User:Renee Boudakian

About this Author

I am a third year student at Dalhousie University studying a Psychology major and a Law and Society minor.

Blog Posts

Week One: January 10-14, 2011

During the first few lectures of PSYO 3190, the class engaged in discussions to identify “What is Language”, a central notion to this course. Upon having reflected on both the class discussion and textbook readings, I’ve come to understand that language does not have one concrete definition but rather a plethora of properties. Language is both generative and productive. It is also recursive, culturally influenced and follows a hierarchy model. For example, syntax is more complex than phonology, thus ranking higher on the proverbial language pyramid. Lastly, language is communicative, arbitrary and evolutionary.

Another aspect of language that I find particularly interesting is individuals who can speak more than one language. Many “Head Start” programs encourage parents to introduce two languages to their children during infancy, as it seems that language acquisition requires less effort at this developmental period. I myself am fluently bilingual, speaking both Armenian and English. Interestingly enough, English is my second language which I was introduced to almost two years after learning my first or home language. I am intrigued to know what quantity of cultural languages an infant can fluidly retain if exposed to from a young age (i.e. are four or five languages attainable?) Moreover, 95% of right-handed people and 75% of left-handed people have language and most aspects of language to be lateralized in the left-hemipshere. For those who are bilingual or even trilingual, does this left-lateralized statistic also hold true for them? And if not, does the right hemisphere of bilingual individuals play a more active role in language functioning then for those who are solely monolingual?

As these questions become illuminated through this course’s progression, I will be updating my blog!

Week Two: January 17-21, 2011

During this weeks lectures we covered a variety of topics including Aphasias, Sign Language and the correct way to read the components of a journal article. Of the topics discussed I particularly found the Sign Language portion of this weeks lecture interesting. An important figure who was instrumental in having sign language recognized as an actual language was William Stokoe. Stokoe created the American Sign Language Dictionary in 1960.

For individuals who communicate through sign language, they abide by a Symmetry Condition and Dominance Condition. Essentially this means that each individual has a dominant hand which they can perform a variety of signs with, and a subordinate hand which they can perform seven simple hand signs. As asked in class by myself, I wondered if an individual who is highly ambidextrous and somewhat of an anomaly could have more function of their subordinate hand in comparison to an individual who has a conventional dominant hand and subordinate hand? Moreover, would an individual who is highly ambidextrous be able to surpass the limited seven signs of the Symmetry Condition?

An interesting thought is the important of their hands for deaf individuals. If a deaf individual were to break their wrist in an accident - would they be cut off from language during their recovery time? Would they have an alternative method of communicating? Upon reflecting on this thought, I believe that speech production can be taken for granted by many individuals who are not hearing impaired.

As these answers surface, I will be sure to keep you posted!

Week Three: January 24-28, 2011

This week we discussed Speech Perception in a great amount of depth. I found myself highly fascinated during the Acoustic Phonetics lecture, which is essentially how we hear speech. One interesting thought was the use of speech recognition programs and softwares, such as Windows on computers and Voice Throttle & Stick Control (VTAS) on fighter jets. In the second example, each pilot who is going to use the system is required to train the jet on their particular voice. I wonder how many misperceived commands would occur if a different pilot were to fly these high-tech jets? If the mistakes of speech recognition for the fighter jets were nearly as high as the Windows software, it is a scary thought to imagine the consequences of "accidentally" firing missiles.

Moreover, in this lecture we discussed the sound spectrogram, which visually represented how different sounds have different acoustic properties. I had learned that sound is measured in Hertz (Hz), however I would like to know at how many Hz will cause damage to our hearing? Another question I have is why are younger individuals more sensitive to higher pitched sounds than older individuals (i.e. the "invisible dog whistle sound that students would play on their cellphones during class, however this sound was not audible to the professor). Secondly we learned that Males have a lower F0 and females have a higher F0. In a former human sexuality class, I had learned that young boys with nice voices were castrated to keep their voices higher - perhaps it was to maintain a higher F0 than a boy who had experienced puberty. Lastly, we discussed speech synthesis which explains that we use contexts to help us understand what we expect to hear. I wonder if an example of this could be a bartender at a club who is using speech synthesis to understand which drink the customer is ordering?

