PSY 325 EXAM 3
Wittgenstein's Analysis of Concepts
"What do all members of a category have in common?" - often NOTHING Family resemblance: - Individual instances of a concept may shade into one another without any clearly definable boundary to the concept itself.
Concepts as Metaphors
- A primary metaphor: is a pairing of subjective experience and judgment with sensorimotor experience. - Double-function words: refer to both physical and psychological properties (e.g., warmth).
The Prototype Approach
- Categorization based on comparing with an abstract prototype - Certain members of a category are often seen as better examples than others. They are closer to the 'middle' of the category, and farther from other categories People can answer questions about an object's membership in a category faster if It has high family resemblance/ high prototypicality
Evaluation of Chomskian Theories
- Chomskian theories generated a lot of research. - Innate processes are now believed to play a lesser role in language acquisition. - Child's linguistic environment is much richer than had been previously believed. - Language acquisition is increasingly acknowledged to be dependent on learning.
Research related to the Dual-Coding Theory
- Results show that concrete words are easier to remember. - They can be coded with both codes, whereas abstract words can be coded only verbally. - Two concrete words can generate a single image.
Time spaces & Number forms
- The visual experience of time units such as days of the week or months of the year as occupying spatial locations outside the body - Automatically generated images of numbers in various spatial layouts external to an individual
Left brain & Right brain - Dual-Coding
- Verbal activity is predominantly processed in the left hemisphere; imagery in the right. Fiebach and Friederici's fMRI study (2003): -Concrete and abstract words both elicited different patterns of activity in the left hemisphere. -However, concrete words do not elicit heightened activity in the right hemisphere. - We should be careful of simplistic right brain-left brain attributions of cognitive functions.
Limitation of the Classic Approach
-Bruner's tasks used to examine concept acquisition is too simplistic and contrived -In real life, categorical discrimination are much more nebulous than simple rule-based approach Even for relatively straight-forward concepts it is often hard to give a definition sufficient conditions - Bachelor: male and unmarried (2 conjunctive conditions)
Concreteness
-It's correlated with imagery and may represent the same process. -Some words elicit imagery more easily - these are concrete (Ex., table, rock, book, cat , car, mitochondria) -Other words are abstract and do not readily evoke imagery (Ex., justice, truth, ethics, purpose, mind, attention, memory) -Concreteness can be thought of as the extent/degree to which a word refers to something that can be experienced through the senses -Concrete words and concepts are less likely to cause speech disfluencies (erm, uh, um)
Concept Formation Tasks - Scanning
-Simultaneous scanning: is keeping in mind all possible hypotheses and trying to eliminate as many as possible with each instance selection. -Successive scanning: is formulating a single hypothesis and testing it by selecting instances until the correct hypothesis emerges.
Allocentric Frame of reference!!!
-how things out there are related to each other
The 2 Learning Concept Approaches
1. The Classic Approach - rule based categorization 2. The Prototype Approach - categorizing new object by comparing with its abstract prototype (abstracted from examples) 3. The Exemplar Approach - categorizing new object comparing with specific instances (exemplars, specific examples) Categorization • Rule-based (Classic approach) - does a new object have defining attributes? • Prototype-based - does a new object share similarity with my abstract prototype? • Exemplar-based - comparing new object to every exemplars that I know in my memory
Chomsky - Transformational Grammar PART-2
3. To understand the structure of language, we need to understand the structure of grammar. 4. Grammatical utterances need not be semantically meaningful. - "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" vs. "Furiously sleep ideas green colourless" 5. Chomsky argued that there needs to be a sharp distinction between grammar and semantics, or the study of meaning.
Basic Properties of Cognitive Maps
A cognitive map is information from the environment that is "worked over and elaborated ... into a tentative, cognitive-like map ... indicating routes and paths and environmental relationships." - The partial nature of our cognitive maps means that we are capable of making several interesting errors
Goal-Derived Categories
A goal-derived category is a category invented for a specific purpose on a particular occasion, - e.g., "things to eat while driving a car" -Goal-derived categories have a graded structure. -The ability to cross-classify an object in terms of both its basic-level name and other goal-derived categories may be an important aspect to thinking creatively.
