Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Thursday, 26 January 2023 11:37 am

Cognitive psychology defined

• Study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.
• May study how people perceive various shapes, why they remember some facts,
but forget others, or how they learn language
• We may learn something about how people think by studying how people have
thought about thinking

Dialectic
○ Progression of ideas often involves a dialectic
○ Developmental process whereby ideas evolve over time through a pattern of
transformation
▪ Example: thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis
○ It is important to understand the dialectic because sometimes we may be
tempted to think that if one view is right, another seemingly contrasting view
must be wrong

Philosophical antecedents of psychology: Rationalism versus Empiricism

Two different approaches to understanding the human mind (roots):

○ Philosophy
▪ Seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world, in
part through introspection (examination of ideas and experiences)
○ Physiology
▪ Seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter,
primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods

Rationalism Empiricism
Believes that the route to We acquire knowledge via empirical
knowledge is through logical evidence - obtained evidence through
analysis experience and observation
Important in theory development Leads directly to empirical investigations of
psychology
Rationalist theories without any Mountains of observational data without an
connection to observations may organizing theoretical framework may not be
not be valid meaningful
Thesis Antithesis
René Descartes John Locke

René Descartes viewed the introspective as superior

John Locke believed that humans are born without knowledge (tabula rasa or
"blank slate") and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical observation.
Immanuel Kant argued that both rationalism and empiricism have their place. Both
must work together in the quest for truth.

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 must work together in the quest for truth.

Early dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition

Structuralism
• First major school of thought in psychology
• Seeks to understand the structure of the mind and its perceptions into their
constituent components
• Wilhelm Wundt used introspection
• Study of sensory experiences through introspections (we analyze our own
perceptions)
• Edward Titchener helped bring structuralism to the United States
• Other early psychologists criticized both method (introspection) and the focus
(elementary structures of sensation) of structuralism

Functionalism
• Alternative to structuralism
• Suggested that psychologists should focus on the processes of thought rather than
on its contents
• Seeks to understand what people do and why they do it
• Held that the key to understanding the human mind and behavior was to study the
processes of how and why the mind works as it does
• Unified by the kinds of questions they asked
• Pragmatists believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness
• William James - lead in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism
- Wrote Principles of Psychology
• John Dewey - profoundly influenced contemporary thinking in cognitive psychology

Associationism: An Integrative Synthesis

• Examines how events or ideas can become associated with one another in the mind
to result in a form of learning
• Associations may result from contiguity, similarity, or contrast
• Hermann Ebbinghaus - first experimenter to apply associationist principles
systematically
- Studied his own mental processes
- Studied how people learn and remember material through rehearsal
(conscious repetition of to-be-learned material)
- Found that frequent repetition can fix mental associations more firmly in
memory
• Edward Lee Thorndike - role of "satisfaction" is the key to forming associations:
"law of effect"
- Law of effect - stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an
organism is rewarded for that response
- An organism learns to respond in a given way (effect) in a given situation if it is
rewarded repeatedly for doing so (satisfaction)

From Associationism to Behaviorism

• Theoretical outlook that psychology should focus only on the relation between
observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli
• Ivan Pavlov - studied involuntary learning behavior
- Observed dogs salivate in response to the sight of the lab technician who fed
them

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 them
- Classically conditioned learning

- Effective conditioning requires contingency (form of reward and punishment

• Considered as an extreme version of associationism
• Focuses entirely on the association between the environment and an observable
behavior

Proponents of Behaviorism
• John Watson - father of radical behaviorism
▪ Concentrate only on the study of observable behavior
• B.F. Skinner - believed that virtually all forms of human behavior, not just
learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the
environment
▪ Rejected mental mechanisms
▪ Believed that operant conditioning could explain all forms of human
behavior
□ Operant conditioning - involving the strengthening and weakening
of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence of
reinforcement or punishments

Criticisms of Behaviorism
• Did not account as well for complex mental activities such as language
learning and problem solving
• Some psychologists wanted to know what went on inside the head
• Often proved easier to use the techniques of behaviorism in studying
nonhuman animals than in studying human ones

