PAPER

THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOR

This paper is to fulfill the assignment of Psycolinguistics subject

THE LECTUER : SYAHRENI SIREGAR M.Pd.

ARRANGED BY :

1. MUCHLIS HIDAYAT (2201051016)

2. NGABIDATUL MUSTAHFIROH (2201051020)

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER PROGRAM
STATE INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES OF METRO
ACADEMIC YEAR 2023/2024
 PREFACE

Firstly, we thank to the almighty God who had given mercy and blessing so we able
to finished this paper. Secondly, may sholawat and salam always be delivered to our
prophet Muhammad Saw, who had brought us from the darkness to the lightness that
is modern era that we live in today. And thirdly, we don’t forget to thank to mam
Syahreni Siregar M.Pd, as a lecturer for subject Psycolinguistics for gave this
assignment so we learn and get more information about linguistics and can arrange
this paper nicely.

As we know that language and communication is very important to learn, so we

wrote this paper to explain about the biological basis of human communicative
behaviour. We know that this paper has many mistakes so, we appologize abaout it.
We hope that this paper gave many knowledge and information that can be profite for
the readers.

Metro, 2 March 2024.

The second group.

 TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE ii

TABLE OF CONTENT iii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1

1. Bakground Of The Issue

CHAPTER II

A. THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE

B. CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
C. THE SOCIAL USE OF LANGUAGE

BAB III CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Background Of Issue

Lenneberg (1967) defines language as an aspect of human biological nature that

needs to be studied in the same manner as their anatomy. This definition puts
emphasis on the human physiological and
psychological aspect.

Language is species specific; its acquisition and use depend on being human and not
on intelligence or the size of the brain; and wherever human beings exist, language
also exist, the two are inseparable. With regard to the same, Chomsky (1986, p. 29)
argues that “there is a system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or
properties of all human languages. the essence of human language.” He further
argues that language is a sole property of the human mind and that all human beings
share part of their knowledge of language; which is very specific to them. Thus,
whereas both humans and animals can communicate, it is only humans that use
language to communicate.

Chomsky (1986) is the one who came up with the idea of the innate
biological endowment, which enable humans to acquire language rapidly and
efficiently in the first years of life. According to Chomsky, the origin of language is a
case of evolutionary biology; it is about humans being genetically endowed with
species specific language faculty. This predisposition for language makes it possible
for children to acquire any language that they are exposed to as long as their
neurophysiological organs are intact; they are never taught.
 CHAPTER II

A. THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE

The biological basis of language is hinged on the assumption that a human being who
is physiologically and psychologically intact acquires any human language that they are
exposed to; that is, humans have a genetic ability for language. Specifically, the biological
basis approach to the language issue holds that for language to occur, the brain, the auditory
system and articulatory system/ the manual-visual system must not only be intact but
coordinate/ interact in a very specific but complex way, within a rich linguistic environment.

1. Brain
The biological communication processes of human occur between the left and right
brains. The researcher explained several biological communication activities that
occur while an individual performs activities such as seeing, tasting, thinking, and
acting.
Chomsky (2009) believes that human beings are born with a set of rules about
language in their brains and they are equipped with an innate template or blueprint
for language and this blueprint aid the child in the task of constructing a grammar for
their language.
Those biological communication activities can be explained through activities of
specific parts of the brain. The explanation is as follow:

1.) Biological Communication Behavior activity when “seeing”

The biological communications behavior made by the senses of sight. It shows that
the message coming through the left eye passed to the brain as a cross section that is
specific to the right and the message received by the right eye forwarded to specific
parts of the left brain.

2.) Biological communication behavior activity when “feeling”

“feeling” or sense something processed by specific brain, processed by the occipital

and then later in the auxiliary by other specific parts of the brain that is the temporal,
frontal and parietal .

