tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post3351417249508639290..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: More on ModularityNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-91621748038730010002013-02-08T07:54:34.332-08:002013-02-08T07:54:34.332-08:00Great post, thanks for pointing to the L&D pap...Great post, thanks for pointing to the L&D paper, I read it last night.<br /><br />On autism and modularity, I recall this (old) paper:<br />Simon Baron-Cohen, "Does the study of autism justify minimalist innate modularity" in Learning and Individual Difference 10, 179-191 (1999). (Google will find you a pdf)<br />I suspect there is more recent work.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11869582156654770141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-38564491842525930362013-02-07T14:01:00.307-08:002013-02-07T14:01:00.307-08:00Hi Norbert, great post, I'll read the paper.
...Hi Norbert, great post, I'll read the paper.<br /><br />Much of what you said also applies to children with autistic spectrum disorder, as well (I am not a domain expert, though i am on my way to becoming one). It is highly heritable, though there is a more complex many-to-one genotype-phenotype relationship than in WS. The neural signature is not so well understood as WS, but we know that pre-natal or early childhood brain injury causes or exasperates it. Even children with autism who are classified as having clinical language impairments comorbid with autistic spectrum disorder are capable of difficult language processing tasks; for instance, they are just as good as typically developing children (matched for scores on standardized non-verbal intelligence batteries) at difficult language tasks such as repeating 4-syllable nonce words (try saying "teyvoychaydeg"). Their language impairments appear only in the places where language abuts against non-linguistic considerations. For instance, they have problems with learning the semantics of individual pronouns, confusing "he"/"she" for "you", which is thought to indicate a deficit in social cognition. This seems to me to be a serious problem both for the antimodularity crowd and also for those (Tomasello?) who see language as applied social cognition. But, I haven't see any paper about autism and modularity; I imagine it'd be tough going to publish such a thing, unless it was sent somewhere like _Biolinguistics_.<br /><br />- Kyle Gorman (I can't figure out how to make my username be a recognizable avatar of my real name)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com