PSYC 1020H Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Allen Newell, Noam Chomsky, Phoneme
14 Jun 2018
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Psych 1020
Chapter 8: Cognition
04/11/2017
Language and Thought
Cognition: Refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge
- Theorists like Herbert Simon believed that behaviourism was an incomplete
understanding of human functioning
- A oferee i the 95’s sparked the Cogitie Reolutio ad gae to three major
advances:
o Herbert Simon and Allen Newell described the firs computer program to
successfully simulate human problem solving
o Noam Chomsky outlined a new model on how we study language
o George Miller delivered a discussion paper that argued the capacity of short term
memory is seven (plus or minus two) items
What is Language?
- Language: Consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining these
symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages
Properties of language:
o Symbolic: spoken sounds and words to represent objects, actions, events, ideas
o Generative: limited number of symbols can be combined to generate messages
o Semantic: meaningful
o Structured: Rules govern the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences
The Structure of Language
- Phonemes: smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually
o Humans are capable of recognizing only 100 such basic sounds
o English language is composed of 40 phonemes, corresponding to the alphabet
o A letter can represent more than on phoneme if it has more than one way of
saying it and some phonemes are represented by a combo of letters like ch and th
- Morphemes: Smallest units of meaning in language
o The are approx. 50 000 English morphemes, which include prefixes and suffixes
o Words like fire rep one morphemes, others like unfriendly represent three (root
word is friend, prefix-un and suffix-ly)
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2
- Semantics: the area of language that is concerned with understanding the meaning of
ords ad ord oiatios. A ord’s eaig osists of a detoatio (ditioar
definition) and connation (emotional overtones and other implications)
- Syntax: A system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences
o A simple of rule of syntax is that a sentence must have a subject and a verb
Milestones in Language Development
- Janet Werker, scientist from U of BC believes that human infants are well prepared to
learn language, and that there are critical periods involved in language acquisition
- Laura Ann Pettito believes that babbling is one of the most monumental milestones of
language acquisition. Babbling allows them to produce a wide variety of sounds that
correspond to phonemes and will increasingly resemble the language spoken by parents
i the hild’s eiro
- Babbling may originate from the motor achievement of the brain and reflects its
maturation ins controlling speech; or it is a mechanism that allows them to produce a
patterned structure of natural language
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Featured Study; Babbling in the Manual Mode
- The hypothesis that babbling is not solely for the function of motor mechanisms but is
also linked to the developing language capacity of an infant was proven
- Consisted of five infants aged 10, 12, and 14 months. Two were deaf and knew sign
language as their first language, three were hearing infants that acquired spoken
language
- Researchers Laura Ann Petitto and Paula Marentette tested each infant and gave them
manual activities (for deaf children) and acoustic forms and sounds (for hearing children)
- The counted babbling as utterances that were not words; these were examined for
systematic organization; then if it had phonetic and syllabic features common to spoken
lang
Using Words
- Toddlers can typically say between 3-50 words; they can understand more words than
they can use them to express themselves (larger receptive vocab vs productive vocab)
- Toddler’s earl ords tend to refer mostly to objects and acquire nouns before verbs
because nouns refer to distinct objects whereas verbs refer to abstract relationships
- Children go through a vocab spurt hih a oe fro a hild’s iproed artiulatio
skills, understanding of syntax, underlying cognitive development→ fast mapping is the
process by which children associate a word onto an underlying concept after only one
exposure
- Overextension: occurs when a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a wider set of
objects or actions than it is meant to
ie. Calling oranges, apples and the moon a ball
- Under-extension: occur when a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of
objects or actions that is meant to
ie. Using the word doll to a specific, favourite doll
Combining Words
- Telegraphic speech: Consists mainly of content words: articles, prepositions, and other
less critical words are omitted
ie. Gie doll istead of please gie e the doll
- Overregularization: occur when grammatical rules are incorrectly generalized to irregular
cases where they do not apply
Ie. I hitted the all
- Usually occur after they learn general grammatical rules
Refining Language Skills
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Document Summary
Cognition: refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. Theorists like herbert simon believed that behaviourism was an incomplete understanding of human functioning. Language: consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining these symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Symbolic: spoken sounds and words to represent objects, actions, events, ideas: generative: limited number of symbols can be combined to generate messages, semantic: meaningful, structured: rules govern the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences. Morphemes: smallest units of meaning in language: the are approx. 50 000 english morphemes, which include prefixes and suffixes: words like fire rep one morphemes, others like unfriendly represent three (root word is friend, prefix-un and suffix-ly) Semantics: the area of language that is concerned with understanding the meaning of (cid:449)ords a(cid:374)d (cid:449)ord (cid:272)o(cid:373)(cid:271)i(cid:374)atio(cid:374)s. a (cid:449)ord"s (cid:373)ea(cid:374)i(cid:374)g (cid:272)o(cid:374)sists of a deto(cid:374)atio(cid:374) (di(cid:272)tio(cid:374)ar(cid:455) definition) and connation (emotional overtones and other implications)