Cognitive Maps as Mental Models
A mental model is a representation of a situation that enables us to understand and reason about it. -We construct a mental model of a given situation, on the basis of which we understand, reason, and draw conclusions about it. -It involves the creation of a temporary representation that is continuously updated. -Mental models are often "unscientific" or "superstitious." -They give us a way to represent and draw inferences about the behaviour of things in many different contexts.
Reception Strategies - Wholist & Partist
A reception task is a concept formation task in which the order of the instances presented to the participant is chosen by the experimenter. - In the Wholist strategy you initially hypothesize that all attributes are members of the concept. - In the Partist strategy you initially hypothesize that only some attributes are members of the concept. Reception task: experimenter specifies the order of presentation of positive and negative instances • Wholist strategy: first hypothesis is that all attributes are part of the concept • Partist strategy: first hypothesis includes only some of the attributes
The Classical Approach - Attributes
Attributes can take on a number of values: - conjunctive concept (A and B) - disjunctive concept (A or B) - relational concept The relation between attributes determines the class into which an event will be assigned. Any attribute that doesn't occur in every positive instance is considered irrelevant - Positive instance is an example that is an instance of a particular concept. - Negative instance is an example that does NOT contain the right attributes of a particular concept.
Innateness Hypothesis
B.F. Skinner and the impact of informative feedback The innateness hypothesis posits that children innately possess a language acquisition device pre-equipped with the principles of universal grammar.
Support for the innateness hypothesis:
Brown and Hanlon (1970) observed interactions of mothers and children and found no evidence supporting Skinner's learning theory. Children are not given feedback about grammatical correctness of their utterances.
Conversational Maxims - 4 rules
Four rules, or conversational maxims, follow from the co-operative principle. - Maxim of quantity: say no more than is necessary - Maxim of quality: try to be truthful - Maxim of relation: attempt to be relevant - Maxim of manner: avoid ambiguity and be clear
The Exemplar Approach
Categorizing new object by comparing with specific exemplars Comparing new object with individual members of a category • Can better account for atypical cases (that bird with 2 ass cheeks on its torso)
Parental Reformulations
Children gather information from parental reformulations of their erroneous utterances. Parental reformulations inform children that they have made a mistake and provide examples of correct speech.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Children learn language very quickly, therefore they must possess a language acquisition device (LAD), which contains principles of universal grammar that apply to any natural language.
Transformational Grammar
Chomsky didn't believe that finite state grammars were capable of generating all the sentences in natural languages (e.g., English). - They operate at only one level and are too simple. A finite state grammar: Example 1. The old man comes. OR 2. The old men come.Same base but two paths at man/men
Noam Chomsky Innate Language Hypothesis PART-1
Chomsky is one of the most important figures in the history of linguistics. In Syntactic Structures (1957) he contained the following points. 1. Language is open-ended verbal communication that consists of all possible sentences. - Speech consists of those sentences that are actually spoken, which is a small subset of language. 2. There must be a finite set of grammatical rules that can produce an infinite set of sentences.
Parental Reformulations - Chouinard & Clark
Chouinard & Clark's research (2003) found that: - reformulations occur between 50% and70% of the time when children are 2 years old - children repeat reformulations up to 50% of the time - reformulations decline as children get older, presumably due to their improved speech
Types of Synesthesia
Chromesthesia: most common type, color and hearing - hearing the sound of birds chirping you also see/experience the color purple - Grapheme color synesthesia: when see letter B typed in black, they actually see it typed in green Odor color synesthesia: is when you associate smells with visual experiences usually colors Spatial sequence synesthesia: where you think about a month and it may elicit or bring about the visual spatial impression of a circular arrangement of the months around you or infront of you - EX. hearing a number and it may bring about the visual spatial impression of a number line
The Distinctiveness hypothesis -
Claims that the more distinctive the item is, the easier it will be to recall. - Bizarre items tend to be remembered better than common items, especially if they occur along with common items. More distinct items will be remembered more easily because they stand out in memory - Distinctiveness is contextual Good design emphasizes immediately distinguishable features among key characteristics - makes recognition much easier
Rosch Prototypicality - Cognitive economy
Cognitive economy: Our constant attempts to balance the tendency towards simplification and the necessity for differentiation
Cognitive Maps and the Hippocampus
Cognitive maps have been linked with hippocampal activity at least since the classic work of O'Keefe & Nadel (1978) - London taxi drivers undergo 2 years of training to learn the city. - They have a larger hippocampus than non-taxi drivers. - The increase in the size of the hippocampus varies with years of experience as a taxi driver.
