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Michael C. Frank
Michael C. Frank is a developmental psychologist at Stanford University who proposed that infants' language development may be thought of as a process of Bayesian inference Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, a .... He has also studied the role of language in numerical cognition by comparing the performance of native Pirahã language speakers to that of MIT undergraduate students in numeric tasks. For this work, he traveled to Amazonas, Brazil with Daniel Everett, a linguist best known for his claim that Pirahã disproves a crucial component of Noam Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, recursion. Frank won the Cognitive Science Society's prestigious Marr Award for this work in 2008.List oMarr Award winners published by the Cognitive Science Society References ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Developmental Psychologist
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation. Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature ''and'' nurture on the process of human development, as well as processes of change in context across time. Many researchers are interested in the interactions among p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a List of United States senators from California, U.S. senator and former List of governors of California, governor of California who made his fortune as a Big Four (Central Pacific Railroad), railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Development
Language development in humans is a process starting early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice and differentiate them from other sounds after birth. Typically, children develop receptive language abilities before their verbal or expressive language develops. Receptive language is the internal processing and understanding of language. As receptive language continues to increase, expressive language begins to slowly develop. Usually, productive/expressive language is considered to begin with a stage of pre-verbal communication in which infants use gestures and vocalizations to make their intents known to others. According to a general principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that children learn words to expr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayesian Inference
Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, and especially in mathematical statistics. Bayesian updating is particularly important in the Sequential analysis, dynamic analysis of a sequence of data. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, engineering, philosophy, medicine, sport, and law. In the philosophy of decision theory, Bayesian inference is closely related to subjective probability, often called "Bayesian probability". Introduction to Bayes' rule Formal explanation Bayesian inference derives the posterior probability as a consequence relation, consequence of two Antecedent (logic), antecedents: a prior probability and a "likelihood function" derived from a statistical model for the observed data. Bayesian inference computes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Numerical Cognition
Numerical cognition is a subdiscipline of cognitive science that studies the cognitive, developmental and neural bases of numbers and mathematics. As with many cognitive science endeavors, this is a highly interdisciplinary topic, and includes researchers in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience and cognitive linguistics. This discipline, although it may interact with questions in the philosophy of mathematics, is primarily concerned with empirical questions. Topics included in the domain of numerical cognition include: *How do non-human animals process numerosity? *How do infants acquire an understanding of numbers (and how much is inborn)? *How do humans associate linguistic symbols with numerical quantities? *How do these capacities underlie our ability to perform complex calculations? *What are the neural bases of these abilities, both in humans and in non-humans? *What metaphorical capacities and processes allow us to extend our numerical understand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirahã Language
Pirahã (also spelled ''Pirahá, Pirahán''), or Múra-Pirahã, is the indigenous language of the isolated Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. Pirahã is the only surviving dialect of the Mura language, all others having died out in the last few centuries as most groups of the Mura people have shifted to Portuguese. Suspected relatives, such as Matanawi, are also extinct. It is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is not in immediate danger of extinction, as its use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is mostly monolingual. The Pirahã language is most notable as the subject of various controversial claims; for example, that it provides evidence for linguistic relativity. The controversy is compounded by the sheer difficulty of learning the language; the number of linguists with field experience in Pirahã is very small. Phonology The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amazonas, Brazil
Amazonas () is a state of Brazil, located in the North Region in the northwestern corner of the country. It is the largest Brazilian state by area and the 9th largest country subdivision in the world, and the largest in South America, being greater than the areas of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile combined. Mostly located in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the third largest country subdivision in the Southern Hemisphere after the Australian states of Western Australia and Queensland. Entirely in the Western Hemisphere, it is the fourth largest in the Western Hemisphere after Greenland, Nunavut and Alaska. It would be the sixteenth largest country in land area, slightly larger than Mongolia. Neighbouring states are (from the north clockwise) Roraima, Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Acre. It also borders the nations of Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. This includes the Departments of Amazonas, Vaupés and Guainía in Colombia, as well as the Amazonas state in Venezuela, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Everett
Daniel Leonard Everett (born 26 July 1951) is an American linguist and author best known for his study of the Amazon basin's Pirahã people and their language. Everett is currently Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. From July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2018, Everett served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley. Prior to Bentley University, Everett was chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He has taught at the University of Manchester and the University of Campinas and is former chair of the Linguistics Department of the University of Pittsburgh. Early life Everett was raised near the Mexican border in Holtville, California. His father was an occasional cowboy, mechanic, and construction worker. His mother was a waitress at a local restaurant. Everett played in rock bands from the time he was 11 years old until converting to Christianity at age 17, aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. Born to Ashkenazi Jews, Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Grammar
Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition, children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However, the latter has not been firmly established, as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare. It is a matter of empirical investigation to determine precisely what properties are universal and what linguistic capacities are innate. Argument The theory of universal grammar proposes that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions (not those ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Science Society
The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society promotes scientific interchange among researchers in disciplines comprising the field of cognitive science, including artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and education. The Society is a member of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. Meetings The group sponsors the annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, a meeting which hosts the latest theories and data from cognitive science researchers, for which it also publishes proceedings. The first meeting of the conference was held in 1979 at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California. The society was incorporated in 1979 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional organization in Massachus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Development Researchers
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language. Imagination is also a cognitive process, it is considered as such because it involves thinking about possibilities. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge. Cognitive processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, musicology, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy, anthropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science. These and other approaches to the analysis of cognition (such as embodied cognition) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