Behaviorists Daring to Peek into the Black Box

• Some psychologists rejected radical behaviorism
• Black box - mind that is best understood in terms of its input and output, but
whose internal processes cannot be accurately described because they are not
observable
• Edward Tolman - understanding behavior required taking into account the
purpose of, and the plan for, the behavior
▪ All behavior is directed toward a goal
• Bandura - learning appears to result not merely from directs for behavior, but
it can also be social, resulting from observations of the rewards or
punishments given to others

Gestalt psychology
• States that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view
them as organized, structured wholes
• We cannot fully understand behavior when we only break phenomena down
into smaller parts
• Studied insight, seeking to understand the unobservable mental event

Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitivism - belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of
how people think
• Rejects the notion that psychologists should avoid studying mental processes

Early role of Psychobiology

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 Early role of Psychobiology
• Karl Spencer Lashley - considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer
of behavior
• Donald Hebb - proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for
learning in the brain
• B.F. Skinner - language acquisition and usage could be explained purely in
terms of environmental contingencies
• Noah Chomsky - stressed both the biological basis and creative potential of
language

Engineering, Computation, and Applied Cognitive Psychology

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) - attempt by humans to construct systems that show
intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information

Cognition and Intelligence

• Intelligence - capacity to learn from experience, using metacognitive processes to
enhance learning, and the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment
- Involves (1) capacity to learn from experience, (2) the ability to adapt to the
surrounding environment
• Metacognition - people's understanding and control of their own thinking process
• Cultural intelligence (CQ) - used to describe a person's ability to adapt to a variety of
challenges in diverse cultures

Three Cognitive Models of Intelligence

▪ Three-stratum model, theory of multiple intelligences, and the triarchic
theory of intelligence

Carroll: Three-Stratum Model of Intelligence

1. Stratum I includes many narrow, specific abilities
▪ Spelling ability, speed of reasoning
2. Stratum II includes various broad abilities
▪ Fluid intelligence, short-term memory, long-term storage and retrieval,
information-processing speed
3. Stratum III is just a single general intelligence

Gardner: Theory of Multiple Intelligences

▪ Intelligence comprises multiple independent constructs, not just a single,
unitary construct
▪ Distinguishes eight distinct intelligences that are relatively independent
of each other
▪ Mind is modular. Modularity theorists believe that different abilities -
such as Gardner's intelligences - can be isolated as emanating from
distinct portions or modules of the brain.

Gardner's Eight Intelligences

Type of Intelligence Tasks Reflecting This Type of Intelligence

Linguistic Reading a book; writing a paper, a novel, or a poem;
intelligence and understanding spoken word
Logical- Solving math problems, logical reasoning
mathematical

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 mathematical
intelligence
Spatial intelligence Used in getting one place to another, reading a map,
and in packing suitcases in the trunk of a car so that
they all fit in
Musical intelligence Singing a song, composing a sonata, playing
instruments
Bodily-kinesthetic Used in dancing, playing sports
intelligence
Interpersonal Used in relating to other people
intelligence
Intrapersonal Used in understanding ourselves
intelligence
Naturalist Used in understanding patterns in nature
intelligence

Sternberg: The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

▪ Emphasize the extent to which they work together in his triarchic theory
of human intelligence
▪ Three aspects: creative, analytical, and practical
○ Creative abilities are used to generate novel ideas
▪ Create, invent, design
▪ We solve new kinds of problems that require us to think about the
problems and its elements in a new way
○ Analytical abilities ascertain whether your ideas are good ones
▪ Analyze, compare, evaluate
▪ We solve familiar problems by using strategies that manipulate the
elements of a problem or the relationships among the elements
○ Practical abilities are used to implement the ideas and persuade others of their
value
▪ Apply, use, utilize
▪ We solve problems that apply what we know to everyday contexts

▪ Cognition is the center of intelligence

▪ Three different kinds of components
□ Metacomponents - higher-order executive processes used to plan,
monitor, and evaluate problem solving
□ Performance components - lower-order processes used for
implementing the commands of the metacomponents
□ Knowledge-acquisition components - the processes used for
learning how to solve the problems in the first place

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

Goals of Research
○ Data gathering
▪ Reflects on empirical aspect of the scientific enterprise
▪ Aid researchers in describing cognitive phenomena
▪ Theory - an organized body of general explanatory principles regarding a
phenomenon, usually based on observations
▪ Hypotheses - tentative proposals regarding expected empirical

