CH9: Language and Development Flashcards
What is Language?
Language is a set of symbols used to communicate to others whether it be spoken, signed, or written. It is divided into 2 components: language production and language comprehension.
Language production
Occurs when we generate our thoughts through words. It can either be generative or creative. The ability to produce new unique sentences is an important feature of human communication.
Language Comprehension
It is the ability to comprehend vocal communication or gestures. We can generally understand mispronunciations in sentences or words, accents, speech, impediments, even immature baby speech. Our ability to understand incomplete speech and how language comprehension is automative are related to each other.
Language structure
Speech is divided into 4 areas:
Phonology: the study of how sounds form words (“jump”)
Phonemes: the smallest units of sound in any language (“j, u, m, p”)
Morphemes: smallest units of language that convey meaning or function (“jumped” = jump + ed)
Semantics: the study of the meaning of words (raining cats and dogs)
Lexical: changes over time (“awful” used to mean “full of awe”)
Syntax: the way which words are formed into sentences
Pragmatics: the practical aspects of language including speech pace, gestures, and body language
How Language Develops
Pre-vocal learning: 2-4 months, babies are capable of perceiving phonemes
Cooing: 2 months, begin making cooing noises
Babbling: 6 months, production of meaningless sounds
First words: 1 year, speaking begins usually in simple words
Pragmatic: 3 years, toddler learned practical information in language use
Grammar: 4 years, automatically absorbed many rules of grammar
Bilingualism
Bilingual kids have a smaller vocabulary compared to monolingual kids. However they may lead to advances in cognitive flexibility, analytic reasoning, and selective attention.
Theories of Language Development
There are 3 predominant perspectives:
Nativist, founded by Noam Chomsky
Behaviourist, founded by B.F. Skinner
Interactionalist, founded by Bates
Nativist
Founded by Noam Chomsky, he believed we had a device in our brains known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and that all languages share basic elements. Humans are born with a native predisposition to learn grammar and children begin speaking in nouns. Essentially the Nature argument, however there is no evidence towards LAD or a universal grammar.
Behaviourist
Founded by B.F. Skinner, he believed that children learn language in the same way that they learn anything else, through limitations, reinforcement, and other conditioners. The ability to acquire language later in life requires effort, an example being Genie who was a rescue and non-verbal. She was never able to develop a full language regardless of therapy. This is because she missed the critical period where language is developed the best.
Interactionalist
Founded by Bates, he claims that both nature and nurture are important when it comes to learning languages. Maturation drives language development directly and indirectly. Humans are biologically prepared to learn, but social exchanges are important.
What is Thought?
Examples of thought are:
Controlled processing vs. Automatic processing, mental imagery (spacial navigation), reasoning (problem solving), cognitive control (direct attention, impulse control, future planning), meta cognition (reviewing memories, self-reflection).
Solving a problem
There are steps into solving a problem:
First is to define the problem and the goal. Second is to find a strategy to solve the problem, either algorithmically, heuristically, or through insight/incubation.
Algorithm is the methodical and logical rule that guarantees a solution.
Heuristic is a thinking strategy that is faster than algorithm, but more prone to errors.
Heuristic
Basically working backwards and forming subgoals (shortcut). There are 2 types of heuristics:
Availability heuristic: the estimation likelihood of events based on availability in memory
Representativeness heuristic: when we assume that individuals share the same characteristic of which they are a member for (surgeons predominantly being male).
Barriers to Problem Solving
Mental set: a tendency to approach a problem in a specific way, often succeeding in the past. Another section to this is functional fixedness, which is the tendency to perceive an item only in its common use.
Confirmation bias: the tendency to look for information that meets our expectations.
Unnecessary constraints: the assumption that imposes constraints on problem solving efforts.
Most real world problems are ill-defined.
