Nonword Repetition
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

250px, Children copy with their own mouths the words spoken by the mouths of those around them. That enables them to learn the pronunciation of words not already in their vocabulary. Speech repetition occurs when individuals speech, speak the sounds that they have heard another person Speech production, pronounce or say. In other words, it is the saying by one individual of the spoken vocalizations made by another individual. Speech repetition requires the person repeating the utterance to have the ability to map the sounds that they hear from the other person's oral pronunciation to similar
places Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Oft ...
and
manners of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...
in their own
vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in human bodies and in animals where the sound produced at the sound source (larynx in mammals; syrinx in birds) is filtered. In birds, it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of t ...
. Such speech imitation often occurs independently of speech comprehension such as in
speech shadowing Speech shadowing is a psycholinguistic experimental technique in which subjects repeat speech at a delay to the onset of hearing the phrase. The time between hearing the speech and responding, is how long the brain takes to process and produce spe ...
in which people automatically say words heard in
earphones Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an ...
, and the pathological condition of
echolalia Echolalia is the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person; when repeated by the same person, it is called palilalia. In its profound form it is automatic and effortless. It is one of the echophenomena, closely related to ...
in which people
reflex In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous system. A reflex occurs ...
ively repeat overheard words. That links to speech repetition of words being separate in the
brain The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...
to
speech perception Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted, and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonology and phonetics in linguistics and cognitive psychology and percept ...
. Speech repetition occurs in the dorsal speech processing stream, and speech perception occurs in the ventral speech processing stream. Repetitions are often incorporated unawares by that route into spontaneous novel sentences immediately or after delay after the storage in phonological memory. In humans, the ability to map heard input vocalizations into motor output is highly developed because of the copying ability playing a critical role in children's rapid expansion of their spoken vocabulary. In older children and adults, that ability remains important, as it enables the continued learning of novel words and names and additional languages. That repetition is also necessary for the propagation of language from generation to generation. It has also been suggested that the phonetic units out of which speech is made have been selected upon by the process of vocabulary expansion and vocabulary transmissions because children prefer to copy words in terms of more easily imitated elementary units.


Properties


Automatic

Vocal imitation happens quickly: words can be repeated within 250-300
millisecond A millisecond (from '' milli-'' and second; symbol: ms) is a unit of time in the International System of Units equal to one thousandth (0.001 or 10−3 or 1/1000) of a second or 1000 microseconds. A millisecond is to one second, as one second i ...
s both in normals (during
speech shadowing Speech shadowing is a psycholinguistic experimental technique in which subjects repeat speech at a delay to the onset of hearing the phrase. The time between hearing the speech and responding, is how long the brain takes to process and produce spe ...
) and during
echolalia Echolalia is the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person; when repeated by the same person, it is called palilalia. In its profound form it is automatic and effortless. It is one of the echophenomena, closely related to ...
. The imitation of speech syllables possibly happens even more quickly: people begin imitating the second phone in the syllable oearlier than they can identify it (out of the set o æand i. Indeed, "...simply executing a shift to upon detection of a second vowel in otakes very little longer than does interpreting and executing it as a shadowed response". Neurobiologically this suggests "...that the early phases of speech analysis yield information which is directly convertible to information required for speech production". Vocal repetition can be done immediately as in speech shadowing and echolalia. It can also be done after the pattern of pronunciation is stored in
short-term memory Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
or
long-term memory Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to sensory memory, the initial stage, and short-term or working memory, the second stage ...
. It automatically uses both auditory and where available visual information about how a word is produced. The automatic nature of speech repetition was noted by
Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also ...
, the late nineteenth century
neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...
, who observed that "The primary speech movements, enacted before the development of consciousness, are reflexive and mimicking in nature..".Wernicke K. The aphasia symptom-complex. 1874. Breslau, Cohn and Weigert. Translated in: Eling P, editor. Reader in the history of aphasia. Vol. 4. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; 1994. p. 69–89.


