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Language and Thought Psych 101 Lecture Notes

The document discusses cognition, concepts, and schemas, emphasizing how we categorize and make judgments based on prototypes. It also explores the relationship between language and thought, detailing the components of language such as phonemes and morphemes, and the different approaches to language acquisition. Additionally, it highlights the roles of schemas in organizing information and expectations in social contexts.

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21 views3 pages

Language and Thought Psych 101 Lecture Notes

The document discusses cognition, concepts, and schemas, emphasizing how we categorize and make judgments based on prototypes. It also explores the relationship between language and thought, detailing the components of language such as phonemes and morphemes, and the different approaches to language acquisition. Additionally, it highlights the roles of schemas in organizing information and expectations in social contexts.

Uploaded by

lianerikalo04
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Language and Thought – dec 1

Cognition: how we “think”


- Past experiences, beliefs, emotion, creativity, language, problem-solving

Concept: group/categories of shared features of related objects, events, or stimuli

Prototype: the BEST example of a concept. Possesses many, if not all of the characteristics of a
category

- The closer an example of something is to the prototype, the better of an example of the
concept it would be considered
o Fruit  if apple is the prototype, the closer a fruit is to an apple, the better and
example of a fruit it would seem
- People make category judgements (whether it belongs in the category or not) based off
of the category’s prototype

Based on concepts and prototypes we make generalizations – probability judgements by


comparing an object of event with its prototype. This is not inherently bad, but we tend to rely
on these judgements too much.

Conjunction Bias: more likely someone is one thing rather than a combination of things

Representation Bias: behaviour matches something else despite statistics/probabilities


showing elsewise

Concepts help organise the world.


- Ex. Is this thing that looks like an apple safe to eat? Is this animal that looks like a hornet
safe to touch?
- They are informed by semantic memory.
- Can be concrete or abstract

Concrete / Simple Concepts Abstract / Complex Concepts


- Fruit - Psychology
- Clouds - Pythagorean’s theorem

- Can be agreed upon (governed by societal rules), or individual (what you look for in a
class)
- Can also be natural or artificial

Natural Artificial
- Experienced in the world (fruit, snow, - The area of a square / Pythagorean’s
birds) theorem / dictionary definitions
- Can construct an understanding of it - Understood through a set of
through DIRECT observation properties / characteristics
- Build upon one another

Schemas: represents CLUSTERS of related concepts. These further help us with the organization
of information. (like meta concepts)
- Multiple types
- We’re focusing on role schemas and event schemas
Role Schema: expectations based on someone’s role (ex. Teacher, student, parent, etc)
- How a person should behave based on their categorization
- Ex. Professor – smart, inquisitive, intelligent
Event Schema:
- cognitive scripts – what do you do in certain events?
- When we are uncertain about event schemas (certain situations), we look to others.
- Some event schemas are more powerful than others
o Taking an exam: everyone performs the same behaviour
o Going out to a bar: people engage in similar behaviour, but in a way more
consistent with their usual behaviour

LANGUAGE

Does language change / dictate the way we think, or does the way we think influence our
language?

Language: a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according
to rules (grammar) and that convey meaning
- Not necessarily words – bees dance, individuals use sign language, some animals use
chirps and beeps, pheromones, etc.

Phonemes:
- Smallest unit of language
- 44 different phonemes in English
- How many letters in the alphabet?
- ch / ph / sh / ai / igh / ee / oo

Phonemes combine to create phonetic rules


Phonetic Rules:
- how we can combine phoneme to produce sounds
- when these get ignored, language breaks down

We can combine phonemes to make morphemes


Morphemes = smallest unit of meaningful language

Some phonemes are also morphemes (the word and phoneme “a”)

Morphological Rules
- how we combine morphemes to remix words

We use grammar to construct sentences and meanings within them


- semantics (what words MEAN)
- syntax (how words are ORGANIZED)
o important! how many ways can you arrange a 10 word sentence?
o 3.6 million – but not all of these would make sense because of syntax.

Behaviourist Approach
- We learn language through reinforcement
o Ex. A baby says “Mama” and parents give them affection, love, attention in
response

Nativist Approach
- We have an innate, biological capacity for language
o Languages are more difficult to learn after puberty – supports the nativist
approach
o Initial language leaves lasting traces in the brain
- Similar language development occurs, regardless of culture (and the different forms of
reinforcement they may use)

Hybrid approach = Interactionist

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