PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Cognitive Revolution, Phoneme, Bounded Rationality

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Doug Mc Cann

Document Summary

Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. The first research method of choice was introspection. The 1950 was the era of cognitive revolution. A language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Phonemes - the smallest speech unit in a language that can be distinguished perceptually. It is estimated that humans can only differentiate 100 of these basic sounds. A letter in the alphabet can represent more than one phoneme if it has more than one pronunciation. Morphemes - the smallest units of meaning in a language. Approximately 50,000 english morphemes, which include root words as well as prefixes and suffixes. Each of the morphemes contributes to the meaning of the entire word. Semantics the area of language concerned with understanding the meaning. Syntax a system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into.