Independent of speech

Vocal imitation arises in
development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...
before speech comprehension and also
babbling A babbling infant, age 6 months, making ''ba'' and ''ma'' sounds Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not y ...
: 18-week-old
infants In common terminology, a baby is the very young offspring of adult human beings, while infant (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'baby' or 'child') is a formal or specialised synonym. The terms may also be used to refer to juveniles of ...
spontaneously copy vocal expressions provided the accompanying voice matches. Imitation of
vowels A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
has been found as young as 12 weeks. It is independent of native language, language skills, word comprehension and a speaker's
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
. Many
autistic Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing di ...
and some
mentally disabled Developmental disability is a diverse group of chronic conditions, comprising mental or physical impairments that arise before adulthood. Developmental disabilities cause individuals living with them many difficulties in certain areas of life, espe ...
people engage in the echolalia of overheard words (often their only vocal interaction with others) without understanding what they echo. Reflex uncontrolled echoing of others words and sentences occurs in roughly half of those with
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome Tourette syndrome (TS), or simply Tourette's, is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that begins in childhood or adolescence. It is characterized by multiple movement (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic. Common tics are blinkin ...
. The ability to repeat words without comprehension also occurs in mixed transcortical aphasia where it links to the sparing of the short-term phonological store. The ability to repeat and imitate speech sounds occurs separately to that of normal speech. Speech shadowing provides evidence of a 'privileged' input/output speech loop that is distinct to the other components of the speech system.McLeod P. Posner MI. (1984). Privileged loops from percept to act. In H. Bouma D. Bouwhuis, (Eds), Attention and performance X (pp. 55-66). Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum.
Neurocognitive Neurocognitive functions are cognitive functions closely linked to the function of particular areas, neural pathways, or cortical networks in the brain, ultimately served by the substrate of the brain's neurological matrix (i.e. at the cellular a ...
research likewise finds evidence of a direct (nonlexical) link between phonological analysis input and motor programming output.


Effector independent

Speech sounds can be imitatively mapped into vocal articulations in spite of vocal tract anatomy differences in size and shape due to
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
,
age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone has been alive or something has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...
and individual
anatomical Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
variability. Such variability is extensive making input output mapping of speech more complex than a simple mapping of vocal track movements. The shape of the mouth varies widely:
dentist A dentist, also known as a dental doctor, dental physician, dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry, the branch of medicine focused on the teeth, gums, and mouth. The dentist's supporting team aids in provi ...
s recognize three basic shapes of
palate The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sep ...
: trapezoid, ovoid, and triangular; six types of
malocclusion In orthodontics, a malocclusion is a misalignment or incorrect relation between the teeth of the upper and lower dental arches when they approach each other as the jaws close. The English-language term dates from 1864; Edward Angle (1855–1 ...
between the two
jaw The jaws are a pair of opposable articulated structures at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth ...
s; nine ways teeth relate to the
dental arch The dental arches are the two arches (crescent arrangements) of teeth, one on each jaw, that together constitute the dentition. In humans and many other species, the superior (maxillary or upper) dental arch is a little larger than the inferi ...
and a wide range of
maxilla In vertebrates, the maxilla (: maxillae ) is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxil ...
ry and
mandible In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone i ...
deformities. Vocal sound can also vary due to dental injury and
dental caries Tooth decay, also known as caries,The word 'caries' is a mass noun, and is not a plural of 'carie'.'' is the breakdown of teeth due to acids produced by bacteria. The resulting cavities may be a number of different colors, from yellow to black ...
. Other factors that do not impede the sensory motor mapping needed for vocal imitation are gross oral deformations such as
hare-lip A cleft lip contains an opening in the upper lip that may extend into the nose. The opening may be on one side, both sides, or in the middle. A cleft palate occurs when the palate (the roof of the mouth) contains an opening into the nasal cavi ...
s,
cleft palate A cleft lip contains an opening in the upper lip that may extend into the nose. The opening may be on one side, both sides, or in the middle. A cleft palate occurs when the palate (the roof of the mouth) contains an opening into the nose. The ...
s or amputations of the tongue tip, pipe smoking, pencil biting and teeth clinching (such as in
ventriloquism Ventriloquism or ventriloquy is an act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) speaks in such a way that it seems like their voice is coming from a different location, usually through a puppet known as a "dummy". The act of ventrilo ...
).
Paranasal sinuses Paranasal sinuses are a group of four paired air-filled spaces that surround the nasal cavity. The maxillary sinuses are located under the eyes; the frontal sinuses are above the eyes; the ethmoidal sinuses are between the eyes and the sphe ...
vary between individuals 20-fold in volume, and differ in the presence and the degree of their asymmetry.


