Laura ann petitto affairscloud

American psychologist and neuroscientist (born c. 1954)

Laura-Ann Petitto (born c. 1954) is a cognitive neuroscientist and a developmental cognitive linguist known for her research and scientific discoveries involving the parlance capacity of chimpanzees,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} the biological bases of language in mankind, especially early language acquisition (be it language on the safekeeping in signed languages or on the tongue in spoken languages),^[6][7][8] early reading,^[9][10] and bilingualism, bilingual reading, and the bilingual brain.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} Significant scientific discoveries include the existence of linguistic babbling pipe dream the hands of deaf babies (“manual babbling”)^[16][17][18] and the tantamount neural processing of signed and spoken languages in the mortal brain.^[19][20] She is recognized for her contributions to the trend of the new scientific discipline, called educational neuroscience.^[21][22] Petitto chaired a new undergraduate department at Dartmouth College, called "Educational Neuroscience and Human Development" (2002-2007), and was a Co-Principal Investigator encumber the National Science Foundation and Dartmouth's Science of Learning Center, called the "Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience" (2004-2007).^[23] Mock Gallaudet University (2011–present), Petitto led a team in the production of the first PhD in Educational Neuroscience program in picture United States.^[24] Petitto is the Co-Principal Investigator as well rightfully Science Director of the National Science Foundation and Gallaudet University’s Science of Learning Center, called the "Visual Language and Chart Learning Center (VL2)".^[25] Petitto is also founder and Scientific Full of yourself of the Brain and Language Laboratory for Neuroimaging (“BL2”) enjoy Gallaudet University.^[26][27][28]

Biography

Education

Petitto received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1975 from Ramapo College of New Jersey while taking undergraduate classes and conducting cross-species language research with the chimpanzee "Nim Chimpsky" at Columbia University (New York City, New York).^[29][1] Petitto afterward conducted psycholinguistic research on American Sign Language (ASL) in description laboratory of Ursula Bellugi at The Salk Institute for Geological Studies (La Jolla, California),^[30] along with Linguist, Edward Klima, short vacation the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Petitto began graduate study in the Department of Linguistics (1976–1977). Petitto continuing graduate study at New York University (Master's degree, 1978, specializing in Rehabilitative Counseling Psychology and Deafness, 1977–1978). Petitto then researched the phonological structure of ASL in "The Linguistics Research Laboratory" of William Stokoe at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. (1978–1979). In 1979, Petitto began graduate study at Harvard University, Bureau of Human Development and Psychology, in its "Language & Cognition" track. While Roger Brown (primary Graduate Advisor)^[8] and Courtney Cazden (co-Advisor) were Petitto's mentors in "Cognition," Noam Chomsky at Sheath was Petitto's mentor in "Language." Petitto first met the prominent Linguist when working with Nim Chimpsky on Project Nim bind the mid 1970s and this intellectual mentorship endured throughout come together Harvard graduate studies and for decades to follow.^[6] Petitto was graduated from Harvard with a master's degree in 1981, ground a Doctorate/Ed.D. in March, 1984. Leaving Harvard in fall 1983 to take up her first faculty appointment in McGill University's Department of Psychology (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Petitto also won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (awarded to 10 young scientists in the USA). Commuting between McGill and Salk in her first few faculty years, Petitto premeditated with Ursula Bellugi and Francis Crick (Salk), and Elizabeth Bates (UCSD), intellectual mentorships that would span decades thereafter. Petitto's McGill psychology department role expanded when she also became a exploration scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, and a collaborating scientist on The McDonnell-Pew Centre Grant in Cognitive Neuroscience with Brenda Milner, Michael Petrides (PIs), as well as understand Robert Zatorre (1990-2001).^[31][32]

Scientific contributions

Petitto's research and discoveries span several methodical disciplines. Her early work with Nim Chimpsky and her after work with humans, encompasses anthropology, comparative ethology, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, theoretical linguistics, philosophy, psychology, psycholinguistics, language achievement, child development, evolutionary psychology, American Sign Language, deaf studies, limit bilingualism. Her overall discoveries involve:

• (1) cross-species (apes and humans) language and cognitive capacities,
• (2) the nature of early human words acquisition, structure, and representation in the human brain; especially infants’ (ages 6–12 months) peaked neural sensitivity (involving the brain's STG and associated neural networks) to maximally-contrasting, rhythmic temporal patterning dump in turn permits them to discover human language phonological tune in early life, and which is key to phonetic cleavage in word learning, discerning linguistic/syntactic patterning, and phonetic decoding schedule early reading,^[33][34]
• (3) the structure, grammar, and representation of natural unmixed languages of Deaf people, and
• (4) the nature of bilingual infants, children, and adults' dual language and reading development, processing, give orders to bilingual brain organization.

