I was going to say Myth of Mirror Neurons by Hickok (excellent book by the way—maybe the only neuroscience book I’ve ever read where I feel like I can treat every word as gospel truth). But I just went back and double-checked, and he actually only said this about receptive language, not production.
Specifically, Hickok cites evidence that the task of distinguishing nonword sounds from each other (e.g. “ba” vs “da”) is “double dissociated” from the task of distinguishing different words (e.g. “bad” vs “dad”). In simpler terms, some people get brain damage that causes them to be able to distinguish ba-vs-da but not bad-vs-dad, and other people get brain damage that causes them to be able to distinguish bad-vs-dad but not ba-vs-da. This proves that they’re at least partly processed in different brain regions.
I still think what I wrote is probably correct (i.e. that production of animal sounds or other “sound effects” involves different brain regions than production of speech, although of course they’ll overlap by both passing through low-level motor control on the way out). But until I find direct evidence, I better fix the wording! Thanks for calling me out on that :-)
One thing I’ve been thinking about regarding animal noises is the actual animal noise and the not-quite-phonetic spelling of the noise. My slightly late talking youngest son makes realistic animal noises rather than saying “moo” (which I think most children would say). Even now when I think of what noise a cow makes I initially think “moo”, rather than of the actual noise itself.
I’m not sure that actually means anything—just an observation!
I was going to say Myth of Mirror Neurons by Hickok (excellent book by the way—maybe the only neuroscience book I’ve ever read where I feel like I can treat every word as gospel truth). But I just went back and double-checked, and he actually only said this about receptive language, not production.
Specifically, Hickok cites evidence that the task of distinguishing nonword sounds from each other (e.g. “ba” vs “da”) is “double dissociated” from the task of distinguishing different words (e.g. “bad” vs “dad”). In simpler terms, some people get brain damage that causes them to be able to distinguish ba-vs-da but not bad-vs-dad, and other people get brain damage that causes them to be able to distinguish bad-vs-dad but not ba-vs-da. This proves that they’re at least partly processed in different brain regions.
I still think what I wrote is probably correct (i.e. that production of animal sounds or other “sound effects” involves different brain regions than production of speech, although of course they’ll overlap by both passing through low-level motor control on the way out). But until I find direct evidence, I better fix the wording! Thanks for calling me out on that :-)
Thanks.
One thing I’ve been thinking about regarding animal noises is the actual animal noise and the not-quite-phonetic spelling of the noise. My slightly late talking youngest son makes realistic animal noises rather than saying “moo” (which I think most children would say). Even now when I think of what noise a cow makes I initially think “moo”, rather than of the actual noise itself.
I’m not sure that actually means anything—just an observation!
I agree on all counts: “moo” is a word, <more realistic cow sound> is a non-word, and my kid like yours can only do the non-word version.