Diverse linguistic vocalizations

Vocal imitation occurs potentially in regard to a diverse range of phonetic units and types of vocalization. The world's languages use consonantal phones that differ in thirteen imitable vocal tract
place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...
s (from the
lip The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...
s to the
glottis The glottis (: glottises or glottides) is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing sound from the vocal folds. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γ ...
). These phones can potentially be pronounced with eleven types of imitable
manner of articulation articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators ( speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...
s (
nasal stop In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...
s to
lateral click The lateral clicks are a family of click consonants found only in African languages. The clicking sound used by equestrians to urge on their horses is a lateral click, although it is not a speech sound in that context. Lateral clicks are fou ...
s). Speech can be copied in regard to its social accent,
intonation Intonation may refer to: *Intonation (linguistics), variation of speaking pitch that is not used to distinguish words *Intonation (music), a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument *Intonation Music ...
, pitch and individuality (as with entertainment
impersonator An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another. There are many reasons for impersonating someone: *Living history: After close study of some historical figure, a performer may dress and speak "as" that ...
s). Speech can be articulated in ways which diverge considerably in speed,
timbre In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...
, pitch,
loudness In acoustics, loudness is the subjectivity, subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as the "attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The relat ...
and
emotion Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...
. Speech further exists in different forms such as
song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...
, verse,
scream Scream may refer to: *Screaming, a loud vocalization Amusement rides * Scream (Heide Park), a gyro drop tower in Soltau, Germany * Scream (Six Flags drop tower), at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Six Flags New England * Scream (roller coaster), at ...
and whisper. Intelligible speech can be produced with pragmatic intonation and in
regional dialect A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...
s and foreign accents. These aspects are readily copied: people asked to repeat speech-like words imitate not only phones but also accurately other pronunciation aspects such as
fundamental frequency The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'' (abbreviated as 0 or 1 ), is defined as the lowest frequency of a Periodic signal, periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch (music), pitch of a n ...
, schwa-syllable expression, voice spectra and lip
kinematic In physics, kinematics studies the geometrical aspects of motion of physical objects independent of forces that set them in motion. Constrained motion such as linked machine parts are also described as kinematics. Kinematics is concerned with s ...
s,
voice onset time In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, accor ...
s, and
regional accent In sociolinguistics, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language that is distinctive to a country, area, social class, or individual. An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside (a regional or geographical acce ...
.


Language acquisition


Vocabulary expansion

In 1874 Carl Wernicke proposed that the ability to imitate speech plays a key role in language acquisition. This is now a widely researched issue in
child development Child development involves the Human development (biology), biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. It is—particularly from birth to five years— a foundation ...
.Miller GA. (1977). Spontaneous apprentices: Children and language. New York, Seabury Press. PDF
A study of 17,000 one and two word utterances made by six children between 18 months to 25 months found that, depending upon the particular
infant In common terminology, a baby is the very young offspring of adult human beings, while infant (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'baby' or 'child') is a formal or specialised synonym. The terms may also be used to refer to juveniles of ...
, between 5% and 45% of their words might be mimicked. These figures are minima since they concern only immediately heard words. Many words that may seem spontaneous are in fact delayed imitations heard days or weeks previously. At 13 months children who imitate new words (but not ones they already know) show a greater increase in
noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
vocabulary at four months and non noun vocabulary at eight months. A major predictor of vocabulary increase in both 20 months, 24 months, and older children between 4 and 8 years is their skill in repeating nonword phone sequences (a measure of mimicry and storage). This is also the case with children with Down's syndrome . The effect is larger than even age: in a study of 222 two-year-old children that had spoken vocabularies ranging between 3–601 words the ability to repeat nonwords accounted for 24% of the
variance In probability theory and statistics, variance is the expected value of the squared deviation from the mean of a random variable. The standard deviation (SD) is obtained as the square root of the variance. Variance is a measure of dispersion ...
compared to 15% for age and 6% for
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
(girls better than boys).


Nonvocabulary expansion uses of imitation

Imitation provides the basis for making longer sentences than children could otherwise spontaneously make on their own. Children analyze the linguistic rules, pronunciation patterns, and conversational
pragmatics In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...
of speech by making
monologue In theatre, a monologue (also known as monolog in North American English) (in , from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts ...
s (often in
crib talk Crib talk or crib speech is pre-sleep monologue made by young children while in bed. This starts somewhere around one-and-a-half years and usually ends by about two-and-a-half years of age, though children can continue longer.Weir, R. H. (1962). ' ...
) in which they repeat and manipulate in
word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, ph ...
phrases and sentences previously overheard. Many proto-conversations involve children (and parents) repeating what each other has said in order to sustain social and linguistic interaction. It has been suggested that the conversion of speech sound into motor responses helps aid the vocal "alignment of interactions" by "coordinating the rhythm and melody of their speech". Repetition enables immigrant monolingual children to learn a second language by allowing them to take part in 'conversations'. Imitation related processes aids the storage of overheard words by putting them into speech based short- and long-term memory.


