PSYC 102 Chapter Notes -Language Acquisition Device, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Jerome Bruner

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 102
• Professor: A.George Alder

Document Summary

Mental representations- cognitive representations of the world, including images, ideas, concepts, and principles, that are foundations of thinking, problem solving, and reasoning. *much of thinking, reasoning, and problem solving involves language. Language- consists of system of symbols and rules for combining these symbols in ways that can generate infinite number of possible msgs and meanings. Every language share same underlying features (refer to 5 properties of language) Psycholinguistics- scientific study of psychological aspects of language like how ppl understand,produce and acquire language. Over course of evolution, humans adopted socially oriented lifestyle that helped survival and reproduction (huamns evolved an innate capacity for acquiring language) Theorists believe language evolved as ppl formed larger social units, where social env"t became more complex, need to divide labor, cooperative social systems, social customs and communicating thoughts, and passing down knowledge and wisdom. Conscious thinking takes form of self-talk or inner speech using language.