3.) Biological communication behavior activity when“understanding”

 when human try to understanding something, before obtaining the behavior of
biological stimulus of communication that occurs in the human brain performed by
frontal, temporal, occipital and parietal is located in the left and right hemispheres
assisted Central, Parasagital and Hypocampus. While there is a stimulus during the
working process is assisted by the cerebellum so that all
the specific parts of the brain work in a balanced and equitable. Further this
psychological motivation which is further supported by the flow of blood from the
brain as a command to the members of the body such as hands to perform learning
activities such as typing, or pay attention to the explaining the material. Shahib [20]
explained, “Individual learning accelerated is influenced by blood condition in the
brain, which is the active blood will support the speed of the individual in accepting
the information.

4.) Biological communication behavior activity when performing a tendency

“acting”

To students are basically very complex influenced by previous information that

resides in memory as an input. The biological communication behavior in the form of
these tendencies can be said to be a cycle of limb movements resulted based on
commands from the brain which then results are recorded and
relayed back to the memory in the brain. If this phenomenon occurs tendency to
reflex action would enhance a student learn faster remedy of specific movements
from simple to complex. This finding is appropriate with Piaget’s explanation about
the basis of human intelligence and biological organism.

2. Auditory System
The human auditory system is wired for language. Every child who has intact brains,
has the innate ability to sense, process and comprehend the language that they are
exposed to. All normal children tend to comprehend language before they are able to
produce; whether speech or signing. At the age of six months, a child is able to
distinguish one phoneme from another regardless of where they are located; they are
also able to filter sounds, hence differentiating those that are from his language and
those that are not. Children are never taught how to make such contrasts but rather it
is innate in them; they get to ‘know’ as they are exposed to the linguistic data around
them.
3. Articulatory System
Just as the human brain and the auditory system is adapted for language, so is the
articulatory system; that is, the human vocal tract has been wired in a very special
way to enable human beings produce speech without any struggle; this is despite the
fact that these vocal organs evolved for other primary functions. Every normal
human being with intact brains and articulatory system is able to produce speech as
long as they are in a rich linguistic environment.

B. CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

The ability to acquire language declines with increasing age, with very young
children particularly well-adapted for language acquisition. The critical period
hypothesis of Lenneberg (1967) really comprises two related ideas. The first idea is
that certain biological events related to language development can only happen in an
early critical period. In particular, hemispheric specialization takes place during the
critical period, and during this time we possess a degree of flexibility that is lost
when the critical period is finished. The second component of the critical period
hypothesis is that certain linguistic events must happen to the child during this period
for development to proceed normally.

We are not born with the two brain hemispheres completely lateralized in function.
Instead, lateralization emerges throughout childhood. The most striking evidence for
this is that damage to the left hemisphere in childhood does not always lead to the
permanent disruption of language abilities. We can distinguish two models of how
lateralization occurs. The maturation hypothesis states that the two hemispheres are
similar at birth with respect to language, with the left hemisphere maturing to become
specialized for language functions. Maturation means that the neural hardware is not
fully developed by birth but instead develops at least in part afterwards along lines
specified by the genetic code.

On the other hand, the invariance hypothesis states that the left hemisphere is
specialized for language at birth and it is only if it is damaged over a wide area,
involving both the anterior and posterior regions, that the right hemisphere can take
over language functions (Rasmussen & Milner, 1975). That is, according to this
position language has an affinity for the left hemisphere owing to special innate
anatomical organization and will not abandon it unless an entire centre is destroyed,
and even then one might only find a partial shift in function. The critical difference
between the maturation and invariance hypotheses is that in the former either
hemisphere can become specialized for language, but in the latter the left hemisphere
becomes specialized for language unless there is a very
good reason otherwise.

The critical period hypothesis is the best-known version of the maturation hypothesis.
Lenneberg (1967) argued that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are
equipotential at birth, which means that, in principle, either hemisphere could take
over the role of the other. There is no cerebral asymmetry at birth; instead
lateralization occurs as a result of maturation. The process of lateralization develops
rapidly between the ages of 2 and 5 years, then slows down, being complete by
puberty. (Others such as Krashen, 1973, place the end of the critical period rather
earlier, around the age of 5, but this does not change the essence of the proposal.)
Lenneberg argued that the brain possesses a degree of flexibility early on, in that, if
necessary, brain functions can develop in alternative locations in the brain.

