Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!amdahl!kp
From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Early Language Learning & Ancient Language
Summary: Negative conclusions about perceptual capacity are difficult
Keywords: perception, categorization, negative results
Message-ID: <2erb02EoaaFS01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
Date: 25 May 90 16:32:35 GMT
References: <17809@ultima.cs.uts.oz> <2246@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <6544@ucrmath.UCR.EDU> <17833@ultima.cs.uts.oz> <1990May25.142052.16989@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 17

In article <1990May25.142052.16989@athena.mit.edu> ccimino@hstbme.mit.edu.UUCP (c cimino) writes:
>. . .   After a certain age, if the babies
>have not been exposed to those sounds, they are no longer able to learn to 
>differentiate ('l' and 'r' in japanese children for example).

Negative results are very difficult to prove in cases like these.  I was
told by a speech researcher about some animal studies on color vision
in cats.  For a long time it was believed that cats were color blind.
Nobody could get a cat to respond differentially to differently colored
stimuli.

It turned out that cats have pretty good color vision - they were just
bored to tears by the dumb experiments, and didn't *care* about the
stimuli.


Ken Presting