Language learning

The ability to repeat nonwords predicts the ability to learn second-language vocabulary. A study found that adult polyglots performed better in short-term memory tasks such as repeating nonword vocalizations compared to nonpolyglots though both are otherwise similar in general intelligence, visuo-spatial short-term memory and paired-associate learning ability.
Language delay Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ...
in contrast links to impairments in vocal imitation.


Speech repetition and phones

Electrical brain stimulation Electrical brain stimulation (EBS), also referred to as focal brain stimulation (FBS), is a form of electrotherapy and neurotherapy used as a technique in research and clinical neurobiology to stimulate a neuron or neural network in the brain ...
research upon the human brain finds that 81% of areas that show disruption of phone identification are also those in which the imitating of oral movements is disrupted and vice versa;
Brain injuries Brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating trauma-induced damage. A common c ...
in the speech areas show a 0.9 correlation between those causing impairments to the copying of oral movements and those impairing phone production and perception.


Mechanism

Spoken words are sequences of motor movements organized around vocal tract gesture motor targets. Vocalization due to this is copied in terms of the motor goals that organize it rather than the exact movements with which it is produced. These vocal motor goals are auditory. According to James Abbs 'For speech motor actions, the individual articulatory movements would not appear to be controlled with regard to three- dimensional spatial targets, but rather with regard to their contribution to complex vocal tract goals such as resonance properties (e.g., shape, degree of constriction) and or aerodynamically significant variables'. Speech sounds also have duplicable higher-order characteristics such as rates and shape of modulations and rates and shape of frequency shifts. Such complex auditory goals (which often link—though not always—to internal vocal gestures) are detectable from the speech sound which they create.


Neurology


Dorsal speech processing stream function

Two cortical processing streams exist: a ventral one which maps sound onto meaning, and a dorsal one, that maps sound onto motor representations. The dorsal stream projects from the posterior
Sylvian fissure The lateral sulcus (or lateral fissure, also called Sylvian fissure, after Franciscus Sylvius) is the most prominent sulcus (neuroanatomy), sulcus of each cerebral hemisphere in the human brain. The lateral sulcus (neuroanatomy), sulcus is a deep ...
at the
temporoparietal junction The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
, onto frontal motor areas, and is not normally involved in speech perception.
Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also ...
identified a pathway between the left posterior
superior temporal sulcus The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is the sulcus separating the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus, in the temporal lobe of the mammalian brain. A sulcus (plural sulci) is a deep groove that curves into the largest part of ...
(a cerebral cortex region sometimes called the
Wernicke's area Wernicke's area (; ), also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to ...
) as a centre of the sound "images" of speech and its syllables that connected through the
arcuate fasciculus In neuroanatomy, the arcuate fasciculus (AF; ) is a bundle of axons that generally connects Broca's area and Wernicke's area in the brain. It is an association fiber tract connecting caudal temporal lobe and inferior frontal lobe. Structure ...
with part of the
inferior frontal gyrus The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; also gyrus frontalis inferior) is the lowest positioned gyrus of the frontal gyri, of the frontal lobe, and is part of the prefrontal cortex. Its superior border is the inferior frontal sulcus (which divides it ...
(sometimes called the
Broca's area Broca's area, or the Broca area (, also , ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant Cerebral hemisphere, hemisphere, usually the left, of the Human brain, brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing in the brai ...
) responsible for their articulation. This pathway is now broadly identified as the dorsal speech pathway, one of the two pathways (together with the ventral pathway) that process speech. The posterior
superior temporal gyrus The superior temporal gyrus (STG) is one of three (sometimes two) gyri in the temporal lobe of the human brain, which is located laterally to the head, situated somewhat above the external ear. The superior temporal gyrus is bounded by: * the l ...
is specialized for the transient representation of the phonetic sequences used for vocal repetition. Part of the
auditory cortex The auditory cortex is the part of the temporal lobe that processes auditory information in humans and many other vertebrates. It is a part of the auditory system, performing basic and higher functions in hearing, such as possible relations to ...
also can represent aspects of speech such as its consonantal features.