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 ▪ Hypotheses - tentative proposals regarding expected empirical
consequences of the theory, such as outcomes of research
▪ Statistical significance - indicates the likelihood that a given set of results
would be obtained if only chance of factors were in operation

Distinctive Research Methods

○ Laboratory or other controlled experiments
○ Psychobiological research
○ Self-reports
○ Case studies
○ Naturalistic observation
○ Computer simulations and artificial intelligence

Experiments on Human Behavior

○ Independent variables - aspects of an investigation that are individually
manipulated or carefully regulated
○ Dependent variables - outcome responses, the values of which depend on
how one or more independent variables influence or affect the participants in
the experiment
○ Confounding variables - type of irrelevant variable that has been left
uncontrolled in a study

Psychobiology Research
○ Investigators study the relationship between cognitive performance and
cerebral events and structures
○ Techniques used in psychobiological research
▪ Individual's brain postmortem, relating the individual's cognitive function
prior to death to observable features of the brain
▪ Studying images showing structures of or activities in the brain of an
individual who is known to have a particular cognitive deficit
▪ Obtaining information about cerebral processes during the normal
performance of a cognitive activity

Self-reports, Case Studies, and Naturalistic Observation

○ Self-reports - an individual's own account of cognitive processes
○ Case studies - in-depth studies of individuals
○ Naturalistic observation - detailed studies of cognitive performance in
everyday situations and nonlaboratory contexts

Cognitive science - cross-disciplinary field that uses ideas and methods from
cognitive psychology, psychobiology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics,
and anthropology

Fundamental Ideas in Cognitive Psychology

1. Empirical data and theories are both important - data in cognitive psychology
can be fully understood only in the context of an explanatory theory, and
theories are empty without empirical data
2. Cognition is generally adaptive, but not in all specific instances
3. Cognitive processes interact with each other and with noncognitive processes
4. Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods
5. All basic research in cognitive psychology may lead to applications, and all
applied research may lead to basic understandings

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Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology
1. Nature versus nurture
2. Rationalism versus empiricism
3. Structures versus processes
4. Domain generality versus domain specificity
5. Validity of causal inferences versus ecological validity
6. Applied versus basic research
7. Biological versus behavioral methods

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Cognitive Neuroscience
Friday, 10 March 2023 3:53 pm

Cognitive neuroscience
• field of study linking the brain and other aspects of
the nervous system to cognitive processing and, ultimately, to behavior

Brain
• the organ in our bodies that most directly controls our thoughts, emotions, and
motivations

Localization of function
• specific areas of the brain that control specific skills or behaviors

ANATOMY AND MECHANISMS OF THE BRAIN

Nervous system
• specific areas of the brain that control specific skills or behaviors

GROSS ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN: FOREBRAIN, MIDBRAIN, HINDBRAIN

Forebrain
○ the region of the brain located toward the top and front of the brain
○ comprises the cerebral cortex, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, the
thalamus, and the hypothalamus
▪ Cerebral cortex - outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres. It plays a vital
role in our thinking and other mental processes.
▪ Basal ganglia - collections of neurons crucial to motor function
▪ Limbic system - emotion, motivation, memory, and learning
□ Septum - anger and fear
□ Amygdala - anger and aggression; stimulation of the amygdala
commonly results in fear
□ Hippocampus - memory formation
 Korsakoff's syndrome - disease that produces loss of memory
function
▪ Thalamus - relays incoming sensory information through groups of
neurons that project to the appropriate region in the cortex
▪ Hypothalamus - regulates behavior related to species survival
□ active in regulating emotions and reactions to stress
□ Plays a role in sleep
□ Functioning of the endocrine system

Midbrain
○ control eye movement and coordination
○ Reticular Activating System (RAS; also called "reticular formation")
▪ network of neurons essential to the regulation of consciousness (sleep;
wakefulness; arousal; attention to some extent; and vital functions such
as heartbeat and breathing
○ The brainstem connects the forebrain to the spinal cord

Hindbrain

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 Hindbrain
○ Medulla oblongata - controls heart activity and largely controls breathing,
swallowing, and digestion
○ Pons - serves as a kind of relay station because it contains neural fibers that
pass signals from one part of the brain to another
○ Cerebellum - controls bodily coordination, balance, and muscle tone, as well as
some aspects of memory involving procedure-related movements

