I heard a joke, did you?

An estimated 25% of the US population speaks a second language (McComb, 2011). Our educational institutions encourage learning a 2nd language. As we advance through the learning process of learning a new language, our perception of it changes over time. The additional knowledge transforms sounds that we can’t initially comprehend, into meaningful thoughts and ideas. Your perception of the noises is different than someone else’s perception who is hearing the exact same sounds. A few areas that correlate with the process of perception changing with knowledge are speech segmentation, feedback signals, and the top-down process.

I recently went walking through a flea market with my friend Jenn. It was a combination of loud music and different languages being spoken between merchandise owners and their customers. For the most part, I didn’t understand a lot of what was being said as I was walking around, except for when English words were being used. I was mainly hearing Spanish. Since I don’t speak Spanish, it all sounded like really fast unfamiliar noises being said in an order that have no meaning to me. Speaking a language and recognizing when a word starts and ends is defined as speech segmentation. I lacked speech segmentation when I was listening to Spanish being spoken. I didn’t recognize the noises as individual words, so it all sounded like one long word to me. Knowledge of a language enables or “turns on” speech segmentation in our minds to help us put meaning to the sounds which wouldn’t be possible without feedback signals.

As I continued walking around the flea market, I heard a woman speaking Farsi. My ears suddenly perked up. I understood everything she was saying. She was mixing English words and Farsi words within the same sentences but I was able to follow along easily and smoothly without having to stop to think about it at all. The perception that I had was very different than that of my monolingual friend Jenn who was standing beside me. Jenn and I were hearing completely opposite noises. The reasoning behind this relates to feedback signals. Receptors (neurons that pick up information from the environment, such as neurons on your skin, eyes, and ears) allow for information to be sent to neurons in the brain. At the same time as the receptors are sending signals, feedback signals are being sent down. Feedback signals are additional signals that are traveling down from higher parts of the brain and are providing information. My sense of hearing is allowing me to hear the sounds and feedback signals being sent down are allowing me to translate the sounds. This is only possible with prior knowledge of me learning the language. Having that prior knowledge be the starting point of how information is processed is known as the top-down process. The top-down processing plays a key part in my perception. It’s the additional knowledge that I bring to the table that allowed me to perceive the sound differently.

I heard the woman at the flea market tell a joke at the exact same time as Jenn heard low and high frequency sounds coming from her vocal cords. For most of us (not including individuals with hearing loss/damage) we all hear the same noises. With added feedback signals in our brains based on the top-down process, we can perceive and interpret sounds differently. In the case of language, we are able to use speech segmentation if prior knowledge allows us to. Both Jenn and I were at the flea market physically doing the exact same thing as our senses were picking up similar receptors but this particular experience described allowed us both to experience completely opposite perceptions.

 

References

Goldsteing, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. California: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

McComb, C. (2001). About one in four Americans can hold a conversation in a Second Language: Spanish is by far the most frequently spoken language.

Retrieved from

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/about-one-four-americans-can-hold-conversation-second-language.aspx

 

 

One thought on “I heard a joke, did you?

  1. Angelina Teresa Bennici

    This topic and post is very interesting to me because as I am a first language English speaker, I have recently learned Spanish. The past three semesters I have taken Spanish classes and I am in the third level currently. Although I still do not understand a lot I have also learned a lot more than I knew before. Now this is tricky because I do not understand Spanish as you had said to clearly understand Farsi. Even though I cannot consider myself bi-lingual, I have now been able to build up some sort of speech segmentation which is still very limited. Because I am not fluent in Spanish I emphasize my feedback signals between hearing a mixture of sounds when someone speaks and also understanding a broken message that is being sent through these sounds. For example, if someone were to speak Spanish I use familiar sounds, body language, tone, and certain words that I do know to help me perceive the entire message correctly. My speech segmentation is limited therefore my ability to perceive feedback signals as complete meaningful messages as opposed to just sounds is also limited. I believe this also relates to feedback loop which conveys limited ability to understand information as a whole when there are multiple properties involved. Meaning that if I hear and understand only some parts of the message and not others, there is a greater chance of me misunderstanding the whole message by only understanding bits and pieces here and there as opposed to knowing the language completely which would give me a direct and clear connection between two properties, the language or message and myself. This is different from when I hear someone speak English where my speech segmentation is very experienced resulting in much more accuracy of any message being transmitted.

Leave a Reply