Transcript Introduction to Psychology - Shoreline School District

Chapter 10
Language and Thought
Language
 Language
 our spoken, written, or gestured
works and the way we combine them
to communicate meaning
 Phoneme
 in a spoken language, the smallest
distinctive sound unit
Language
 Morpheme
 in a language, the smallest unit that carries
meaning
 may be a word or a part of a word (such as
a prefix)
 Grammar
 a system of rules in a language that
enables us to communicate with and
understand others
Language
 Semantics
 the set of rules by which we derive
meaning from morphemes, words, and
sentences in a given language
 also, the study of meaning
 Syntax
 the rules for combining words into
grammatically sensible sentences in a given
language
Language
 We are all born to recognize speech sounds from
all the world’s languages
Percentage able 100
to discriminate
90
Hindi t’s
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Hindispeaking
adults
6-8
months
8-10
months
10-12
months
Infants from English-speaking homes
Englishspeaking
adults
Language
 Babbling Stage
 beginning at 3 to 4 months
 the stage of speech development in which
the infant spontaneously utters various
sounds at first unrelated to the household
language
 One-Word Stage
 from about age 1 to 2
 the stage in speech development during
which a child speaks mostly in single words
Language
 Two-Word Stage
 beginning about age 2
 the stage in speech development during
which a child speaks in mostly two-word
statements
 Telegraphic Speech
 early speech stage in which the child
speaks like a telegram-–“go car”--using
mostly nouns and verbs and omitting
“auxiliary” words
Language
Summary of Language Development
Month
(approximate)
Stage
4
Babbles many speech sounds.
10
Babbling reveals households
language.
12
One-word stage.
24
Two-world, telegraphic speech.
24+
Language develops rapidly into
complete sentences.
Language
 Genes
design the
mechanisms
for a
language,
and
experience
activates
them as it
modifies the
brain
Language
Percentage
correct on
grammar
test
 New language
learning gets
harder with
age
100
90
80
70
60
50
Native 3-7
8-10 11-15 17-39
Age at school
Language
 Linguistic Determinism
 Whorf”s hypothesis that
language determines the way
we think
Language
 The interplay
of thought
and language
Animal Thinking and
Language
Direction of
nectar source
 The straight-line
part of the dance
points in the
direction of a
nectar source,
relative to the
sun
Animal Thinking and
Language
 Gestured Communication
Animal Thinking and
Language
 Is this
really
language?