Imagens
Contain information that generates mental images(natural images, parts, groupings, etc.); the components of the non-verbal system. - Non-verbal stimuli enter Sensory systems that send to Imagens
Logogens
Contain the information underlying the our use of a particular word; the components of the verbal system. - Verbal stimuli enter Sensory systems that send to Logogens
Rosch Prototypicality - Correlated attributes
Correlated attributes: The hypothesis that some combinations of attributes tend to occur more frequently than other combinations
The Classical Approach - Critical attribute
Criterial attribute is an attribute that is required in order for something to qualify as an instance of a concept. Critical attribute: an attribute that must be present for something to be part of the concept - Line-shaded and 'two' were both critical attributes in the example - Feathers and wings are both critical attributes for the concept 'bird' Abstraction - is the process of including recurring attributes and excluding non-recurring attributes. - It is sometimes likened to a composite photograph.
The Classic Approach
Definitional approach: does the item meet the definition of a concept/category? Attributes: general characteristics that is shared by all members of a category -Conjunctive ("and") concepts: defined by the combination of 2+ attributes - E.g., sister = female + sibling -Disjunctive ("or") concepts: defined by one of 2+ possible sets of attributes - E.g., a strikes in a baseball = either a pitch down the middle OR a swing and a miss -Relational: defined by the relationship between attributes - E.g., sibling, above, larger, etc.
Strong & Weak synesthetes
Developed over childhood from experience with percepts and language Strong synesthetes: - are people susceptible to an inducer in one sensory modality (e.g. a sound) producing a concurrent image in another sensory modality (e.g. a colour). Weak synesthetes: - are people who can appreciate cross-modal associations without having a strong synesthetic experience. - EX, a sneeze is judged to be brighter than a cough; sunlight louder than moonlight. - EX, may perceive the word "wrong, incorrect" in red due to grading in school, or see the word "Go" as green
Colour Words - Cultures
Different cultures carve up the visible spectrum differently. The Berinmo language contains 5 colour terms (Robertson et al., 2000; 2004): - wapa: white and pale colours; also means "European person" - kel: black; also means "dirty" - mehl: red - wor: spans yellow/orange/brown/khaki - nol: spans green/blue/purple; also means "live"
The Problem of Distinctiveness - Disadvantage
Distinctiveness is an effective memory aid for remembering individual items, but it's not as useful for remembering the association between items. - Relying on distinctiveness alone is a Metamemory failure
Folk Biology - Conceptual modules
Folk biology: ability to organize, classify, and reason about the biological world - Folk biology refers to the concepts ordinary people use to understand living things. -Conceptual modules are responsible for domain-specific knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is handled by a module dedicated exclusively to a particular subject. -Folk taxonomy is a classification system composed of a stable hierarchy of groups.
Egocentric Perspective Transformations
Egocentric perspective transformations require imagining yourself moving about a scene while the objects in the environment remain still. - Recalling a scene requires using mental imagery. - It's faster to locate something above or below you than something behind you or to the left or right: you need to imagine turning. Spatial framework - We imagine ourselves as being upright in a spatial framework that has one vertical (above-below) and two horizontal dimensions (ahead-behind, left-right). - Body symmetry likely plays a role here.