As these questions are answered, I will be sure to keep you posted!

Week Four: January 31-February 4, 2011

This week due to an expected holiday and an unexpected snowstorm, students of PSYO 3190 only had one lecture. The lecture focused on morphology, and introduced students to what morphemes are, the types of morphemes, recursivity, and the past-tense debate. The topic of recursivity is something that I find extremely fascinating. Firstly, I’m curious to know why my Microsoft Word program is not recognizing recursivity as a word and flagging my spell check? Recursivity is interesting to me because I truly wonder with the principle of being able to add numerous prefixes and suffixes to a word, how long could words potentially grow to? For example, antidisestablishmentarianism and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis seem like made up words, however through the principle of recursivity, they are in fact real English words. I would like to find out some more information if any experiments have been conducted which ask participants to discriminate between words and non-words. Moreover, I would like to know if such experiments exist, if there is a high rate of false positives (essentially participants saying that words such as the two large ones mentioned above are non-words rather than words). Hopefully through the information provided in the next few lectures I will be able to answer some of these questions.

I will be sure to keep you posted!

Week Five: February 7-11, 2011

During this weeks lectures we covered a variety of topics including defining what words are, word recognition processes, how we access this information during comprehension, and syntax. Upon having reflected on this weeks topics, I became interested with the question of what do we know when we know a word? I’ve come to understand that knowing a word involves knowing its semantics, sound pattern, orthographic pattern, emotional association, morphological information and grammatical information – to name a few. For example when asked what is an apple, it would be correct to say that “apple” is both a fruit and a company, therefore having multiple meanings.

During the syntax lecture I became interested with the Phrase Structure Rules which essentially outline that a Verb Phrase (VP) has a Verb (V) and Noun Phrase (NP). I began to wonder about the breakdown of grammar and why the rules allow us to fluidly comprehend the phrase “I’m going to go”, but saying “I’m coming to come” sounds just absurd. What are the rules of generative grammar that restrict us from making sense of my latter phrase? Is it grammatically incorrect or is the mind simply unable to compute this novel phrase? I’m also interested with the concept of homophones and want to know if other languages besides English have them within their language? When individuals incorrectly retrieve a word that is a homophone (i.e. than instead of then) where does the error stem from? Is it an issue of lexical ambiguity, semantic error or lexical frequency (i.e. hearing sentences which compare two items more frequently “than” hearing the word in a time concept)? Secondly, the concept of lexical bundles is also worth mentioning because it is quite interesting. Many individuals who have immigrated into Canada, including my grandparents, still have a difficult time understanding some of the euphemisms in the English language. For example, fall off the wagon, been around the block, and bought the farm are all groups of words that when said together, create a meaning to behave like a single word. I question what the purpose of euphemisms are since they are usually longer than just saying the actual word itself (i.e. bought the farm instead of died)? I would be interested in conducting an experiment on individuals who have frequently been exposed to these lexical bundles in comparison to individuals who have not. I would like to know if it would be possible measure which nodes are primed in accordance to the spreading activation model, and if the nodes primed would be slightly different among the two groups.

Lastly, I would like to discuss my thoughts the topics of Zipf’s law and register differences. The concept of Zipf’s law is based on the Principle of least effort and is concerned with the relative frequency of words and how often they are used. This law stipulates that the most frequent word would be twice as frequent as the second most frequent word, and the second most frequent word would be twice more frequent than the third most frequent word, and so forth. It has already been concluded that Zipf’s law applies to search engines (i.e. Google is twice more frequently used than Yahoo), but I wonder if there is any undiscovered real-world applicability for this law? The latter concept can be as basic as a formal and informal register (i.e. informal would be talking to a friend and formal would be talking to a professor). The way which we would address and speak to these individuals would indefinitely be different. In Native American languages, they also have different registers for speaking to males and females. I would like to know if the Native language has a formal and informal register within each gender register or if they would speak to all males, for example, formally?

This weeks lectures seem to have sparked a variety of questions and hopefully in the upcoming weeks I will be able to answer them. I’ll keep you posted!

