Bower – Kuhl notes

T. Bower January 4, 2010
BES 301

Kuhl Notes:


Who is Dr. Patricia Kuhl? Dr Kuhl is the co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the University of Washington's NSF Science of Learning Center.

What are her credentials? She graduated from the University of Minnesota in Neurology.

Who is the intended audience for this presentation? The lecture given to the audience is for those studying Early Childhood Education, and those interested in baby learning. She also relates her material to the importance of understanding language due to the increase use of computers and the future of artificial intelligence.

Why is the intended audience essential to consider when evaluating a presentation? So that context can be appropriate for best comprehension.

The first graph that Dr. Kuhl presents is titled ‘the critical period for language.’ Write a caption for that graph that explains its meaning to someone who hasn’t watched the presentation. The most effective period for language development is from six months to seven years.

What do the data points mean? Data points on the chart for language and age with each symbol producing a talker. In other words, they are results from individual testing for frequencies on the average.

What do the lines between the data points mean? The lines are based on distributional frequency analysis. The first graph is a quick snap shot for “computational learning.”

Compare this to your analysis of Scott (2004) in which you distinguished between direct and indirect observations. Kuhl outlines a series of hypotheses to explain why the critical period exists. Note that she class[es] these hypotheses theories…why do you think she does that, given her audience? With Scott, he mentions that we rarely claim to prove a theory. Kuhl outlines a series of hypotheses because she is dealing with infants, so cannot receive direct information about their experience. Kuhl is making statements about the relationships of observed phenomena. The basis of her lecture is to show how early learning can help older learners and to also close the pre-school preparation gap.

What are the alternative hypotheses that she puts forth? (Remember to paraphrase!) The alternate hypotheses was preformed with a research control group which consisted of, does audio only or tv only have the same effect as learning in person? The result was that the social interaction was critical. There was no learning from audio only and tv only. Also, the better the social skills, the better the learning.

With this graph as a background, Kuhl describes an experiment that she conducted. Pay attention to the order in which she presents information about the experiment in addition to the content. Why did Kuhl conduct this study? Kuhl’s description of the first set of data includes the physical structure of the mouth and throat, or oral posture. This study indicates that there are permanent physical formations take place, after the initial six months of age. She calls this the Form of Frequency.

Summarize the next three slides.
Slide 1: Analysis acoustics – language phonetic discrimination
Slide 2: Pitch frequency – “motherease” used for better articulation
Slide 3: Native perception – shows when neural commitment begins

Now Kuhl moves on to a new experiment, in which she asks when babies stop being “citizens of the world” and become “culture-bound.” She presents the results of her study in a graph titled “Infant perception of /ra/-/la/”. Where was this study published? Developmental Science, 2006.

What are the variables that Kuhl measured to make this slide? Percent correct and age.

Why are these variables appropriate for answering her question? The variables show change over time.

What does Kuhl conclude from these data? The conclusion is that there is a sensitive four month span where the brain organizes language input.

Later on, Kuhl discusses another study in which she compared the sounds made by mothers who speak English, Russian and Swedish. What hypothesis did she test? The hypothesis is, do babies organize categories based on the language heard?

What data did she collect to test that hypothesis? (that is, what did she measure?). The measurement was the most popular sounds, or linguistics hot spots.

What do the graphs look like? The graphs have frequency ranges with vowel sound groupings.

What did she learn from the data? Kuhl learned that babies stop attending to contrasts that aren’t important which restrict the ability to hear distinctions.

Where was this study published? Science, 1992.

Go back to the slides you described, and determine whether they fit into the: Introduction, materials and methods, results or discussion sections of a presentation.

1. Oral posture – introduction
2. Analysis acoustics – Materials and methods
3. Pitch frequency – Materials and methods
4. Native perception – Results


One of the studies that Kuhl discusses asks whether interest in sounds at seven-and-half months of age lead to better language acquisition. Outline the study according to the standard sections of a scientific baby. The study was retention of native language in relation to foreign language. And included:

1. Theories – The brain works computationally plus socially,
2. Laws – Babies are born learning and language starts early,
3. Hypothesis – phonetic learning is a pathway,
4. Facts – new neuroscience tools will greatly affect research.

Give an example of how one of Kuhl’s studies inspired another. With use of the meglatone it could be shown where auditory areas and motor areas need to be connected. In the brain area at seven months, the brain was active in the auditory area, and this gradually shifted over to the motor area by the twelfth month of age.

Redraw the flow chart, including all the detail specified in the enlargements, but draw from Kuhl’s research program to give examples of every step.

How did Kuhl test her ideas? The final result of testing was based on correlating the amount of recognition that the children had for words and utterances perceived.
How did she gather and interpret data? EEG readings, or the neural signature, were used. They were acquired from a machine called a meglatone, which could measure 306 fields of the active brain.

What community analysis and feedback was involved? Etc. Bring this detailed sketch with you to our first class meeting! A group learned by interacting with their tutors. They could learn any language; phonetic and words, and that the degree of social interacting and attention measures is an indicator of learning.

As Scott (2004) observed, science is unique among the different ways of knowing because it is grounded in the natural world. How is Kuhl’s science based in the natural world? Kuhl’s science is based on hypothesis: research and conclusion

What question is Kuhl asking? (This is her research question.) When do babies start to show neural commitment to native language?
What answer does she expect? Babies at good at native language discrimination starting at 7-1/2 months and ending at twelve months.

What variables is she measuring to test her hypothesis? The variables were listening to native and foreign languages at various stages to see where cognition does or does not happen.

How does she measure these variables? Recognition of sounds.

What is a control (in general)? The study is conducted with different variables.

What is the control in this study? The study looked at whether babies could learn language from study speakers, and the control study asked is this the same as in the native country? The conclusion was that it was the same.

Why is a control necessary? To alleviate hypotheses discrimination.

Once Kuhl and her colleagues collect their data, how do they analyze it? The scientists analyze the date by visual understanding using computational graphing.

What kinds of graphs do they use? Distributional frequency analysis graphs.

Why these? These graphs are visual models that are a simplification of the study.

Can you think of other graphs that would be helpful? Graphs showing attributes or clustering would be helpful.