PSYA02H3 Lecture Notes - American Sign Language, Waggle Dance, Temporal Lobe
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PSYA02H3 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
There are five key higher cognitive functions: acquiring and using language, forming concepts and categories, making decisions, solving problems, and reasoning. These five cognitive abilities are critical to our functioning in just about all aspects of our everyday existence and impairment of these cognitive abilities can result in major and lasting disruptions to our lives. Language is a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and convey meaning. Grammar is a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages. Language allows individuals to exchange information about the world, coordinate group action, and form strong social bonds. Each different warning call conveys a particular meaning and functions like a word in a simple language. Three striking differences distinguish human language from vervet monkey yelps: The complex structure of human language distinguishes it from simpler signaling systems.
