Psychology 3130A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Eleanor Rosch, Determinism, Dani People
22 Jun 2018
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Chapter 5 – Language and Thought
Introduction
- Communication amongst animals => limited/direct
- Koko the gorilla => communicates with sign language
What is Language
-Total feedback: whatever you say, you can hear back
-Productive: finite set of units capable of producing infinite set of ideas
-Arbitrary: signal doesn’t need to refer to physical characteristic of the referent
- Discrete, Arbitrary, Productive system of symbols used to express ideas, communicate, engage
in thought
Understanding Language as Cognition
- “Thought transmission system”
-Surface Structure: words used, spoken sound, phrases, word order, written letters, etc
-Deep Structure: underlying meaning, semantics of linguistic entity
Ambiguity in Language
- Lang full of ambiguity and cognitive challenges
-Garden path sentence: when surface structure leads to the WRONG deep structure
oEg. The horse raced past the barn fell
Linguistic Inferences
- We use inferences, context, own memory to understand deep structure
- War in Iraq vs. War on Iraq
- How we describe things/talk about them can influence how others think about them
Memory
- Our memory can be affected by HOW we describe things
- Eg. Loftus study on how memory can be manipulated by questions asked
oWatch car accident => asked about when they “collided” vs. “smashed”
o“smashed” => rate the cars as going faster
Analogy and Metaphor
- Analogy relates concepts that may have similar deep structure EVEN THOUGH surface may be
different
- Allows properties of one domain to extend to another domain
Conceptual Metaphor
- Interaction b/w conceptual metaphor and produced statements
- Having wrong metaphor/analogy for something has differences in behaviour
- Eg. Thermostat and the 2 theories (feedback and valve theory)
oValve theory => more likely to make extreme adjustments to the thermostat
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Koko the gorilla => communicates with sign language. Total feedback: whatever you say, you can hear back. Productive: finite set of units capable of producing infinite set of ideas. Arbitrary: signal doesn"t need to refer to physical characteristic of the referent. Discrete, arbitrary, productive system of symbols used to express ideas, communicate, engage in thought. Surface structure: words used, spoken sound, phrases, word order, written letters, etc. Deep structure: underlying meaning, semantics of linguistic entity. Garden path sentence: when surface structure leads to the wrong deep structure: eg. We use inferences, context, own memory to understand deep structure. War in iraq vs. war on iraq. How we describe things/talk about them can influence how others think about them. Our memory can be affected by how we describe things. Loftus study on how memory can be manipulated by questions asked: watch car accident => asked about when they collided vs. smashed , smashed => rate the cars as going faster.