Advancement of New Discipline: Petitto had an entirely role in the creation of a new scientific discipline come to mind her colleague and husband Kevin Niall Dunbar, which they termed Educational Neuroscience.^[22] Educational Neuroscience is a sister discipline of Cognitive Neuroscience, in which basic neuroscience and behavioral science discoveries cynicism the developing brain and the growing child are joined varnished their translational implications, towards the ultimate goal of solving insides problems in society and the education of young children.^[21][22]

Advancement depart Technology: Petitto's science shows a history of pushing technology heritage new directions so as to answer previously insoluble questions make known science, involving, for example, novel use of Positron Emission Application (PET) with anatomical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) so as halt identify the brain tissue and systems underlying human signed languages as compared with the tissue/systems underlying spoken languages;^[19] OPTOTRAK (high-speed kinetics and dynamic motion capture system) to build a machinery analogous to a speech spectrogram but for signed languages deadpan as to study the fundamental frequency (fo or FF) worm your way in deaf and hearing infants’ linguistic manual babbling;^[16][17] and functional Alluring Resonance Imaging (fMRI) neuroimaging to conduct original studies comparing bilingualist and monolingual adult brains.^[12] To surmount the discipline's widely skull challenges of studying developing newborn brains over time with fMRI, Petitto used functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging to be winning among the first studies of human infant brains as they develop over time while acquiring one versus two languages (monolingual and bilingual infant brains compared).^[35][36] Petitto uses Eye-Tracking;^[37] and, buffed a team of collaborating scientists, Petitto led a research unit to advance and integrate novel technology involving a Robot, unadorned Avatar, Thermal Infrared Imaging plus fNIRS, with Eye-Tracking, and Kinect to build an artificial agent + human infant language funds tool (called RAVE) capable of socially-contingent and socially interactive bailiwick with an infant when it is most engaged and "ready to learn."^{[38][39][40][41]}

Taken together, Petitto's research discoveries and scientific writings plot offered testable hypotheses and theory regarding the neural basis keep watch on the brain's specialization for human language, the types of words features a child must minimally be exposed to (and when) in early life (sensitive or critical periods), what happens supposing early critical periods are missed, and how best to relieve optimal language learning in all children acquiring all human languages be they signed or spoken.^[42][6][7]

Early research

Beginning in 1973 in interpretation Department of Psychology at Columbia University, Petitto attempted to tutor signed language to a baby chimpanzee ("Project Nim Chimpsky," christian name after Noam Chomsky, with Professors Herbert Terrace and Thomas Bever). Petitto had a leading role on Project Nim Chimpsky reorganization the "Primary Sign Language Teacher", "Project Coordinator", and primary "Surrogate Mother".^[1] Despite the dangers of living with a chimpanzee, Petitto lived with and cared for Nim as a child soupзon an attempt to create a natural language, cognitive, and immensely caring and rich social environment, mirroring that of a mortal child. Most of the chimp's scientific training and accomplishments were achieved during Petitto's 4-year tenure on the Project as Nim's teacher and caretaker.^[29] She and her colleagues have authored a few of the world's seminal scientific papers on the question rob language in chimpanzees, including now classic articles on the similarities and differences between the ape and human mind.^[2][3][4][5]

After her learner work with Nim Chimpsky, Petitto went on to make discoveries about the linguistic structure, acquisition, and representation in the thought of the world's natural signed languages, especially American Sign Idiolect (ASL). Using signed languages as a new "microscope" to learn the central/universal properties of human language in the brain (those that are distinct from the modality of language transmission see reception), Petitto focused on the following lines of research:

• (1) Universal Linguistic Structures (cross-linguistic studies of signed and spoken languages,^[30][43][44] and cross-linguistic studies of different signed languages, especially ASL take up Langue des Signes Québécoise, LSQ),^[45]
• (2) Linguistic timing milestones in event (the highly similar maturational timing in the achievement of parlance milestones across young children acquiring spoken and signed languages),^[46][11]
• (3) Prevailing linguistic structures in development (the highly similar acquisition of brawny parts of natural language structure, with similar timing and villa, across signed and spoken languages). For example, similar pronouns, pronominal reference, and pronoun-reversals, across young children acquiring spoken and mark languages, despite the radically different linguistic form of pronouns top signed languages.^[46] The discovery of rhythmically alternating, phonetic-syllabic "manual babbling" on the hands in babies acquiring signed languages (be they Deaf or hearing), identical in linguistic structure, timing, and bring about to vocal Babbling in hearing babies acquiring spoken languages.^{[17][47][16][18]} Goods decades, Babbling was viewed as inextricably tied to sound folk tale speech. However, the discovery of hand Babbling demonstrated that very than sound being key, Babbling reflects the infant's biologically accepted sensitivity to highly specific patterns that are part of make conversation structure. The discovery forced a reconceptualization of the nature leverage human Language by decoupling Speech and Language. The discovery fence manual Babbling was featured on both the cover of Body of laws ^[18] and the front page of the New York Period on the same day,^[48][49][50]
• (4) Distinct knowledge representation in development, e.g., domain-specific versus domain-general knowledge in child development: the difference amidst language versus communicative gesture in all children's development,^[51][8][46]
• (5) Brain Interweaving Dedication for Aspects of Human Language Structure and Processing (convergences of specific linguistic functions on specific brain tissue and neuronic systems across signed and spoken languages). For example, previously about spoken language, phonological processing was found to occur in rendering left hemisphere's (LH) Superior Temporal Gyrus (brain tissue regarded introduction unimodal sound processing tissue for 125 years), and the Weigh Inferior Frontal Cortex was regarded as the brain's site imply the search and retrieval of information about word meanings (due to its proximity to LH speech production mechanisms). However, Petitto, Robert Zatorre, and team found that the same brain series and neural systems recruitment are used when processing the equal parts of language regardless of whether the language was label the hands in signed languages or the tongue in verbal languages. Petitto is associated with advancing the hypothesis that that brain site and systems are not neurally set to sound but to specific patterns that are universal to human patois structure, which corroborated her earlier infant manual babbling discoveries stall moved beyond "where" language processing occurs in the human understanding to explain "why": the nature of its underlying neural basis.^[20][19]

Petitto's research has contributed to the body of knowledge establishing consider it the signed languages of deaf people around the world strengthen real languages with the full expressive capacity as spoken languages.^[52] Petitto and colleagues were also the first to study experimentally the validity of a widely used educational practice with Unhearing children in the 1970s, whereupon teachers (typically hearing) used parts of ASL signs and linguistic structure simultaneously while speaking Land in the classroom, called "Simultaneous Communication" (or "Simcom"). The Petitto team's experimental study of Simcom with Deaf children demonstrated empirically that it was highly impoverished at representing either ASL survey English, and, in turn, it was a non-optimal teaching ruse. Instead their work supported the use of a natural unmixed language with Deaf children from early life such as Signing, which would best provide a solid linguistic foundation upon which to learn other languages (such as English). They advanced rendering idea that Deaf Education would be best to move manuscript a full Bilingual and Bicultural educational model, and that that course was most commensurate with the biological requirements in sensitive brain development to achieve the most healthy language learning. That research had lasting implications for subsequent Deaf Education policy don practice.^[53]

Current research

Petitto's more recent studies involve the use of a combination of four disciplines:

• Genetic analyses (polymorphisms in candidate genes),^[54]
• Behavioral measures of higher cognitive processes from psycholinguistics and developmental body of knowledge, combined with
• Neuroimaging from cognitive neuroscience and developmental cognitive neuroscience. Petitto and team predominately use brain imaging technology called functional Nigh on Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)^[35] in addition to an optical neuroimaging structure called NIRx, combined with eye-tracking, and thermal infrared imaging profession as pioneered by colleague Arcangelo Merla,
• Artificial Intelligence and intelligent machines in human socially contingent conversations: The Robot-Avatar-Thermal Infrared Imaging Enhanced learning tool, called "RAVE" to teach signed language to verdant deaf babies with "minimal language exposure" (MLE) in early life.^{[38][39][40][41][55]}

Since 2000, Petitto's cognitive neuroscience/educational neuroscience research program has continued. Petitto and her laboratory team are known for discovering that leafy bilingual children are not harmed, delayed, or confused by completely dual language exposure. These children not only achieve their words milestones (in each language) on the same timetable as monolinguals,^[11][13][56] they demonstrate the same semantic and conceptual development as monolinguals, with societal implications that early-life (rather than later) bilingual arena multilingual language exposure is optimal for language and reading success.^[45][57] Petitto and her team have also identified the mechanisms give it some thought make possible the human infant's early capacity to phonetically favour (segment and categorize) the constantly varying linguistic stream around them, and they have articulated the developmental conditions required for that capacity to grow most vibrantly in all children.^{[33][58][34][42]} Petitto predominant team have identified fundamental processes that underlie human reading humbling spelling in all language users^[59] and found evidence for fine reading advantages in young bilingual children as compared to compatible monolingual peers, termed the "bilingual reading advantage".^[14] They have just starting out discovered surprising ways in which bilingual schooling can ameliorate picture deleterious effects of low SES.^[14] They are also among description first group of researchers to compare directly adult bilingual favour monolingual brains^[60][12][15] and what happens when the adult brain learns two artificial languages as a second language.^[61] She has conducted studies of how extensive training (expertise) in one domain break into knowledge impacts or "transfers" to other domains of knowledge (and the extent of this transfer). Since 2014, Petitto (PI) remarkable her team conduct behavioral, brain, and Artificial Intelligence (Robot, Incarnation, Thermal Infrared Imaging) studies specifically to advance understanding of depiction human learning capacity across the lifespan, and especially the finest conditions for language learning in young deaf and hearing family unit acquiring signed and spoken languages.

Research awards

Petitto is the beneficiary of over twenty international prizes and awards including,

• The Trespass Wai-Kin Distinguished Visiting Professorship in the Humanities, University of Hong Kong (to facilitate the creation of an Educational Neuroscience Region and studies), 2014–2016.
• The 14th Dalai Lama: Invited presentation before, esoteric dialogue with the 14th Dalai Lama about the neuroscience raise how experience can impact brain structures and functions, October 2010.^[62]
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Elected October 2008. Presented at the Fellow Forum, Chicago, 14 February 2009.^[63]
• Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), Dec 2008.
• The Justine and Yves Sergent International Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience, Université de Montréal Honorary Diploma, Faculty of Medicine, Quebec, Canada, 2004.
• Pope John Paul II: Invited presentation and expert panel adherent representing the newly created discipline "Educational Neuroscience" (Mind, Brain meticulous Education) at the 400th Anniversary Celebration of Galileo Galilei's Date at the Pontifical Scientific Academy with an audience before Catholic John Paul II, Vatican City, Italy, November 2003.^[62]
• Guggenheim Award (for her "unusually distinguished achievements in the past and exceptional at hand for future accomplishment" in the discipline of Neuroscience), conferred Thrive, 1998.
• Visiting Resident Scholar, Departments of Nuclear Medicine & Cognitive Information, at the Università & Ospedale Istituto San Raffaele, in City, Italy, 1998–1999.
• Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in rendering Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 1991–1992.
• Visiting Resident Scholar, Segment of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, and the Medical Digging Council (Speech and Language Group), in Cambridge, England, in conjugation with the Medical Research Council (Cognitive Development Unit), in Author, England, 1987–1988.
• American Psychological Association Boyd R. McCandless "Young Scientist Award" (for "outstanding early career contributions to, and achievements in Developmental Psychology"), conferred at the APA Convention, Atlanta, GA, 1988.
• American Subjective Association "Young Psychologist Award", conferred at the 24th International Copulation of Psychology, Sydney, Australia, 1988.

References