Psychology 1000 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Divergent Thinking, Creative Problem-Solving, Deductive Reasoning
by Selvi Sert
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Psychology Chapter 9
Psycholinguistics
- Study of psychological aspects of language
Adaptive Functions of Language
- Cognitive skills evolved despite that brain structure has been stagnant for the past 50,000
years
- Theorized that the use of language evolved as people gathered to form larger social units
o Divisions of labor, customs, to communicate thoughts, pass on knowledge
Components of Language
Grammar (symbols)
- Set of rules of how symbols can be combined to create meaningful units of communication
o Symbols are arbitrary (ow a word is written and spoken doesn’t indicate its
meaning) ).e. Dog doesn’t indicate the animal
o Grammatical rules vary across languages
▪ Although language changes over time, new words need to conform to basic
rules of that language
Syntax (structure)
- Rules that govern the order of words
Semanticity
- The meaning of words and expressions (I.e. I nailed the exam, make me a coffee)
- Ambiguity in a sentence
Generatively
- Finite symbols can be combined to an infinite number of messages
o I.e. 26 lettered alphabet generates words which in turn generates limitless number of
sentences
Displacement
- Language allows us to communicate events that aren’t physically present imaginary, past,
future)
o Not restricted to focusing on things right before us in the present
Noam Chomsky’s Transformation Grammar
Surface structure
- Symbols used and their order (syntax) – sequence of words (the print)
Deep structure
- Underlying meaning (semantics)
- Rules for deep structure transform the surface structure (The way the sentence is structured
depends on the meaning intended to convey)
- Sentences can have different surface structures but the same deep structure
o I.e. Nikola ate the cake/ the cake was eaten by Nikola
- A single surface structure can give rise to 2 deep structures
o I.e. Ambiguous sentences that can be misinterpreted (Flying planes can be
dangerous)
Hierarchical Structure of Language
1) Phoneme
- The smallest unit of speech that can signal a difference in meaning (pronunciation)
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o The sounds represented by letters (I.e. /n/ makes n, nn, kn, gn, pn (net, funny, know,
gnat, pneumonic)
o Have no meaning individually but can alter meaning when combined
2) Morphemes
- A combination of phonemes that form the smallest unit of meaning
o Free morphemes can function independently as words (syllables)
o Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words (prefix, suffix)
▪ -er, -ly, -able, -hood, -ful, -ness, -s, -c, -ship, dis-, de-, trans-
I.e. How many morphemes in the following?
Crossword
players
undeniable
dislocation
ladylike
stapler
corner
1
3
3
3
1
2
1
- I.e. Crossword & ladylike – the 2 components of the word have to modify the other—Word
doesn’t change the meaning of Cross
3) Words
- Correlation of word frequency & word length= -0.75 (Longer words are less likely to be used)
4) Phrases 5) Sentences
6) Discourse
- Sentences combined into paragraphs, articles, books, conversations
Bottom-up processing
o Individual elements of a stimulus are combined into a unified perception
Specialized cells:
1) Analyze the basic elements of the visual patterns
2) Feed information to other cells to perceive patterns as letters directly or indirectly by
translating visual patterns into auditory codes
Top-down processing
- Information is interpreted using existing knowledge, experience and expectations (mental
sets)
- I.e. Language (words activate knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, etc. in long term memory)
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Speech segmentation
- Perceiving where each word begins and ends
o Certain sequences of phonemes unlikely to occur within the same word, more likely
to be at the end of words or beginning of an adjacent word
o Context makes it easier to identify words (I.e. It was so ___ outside, I wore shorts)
Pragmatics (Social context of language)
- Communication must be appropriate for the social context
o I.e. Writing a formal essay vs texting a friend
o ).e. ) need help with this material. Do you have the time?, :pm
▪ )n this context, do you have the time means can you take a few minutes to
help me rather than what time is it
Types of Humor
Phonological ambiguity - Confusion of sounds (Knock knock jokes—“Orange you glad I didn’t say
banana)
Lexical ambiguity – Confusion of double meaning of words (I work as a baker because I knead the
dough)
Syntactic ambiguity - Confusion in structure (Man eating salmon vs man- eating salmon)
Semantic ambiguity – Confusion of meaning (Call me a cab. Okay, you’re a cab.)
- Kids: phonological & lexical to syntactic & semantic as they begin to appreciate ambiguous
meaning & logical inconsistency
THE BRAIN
Broca's Area— Involved in word production and articulation (speech), located in left hemisphere’s
frontal lobe
Wernicke's Area— Involved in speech comprehension, located in rear temporal lobe
- Aphasia: Impairment in speech comprehension or production that can be permanent or
temporary due to damage to either one or both areas
• Women have language in both hemispheres, men have it in the left (Unclear as to whether
genetic or environmental)
• Even if you learn early and fluently, the inferior frontal gyrus goes off when you use a
second language, indicating it requires more effort
Acquiring a Language
Nature
- Infants vocalize (cry, babble) from the first moments of life - even deaf infants
- Children perceive the entire range of phonemes and begin to discriminate by 2 months
o (Sucking rates for PA vs BA—infants suck when interested, stop when
disinterested) – Experiment wherein PA repeated & sucking rates recorded
(progressively decreases due to disinterest in PA, peaks again when switched to BA)
- At 6-12 months, they discriminate sounds specific to native tongue
Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
- Neural system that permits understanding of language due to innate predisposition to
acquire language
o An innate biological mechanism that contains grammar rules common to all
languages (universal grammar)
- Comparable to a huge linguistic switchboard that’s calibrated to your language
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