Week Six: February 14-18, 2011

During this weeks lectures we either reviewed or were introduced to the topics of syntax, cognitive neuroscience and parsing in sentence processing. Upon having reflected on this week’s topics, I became interested in the variability of reading span among individuals, the head directionality parameter, and ambiguity in sentence processing.

In linguistics, the head directionality parameter classifies word order in accordance to the placement of the head stem. In phrase structures this head stem can either be head-initial or head-final (i.e. X bar = {ZP (complements), X} or X bar = {X, ZP (complements)}. As learned in class, languages such as Japanese and Finnish are head-final languages where the head follows the phrase (i.e. hashi de and talosta). One area of fascination with head directionality is related to those individuals who are learning to speak multiple languages. Since English is a head-initial language and Japanese is a head-final language, would individuals who have first learned a head-first language have more difficulty learning the rules of a head-final language? Moreover, if an individual knows two head-final languages (i.e. Japanese and Finnish – an interesting bilingual combination), would they have a faster lexical access due to the similarities of the linguistic phrase structure?

Secondly, the concept of reading span is of interest to me as it is hypothesized to affect comprehension of complex sentences. Reading span is described as a non-rehearsed storage capacity and can vary among individuals. As I mentioned in class, I wonder if there is any evidence-based research that exists which supports that reading spans can be enhanced? For example, if an individual has a slow reading span, are there techniques or tasks available that will increase their reading span time?

Lastly, the topic of lexical ambiguity relates to the concept of reading span and as such will be discussed briefly. In regards to lexical ambiguity, it is theorized that low span readers have a longer reading time for non-dominant lexical resolutions, where as high span readers have equivalent reading times. This essentially means that in a sentence such as “Ken really liked the boxer”, a low span reader would have a slower reading span relating the word boxer if they do not associate “boxer” with a dominant meaning (i.e. dog or fighter). Relating back to possible techniques to increase reading span – I would be interested to know if increasing reading span would reduce lexical ambiguity? Moreover, is there any evidence to support that languages with head-last languages have more lexical ambiguity in contrast to head-first languages?

As the answers to these questions become illuminated I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Week Seven: February 28-March 4, 2011

During the lectures this week, the topic of language and music truly grabbed my attention and propelled me into thinking deeper into this unique relationship long after the class had ended. While in class a fellow peer mentioned a recently released film, The King’s Speech, which has a scene that illuminates this relationship well. In this film, the main character has a great deal of difficulty reading a Shakespearian passage and is instructed to play music while reading. By listening to music, his difficulties in reading the passage almost immediately dissipate. This lends credibility to the idea that music and language may share syntactic resources (as seen in Patel’s Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis). For myself personally, music and language are both important components to my daily life as they provide me with immense relaxation (i.e. talking about your day or listening to your favourite song). Upon having reflected on the class discussion, I’ve come to understand that language and music have a number of similarities as well as differences. For example, language and music both have a minimal sound unit (i.e. language – phoneme, music – note), however they differentiate in regards to their meanings (i.e. language is a system of shared meanings but music is non-referential).

Prior to getting into some of the questions I have, I would like to preface this blog post by mentioning that I am both a musician and avid lover of music. I started playing the flute in seventh grade and once into high school was asked to be a member of the school band. I also had vocal training from the age of six up until sixteen, however I haven’t sung for a number of years now and probably sound like a rusted pipe! The specific areas of the music and language lecture that I became fascinated with was the development of musical perception and types of neuropsychological impairments. To explore the latter topic, I first pose this question – “have you been told that you have a tin ear?” If so, what people are likely trying to tell you is that you seem to be tone deaf and probably have difficulty singing in tune. Essentially individuals who are tone deaf still have a functional musical perception but their musical production is somewhat distorted. Nevertheless, if this is the case for you not to worry as a number of people are slightly tone deaf. What is most interesting to me is not the large number of individuals who are tone deaf, but the rare number of individuals who are amusic. This impairment is described as an individuals’ total inability to perceive music or harmonic relationships and can be congenital or acquired (i.e. from a brian injury or tumour). More information on the skewed musical perceptions of amusics in comparison to non-amusics is provided here by Oliver Sacks. I find myself asking why are people tone deaf? Where does the impairment truly stem from? Moreover a question I would like to pose is, are there are any similarities in brain activation through the use of fMRIs if one were to study amusic and tone deaf individuals?