CEREBRAL CORTEX AND LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION

Cerebral cortex
• plays an extremely important role in human cognition
• The human cerebral cortex enables us to think
• forms the outer layer of the two halves of the brain—the left and right cerebral
hemispheres
• not all information transmission is contralateral—from one side to another
• Some ipsilateral transmission—on the same side—occurs as well. For example,
odor information from the right nostril goes primarily to the right side of the brain.
• Corpus callosum is a dense aggregate of neural fibers connecting the two cerebral
hemispheres. It allows transmission of information back and forth. If it is cut, the
two cerebral hemispheres cannot communicate with each other

Hemispheric Specialization
• Broca's area - contributes to speech
• Wernicke's area - contributes to language comprehension

Lobes of the Cerebral Hemispheres

• Frontal lobe
○ motor processing and higher thought processes, such as abstract reasoning,
problem solving, planning, and judgment
○ Prefrontal cortex - involved in complex motor control and tasks that require
integration of information over time
○ contains the primary motor cortex, which specializes in the planning, control,
and execution of movement, particularly of movement involving any kind of
delayed response
• Parietal lobe
○ associated with somatosensory processing
○ receives inputs from the neurons regarding touch, pain, temperature sense,
and limb position when you are perceiving space and your relationship to it—
how you are situated relative to the space you are occupying
○ also involved in consciousness and paying attention
○ the primary somatosensory cortex receives information from the senses
about pressure, texture, temperature, and pain
• Temporal lobe
○ associated with auditory processing and comprehending language
○ Retention of visual memories
○ matches new things you see to what you have retained in visual memory
• Occipital lobe
○ Visual processing
○ contains numerous visual areas, each specialized to analyze specific aspects of
a scene, including color, motion, location, and form
○ Visual cortex

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 • Projection areas
○ areas in the lobes in which sensory processing occurs
○ the nerves contain sensory information going to (projecting to) the thalamus

Neuronal Structure and Function

• Neurons - transmit electrical signals from one location to another in the nervous
system
○ Some - contains the nucleus of the cell; responsible for the life of the neuron
and connects the dendrites to the axon
○ Dendrites - branchlike structures that receive information from other neurons,
and the soma integrates the information
○ Axon - a long, thin tube that extends (and sometimes splits) from the soma
and responds to the information, when appropriate, by transmitting an
electrochemical signal, which travels to the terminus (end), where the signal
can be transmitted to other neurons

• Three types of chemical substances are involved in neurotransmission

○ monoamine neurotransmitters are synthesized by the nervous system
through enzymatic actions on one of the amino acids (constituents of
proteins, such as choline, tyrosine, and tryptophan) in our diet (e.g.,
acetylcholine, dopamine, and serotonin)
○ amino-acid neurotransmitters are obtained directly from the amino acids in
our diet without further synthesis (e.g., gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA)
○ neuropeptides are peptide chains (molecules made from the parts of two or
more amino acids)
• Neurotransmitters
○ Acetylcholine - associated with memory functions, and the loss of
acetylcholine through Alzheimer’s disease has been linked to impaired
memory functioning in Alzheimer’s patients
▪ plays an important role in sleep and arousal
○ Dopamine - associated with attention, learning, and movement coordination
▪ involved in motivational processes, such as reward and reinforcement
○ Serotonin - important role in eating behavior and body-weight regulation
▪ also involved in aggression and regulation of impulsivity

VIEWING THE STRUCTURES AND FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN

• Postmortem studies and vivo techniques on both humans and animals

Postmortem Studies
○ researchers may be able to trace a link between an observed type of behavior
and anomalies in a particular location in the brain

Studying Live Nonhuman Animals

○ Many early in vivo techniques were performed exclusively on animals
○ scientists can measure the effects of certain kinds of stimuli, such as visually
presented lines, on the activity of individual neurons
○ second group of animal studies includes selective lesioning—surgically
removing or damaging part of the brain—to observe resulting functional
deficits
○ A third way of doing research with animals is by employing genetic knockout
procedures. By using genetic manipulations, animals can be created that lack

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 procedures. By using genetic manipulations, animals can be created that lack
certain kinds of cells or receptors in the brain

Studying Live Humans

Electrical recordings
▪ Electroencephalograms (EEGs) - recordings of the electrical frequencies
and intensities of the living brain, typically recorded over relatively long
periods
□ possible to study brainwave activity indicative of changing mental
states such as deep sleep or dreaming
▪ Event-related potential (ERP) - record of a small change in the brain’s
electrical activity in response to a stimulating event

