PSYCH211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Age 13, Home Sign
Document Summary
We basically learn by imitation (parents help us); similar to how we learn dancing (requires a teacher) We have some knowledge of language that doesn"t require experience (and it is specific to language) Babies are born basically with knowledge of what kinds of sound changes make different words (piece of language learning accomplished by a mechanism that"s not specifically designed for acquiring language) Domain specific = knowledge is useful only for specific domains (ex. learning language) Babies are keeping track of how x follows y. Case of domain general learning (can be applied to a lot of other different things) There"s stuff that"s innate is useful for learning language (nothing else) Learning view: no knowledge of language without experience. Using very general learning mechanisms to do it. Learning from experience is key to survival (not just humans that do this) If this view is right, other animals should be able to learn syntax too.