PS102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Language Acquisition Device, American Sign Language, Functional Fixedness
Document Summary
Mental representations: at the core of our ability to do many things, take a variety of forms. Concepts: manipulate these in the form of language, thinking, problem solving. Language is a system of symbols and rules for combining symbols. Properties of language: symbolic-use of sounds, signs, gestures; allows for displacement, semantic- symbols have meaning, generative- symbols can be combined to created infinite messages, structured- rules dictate how symbols are combined. All human languages have a hierarchical structure: phonemes= smallest speech units(ing th, morphemes=smallest unit of meaning(cat, contains prefixes and suffices, semantics=meaning of words and word combinations, syntax=a system of rules for arranging words. Children begin to master language without formal instruction. Newborns react to human speech, recognize mothers voice at 3 days, prefer mothers language. Young infants can discriminate more phonemes than adults. Holophrastic period: single- word utterance with meaning of entire sentence, word learning slow at first, naming explosion (18-24 months)