Static imaging techniques

▪ include angiograms, computed tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic
resonance imaging scans (MRI)
▪ X-ray–based techniques (angiogram and CT scan) allow for the
observation of large abnormalities of the brain, such as damage resulting
from strokes or tumors
▪ Computed tomography (CT or CAT) - Unlike conventional X-ray methods
that only allow a two-dimensional view of an object, a CT scan consists of
several X-ray images of the brain taken from different vantage points
that, when combined, result in a three-dimensional image
▪ Angiography - to examine the blood flow
▪ Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - reveals high-resolution images of
the structure of the living brain by computing and analyzing magnetic
changes in the energy of the orbits of nuclear particles in the molecules
of the body
□ Structural MRIs - provide images of the brain’s size and shape
□ Functional MRIs - visualize the parts of the brain that are activated
when a person is engaged in a particular task

Metabolic imaging
▪ rely on changes that take place within the brain as a result of increased
consumption of glucose and oxygen in active areas of the brain
▪ The basic idea is that active areas in the brain consume more glucose and
oxygen than do inactive areas during some tasks
▪ Positron emission tomography (PET) scans - measure increases in oxygen
consumption in active brain areas during particular kinds of information
processing
▪ Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - neuroimaging technique
that uses magnetic fields to construct a detailed representation in three
dimensions of levels of activity in various parts of the brain at a given
moment in time

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

▪ temporarily disrupts the normal activity of the brain in a limited area

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
▪ measures activity of the brain from outside the head (similar to EEG) by
picking up magnetic fields emitted by changes in brain activity
▪ allows localization of brain signals so that it is possible to know what

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 ▪ allows localization of brain signals so that it is possible to know what
different parts of the brain are doing at different times
▪ used to help surgeons locate pathological structures in the brain

BRAIN DISORDERS

Stroke
○ Vascular disorder is a brain disorder caused by a strok
○ occur when the flow of blood to the brain undergoes a sudden disruption
○ Typically show marked loss of cognitive functioning
○ Ischemic stroke - occurs when a buildup of fatty tissue occurs in blood vessels
over a period of years, and a piece of this tissue breaks off and gets lodged in
arteries of the brain. Ischemic strokes can be treated by clot-busting drugs
○ Hemorrhagic stroke - occurs when a blood vessel in the brain suddenly breaks.
Blood then spills into surrounding tissue

Brain Tumors
○ can affect cognitive functioning in very serious ways
○ Tumors can occur in either the gray or the white matter of the brain
○ Primary brain tumors - start in the brain; childhood brain tumors
○ Secondary brain tumors - start somewhere else in the body

Head injuries
○ In closed-head injuries, the skull remains intact but there is damage to the
brain, typically from the mechanical force of a blow to the head
○ In open-head injuries, the skull does not remain intact but rather is penetrated,
for example, by a bullet

INTELLIGENCE AND NEUROSCIENCE

Intelligence and Brain Size

○ The evidence suggests that, for humans, there is a modest but significant
statistical relationship between brain size and intelligence
○ The amount of gray matter in the brain is strongly correlated with IQ in many
areas of the frontal and temporal lobes

Intelligence and Neurons

○ Several studies initially suggested that speed of conduction of neural impulses
may correlate with intelligence, as measured by IQ tests

Intelligence and Brain Metabolism

○ Higher intelligence correlates with reduced levels of glucose metabolism
during problem-solving tasks

Biological Bases of Intelligence Testing

○ Some neuropsychological research suggests that performance on intelligence
tests may not indicate a crucial aspect of intelligence—the ability to set goals,
to plan how to meet them, and to execute those plans

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Sensation and Perception
Friday, 10 March 2023 10:52 pm

Sensation
• a physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comes
into contact with the body
• The bottom-up process by which our senses, like vision, hearing and smell, receive
and relay outside stimuli.

Perception
• way that sensory information is interpreted and consciously experienced.
• The top-down way our brains organize and interpret that information and put it into
context

Basic Concepts of Perception

• The distal (far) object is the object in the external world (e.g., a falling tree).
- The event of the tree falling creates a pattern on an informational medium.

