utter lack of patients' ability to produce syntactically correct sentences. They produce pure gibberish.

"Woah! Really?" he exclaims. "So we really are biochemical machines." He must have been picturing Descartes. "I already was already heading there but now I'm there!" (or something like that) he mutters as he walks off in the direction of the science building...

Students like him make my day.

If you'd like to read some of my other thoughts on language and apes, click here.