Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Language and Cognition

Language and Cognition

Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.

Cognitivism

Cognitivism

Cognitive psychology emerged as a significant field in the mid-20th century. It focused on understanding humans' internal mental processes. This approach emphasizes how people perceive, remember, think, and solve problems—elements critical to human cognition.
Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process information is...

Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language

Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language

Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
Language formation and comprehension take place in the dominant hemisphere. The dominant hemisphere is responsible for understanding the meaning of spoken, written, or sign language, as well as the ability to communicate. For most people, the left hemisphere is the dominant one. The right hemisphere, then, gives tone and emotional context to the...

Interference and Decay

Interference and Decay

Forgetting is a complex cognitive phenomenon influenced by several factors, among which interference and decay are particularly prominent. These processes explain why individuals often struggle to retrieve specific information from memory, leading to lapses in recall that can be observed in everyday situations.
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...

Components of Language

Components of Language

Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs. “eh”). Phonemes combine to...

Language Development

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Comparing Two Smoothing Approaches in Estimating Kinematic Parameters.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2024

Same author

Speech Fluency Production and Perception in L1 (Slovak) and L2 (English) Read Speech.

Language and speech·2024

Same author

Measuring Prosodic Entrainment in Conversation: A Review and Comparison of Different Methods.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2023

Same author

How thresholding in segmentation affects the regression performance of the linear model.

JASA express letters·2023

Same author

Spatiotemporal coordination in word-medial stop-lateral and s-stop clusters of American English.

Phonetica·2021

Same author

Prosodic cues for emotion: analysis with discrete characterization of intonation.

Speech prosody (Urbana, Ill.)·2021

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 31, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Dynamics of phonological cognition.

Adamantios I Gafos¹, Stefan Benus

¹Department of Linguistics, New York University and Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, ConnecticutDepartment of Computer Science, Columbia University.

Cognitive Science

|June 28, 2011

Summary

This study models the connection between continuous speech sounds and discrete language rules using nonlinear dynamics. It explores voicing neutralization and vowel harmony to bridge phonetic performance and phonological competence.

More Related Videos

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Published on: June 29, 2021

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 31, 2026

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

Published on: July 1, 2015

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Published on: June 29, 2021

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

Area of Science:

Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonology
Computational Linguistics
Cognitive Science

Background:

Spoken language presents a fundamental challenge: reconciling continuous phonetic variations with discrete phonological rules.
Understanding this duality is crucial for modeling speech production and perception.
Previous models have often struggled to bridge these two levels of linguistic representation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between continuous phonetic features and discrete phonological structures.
To develop a unified model that accounts for both phonetic performance and phonological competence.
To apply mathematical frameworks to linguistic phenomena like voicing neutralization and vowel harmony.

Main Methods:

Utilizing the mathematical framework of nonlinear dynamics.
Developing computational models to simulate phonetic distinctions.
Analyzing experimental data on voicing neutralization and vowel harmony.
Linking continuous acoustic measurements to discrete phonological categories.

Main Results:

Demonstrated a successful linkage between continuous phonetic distinctions and discrete phonological forms.
Provided a novel dynamical systems approach to phonological phenomena.
Showcased the applicability of nonlinear dynamics to linguistic problems.
Offered insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying speech processing.

Conclusions:

Nonlinear dynamics offers a powerful tool for modeling the continuous-discrete duality in spoken language.
The proposed models successfully integrate phonetic and phonological levels of analysis.
This approach advances our understanding of fundamental linguistic processes and their cognitive underpinnings.