• The informational medium could be sound waves, as in the sound of the falling tree.
The informational medium might also be reflected light, chemical molecules, or
tactile information coming from the environment.
- For example, when the information from light waves comes into contact
with the appropriate sensory receptors of the eyes, proximal (near) stimulation
occurs (i.e., the cells in your retina absorb the light waves).

• Perception occurs when a perceptual object (i.e., what you see) is created in you
that reflects the properties of the external world. That is, an image of a falling tree
is created on your retina that reflects the falling tree that is in front of you.

Attention and Perception

• Attention plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is
perceived

Motivations, expectations, and perceptions

• If you have experienced how motivation to detect a meaningful stimulus can shift
our ability to discriminate between a true sensory stimulus and background noise

SENSORY SYSTEM
• Responsible for the reception of information from the external world . Is composed
of highly specialized cells called sensory receptors in the skin, tongue, ears , eyes
and other parts of the body. With the sensory system, information is acquired.

APPROACHES TO PERCEPTION

BOTTOM UP THEORIES
○ Perception starts with the stimuli whose appearance you take in through your
eye
○ Data driven theories
can be defined as sensory analysis that begins at the entry-level—with what

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 ○ can be defined as sensory analysis that begins at the entry-level—with what
our senses can detect.
○ is purely data-driven and requires no previous knowledge or learning.

Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception

• James J. Gibson’s theory of direct perception states that the information in our
sensory receptors, including the sensory context, is all we need to perceive
anything.
• Also called ecological perception
• In other words, we do not need higher cognitive processes or anything else to
mediate between our sensory experiences and our perceptions

Template theories
• suggest that we have stored in our minds myriad sets of templates- highly detailed
models for patterns we potentially might recognize. We recognize a pattern by
comparing it with our set of templates. We then choose the exact the template that
perfectly matches what we observe

Feature Matching Theories

• alternative explanation of pattern and form perception wherein we attempt to
match features of a pattern to features stored in memory, rather than to match a
whole pattern to a template or a prototype.

Pandemonium Model
○ In it, metaphorical “demons” with specific duties receive and analyze the
features of a stimulus
○ In Oliver Selfridge’s Pandemonium Model, there are four kinds of demons:
image demons, feature demons, cognitive demons, and decision demons.

Recognition-by-Components Theory
• we quickly recognize objects by observing the edges of them and then
decomposing the objects into geons (for geometrical ions).
• They include objects such as bricks, cylinders, wedges, cones, and their curved axis
counterparts
• The objects constructed from geons thus are recognized easily from many
perspectives, despite visual noise.

TOP-DOWN THEORIES
• perception is driven by high-level cognitive processes, existing knowledge, and the
prior expectations that influence perception
• These theories then work their way down to considering the sensory data, such as
the perceptual stimulus
• the perceiver builds (constructs) a cognitive understanding (perception) of a
stimulus
• Form our perception starting with a larger object, concept, or idea before working
our way toward more detailed information
• Processing happens when we work from general to specific.

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Language: Structure and Comprehension
Friday, 10 March 2023 11:51 pm

Language
• The use of an organized means of combining words in order to communicate
• makes it possible for us to communicate with those around us.
• Makes it possible to think about things and processes we currently cannot see,
hear, feel, touch, or smell

Psycholinguistics
• the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind.
• considers both production and comprehension of language

Four areas of study

1. Linguistics - the study of language structure and change.
2. Neurolinguistics - the study of the relationships among the brain, cognition, and
language
3. Sociolinguistics - the study of the relationship between social behavior and
language.
4. Computational Linguistics And Psycholinguistics - the study of language via
computational methods

Properties of language
1. Communicative: Language permits us to communicate with one or more people
who share our language.
2. Arbitrarily symbolic: Language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol
and its referent: an idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a description.
3. Regularly structured: Language has a structure; only particularly patterned
arrangements of symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield different
meanings.
4. Structured at multiple levels: The structure of language can be analyzed at more
than one level ( e.g., in sounds, in meaning units, in words, in phrases) .
5. Generative, productive: Within the limits of a linguistic structure, language users
can produce novel utterances. The possibilities for creating new utterances are
virtually limitless.
6. Dynamic: Languages constantly evolve.