Secondly and stemming from my thought of amusia, I would like to discuss the topic of absolute tone. Although not covered in class, absolute tone is otherwise known as perfect pitch. Essentially, it is a fairly rare cognitive trait that involves the ability to identify and name musical pitches without the use of a reference pitch. Although perfect pitch does have a genetic component, the source of this ability has yet to be concretely identified and as such research studies such as the Absolute Pitch Study (hyperlink) are being conducted. Studies have been conducted on grey matter and fMRI differences between professional musicians and non-musicians that have yielded support that different areas of the brain are activated in these groups when listening to an out of tune note. Another question that I am intrigued by, is if studies have been conducted to compare professional musicians without perfect pitch to individuals with perfect pitch? I would hypothesize that the areas of brain activation and grey matter would be much similar among these groups in comparison to the study mentioned above.

On a final note, I hope this blog post encourages you to visit the Absolute Pitch Study and explore if you have perfect pitch! As the answers to this week’s questions become illuminated, I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Week Eight: March 7-11, 2011

During this weeks lectures the topic of language and gestures really captivated my attention. I now know that individuals primarily gesture when they speak to facilitate lexical access and communicate information. Gestures often co-occur with speech and are not really thought about by the individual. In light of this lecture, I learned that there are various types of gestures, including: embles, iconics, metaphorics, beats and deictic. One type of gesture that I found particularly interesting were emblems. As many people in North America and around the world understand, giving someone the middle finger or flipping them the bird is a gesture which signifies F#*% You. I began to think about the various emblems which exist universally, but also those that exist within cultures as well. I myself have a Greek and Armenian background, and within those cultures there are several offensive emblems which exist but do not hold the same meaning in Canada. For example, when Dr. Newman showed the Italian version of the middle finger, which is essentially flicking your chin forward with your four fingers, some of my classmates were looking around at each other confused about the relevance of this slide. I wonder if the inconsistency of emblem meanings causes some confusion for new immigrants of Canada. To illuminate culturally bound emblems, I think it would be interesting to conduct a study in which the subjects were immigrants to Canada and the control group was native Canadians. I hypothesize that emblems which are a result of North American pop culture would be identified with less accuracy by the individuals who are new to Canada. An example of such a North American pop culture emblem is Lady Gaga’s Monster Salute.

Another area of interest in regards to gestures and how it relates to personal space. It is apparent that in some cultures such as Greeks, we like to speak with our hands and engage in a conversation at a very close proximity to the other person. Moreover, I've noticed that many of my older Greek relatives often will clutch my shoulder or my forearm during a story to emphasis a point, similar to the function of a beat. On the other hand, my extended family members who are British do not like to have conversations at a very close proximity. As a result of these apparent differences among cultures the question which I would like to ask is, do cultures with apparent personal space boundaries gesture less than those who like to converse at a closer proximity? Another question which I would like to pose is if certain geographic locations (i.e. Europe) have cultures which gesture more than other locations (i.e. Asia). If this is the case, are there reasons to explain a geographic gesture phenomenon?

As these questions become illuminated, I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Week Nine: March 14-18, 2011

