Introduction

The problem of the role of feedback in human processing of language falls within the domain of
human information processing. With the core concepts of a hierarchy of control, a processing
unit, and a program being necessary for the discussion of feedback phenomena, the use of
terminology related to computer science should not be understood as an attempt to draw too
close an analogy however, as human language belongs within the very scope of skill still
unmatched by the so called artificial intelligence. Human physiology shall therefore remain the
main area of reference for the following discussion of the role of feedback in language
behavior.

Live systems have been recognized as dependent for their growth and sustention of function on
genetically endowed scope of information encoded in their DNA (Young, 1984). Further, the
information has been compared to a program, where the notion of a program may be basically
understood as a systematic plan for an automatic solution of a problem (Webster's
Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1989). Moreover, activity of live
systems has been defined as purposed primarily at development, renewal, and maintenance of
their internal structure (Young, 1984); the term “problem” employed in the hitherto definition
of a program may be comprehended generally as the task of homeostasis preservation to
require a constant selection and exchange of substances within an environment.

With the processes of substance selection and exchange to concern the single cell as well as an
entire complex structure such as the human being, a biological program may be exemplified by
a DNA encoded pattern of active protein production. Importantly, even basic programs of
cellular activity may be claimed to depend on feedback for their execution (Vander et al., 1985),
feedback being defined here as the returning of part of the output of a system to be
reintroduced as input (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language,
1989). Positive and negative feedback cycles should be further recognized where the former,
being also known as regenerative one, aids the input while the latter opposes it, hence the
alternate term “inverse feedback”. Since basic programs of cellular activity tend to translate
and accrue into entire schemata to incorporate also learned behaviors, total and integrated
patterns of preprogrammed activity may be argued to depend on feedback for their formation,
execution and sustention.

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The role of feedback in controlling automatic operations has been recognized already by
Norbert Wiener, who insisted that the concept of feedback control may be successfully applied
in the field of physiology, especially as regards the functioning of the nervous system. Within
this perspective, feedback operations should be understood as closed-loop processes to control
open-loop, programmed ones (Puppel, 1988, 1996).

With the following discussion being purposed to embrace the entire human internal structure,
reliance on feedback shall be posited a principled phenomenon. The principle of dependence
on feedback in human information processing shall be postulated and examined for validity
across the human nervous system as the human processing hierarchy. Since man constitutes a
complex and self-orienting structure in a complex environment, our examination of the validity
of the principle shall incorporate cellular, intercellular as well as interschematic dimensions of
the human nervous system functioning.

For the following discussion of feedback phenomena to be representative of human language

processing, our inquiry shall concern also human communication understood as information
exchange to involve interplay of intra- and inter-personal components. Since this is language to
constitute the highly sophisticated tool for human communication and psycholinguistics
remains the main framework of the intended inquiry, relevance of the principle of dependence
on feedback shall be explored with regard to language acquisition, use, and deficit. All these
aspects of language behavior are postulated to incorporate feedback dependent processing
functions.

Finally, if the validity of the posited principle is confirmed in the physiological as well as
psychical aspects of human functioning, language behavior to arguably incorporate both of
them, human dependence on feedback processes might be recognized as approximate to a
drive, the relevant instinct being that for self-preservation. In this view to human information
processing, feedback would have the role of the initiating, mediating, and modeling factor.