Eidetic (photographic) memory
Eidetic memory: lasting perception of a visually complex scene - A person (potentially) can 'scan' the image and describe its parts - Exclusive phenomenon from the eidetic imagery - Descriptions tend to be faster and more certain than those from memory
Support for the domain-specific module theory: Folk Biology and the Brain
Farah and Rabinowitz (2003) studies a young man who suffered brain damage immediately after birth. - He had normal IQ. - At age 16, he was asked to name pictures of living and non-living things. - He showed selective impairment of knowledge of living things. -Biological concepts and the brain: results from the Farah & Rabinowitz (2003) experiment involving a brain-damaged individual
Speech Disfluency
Hesitation pauses are pauses in speech. Schachter and colleagues observed more pauses when talking about less clearly defined subjects (e.g., in humanities) rather than more clearly defined subjects (e.g., in sciences). Clark & Fox Tree (2002) noticed longer pauses after "um" than after "uh." Disfluencies might serve a communicative function to the listener.
Controversy over the Nature of Mental Imagery
If knowledge about the world is stored in memory in the form of propositions, what role do images have in cognition? - Images are epiphenomenal: by-products of something else. - Mental rotation is accurate only in highly practiced tasks.
Implicit vs. Explicit Learning - complex rules
Implicit learning - takes place unintentionally. - The cognitive unconscious hypothesis states that implicit learning represents an evolutionarily primitive form of cognition. Explicit learning - takes place intentionally. It appeared later in evolutionary history.
The Inferential Model - Co-operative principle
In the inferential model of communication (Grice, 1957/1971; 1975) a speaker intends to inform a listener, and the listener infers what the speaker intends. The co-operative principle requires that speakers try to be concise, truthful, relevant, and unambiguous, and listeners take it for granted that this is the case.
Vividness of Visual Imagery
Individuals differ with respect to how vivid their images are. However, people who score high on vividness do not exhibit superior performance on memory tasks.
Scanning Mental Images
Kosslyn et al. (1978) asked participants to memorize a map of an island containing various landmarks. - Participants needed more time to scan between parts of the map that were far apart. - Participants mentally travelled over the locations on the island - Objective distances are preserved in mental images. - Categorical distances are preserved too (Rinck & Denis, 2004).
Imagery and Mnemonics!!!
Mnemonic Technique - Memory recall trick A mnemonic technique is a procedure used to aid memory. Imagery can be used as a mnemonic technique; e.g., the Method of loci. Method of Loci: "Memory Palace" - use a place that is highly familiar to you, have the items interact, use combinations that are memorable, generally more effective than acronyms (you may forget the acronym, or what a specific letter stands for)
Languages and Spatial Frames of Reference
Intrinsic frame of reference: - Spatial relations are based on the relations between the objects being described. Relative frame of reference: - Spatial relations are described relative to an observer's viewpoint. Absolute frame of reference: - Spatial relations are described in terms of an invariant set of coordinates.
Is the Stimulus for Language really Impoverished?
It is very difficult to answer, as it's next to impossible to provide a complete account of all the data available to a child. However, children do: - make use of corrective feedback on their grammatical constructions - produce speech of similar complexity to which they are exposed
Criticisms of Classical Concept Research
Lab-based experiments like the Bruner task are artificial ways to study real-world concepts. They do not capture the complexity of concepts in the real world.
Linguistic Competence & Performance
Linguistic competence: is an internalized system of rules used to understand language, not always reflected in actual use of language. - how much are we able to understand and to use language, Not always reflected in the actual use of the language Linguistic performance: is determined by the person's basic linguistic competence, as well as cognitive factors such as memory and situational understanding. - the actual use of the language, determined by linguistic competence and other cognitive factors such as working memory
Literacy & Metalinguistic Awareness
Literacy is the ability to read and write. It's sometimes extended to include the metalinguistic ability to talk or write about text. Metalinguistic awareness: - is the ability to talk about language itself, without worrying about what it refers to. Stanovich and Cunningham (1992): - observed that print exposure makes an independent contribution to cognitive skills over and above general intelligence.
How are Logogens & Imagens different? Connected?
Logogens and imagens are linked by referential connections - When describing something, it evokes an image - When seeing something, it evokes a verbal representation Imagens operate synchronously: the parts they contain are available for inspection simultaneously (means a variety of related mental images can be generated from imagens) In contrast, Logogens operate sequentially. When you listen to a sentence, for example, the words are not present all at once, but come one after the other
Method of Loci - Special Places strategy!!!
