Summary: ACADEMIC WORD A stimulus is something that produces a response. So, for example, if the government reduces interest rates, this stimulus may encourage investment and growth, because it becomes easier for businesses to borrow money. According to behaviourist theories of learning, people learn how to behave by responding to stimuli, learning to do things which give them a reward and to avoid doing things which are unpleasant. Stimulus is a Latin word and has an irregular plural, stimuli. TEST Here are FOUR sentences with the word of the day. But only THREE are correct. Which is the Odd One Out? The experiment measures the response of participants to a range of visual, kinaesthetic and audio stimulus. I hope that my presentation will prove to be a stimulus for discussion regarding practical improvements. The participants were presented with one stimulus in their central visual field and a range of other simultaneous audio and visual stimuli. This meta-analysis explores research into the value of classroom reading as a stimulus for vocabulary development at intermediate school level. PRACTICE What were the main stimuli for your choice of subject area, school or university? What kinds of economic stimulus are used by governments? KIWI QUIZ Which New Zealand resident, originally from Germany, but now living near Massey’s Albany campus, is facing legal charges in the US related to his internet company, Megaupload? VIDEO https://archive.org/details/PatriciaKuhl_2010XThis is a talk by Patricia Kuhl about how children learn languages. In particular, she discusses her research into how babies learn to recognise the sounds of a particular language – this is known as the phonology of a language. 1) The Indian language Koro could be described as ___ developing critical endangered 2) According to the 'Critical Period of Acquisition' theory, a person’s ability to learn a language begins to decline at the age of ___ 3 7 17 3) Patricia Kuhl points out that her research may contribute to our knowledge of how people ___ develop a range of knowledge and skills in early childhood can improve their accent in foreign languages can memorise new vocabulary more effectively 4) Patricia’s research project has produced evidence that babies, up to the age of 12months, ____ are better at discriminating between sounds in their own language can be conditioned to distinguish between sounds in a laboratory setting can tell the difference between sounds in any language 5) What does Patricia Kuhl describe as the key factor about the sounds of a language that babies notice in ‘motherese’ (the language spoken to them by their caregiver? volume distribution stimuli 6) How did they make sure that simply taking part in the experiment didn’t help the babies improve their perception of Mandarin sounds? There was a control group Some of the children had Chinese lessons at home Only bilingual mothers took part in the experiment 7) The experiment in which babies were exposed to language input on audio and TV, showed that interaction with a real person is ________ for a child’s phonological development. optional inefficient essential 8) The MEG device allows researchers to analyse ____ brain activity during tasks cognitive content during tasks motivational factors in language learning You can read an academic paper on this topic by Patricia Kuhl at: http://www.pnas.org/content/97/22/11850.full#sec-11
