Chapter : Chapter 9; Learning and Thinking

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000

Document Summary

Mental representations include images, ideas, concepts, and principles. At this very moment, through the printed words you are reading, mental representations are being transferred from our minds to yours. Language consists of a system of symbols and rules for combining these symbols in ways that can generate an infinite number of possible messages and meanings. Psycholinguistics is the scientific study of the psychological aspects of language, such as how people understand, produce, and acquire language. Adaptive functions of language humans adopted a more socially oriented lifestyle that helped them survive and reproduce. As the social environment became more complex, new survival problems emerged: the need to create divisions of labour and cooperative social systems, to develop social customs and communicate thoughts, and to pass on knowledge and wisdom. Development of language made it easier for humans to adapt to these environmental demands. Every human culture, no matter how isolated or geographically remote, has developed one or more languages.