Method of loci - relying on mental images to associate the items that needs to be remembered Special places strategy is choosing a storage place that others won't think of. - The problem is that you may not think of it either when the time comes to retrieve the item. Special places strategy ≠ method of loci
Paivio's Study - Dual Coding Theory
Paivio's study (1965): Four groups of participants each learned 16 pairs of words. - Each group learned a different kind of stimulus-response pair: the first and second word were either concrete or abstract across groups. - Participants had to generate the second word or pair when cued with the first. Recall performance of the four groups in study: - People correctly recall Concrete Stimuli more often than Abstract Stimuli
Path Integration
Path integration is the process whereby our position in relation to an important location is continuously updated as we move through the environment.
Rosch Prototypicality - Perceived world structure
Perceived world structure: Particular combinations of attributes of objects in the world tend to occur more frequently than other combinations
The building blocks of language include:
Phonemes: the smallest units in language, combined to form morphemes, e.g., /d/, /o/, /g/ Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units of language, e.g., /dog/ Syntax: the rules that govern how words are arranged in a sentence Semantics: the meaning of words and sentences
Rosch and Prototypicality
Prototypical: Representative of a pattern or category People can answer questions about an object's membership in a category faster if It has high family resemblance/ high prototypicality
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is the branch of cognitive psychology interested in how we comprehend, produce, acquire, and represent language. It studies: 1. Comprehension - how do we understand spoken and written language 2. Production - how do we produce language 3. Acquisition - how do we learn language - 206 languages with fewer than 10 speakers - 530 languages with fewer than 100 speakers - Nearly half of the world's 7,000 languages are considered vulnerable - Estimated that a language dies every 14 days
Reber Study - Implicit vs. Explicit learners
Reber et al. (1967) told participants to memorize letter strings generated by the finite state grammar. - Explicit learners were told that the strings followed certain rules. - Implicit learners were just told to memorize the strings. - Explicit task scores and IQ were more highly correlated than implicit task scores and IQ. Implicit tasks can generate hypotheses of the rules of grammar, but they are imperfect.
Recursion
Recursion is the capacity of any one component (e.g., phrase or sentence) to contain any number of similar components. It is possible to construct a sentence that has an infinite number of other sentences embedded in it. - Recursive: embedding pieces of a sentence within a sentence.
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis - Research
Research evidence supports the linguistic relativity hypothesis. - Colours that are not easily named are harder to remember (Robertson et al., 2000). - Colour categories are acquired within a particular culture and are not the outcome of an innate unfolding of the visual system (Robertson et al., 2004).
Concept formation tasks
Selection task: - is a concept formation task in which the participant selects instances from those presented by the experimenter. - experimenter shows a single positive instance, then lets participants choose (select) which card to test next Conservative focusing: - is actively formulating hypotheses and selecting instances to see if your hypotheses are correct by focusing on one attribute at a time and by selecting instances that vary only in that attribute. - choose something that differs by one attribute (i.e., focus on one attribute at a time) Focus gambling: - is selecting instances that vary from the first positive instance in more than one attribute. - choose something that differs in a few ways
Communication and Comprehension
Speakers and listeners are said to enter into a given-new contract (Clark & Haviland, 1977) whereby the speaker tacitly agrees to connect new information to what the listener already knows. Sperber and Wilson's (1986/1995; 2002) contrasted two approaches to communication: - the code model and the inferential model.
Synesthesia Imagery - Inducer & Concurrent
Synesthesia: the condition in which a stimulus specific to one sense (e.g., a sound) triggers an experience specific to another sense (e.g., a color). - EX. hears birds chirping, and sees/experiences the color purple Inducer: is the cue/stimulus that elicits a synesthetic experience. (EX. birds chirping) Concurrent: is the synesthetic response (sees purple) Ward and Simner(2003) did a study to find evidence that there are linguistic & conceptual factors involved in synesthetes - subject associated sounds of words with tastes from his childhood
"Poverty of the stimulus" argument
The "poverty of the stimulus" argument claims that the linguistic environment to which a child is exposed is too deficient to enable the child to acquire language on that basis alone.