Lenneberg examined how a child’s age affected recovery after brain damage.
Remember that primary language functions are localized in the left hemisphere of the
adult brain. Damage to the left hemisphere of adults therefore leads to significant and
usually permanent language impairment. Lenneberg’s key finding was that the
linguistic abilities of young children recover much better after brain damage, and the
younger the child, the better the chances of a complete recovery. Indeed, the entire
function of the left hemisphere can be taken over by the right if the child is young
enough. There are a number of cases of complete
 hemidecortication, where an entire hemisphere is removed as a drastic treatment for
exceptionally severe epilepsy. Such an operation upon an adult would almost totally
destroy language abilities. If performed on children who are young enough—that is,
during their critical periods— they seem able to recover almost completely. Another
piece of evidence supporting the critical period hypothesis is that crossed aphasia,
where damage to the right hemisphere leads to a language deficit, appears to be more
common in children. (This claim has been strongly disputed; for discussion, see
Woods & Teuber, 1973.) These findings all suggest that the brain is not lateralized at
birth, but that lateralization emerges gradually throughout childhood as a consequence
of maturation. This period of maturation is the critical period.

On the other hand, Dennis and Whitaker (1976, 1977) found that left hemidecorticates
subsequently had particular difficulties in understanding complex syntax, compared
with right hemidecorticates. One explanation of this is that the right hemisphere
cannot completely accommodate all the language functions of the left hemisphere,
although Bishop (1983) in turn presented methodological criticisms of this work. She
observed that the number of participants was very small, and that it is important to
match for IQ to ensure that any observed differences are truly attributable to the
effects of hemidecortication. When IQ is controlled for, there is a large overlap with
normal performance. It is not clear that non-decorticated individuals of the same age
would have performed any better.

C. THE SOCIAL USE OF LANGUAGE

Important to acknowledge is the fact that as much as the brain, the articulatory
system, the auditory system and the manual-visual system in humans is predisposed
for language, no language can occur and develop unless there is a rich linguistic
environment. Thus, it is not possible for one to speak, comprehend, sign or understand
signs until and unless humans are exposed to linguistic data that is only available in a
social context. Social interactionists have pointed out this as key to acquisition, and
since this involves human beings, whose biological predisposition makes it possible to
provide the required social context, it is still about the biological basis of language.

According to Vygotsky (1978), the social environment provides the child with the
means of making sense of their own linguistic behavior as well as making
sense of the surrounding; thus, the human factor (with language) is key in the
acquisition process. Social interactionists have pointed out this as key to acquisition,
and since this involves human beings, whose biological predisposition makes it
possible to provide the required social context, it is still about the biological basis of
language. it is not possible for one to speak, comprehend, sign or understand signs
until and unless humans are exposed to linguistic data that is only available in a social
context.
 CONCLUSION

Every human being has complete physical and mental abilities and will pick up any language
they encounter. Humans have a language innate from birth that helps them create their own
grammar. According to several experts, the critical period for humans to acquire language
and communicate is from childhood and communication skills will decrease with age.
Children will have the ability to communicate or speak according to the language their
parents gave them or also known as their (mother language/native language). However, it
does not rule out the possibility that social influences will also influence their behavior and
use of language. It is not possible for one to speak, comprehend, sign or understand signs
until and unless humans are exposed to linguistic data that is only available in a social
context.
 BIBLIOGHRAPHY

Lonyangapuo, K. Mary. (2021). The Biological Basis of Language: Science and Creationism
Interface. Kenya: Moi University.

Harley, T. (2014). The Psychology of Language. From Data to Theory (4th ed.). Psychology
Press.

Darmawan, Deni. (2012). Biological Communication Behavior through Information

Technology Implementation in Learning Accelerated. Bandung: Indonesia University of
Education.
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