During this weeks lectures we discussed the topic of language development. More specifically, we examined how children learn words, the average age of acquisition for a child’s first word and types of learning styles - to name a few. Among these, the topic of Motherese really captivated my interest for a number of reasons. Motherese is essentially infant-directed speech, usually used by mothers, which involves short and simple sentences. Stress patterns, rhythm and intonation are all exaggerated which it thought to better sustain the infant’s attention. It is interesting to note that mothers often engage in Motherese without conscious awareness. An example of a mother engaging in Motherese with her daughter can be found here. So now that we have identified what Motherese is, the question that I would like to pose is, why do adults engage in infant-directed speech and does it actually help infants acquire language? Upon thinking further into the topic of Motherese, I began to wonder about individuals who talk to their pet companions, specifically dogs and cats, using speech which is very similar to Motherese in terms of exaggerated stress patterns and intonation. Like infants, dog and cat owners usually speak to their pets during the kitten and puppy stages in a Motherese-like manner. The question is – why do we do this? Are we assisting the learning of our pet or simply praising them for their adorable looks. Please see the following link for a funny example of what I’m taking about. Through the discussion of language development during this weeks lecture, it was identified that Motherese help infants discriminate sounds, which would ultimately facilitates their language acquisition. In relationship to this concept, I would be interested to know if any studies on dogs or cats have been conducted which compare owners who use a Motherese-like speech during their pets first years of life to pet owners who don’t (I’m not sure if any exist!) Since it is generally agreed upon that pets can’t speak a human language, (although some people even contest this, i.e. a dog saying water in Spanish), a study which would compare Motherese vs. non-Motherese pet owners could illuminate if the use of this type of speech facilitates superior and faster learning in pets, such as toilet training, tricks, etc.

On a final note, when discussing the types of learning styles for language acquisition, infants are usually exposed to either a referential or expressive learning style. The referential learning style refers to primarily naming objects and was illustrated in the Motherese YouTube clip above. Moreover, this learning style is common for first born and only children. On the other hand, an expressive learning style is more common for families with multiple children; this type of learning focuses on social expression and holophrastic utterances. The latter is defined a one-word stage in which children produce just enough words to convey what they want (i.e. an infant of 12-14 months saying cookie, drink or bad, but not saying the or in). The question that I would like to pose, is if infants who are exposed to a referential type of learning style develop language differently than infants exposed to expressive learning? Moreover, I would like to know if there is a correlation between learning style of language development, academic skills and other linguistic phenomenon (i.e. do children who learn language using the referential style have larger vocabularies? Do they experience the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon less due to referential exposure?)

As the answers to this week’s questions become illuminated, I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Week Ten: March 21-25, 2011

During this weeks lectures we discussed the topics bilingualism and aphasia. Bilingualism is defined as the knowledge of two languages. In contrast, polylingualism refers to knowing greater than two languages. As mentioned in my blog post from the very first week, many “Head Start” programs encourage parents to introduce two or more languages to their children during infancy as it seems that language acquisition requires less effort during this developmental period. I myself am fluently bilingual, speaking both Armenian and English. In addition I can also speak Spanish and Greek at a very basic level. However, since I can understand both these languages better than I can speak them, I do not consider myself a polyglot yet.

As prefaced above, an individual’s age of acquisition (AoA) for a language has been suggested to be subject to critical and sensitive periods. The relationship suggested between AoA and language is simple – the earlier the AoA of a language, the easier it is to learn and master the language. Alternatively, when AoA is later in life (i.e. 20-years-old), it has been suggested that acquiring a language becomes substantially more difficult. The question I would like to pose, is if language AoA occurs before the critical and sensitive periods expire, to what quantity of cultural languages could a infant fluidly retain (i.e. are twenty languages attainable?). Although current research suggests AoA of language and ease of acquisition are positively correlated together, there are some individuals who seem to be outliers to this concept. For example, in class we were show a video of a man named Benny who is a polyglot of eight languages. The AoA of his second language (L2) was acquired at the age of 21, which from a research standpoint would indicate that he would have difficulty mastering this language. But on the contrary, when you watch his video, Benny seems to have fluently mastered not just one, but eight different languages! The question I would like to ask, is how individuals like Benny are able to successfully achieve an L2 at a late AoA? If researchers were to examine bilinguals or polyglots who have acquired language late in life, are their unique differences among these individuals that would be found (i.e. all have increased activity in a specific brain region, all have above average IQ, etc)? In short, I would like to find out more about this fascinating ability to “hack a language”, as termed by Benny. I would also like to know if any research has been successful in identifying the relation between bilinguals and memory span. Why do I ask? Well when you are learning a new language, such as Spanish, the number of vocabulary words are immense – therefore I wonder if bilinguals have better adaptive memory span than monolinguals? The last thing I would like to mention in regards to bilingualism is, for the record, something that I actually wrote down in my notes during the first lecture of this week. Verbatim, I jotted down "have there been studies conducted where a native speaker (L1) and the L2 languages are very similar. For example (English L1 learning Spanish L2. versus English L1 learning Japanese L2) to uncover the relationships between the first language and second language (similar phonologies and syntax, inflectional morphology)? It seems that I may have been a little psychic on this particular day, because the second lecture of this week was precisely on the topic of examining the relationships between L1 and L2 languages.

