PSYA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Border Collie, Frontal Lobe, Deep Structure And Surface Structure
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Language
To a large extent, it is and it is not true that language is a distinctively human concept.
Power of Language
Animals do use bodies and sound to communicate. But human language is different.
Three key things to our domination of the planet:
!-bipedalism, freeing up our hands
!-big front lobes, frontal cortex figuring out useful ways to use our hands
!-language - ability to transmit all this across generations, you can get a book and
!!see what Einstein’s ideas were back in time, share his mind with him.
Language allows us to share our minds in complex and rich ways.
We can deconstruct language to some extent.
“Smartest dog”: Chaser. Thousand word vocabulary. Border Collie dog. Very good at
learning things and eager to do stuff.
!
!Has the dog just through operant conditioning learned the labels of different
things, and if that’s all he’s done, is that really language?
!Demonstrates receptive language; you can communicate what you want to the
dog with words, with the constraints that the dog has learned in a very slow way, doesn’t
seem like human language and learning process is different.
!
!For a psychologist to really be impressed with the language capability of an
animal, they want to see real flexible dynamic use of a symbol system. Words for
example are a symbol system. How does the word “cat” link to what we think of the
actual thing, a cat?
!Words are symbolic abstract things that we can use to represent concepts.
Surface vs Deep structure
Joe took a bite out of his burger.
Joe’s burger took a bite out of his wallet.
!For these sentences, the surface structure is similar. Even though there are
!similar words in similar order, the meanings are different to us. Order and
!modifiers matter. There are roughly similar meanings.
!(How you convey it)
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Document Summary
No questionnaire this week anymore for digital labcoat. To a large extent, it is and it is not true that language is a distinctively human concept. Animals do use bodies and sound to communicate. Three key things to our domination of the planet: Big front lobes, frontal cortex guring out useful ways to use our hands. Language - ability to transmit all this across generations, you can get a book and see what einstein"s ideas were back in time, share his mind with him. Language allows us to share our minds in complex and rich ways. Very good at learning things and eager to do stuff. Demonstrates receptive language; you can communicate what you want to the. For a psychologist to really be impressed with the language capability of an animal, they want to see real exible dynamic use of a symbol system. Words are symbolic abstract things that we can use to represent concepts.