Mirror neurons

Mirror neuron A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Mirror neurons a ...
s have been identified that both process the perception and production of motor movements. This is done not in terms of their exact motor performance but an inference of the intended motor goals with which it is organized. Mirror neurons that both perceive and produce the motor movements of speech have been identified. Speech is mirrored constantly into its articulations since speakers cannot know in advance that a word is unfamiliar and in need of repetition—which is only learnt after the opportunity to map it into articulations has gone. Thus, speakers if they are to incorporate unfamiliar words into their spoken vocabulary must by default map all spoken input.


Sign language

Words in
sign languages Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sig ...
, unlike those in spoken ones, are made not of sequential units but of spatial configurations of subword unit arrangements, the spatial analogue of the sonic-chronological
morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
s of spoken language.Poizner H. Klima ES. Bellugi U. (1987). What the hands reveal about the brain. MIT Press. These words, like spoken ones, are learnt by imitation. Indeed, rare cases of compulsive sign-language echolalia exist in otherwise language-deficient deaf autistic individuals born into signing families. At least some cortical areas neurobiologically active during both sign and vocal speech, such as the auditory cortex, are associated with the act of imitation.


Nonhuman animals


Birds

Bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...
s learn their
song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...
s from those made by other birds. In several examples, birds show highly developed repetition abilities: the Sri Lankan
Greater racket-tailed drongo The greater racket-tailed drongo (''Dicrurus paradiseus'') is a medium-sized Asian bird which is distinctive in having elongated outer tail feathers with webbing restricted to the tips. They are placed along with other drongos in the family Dicr ...
(''Dicrurus paradiseus'') copies the calls of predators and the
alarm signal In animal communication, an alarm signal is an antipredator adaptation in the form of signals emitted by social animals in response to danger. Many primates and birds have elaborate alarm calls for warning conspecifics of approaching predators ...
s of other birds Albert's lyrebird (''Menura alberti'') can accurately imitate the
satin bowerbird The satin bowerbird (''Ptilonorhynchus violaceus'') is a species of passerine bird in the bowerbird family Ptilonorhynchidae that is endemic to eastern Australia. It is the only species placed in the genus ''Ptilonorhynchus''. Taxonomy The sati ...
(''Ptilonorhynchus violaceus''), Research upon avian vocal motor neurons finds that they perceive their song as a series of articulatory gestures as in humans. Birds that can imitate humans, such as the Indian
hill myna ''Gracula'' is a genus of mynas, tropical members of the starling family of birds found in southern Asia and introduced to Florida in the United States. Taxonomy The genus ''Gracula'' was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linna ...
(Gracula religiosa), imitate human speech by mimicking the various speech
formants In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmon ...
, created by changing the shape of the human vocal tract, with different vibration frequencies of its internal tympaniform membrane. Indian hill mynahs also imitate such phonetic characteristics as voicing,
fundamental frequencies The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the ''fundamental'' (abbreviated as 0 or 1 ), is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In music, the fundamental is the musical pitch of a note that is perceived as the l ...
, formant transitions,
nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...
, and timing, through their vocal movements are made in a different way from those of the human vocal apparatus.


Nonhuman mammals

*
Bottlenose dolphins The bottlenose dolphin is a toothed whale in the genus ''Tursiops''. They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus contains three species: the common bot ...
can show spontaneous vocal mimicry of computer-generated whistles. *
Killer whales The orca (''Orcinus orca''), or killer whale, is a toothed whale and the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family. The only extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'', it is recognizable by its black-and-white-patterned body. A cosmopolita ...
can mimic the barks of
California sea lion The California sea lion (''Zalophus californianus'') is a coastal eared seal native to western North America. It is one of six species of sea lions. Its natural habitat ranges from southeast Alaska to central Mexico, including the Gulf of Califo ...
s. *
Harbor seal The harbor (or harbour) seal (''Phoca vitulina''), also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere. The most widely distributed species of pinniped (walruses, eared sea ...
s can mimic in a speech-like manner one or more English words and phrases *
Elephants Elephants are the Largest and heaviest animals, largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant (''Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian ele ...
can imitate trunk sounds. *
Lesser spear-nosed bat The lesser spear-nosed bat (''Phyllostomus elongatus'') is a bat species found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the nor ...
can learn their call structure from artificial playback. * An
orangutan Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ...
has spontaneously copied the
whistle A whistle is a musical instrument which produces sound from a stream of gas, most commonly air. It is a type of Fipple, fipple flute, and may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means. Whistles vary in size from a s ...
s of humans.