During the last lecture of this week, the students of PSYO 3190 were fortunate enough to have a guest speaker come in and discuss the various types of aphasias that exist. I personally found this lecture to be an eye-opening experience as I was not aware of the high prevalence rate of aphasia in North America (i.e. 20% of all stroke patients develop some type of aphasia). The aphasias discussed were a non-fluent, fluent and global aphasia. The non-fluent type of aphasia (Broca) is primarily characterized as an expressive deficit, where as the fluent type of aphasia is characterized by a receptive deficit (Wernicke). Examples of fluent and non-fluent aphasias can be seen here. The question I would like to ask is, since a majority of stroke survivors develop some form of aphasia, is the government doing an adequate job of promoting medical campaigns for stroke and informing the public? Based on the fact that I only became aware of the prevalence for aphasia through this lecture - I would say no. Further, I think that a common misperception needs to be addressed, the public needs to be informed that aphasia affects individuals of all ages and not just a geriatric population. (i.e.19-year-old who suffered from a stroked).

Before concluding this post, I would like to share an idea with you that has been plaguing my mind! In line with the blog post from week seven discussing language and music I had an interesting thought. First I'll ask you, do you have any favourite music artists who are from a country with a strong accent (i.e. Australia, United Kingdom)? Have you ever noticed how their accent does not transfer even a miniscule amount into their singing? An example of what I mean can be seen in this video from two female singers from Australia where their accent is very potent in an interview, but not apparent during singing whatsoever? Just an interesting thought I suppose.

As the answers to these questions become illuminated, I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Week Eleven: March 28-April 1, 2011

During the allotted lecture time this week, students of PSYO 3190 debated in teams of four on a “pro” and “against” stance pertaining to a predetermined topic. In ordered sequence, the overarching debate topics for this week included: Ebonics, dyslexia treatments, and language instruction accompanying cochlear implants. More specifically, the topic of dyslexia treatments was my group’s topic, which we supported the position of “the Fast ForWord program for dyslexia as an effective treatment and superior to other therapies”. In this post I will reflect on my personal experience of the debate process, along with discussing my overall impression of some of the debate topics presented by my peers

During the first debate on Ebonics, four peers argued in favour of the Oakland School Board resolution, which states that Ebonics should be a language of instruction in classrooms where Ebonics is the dominant language of the student majority. In contrast, the other four debaters argued against this resolution. If you would like an example of what Ebonics sounds like, please see this clip which depicts an African American male speaking Ebonics to police officers. As you can see the police require a translator to understand this particular individual. The essence of the arguments presented in class from the “for” team was that Ebonics should be the primary language used in the Oakland School Board and the “against” team argued that Ebonics should not be used as the primarily instructional language in Oakland schools. Something interesting to note about this debate in retrospect was, why did neither teams propose the idea of using Ebonics in the same context as a secondary in school? The rational behind this thought is that in most American schools Spanish is taught as a mandatory second language until eight grade; similar to mandatory French in Canada. Rather than arguing that Ebonics should be the language of instruction in classrooms where Ebonics is the dominant language of the majority of children - perhaps Ebonics could be substituted as the mandatory second language for students with an Ebonics background? I was able to find this YouTube clip which illustrates the type of Ebonic words which would be taught to children and types of contexts these words would be used in. For example, "what's the D.L on the high yielding tech stocks" - D.L meaning Down Low. In layman's terms this sentence means, what is the status or update on the high yielding tech stocks?

