PSYCH211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Boombox, Language Acquisition Device, Categorical Perception

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH211
• Professor: Mathieu Le Corre

Document Summary

There are no obvious breaks in what babies hear (sounds like continuous words/sounds) You can"t start learning words unless you know which sounds changes make different words! How big of a change in sound makes a new word for babies? (pat vs. bat, or pat vs. code) 2 options: there is a language acquisition device whose job is to learn language and knows a whole bunch of stuff about language without needing any experience. Other is imitation, experience, etc. and it learns language through experience (doesn"t know anything about language ahead of time) We know the sounds of all possible human languages as babies. Babies can tell differences in sound that even adults cannot. Sound is a transformation of air vibrations hitting our ears. Ex. when humming, there is a vibration of vocal chords, but no air flow through the mouth.