# Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Memory and Language


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## Introduction

Introduction

\"You need memory to keep track of the flow of conversation\" [^1]

Maybe the interaction between memory and language does not seem very
obvious at first, but this interaction is necessary when trying to lead
a conversation properly. Memory is the component for storing and
retrieving information. So to remember both things just said and
information heard before which might be important for the conversation.
Whereas language serves for following the conversational partner, to
understand what he says and to reply to him in an understandable way.\
This is not a simple process which can be learned within days. In
childhood everybody learns to communicate, a process lasting for years.\
So how does this work? Possible responses to the question of language
acquisition are presented in this chapter.The section also provides an
insight into the topic of malfunctions in the brain. Concerning
dysfunctions the following questions arise: How can the system of
language and memory be destroyed? What causes language impairments? How
do the impairments become obvious? These are some of the topics dealt
with in this chapter.

Up to now, the whole profoundness of memory and language cannot be
explored because the present financial resources are insufficient. And
the connection between memory and language mostly becomes obvious when
an impairment arises. So certain brain areas are explored when having a
comparison between healthy brain and impaired brain. Then it is possible
to find out what function this brain area has and how a dysfunction
becomes obvious.

## Basics

### Memory

Memory is the ability of the nervous system to receive and keep
information. It is divided into three parts: Sensory memory, Short-term
memory and Long-term memory. Sensory memory holds information for
milliseconds and is separated into two components. The iconic memory is
responsible for visual information, whereas auditory information is
processed in the echoic memory. Short-term memory keeps information for
at most half a minute. Long-term memory, which can store information
over decades, consists of the conscious explicit and the unconscious
implicit memory. Explicit memory, also known as declarative, can be
subdivided into semantic and episodic memory. Procedural memory and
priming effects are components of the implicit memory.

![](Brainlobes.svg "Brainlobes.svg")

Brain regions:

  Brain regions                                                 Memory
  ------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
  Frontal lobe, parietal lobe, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex   Short-term Memory/ Working Memory
  Hippocampus                                                   Short-term Memory → Long-term Memory
  Medial temporal lobe (neocortex)                              Declarative Memory
  Amygdala, Cerebellum                                          Procedural Memory

For detailed information see chapter
**Memory**

### Language

Language is an essential system for communication which highly
influences our life. This system uses sounds, symbols and gestures for
the purpose of communication. Visual and auditory systems of a human
body are the entrance-pathway for language to enter the brain. The motor
system is responsible for speech and writing production, it serves as
exit-pathway for language. The nature of language exists in the brain
processes between the sensory and motor systems, especially between
visual or auditory income and written or spoken outcome. The biggest
part of the knowledge about brain mechanism for language is deduced from
studies of language deficits resulting from brain damage. Even if there
are about 10 000 different languages and dialects in the world, all of
them express the subtleties of human experience and emotion.

For detailed information see chapters
**Comprehension**
and **Neuroscience of
Comprehension**

## Acquisition of language

A phenomenon which occurs daily and in everybody's life is the
acquisition of language. Anyhow scientists are not yet able to explain
the underlying processes in detail or to define the point when language
acquisition commences, even if they agree that it happens long before
the first word is spoken.\
Theorists like Catherine Snow and Michael Tomasello think that the
acquisition of language skills begins at birth. Others claim, it already
commences in the womb. Newborns are not able to speak, even if babbling
activates the brain regions later involved in speech production.\
The ability to understand the meaning of words already begins before the
first birthday, even if they cannot be pronounced till then. The
phonological representation of words in the memory changes between the
stage of repetitive syllable-babbling and the one-word stage. At first
children associate words with concrete objects, followed by an extension
to the class of objects. After a period of overgeneralisation the
children's system of concept approaches to the adults' one. To prove the
assumption of understanding the meaning of words that early, researches
at MIT let children watch two video clips of "Sesame Street".
Simultaneously the children heard the sentences "Cookie Monster is
tickling Big Bird" or "Big Bird is tickling Cookie Monster". The babies
consistently looked more at the video corresponding to the sentence,
what is an evidence for comprehension of more complex sentences, than
they are able to produce during the one-word period.\
The different stages of speech production are listed in the table below.

