PSYC 1001 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Metalinguistic Awareness, Problem Solving, Decision-Making
Document Summary
Cognitive psychologists investigate the complexities of language, inference, problem solving, decision making, and reasoning. Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. A language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Language is symbolic=people use spoken sounds and written words to represent objects, actions, events, and ideas. A limited number of symbols can be combined in an infinite variety of ways to generate an endless array of novel messages. At the base of the language hierarchy are phonemes, the smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Semantics is the area of language concerned with understanding the meaning of words and word combinations. Starting at around 6 months, infants" babbling increasingly resembles the language spoken in the child"s environment. Children typically utter their first words around their first birthday.
