PSYC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Patricia K. Kuhl, Joint Attention, Environmental Factor
●Development of Perception
○Perceptual Narrowing
■Detect low-level features
●Primitive knowledge
●Non native categories
○Things we don’t need to process gradually goes away
○What you’re not repeatedly exposed to, goes away
○Perceptual Broadening
■Detect identity features
●Expert knowledge
●Native categories
○At birth, babies can distinguish things broadly
○But overtime, repeated exposure to the same stimuli will
make you get better at distinguishing things
●Language Development
○Sentences→ phrases→ words→ morphemes→ phonemes
■From high to low difficulty
■Phonemes: smallest unit of sound in a language (Da-, A-)
●If you can’t hear the differences in sounds early, it is harder to
learn different languages (perception of differences)
■Morphemes: smallest unit of sound in a language with meaning
■Syntax & Semantics (Sentences, Phrases, and Words)
●Syntax→ system of rules within a particular language that
regulates how words are combined into phrases/sentences
○“The girl kissed the boy” → “Girl kissed the boy the”
■Doesn’t make sense
●Semantics→ the way in which we put together phrases/sentences
will change the meaning of those phrases/sentences
○“The girl kissed the boy” → “The boy kissed the girl”
■The meaning has now changed
●Theories of Language Development
○Patricia Kuhl
■How nature interacts with nurture
■Argues that:
●nature aspect is biologically prepared with general cognitive skills
(perceiving differences)
○Helps us become experts at learning languages
●Shaped by nurture in which social interactions are the main
environmental factor
Document Summary
Things we don"t need to process gradually goes away. What you"re not repeatedly exposed to, goes away. At birth, babies can distinguish things broadly. But overtime, repeated exposure to the same stimuli will make you get better at distinguishing things. Phonemes: smallest unit of sound in a language (da-, a-) If you can"t hear the differences in sounds early, it is harder to learn different languages (perception of differences) Morphemes: smallest unit of sound in a language with meaning. Syntax & semantics (sentences, phrases, and words) Syntax system of rules within a particular language that regulates how words are combined into phrases/sentences. The girl kissed the boy girl kissed the boy the . Semantics the way in which we put together phrases/sentences will change the meaning of those phrases/sentences. The girl kissed the boy the boy kissed the girl . Nature aspect is biologically prepared with general cognitive skills (perceiving differences) Helps us become experts at learning languages.