The fundamental aspect of language

Two fundamental aspects of language
• Receptive comprehension and decoding of language input
○ Refers to deriving the meaning from whatever symbolic the reference is being
used (e.g., while listening or reading)
• Expressive encoding and production of language output
○ Encoding to refer to both semantic and nonsemantic encoding of information
into a form that can be stored in both working memory and long-term
memory

Syntax
• the way in which users of a particular language put words together to form
sentences

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 sentences
• plays a major role in our understanding of language

Semantics
• the study of meaning in a language
• concerned with how words and sentences express meaning

Speech Perception
• To understand speech is crucial to human communication.
• To understand speech perception, we consider some interesting phenomena of
speech.
• We also, reflect on the question of whether speech is somehow special among all
the various kinds of sounds we can perceive.
• We are able to perceive speech with amazing rapidity.

1. Phonetic Refinement Theory

○ Analyze auditory signals
○ Go to higher-level processing using context to help figure out what is heard
2. TRACE model (like network model)
○ Acoustic features
○ Phonemes
○ Words

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Stages of Language Acquisition

1. Cooing - comprises mostly vowel sounds
2. Babbling - comprises consonant as well as vowel sounds
3. One-word utterances - limited in both the vowels and the consonants they utilize
4. Two-word utterances and telegraphic speech
5. Basic adult sentence structure, with continuing vocabulary acquisition

Nature & Nurture

• Perhaps humans have a language-acquisition device, a biologically innate
mechanism that facilitates language acquisition. That is, we humans seem to be
biologically preconfigured to be ready to acquire language.

Imitation
• children do exactly what they see others do
• related to vocabulary and socially insightful behavior
• Unconscious/not always conscious to the person being imitated

Modeling
• children's speech patterns and vocabulary model the patterns and vocabulary of
the people in their environment
• Almost without thinking, parents and other adults tend to use a higher pitch than
usual. In this way, they exaggerate the vocal inflection of their speech. For example,
they raise and lower pitch and volume more extremely than normal.

Conditioning
• Children hear utterances and associate those utterances with particular objects and
events in their environment. They then produce those utterances and are rewarded

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 events in their environment. They then produce those utterances and are rewarded
by their parents

Beyond the First Years

• In general, children's ability to comprehend language and to process information
efficiently increases with age.
• Older children also demonstrate greater verbal fluency than do younger children.

Animal Language
• nonhuman animals often are presumed to have somewhat simpler cognitive
systems. It is, therefore, easier to model their behavior. These models can then be
bootstrapped to the study of humans, as has happened most notably in the study
of learning.

READING AND UNDERSTANDING

• Lexical processes - used to identify letters and words; also activate relevant
information in memory about these words
• Comprehension processes - used to make sense of the text as a whole

Fixations and Reading Speed

Fixations
○ Series of "snapshots" and variable of link
○ Readers fixate for a longer time on longer words than on shorter words
○ also fixate longer on less familiar words (i.e., words that appear less
frequently in the English language) than on more familiar words
○ The last word of a sentence also seems to receive an extra-long fixation time.
This can be called "sen¬tence wrap-up time"

Lexical access
○ the identification of a word that allows us to gain access to the meaning of the
word from memory.
○ It combines information from multiple levels of processing, such as the
features of letters, the let¬ters themselves, and the words comprising the
letters

Information passes from one level to another bi-directionally, its processing occurs
in each of two directions:

1. Bottom-up- starting with sensory data and working up to higher levels of

cognitive processing
2. Top-down, starting with high-level cognition operating on prior knowledge
and experiences related to a given context.

Word Recognition Models

1. Word-superiority effect
○ happens when letters are read more easily when they are embedded in words
than when they are presented either in isolation or with let¬ters that do not
form words. In studying the word-superiority effect, the standard lexical-
decision task is modified to examine the processing of letters.
2. Sentence-superiority effect
people take about twice as long to read unrelated words as to read words in a

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 ○ people take about twice as long to read unrelated words as to read words in a
sentence

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

Difference among languages

• Variations in the physical and cultural environments in which the languages arose
and developed.
• syntactical structures of languages (order of subject, verb, object and the range of
grammatical inflections)

Bilingualism & Dialects

• Additive bilingualism - a second language is acquired in addition to a relatively well-
developed first language.
• subtractive bilingualism- elements of a second language replace elements of the
first language.
• simultaneous bilingualism- occurs when a child learns two languages from birth
• sequential bilingualism- occurs when an individual first learns one language and
then another

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