Colour Words - The Himba of Nambia
The Himba of Nambia have 5 basic colour terms: - Serandu: spans red, orange, and pink - Dumbu: spans beige, yellow, and light green - Zoozu: spans all dark colours and black - Vapa: spans all light colours and white - Burou: spans green, blue, and purple
Linguistic Relativity - Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposes that two languages may be so different from one another as to make their native speakers' experience of the world qualitatively different. - It is a controversial theory. - A milder version of the theory suggests that differences between languages may have effects on cognitive processes.
Perceptual Symbol Systems
The act of conceptualizing engages perceptual symbols: aspects of perceptual memories that function symbolically. Sensory-functional theories - assume that knowledge of a specific category is located near the sensory-motor areas of the brain. Category-specific deficits - are selective deficits in knowledge, resulting from brain damage.
Chomsky alternative proposal - Transformational Grammar
The alternative proposed by Chomsky is a top-down process with phrase structure rules and grammatical transformations. Phrase structure rules describe: - the way symbols can be rewritten as other symbols. Grammatical transformations: - are rules operating on entire strings of symbols to convert them to new strings.
Analog Form of Representation Hypothesis
The analog form of representation hypothesis claims that a mental image embodies the essential relationships of the thing that it represents.
Colour Words - Basic Colour Terms Hypothesis
The basic colour terms hypothesis (Belin-Kay order) posits that there is an invariant sequence regulating the emergence of colour terms in any language. - If a language has only two colour terms, they will be black and white; if three, they will be black, white, and red; and so on:
The Code Model - Sperber and Wilson's
The code model of communication (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995; 2002) is derived from information-processing theories. - Speaker's thoughts are first encoded into words, then translated into an acoustic signal that is picked up by the listener, and finally the listener decodes the acoustic signal. - It assumes that both speaker and listener share mutual knowledge.
The Impact of Teachers' Speech
The complexity of teachers' speech is related to the syntactic development of the children in their class (Huttenlocher et al., 2002). Figure: The relationship of the proportion of complex sentences in teacher speech to comprehension scores:
Concealing Function Hypothesis
The concealing function hypothesis posits that language is a code, and the parameters set for one language serve to conceal its meanings from the speakers of another language. The main criticism of minimalism is that it is driven by empirical findings and is so vague that is it not falsifiable.
Paivio's Dual-Coding Theory
The dual-coding theory states that there are two ways of representing events: - verbal (Logogens) and - non-verbal (Imagens)
Egocentric Frame of Reference!!!
The egocentric frame of reference is using information available from our current perspective to orient ourselves. - It involves the creation of a temporary representation that is continuously updated -how ur body is related to things out there
Horizontal Dimension - Segmentation of Categories
The horizontal dimension distinguishes between concepts at the same level of inclusiveness. Graded structure: - describes a concept in which some members of the category are better examples of it than others, and the boundaries of the category are vague. - some members of the category are better examples of it than others - A category member has a strong family resemblance to the extent that it is a good example of the category to which it belongs and a poor example of any other category.
Opponent Process theory of colour vision
The opponent process theory of colour vision (Hering) proposes that colour vision is based on three pairs of antagonistic colours: - yellow-blue - red-green - white-black - However there is doubt that "colour space is universally similar and independent of language."
Parameter-Setting Hypothesis - Parameter
The parameter-setting hypothesis posits that language acquisition involves a universal grammar containing a variety of switches that can be set to a number of possible values, or parameters. A parameter: is a universal aspect of language that can take on one of a small set of possible values.
Propositional Knowledge Hypothesis
The propositional knowledge hypothesis states that knowledge about the world is stored in memory in the form of propositions.
Embodied Cognition
The role of cognition is to facilitate successful interactions with the environment. - It matters that the brain is in a body; it matters that the brain is for the body - Concepts provide a bridge between our goals and the environmental possibilities. Affordances: a big part of how we categorize things is based on how we can use them - Recall listing attributes for furniture - how many of these had to do with action? e.g., sitting The concept an object fits into depends largely on your intentions - What is a bottle? A drink container? A vase? A paper-weight? A weapon?
