Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Terrible-don't waste your money . This supposed 'language lab' is VERY poorly designed. The dvd consists of images of items with a nursery rhyme or poem being recited in another language. The amazing thing is that the item shown has no relation to the words being spoken! It might as well be completely random sounds, since anyone who has studied child language acquisition knows that babies learn from making observations of language used in context. While I understand that supposedly this DVD is only intended to 'stimulate' the brain, by six months, a baby's brain has developed specifically to hone in on the sounds presented in his own native language, and to selectively ignore others. The brain continues to prune and forge neural networks in response to sounds from the language spoken in the home, thus the idea that random speech sounds are somehow beneficially stiumlating is invalid. A baby's brain becomes stimulated by the sounds that appear repeatedly in his own language. Habituation and imaging studies have shown this time and time again. Imagine if the baby's brain gave equal attention to any sound--the brain would waste valuable time and resources on information that would not be useful in learning to communicate with his caretakers. We acquire langauge so rapidly because the brain is selective.     Babies depend heavily on repitition, adult modeling, observing cause and effect, and from watching other people's behaviors to learn language. The idea that your child with learn anything from just hearing forgien language sounds out of context is very silly. If you want your child to learn language sounds and words from a language not spoken in the home, try exposing him to another language speaker on a routine basis, or show him programs like Dora or Sesame Street, where there is lots of explicit context to help a baby infer meaning, clear annunciation, and repition.
Output (English): NEG