+--------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| Age                | Stage of Acquisition  | Example               |
+====================+=======================+=======================+
| 6th month          | Stage of babbling:\   |                       |
|                    | - systematic          |                       |
|                    | combining of vowels   |                       |
|                    | and consonants        |                       |
+--------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| 7th -- 10th month  | Stage of repetitive   | da, ma, ga            |
|                    | syllable-babbling:\   |                       |
|                    | - higher part of      | -------------------   |
|                    | consonants → paired   |                       |
|                    | with a vowel --       | mama, dada, gaga      |
|                    | monosyllabic          |                       |
|                    |                       |                       |
|                    | -------------------   |                       |
|                    |                       |                       |
|                    | reduplicated babbling |                       |
+--------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| 11th -- 12th month | Stage of variegated   | bada, dadu            |
|                    | babbling:\            |                       |
|                    | - combination of      |                       |
|                    | different consonants  |                       |
|                    | and vowels            |                       |
+--------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| 12th month         | Usage of first        | car, hat              |
|                    | words - John          |                       |
|                    | Locke(1995):\         |                       |
|                    | - prephonological →   |                       |
|                    | conson                |                       |
|                    | ant-vowel(-consonant) |                       |
+--------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+

Locke's theory about the usage of the first word is only a general
tendency. Other researchers like Charlotte Bühler (1928), a German
psychologist, think that the age of speaking the first word is around
the tenth month, whereas Elizabeth Bates et al. (1992) proposed a period
between eleven and 13 months. The one-word stage described above can
last from two till ten months. Until the second year of life a
vocabulary of about 50 words evolves, four times more than the child
utilises. Two thirds of the language processed is still babbling. After
this stage of learning the vocabulary increases rapidly. The so called
vocabulary spurt causes an increment of about one word every two hours.
From now on children learn to have fluent conversations with a simple
grammar containing errors.

As you can see in the following example, the length of the sentences and
the grammatical output changes a lot. While raising his son, Knut keeps
a tally of his son's speech production, to see how fast the language
develops:

Speech diary of Knut's son Andy:\
*(Year; Month)*\
*2;3: Play checkers. Big drum. I got horn. A bunny rabbit walk.*\
*2;4: See marching bear go? Screw part machine. That busy bulldozer
truck.*\
*2;5: Now put boots on. Where wrench go? Mommy talking bout lady. What
that paper clip doing?*\
*2;6: Write a piece a paper. What that egg doing? I lost a shoe. No, I
don\'t want to sit seat.*\
*2;7: Where piece a paper go? Ursula has a boot on. Going to see kitten.
Put the cigarette down. Dropped a rubber band. Shadow has hat just like
that. Rintintin don\'t fly, Mommy.*\
*2;8: Let me get down with the boots on. Don\'t be afraid a horses. How
tiger be so healthy and fly like kite? Joshua throw like a penguin.*\
*2;9: Where Mommy keep her pocket book? Show you something funny. Just
like turtle make mud pie.*\
*2;10: Look at that train Ursula brought. I simply don\'t want put in
chair. You don\'t have paper. Do you want little bit, Cromer? I can\'t
wear it tomorrow.*\
*2;11: That birdie hopping by Missouri in bag? Do want some pie on your
face? Why you mixing baby chocolate? I finish drinking all up down my
throat. I said why not you coming in? Look at that piece a paper and
tell it. We going turn light on so you can\'t see.*\
*3;0: I going come in fourteen minutes. I going wear that to wedding. I
see what happens. I have to save them now. Those are not strong mens.
They are going sleep in wintertime. You dress me up like a baby
elephant.*\
*3;1: I like to play with something else. You know how to put it back
together. I gon\' make it like a rocket to blast off with. I put another
one on the floor. You went to Boston University? You want to give me
some carrots and some beans? Press the button and catch it, sir. I want
some other peanuts. Why you put the pacifier in his mouth? Doggies like
to climb up.*\
*3;2: So it can\'t be cleaned? I broke my racing car. Do you know the
light wents off? What happened to the bridge? When it\'s got a flat tire
it\'s need a go to the station. I dream sometimes. I\'m going to mail
this so the letter can\'t come off. I want to have some espresso. The
sun is not too bright. Can I have some sugar? Can I put my head in the
mailbox so the mailman can know where I are and put me in the mailbox?
Can I keep the screwdriver just like a carpenter keep the screwdriver?*
[^2]

Obviously children are able to conjugate verbs and to decline nouns
using regular rules. To produce irregular forms is more difficult,
because they have to be learnt and stored in Long-term memory one by
one. Rather than the repetition of words, the observation of speech is
important to acquire grammatical skills. Around the third birthday the
complexity of language increases exponentially and reaches a rate of
about 1000 syntactic types.\
Another interesting field concerning the correlation between Memory and
Language is Multilingualism. Thinking about children educated bilingual,
the question arises how the two languages are separated or combined in
the brain. Scientists assume that especially lexical information is
stored independently for each language; the semantic and syntactic
levels rather could be unified. Experiments have shown that bilinguals
have a more capacious span of memory when they listen to words not only
in one but in both languages.