Apes

Apes taught language show an ability to imitate language signs with
chimpanzee The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...
s such as
Washoe Washoe or Washo may refer to: * Washoe people, an indigenous people of the Great Basin in North America Places ;United States * Washoe County, Nevada * Washoe Creek, Sonoma County, California * Washoe Lake, lake in Nevada * Washoe Valley, Nevada, ...
who was able to learn with his arms a vocabulary of 250
American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...
gestures. However, such human trained apes show no ability to imitate human speech vocalizations.Hayes C. (1951). The ape in our house, Harper, New York.


See also

*
Alan Baddeley Alan David Baddeley CBE Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (born 23 March 1934) is a British psychologist. He is known for his research on memory and for developing the three-component model of working memory. He is a professor of psychology at th ...
*
Auditory processing disorder Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the way the brain processes sounds. Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the ear, but cannot process the information they hear in the s ...
*
Baddeley's model of working memory Baddeley's model of working memory is a model of human memory proposed by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch in 1974, in an attempt to present a more accurate model of primary memory (often referred to as short-term memory). Working memory splits pr ...
*
Conduction aphasia Conduction aphasia, also called associative aphasia, is an uncommon form of aphasia caused by damage to the parietal lobe of the brain. An acquired language disorder, it is characterized by intact auditory comprehension, coherent (yet paraphasi ...
*
Developmental verbal dyspraxia Developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD), also known as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and developmental apraxia of speech (DAS), is a condition in which an individual has problems saying sounds, syllables and words. This is not because of muscle w ...
*
Echoic memory Echoic memory is the sensory memory that registers specific to auditory information (sounds). Once an auditory stimulus is heard, it is stored in memory so that it can be processed and understood. Unlike most visual memory, where a person can cho ...
*
Echolalia Echolalia is the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person; when repeated by the same person, it is called palilalia. In its profound form it is automatic and effortless. It is one of the echophenomena, closely related to ...
*
Language development Language development in humans is a process which starts 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 b ...
*
Language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and s ...
*
Language-based learning disability Language-based learning disabilities or LBLD are "heterogeneous" neurological differences that can affect skills such as listening, reasoning, speaking, reading, writing, and math calculations. It is also associated with movement, coordination, an ...
*
Mirror neurons A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Mirror neurons a ...
*
Mirroring (psychology) Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family, often going unnotice ...
*
Motor cognition The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction. The fundamental unit o ...
*
Motor theory of speech perception The motor theory of speech perception is the hypothesis that people perceive spoken words by identifying the vocal tract gestures with which they are pronounced rather than by identifying the sound patterns that speech generates. It originally cl ...
*
Origin of language The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeolog ...
* Passive speakers *
Phonological development Phonological development refers to how children learn to organize sounds into meaning or language (phonology) during their stages of growth. Sound is at the beginning of language learning. Children have to learn to distinguish different sounds and ...
*
Pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...
*
Second-language acquisition Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning—otherwise referred to as L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process of learning a language other than one's native language (L1). SLA research examines how learners ...
*
Short-term memory Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval. For example, short-term memory holds a phone number that has just been recit ...
*
Speech perception Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted, and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonology and phonetics in linguistics and cognitive psychology and percept ...
*
Thematic coherence In developmental psychology, thematic coherence is an organization of a set of meanings in and through an event. In education, for example, the thematic coherence happens when a child during a classroom session understands what all the talking is ab ...
*
Transcortical motor aphasia Transcortical motor aphasia (TMoA), also known as commissural dysphasia or white matter dysphasia, results from damage in the anterior superior frontal lobe of the language-dominant hemisphere. This damage is typically due to cerebrovascular accid ...
*
Transcortical sensory aphasia Transcortical sensory aphasia (TSA) is a kind of aphasia that involves damage to specific areas of the temporal lobe of the brain, resulting in symptoms such as poor auditory comprehension, relatively intact repetition, and fluent speech with seman ...
* Vocabulary growth *
Vocal learning Vocal learning is the ability to modify acoustic and syntactic sounds, acquire new sounds via imitation, and produce vocalizations. "Vocalizations" in this case refers only to sounds generated by the vocal organ (mammalian larynx or avian syrinx) a ...


Footnotes

{{reflist, 2 Developmental psychology Evolution of language Language Language acquisition Motor control Phonetics Speech and language pathology Speech recognition Speech