(Press-News.org) Tel Aviv -- Although we're convinced that baby is brilliant when she mutters her first words, cognitive scientists have been conducting a decades-long debate about whether or not human beings actually "learn" language.
Most theoretical linguists, including the noted researcher Noam Chomsky, argue that people have little more than a "language organ" -- an inherent capacity for language that's activated during early childhood. On the other hand, researchers like Dr. Roni Katzir of Tel Aviv University's Department of Linguistics insist that what humans can actually learn is still an open question -- and he has built a computer program to try and find an answer.
"I have built a computer program that learns basic grammar using only the bare minimum of cognitive machinery -- the bare minimum that children might have -- to test the hypothesis that language can indeed be learned," says Dr. Katzir, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he took classes taught by Chomsky) and a former faculty member at Cornell University. His early results suggest that the process of language acquisition might be much more active than the majority of linguists have assumed up until now.
Dr. Katzir's work was recently presented at a Cornell University workshop, where researchers from fields in linguistics, psychology, and computer science gathered to discuss learning processes.
A math model in mind
Able to learn basic grammar, the computer program relies on no preconceived assumptions about language or how it might be learned. Still in its early stages of development, the program helps Dr. Katzir explore the limits of learning -- what kinds of information can a complex cognitive system like the human mind acquire and then store at the unconscious level? Do people "learn" language, and if so, can a computer be made to learn the same way?
Using a type of machine learning known as "unsupervised learning," Dr. Katzir has programmed his computer to "learn" simple grammar on its own. The program sees raw data and conducts a random search to find the best way to characterize what it sees.
The computer looks for the simplest description of the data using a criterion known as Minimum Description Length. "The process of human learning is similar to the way computers compress files: it searches for recognizable patterns in the data. Let's say, for instance, that you want to describe a string of 1,000 letters. You can be very naïve and list all the letters in order, or you can start to notice patterns -- maybe every other character is a vowel -- and use that information to give a more compact description. Once you understand something better, you can describe it more efficiently," he says.
Artificial intelligence for answering machines
His early results point to the conclusion that the computer, modeling the human mind, is indeed able to "learn" -- that language acquisition need not be limited to choosing from a finite series of possibilities.
While it's primarily theoretical, Dr. Katzir's research may have applications in technologies such as voice dialogue systems: a computer that, on its own, can better understand what callers are looking for. A more advanced version of Dr. Katzir's program might learn natural language grammar and be able to process data received in a realistic setting, reflecting the manner in which humans actually talk.
The results of the research might also be applied to study how we learn to "read" visual images, and may be able to teach a robot how to reconstruct a three-dimensional space from a two-dimensional image and describe what it sees. Dr. Katzir plans to pursue this line of research with engineering colleagues at Tel Aviv University and abroad.
"Many linguists today assume that there are severe limits on what is learnable," Dr. Katzir says. "I take a much more optimistic view about those limitations and the capacity of humans to learn."
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
END
Associate professor Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger's Reading Centre asks if something is lost in switching from book to computer screen, and from pen to keyboard.
The process of reading and writing involves a number of senses, she explains. When writing by hand, our brain receives feedback from our motor actions, together with the sensation of touching a pencil and paper. These kinds of feedback is significantly different from those we receive when touching and typing on a keyboard.
Learning by doing
Together with neurophysiologist Jean-Luc Velay at the ...
Malignant gliomas are fast-growing brain tumours with poor prospects of recovery depending on disease stage. Experts hope that the examination of patients by means of positron emission tomography (PET) is more helpful in the choice of the right treatment than other procedures. In a final report the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has now investigated the benefit of PET in the detection of recurrences. According to this report, no robust conclusions are possible on the advantages or disadvantages of PET.
Two research questions investigated
The ...
Recent work, in particular the CAMERA study, has used MRI to study the brains of migraine sufferers and has shown that a higher proportion of these patients exhibit lesions of the brain microvessels than the rest of the population.
Lesions of the brain microvessels
Lesions of the brain microvessels, visible on cerebral MRI images, can be of various kinds: white-matter hyperintensities and, more rarely, silent infarcts leading to loss of white-matter tissue.
They result from a deterioration of the small cerebral arteries that supply blood to the brain's white matter, ...
Fairfax, Va., January 18, 2011 – HIV-positive head and neck cancer patients respond well to radiation therapy treatments and experience similar toxicity rates as non-HIV-positive patients, despite prior reports to the contrary, according to a study in the January issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, an official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).
Patients with HIV have a significantly higher risk of developing some types of cancers; however, since the use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) began ...
In birds as in humans, female fertility declines with age.
But some female birds can slow the ticking of their biological clocks by choosing the right mates, according to results of a study published online last week in the journal Oikos.
Female birds become progressively less fertile as age takes its toll, says biologist Josh Auld of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina, and co-author of the Oikos paper.
Older females lay fewer eggs, and they lay them later in the season--at a time when less food is available for their chicks.
But ...
DETROIT— The combined results of a genetic blood test and a five-minute functional MRI successfully classified more than three-quarters of healthy older adults, many of whom were destined to develop cognitive decline within 18 months of testing.
John Woodard, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University, is lead author of "Predicting Cognitive Decline in Healthy Older Adults Using fMRI" published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (vol. 21, no. 3).
"No one had studied ...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT scientists have discovered that cells lining the blood vessels secrete molecules that suppress tumor growth and keep cancer cells from invading other tissues, a finding that could lead to a new way to treat cancer.
Elazer Edelman, professor in the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), says that implanting such cells adjacent to a patient's tumor could shrink a tumor or prevent it from growing back or spreading further after surgery or chemotherapy. He has already tested such an implant in mice, and MIT has licensed the technology ...
Baked goods made from hydrolyzed wheat flour are not toxic to celiac disease patients, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. Celiac disease occurs in the digestive system when people cannot tolerate a protein called gluten, which is found primarily in wheat.
"This is the first time that a wheat flour-derived product is shown to not be toxic after being given to celiac patients for 60 days," said Luigi Greco, MD, PhD, of the University of Napes, Italy, ...
Montreal, January 19, 2011 – Toddlers who learn a second language from infancy have an edge over their unilingual peers, according to a new study from Concordia University and York University in Canada and the Université de Provence in France. As reported in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the research team tested the understanding of English and French words among 24-month-olds to see if bilingual toddlers had acquired comparable vocabulary in each language.
"By 24 months, we found bilingual children had already acquired a vocabulary in each of their two ...
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Scientists around the world have been hot on the trail of a genetic mutation closely associated with some brain cancers and leukemia since the mutation's discovery in 2008. The hunt is now yielding fruit. In the Jan. 18, 2011 issue of Cancer Cell, researchers reveal how the mutation contributes to cancer development and suggest potential ways to counter its effects.
About 75 percent of people with low-grade brain tumors and 20 percent of people with acute myeloid leukemia have a mutated version of a gene known as IDH. IDH helps cells metabolize, or ...