Vertical Dimensions - the level of inclusiveness
The vertical dimension refers to the level of inclusiveness of the category: - superordinate level (e.g., furniture) - basic level (e.g., chair) - subordinate level (e.g., kitchen chair) Children accurately name basic-level categories before superordinate categories.
Distinctiveness - Von Restorff effect - Humor
The von Restorff effect: If one item in a set is different from the others, it will be more likely to be recalled. - The isolation effect - In mixed sets, humorous items are more memorable when contrasted with non-humorous items. - If only humorous items are presented, they are no more memorable than sets of weird or literal items.
The Zone of Proximal Development
The zone of proximal development is defined by Vygotsky as:"the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." - Berk (1994) observed a close relationship between the zone of proximal development and the development of inner speech.
Deep and Surface Structures - Grammar
Universal grammar provides the rules for enabling us to transform meaning into words. - Deep structure is the meaning of the sentence. - Surface structure is the order of the words. Ambiguous sentences show why we need to distinguish between deep and surface structures. -The same surface structure can be derived from different deep structures. -When we understand a sentence, we transform a surface structure into a deep structure. -When we produce a sentence, we construct a surface structure from a deep structure.
Social Context of Language - Vygotsky & Piaget
Vygotsky believed that children begin to think about what they say around year 2. Egocentric speech: is Piaget's term for children's speech that does not take the listener's perspective into account. Inner speech: is Vygotsky's term for what egocentric speech becomes with development.- It plays a role in regulating thought and planning cognitive operations.
The Classical Approach - What are concepts?
Whenever people see something as belonging to a particular category, they are seeing that event as an instance of a particular concept. - That instance shares attributes with other instances of the concept. A mental representation of a category, group of objects, people, events, etc. - Help organize thinking - Allows us to think and communicate with speed and efficiency We generate new concepts by categorizing new experiences into existing concepts
Theories about Synesthesia
With development, interconnections between senses are pruned (apoptosis), allowing senses to become differentiated from each other. - Adult synesthesia occurs when the pruning process fails to run its course, and what were supposed to be transient connections end up being permanent. -Synesthetic responses can be elicited by concepts as well as percepts. -Synesthetic associations may develop over childhood from experience with percepts and language. Possible explanation of Synesthesia: -Traditional explanation - underlying unity of the senses -Common explanation - transient or temporary neural connections that fail to be pruned (apoptosis), End up being permanent connections - exist in newborn senses that are intermingled & as brain grows/develops connections fail to be pruned
Wundt (1832-1920)
Wundt is credited as first to conduct research on psychology of language. Tree diagrams:a description of a process that proceeds from one level at which a number of relations are simultaneously present to other levels at which those relations are serially ordered Figure 9.6 - A Tree Diagram of the relationship between two elements experienced while listening to music
Imagery!!!
_________ is the ease with which something such as a word can elicit a mental image.
Emergent properties
__________ are new properties that emerge when a mental image is constructed
Eidetic Imagery
a long persisting snapshot of visual image - An icon is a snapshot of the information contained in a visual stimulus that persists briefly. - Eidetic imagery are images projected onto the external world that persist for a minute or more even after the stimulus (e.g., a picture) is removed.
Mental rotation
is imagining an object in motion and viewing it from different perspectives. -Participants were shown two line drawings at different rotations and had to decide if they saw the same or different object -The greater the rotation required, the more time they needed to decide if they were a match
Auditory Imagery - Earworm
is the experience of sound in your mind that is not caused by stimulation of the receptive cells in your ears. - It uses the same neural pathways as auditory perception. Involves similar neural mechanisms when processing auditory perception An Earworm: - a conscious experience of sound (typically a short piece of catchy music) that gets stuck on replay in your head.
Cognitive dedifferentiation
is the fusion of perceptual processes that typically function independently. - Eidetic imagery -> dedifferentiation of imagery and perception - Synesthesia -> dedifferentiation of sense modalities