The debate experience for myself was interesting. I had been in several debate settings in the past – from a simple high school debate team to a national mock trial conference, however the debate instructions in this setting were by far the most rigid. The debate format was based on Pecha Kucha, which required the debaters to present their argument predominantly using images. The images were formatted onto a Powerpoint presentation which automatically forwarded to the next slide every 20 seconds. For more information on what Pecha Kucha is and how it came about, please visit their website here. Each of my group members presented six slides in this format regarding the superiority of the Fast ForWord program for dyslexia. From this debate experience, I came to realize how difficult it was to find empirical evidence that supported this treatment as being superior as most articles we found only supported this treatment to be effective. My group found themselves thinking outside the box in terms of comparing the adherence and motivation rates, criterion, self-esteem effects and time and financial requirements between the Fast ForWord program and other dyslexia treatments. Overall the experience was a great addition to my previous debate exposure. Some suggestions for future purposes would be to allow students to be involved in determining the topics as I though some topics were extremely specific (i.e., the Oakland School Board resolution for Ebonics) where as others were very broad (i.e., language instruction accompanying cochlear implants). It is the opinion of this author that the more specific a topic is, the more tailored an argument can be – thus being harder to refute by the opposition as they cannot make general claims during the rebuttal.

On an a final note, the setup of the debate is in a way that the against teams present their arguments the last. I would like to pose the following question: are the peer votes that directly influence the winner results being biased by a recency effect? Just a reminded, the recency effect is the tendency for individuals to be most influenced by what they have last seen or heard, because people tend to retain the most complete knowledge about the most recent events. If such an effect is unduly influencing the results, I hypothesis that the remaining debate results will be in favour of the against arguments. If this turns out to be the case, perhaps future debate teams should present their positions by a random draw. For example, once students have chosen their topics, by process of flipping a coin, teams could prepare to present their arguments first or second, depending on the results of the coin flip. If this method were to be implemented, it would essentially mean that the first debate team would be responsible for presenting the background information on the issue. Other foreseeable issues with implementing this method are not apparent, therefore I support that this method would be effective in combating voter biases.

I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Week Twelve: April 4-8, 2011

During the winter term of last year, I had signed up for the only category “A” course that fit into my six-course semester – PSYO 3091. In the case of most courses, students from previous years always offer their opinions about the course to prospective students. However, upon registering for the Psycholinguistics course I had not heard any good nor bad feedback about the class, so literally did not know what to expect of PSYO 3091. The instructor had a very interesting grade breakdown for this class: 10% from the weekly blog posts, 50% for creating a Wikiversity textbook chapter, 30% for create a Wikiversity learning exercise and 10% for participating in a group debate.

Upon having completed the PSYO 3091 course, I have both suggestions and feedback on what aspects of the course could be modified and what worked well. I think the overall concept of creating an online website chapter for this course is great! In comparison to other courses were assignment are only submitted to the professor and then long forgotten, Wikiversity allows your assignment to be shared with individuals all over the world long after completing the course. Prior to taking this class, I had never been on the Wikiversity website nor knew of its existence. I also didn’t have any knowledge of HTML coding, website copyright laws, etc. Assuming that most students were in the same situation as myself, I would recommend that this course have one lecture devoted to explaining basic HTML to students. In addition, I think it would be very useful to walk students through a step-by-step process on how to upload images onto Wikiversity, as many students expressed uncertainty. Another suggestion I have for future would be to reconsider the necessity of a required course textbook. The textbook was quite expensive and not really used, so if it is something that students can do without in future I think that would be financial friendly. In regards to the debate aspect of this course, as mentioned in my post from week eleven, I would suggest in future that students have the opportunity to be involved in determining the debate topics. My rational for suggesting student involvement is because it seemed as though some debate topics were very tailored while others were kept extremely broad. From a literature research standpoint, it is only logical that the students who had broader topics likely did more research to fully understand their topic and the specific strengths and criticisms of their argument. In contrast, students who had a very specific topic likely spent less time researching about the general concepts of their position (i.e. Oakland School Board resolution for Ebonics). The weekly downloadable lecture podcasts were a unique aspect to this course and a great student resource. If a student was unable to make it to class due to sickness, for example, the available podcasts allowed them to listen to the lecture as if they were sitting in class! I thought that this was a great aspect of the course and would suggest continuing the podcasts in future for this course as well.

In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to say thanks for a great year :) In the spirit of this semester having come to an end, feel free to listen to the wise words of Alice Cooper.