## Disorders and Malfunctions

Reading about the disorders concerning memory and language one might
possibly think about amnesia or aphasia, both common diseases in the
concerned brain regions. But when dealing with the correlation of memory
and language we want to introduce only diseases which affect loss of
memory as well as loss of language.

### Alzheimer\'s Disease

Discovered in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer, this disease is the most common
type of dementia. Alzheimer's is characterised by symptoms like loss of
memory, loss of language skills and impairments in skilled movements.
Additionally, other cognitive functions such as planning or
decision-making which are connected to the frontal and temporal lobe can
be reduced. The correlation between memory and language in this context
is very important because they work together in order to establish
conversations. When both are impaired, communication becomes a difficult
task. People with Alzheimer's have reduced working memory capability, so
they cannot keep in mind all of the information they heard during a
conversation. They also forget words which they need to denote items,
their desires and to understand what they are told. Affected persons
also change their behaviour; they become anxious, suspicious or restless
and they may have delusions or hallucinations. In the early stages of
the disorder, sick persons become less energetic or suffer little loss
of memory. But they are still able to dress themselves, to eat and to
communicate. Middle stages of the disease are characterised by problems
of navigation and orientation. They do not find their way home or even
forget where they live. In the late stages of the disease, the patients'
ability to speak, read and write decreases enormously. They are no
longer able to denote objects and to talk about their feelings and
desires. So their family and the nursing staff have great problems to
find out what the patients want to tell them. In the end-state, the sick
persons do not show any response or reaction. They lie in bed, have to
be fed and are totally helpless. Most of them die after four to six
years after diagnosis, although the disease can endure from three to
twenty years. A cause for this is the difficulty to distinguish
Alzheimer's from other related disorders. Only after death when seeing
the shrinkage of the brain one can definitely say that the person was
affected by Alzheimer's disease.

*\"Genetic Science Learning Center, University of Utah,
<http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/>* *A comparison of the two brains:*\
*In the Alzheimer brain:*\
*· The cortex shrivels up, damaging areas involved in thinking, planning
and remembering.*\
*· Shrinkage is especially severe in the hippocampus, an area of the
cortex that plays a key role in formation of new memories.*\
*· Ventricles (fluid-filled spaces within the brain) grow larger.*

Scientists say that long before the first symptoms appear nerve cells
that store and retrieve information have already begun to degenerate.
There are two theories giving an explanation for the causes of
Alzheimer's disease. The first describes plaques as protein fragments
which defect the connection between nerve cells. They arise when little
fragments release from nerve cell walls and associate with other
fragments from outside the cell. These combined fragments, called
plaques, append to the outside of nerve cells and destroy the
connections. Then the nerve cells start to die because they are no
longer provided with nutrients. As a conclusion the stimuli are no
longer transferred. The second theory explains that tangles limit the
functions of nerve cells. They are twisted fibers of another protein
that form inside brain cells and destroy the vital cell transport made
of proteins. But scientists have not yet found out the exact role of
plaques and tangles.

*\"Genetic Science Learning Center, University of Utah,
<http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/>*\
*- Alzheimer tissue has many fewer nerve cells and synapses than a
healthy brain.*\
*- Plaques, abnormal clusters of protein fragments, build up between
nerve cells.*\
*Dead and dying nerve cells contain tangles, which are made up of
twisted fibers of another protein.*

Alzheimer's progress is separated into three stages: In the early stages
(1), tangles and plaques begin to evolve in brain areas where learning,
memory, thinking and planning takes place. This may begin 20 years
before diagnosis. In the middle stages (2), plaques and tangles start to
spread to areas of speaking and understanding speech. Also the sense of
where your body is in relation to objects around you is reduced. This
may last from 2--10 years. In advanced Alzheimer's disease (3), most of
the cortex is damaged, so that the brain starts to shrink seriously and
cells begin to die. The people lose their ability to speak and
communicate and they do not recognise their family or people they know.
This stage may generally last from one to five years.

Today, more than 18 million people suffer from Alzheimer's disease, in
Germany there are nearly 800,000 people. The number of affected persons
increases enormously. Alzheimer's is often only related to old people.
Five percent of the people older than 65 years and fifteen to twenty
percent of the people older than 80 years suffer from Alzheimer's. But
also people in the late thirties and forties can be affected by this
heritable disease. The probability to suffer from Alzheimer's when
parents have the typicall old-generation-Alzheimer's is not very high.

