•.. صَالة المُنتدى ..

• Psycholinguists make a distinction between:
➢ Low level processes which involve the raw data of speech or writing
➢ High level processes which involve shaping this data into meaning.
For example, reading involves two distinct operations:

1. A reader decodes the words on the page, and notes the sequence in which they appear.

2. Once words have been recognized; he / she then has to build meaning at the level of the sentence and at the level of the text as a whole.

These two operations would appear to involve different degrees of attention and even different parts of the brain.

• Three important issues emerge in relation to language and the
brain:

1. Comparison → In what way do our brains differ from those of
other primates which do not possess language?

2. Localization → Where is language located in the brain?

3. Lateralization → Is there a difference in the way the right side
and left side of the brain contribute to language? At what age
does that difference become established?

• In what way do our brains differ from those of other primates
which do not possess language?

Nativists argue that a human infant must have some kind of
genetically transmitted language faculty in order to acquire
language as rapidly and successfully as it does.

If that is the case, then we can expect the human brain to be different in structure from those of primates not capable of language.

Cognitivists suggest that differences in the operation of the
human brain are what enabled us to evolve language when other
species could not.