### Autism

Autism is a neurodevelopment condition, which causes neurodevelopmental
disorders in several fields. For the last decade, autism has been
studied in light of Autistic Spectrum Disorders, including mild and
severe autism, as well as Asperger\'s syndrome. Individuals with autism,
for example, have restricted perception and problems in information
processing. The often associated intellectual giftedness only holds for
a minority of people with autism, whereas the majority possesses a
normal amount of intelligence or is below the average.\
There are different types of autism, i.a.:

-   Asperger's syndrome -- usually arising at the age of three
-   infantile autism -- arising between nine and eleven months after
    birth

The latter is important because it shows the correlation between memory
and language in the children\'s behaviour very clearly. Two different
types of infantile autism are the low functioning autism (LFA) and the
high functioning autism (HFA). The LFA describes children with an IQ
lower than 80, the HFA those with an IQ higher than 80. The disorders in
both types are similar, but they are more strongly developed in children
with LFA.\
The disorders are mainly defined by the following aspects:

1.  the inability of normal social interaction, e.g. amicable relations
    to other children
2.  the inability of ordinary communication, e.g. disorder of spoken
    language/idiosyncratic language
3.  stereotypical behaviour, e.g. stereotypical and restricted interests
    with an atypical content

To demonstrate the inability to manage normal communication and
language, the University of Pittsburgh and the ESRC performed
experiments to provide possible explanations. Sentences, stories or
numbers were presented to children with autism and to normal children.
The researchers concluded that the disorders in people with HFA and LFA
are caused by an impairment in declarative memory. This impairment leads
to difficulties in learning and remembering sentences, stories or
personal events, whereas the ability to learn numbers is available. It
has been shown that these children are not able to link words they heard
to their general knowledge, thus the words are only partially learnt,
with an idiosyncratic meaning. This explains why LFA and HFA affected
children differ in their way of thinking from sane children. It is often
difficult for them to understand others and vice versa. Furthermore
scientists believe that the process of language learning depends on an
initial vocabulary of fully meaningful words. It is assumed that these
children do not possess such a vocabulary, thus their language
development is impaired. In a few cases the acquisition of language
fails completely, therefore in some cases the children are not able to
use language in general. The inability of learning and using language
can be a consequence of an impairment of declarative memory. It might
also cause a low IQ because the process of learning is
language-mediated. In HFA the IQ is not significantly lower than the IQ
of sane children. This correlates well with their better understanding
of word meanings. They have a milder form of autism. The experiments
have also shown that adults do not have problems with the handling of
language. A reason for that might be that they have been taught to use
it during development or maybe they acquired this ability through
reading and writing. The causes of autism are not yet explored
appropriately to get some idea how to help and support those people
having autism in everyday-life. It is still not clear whether the
diseases are really caused by genetic disorders. It is also possible
that other neurological malfunctions like brain damages or biochemical
specialties are responsible for autism. The research just started to get
answers to those questions.\

## References and Resources

```{=html}
<references/>
```
**Books**

Steven Pinker: The Language Instinct; The Penguin Press, 1994,
\
Gisela Klann-Delius: Spracherwerb; Sammlung Metzler, Bd 325; Verlag
J.B.Metzler; Stuttgart, Weimar, 1999; \
Arnold Langenmayr: Sprachpsychologie - Ein Lehrbuch; Verlag für
Psychologie, Hogrefe, 1997; \
Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, Michael A. Paradiso: Neuroscience -
Exploring The Brain; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 3rd edition, 2006;
\
**Links**

<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ged%C3%A4chtnis>\
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory>\
<http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/CSJarchive/proceedings/2006/docs/p822.pdf>\
<http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/gupta/pdf/gupta.brain+lang2003.pdf>\
<http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/CSJarchive/1980v04/i03/p0243p0284/MAIN.PDF>\
<http://www.quarks.de/gedaechtnis/gedaechtnis.pdf>\
<http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_alzheimers_disease.asp>\
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism>\
<http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/neu20121.pdf>\
<http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Plain_English_Summaries/knowledge_communication_learning>\
/index22.aspx?ComponentId=17702&SourcePageId=11748\


[^1]: E. G. Goldstein, \"Cognitive Psychology - Connecting Mind,
    Research, and Everyday Experience\", page 137, THOMSON WADSWORTH TM
    2005

[^2]: S. Pinker, The Language Instinct, p.269f
