FEM 4102 COGNITION AND LANGUAGE

1. FEM 4102COGNITION AND LANGUAGE DR. ZANARIAH ISMAIL

2. Synopsis • This course encompasses the analysis of psycholinguistic development and the psychology of cognition, as well as the relationships between language processes and cognition processes in the context of human development.

3. OUTLINE

4. ASSESSMENT TASK % • ASSESSMENT 1 (Test) 20 • ASSESSMENT 3 (Project) 40 • FINAL EXAM 40 • TOTAL 100

5. INTRODUCTION • What is Cognitive Psychology? • What is Psychology? • What is Cognition?

6. What is Psychology? • A scientific study of behavior & cognitive process

7. What is Cognitive Psychology? • According to McMillan • Cognitive Psychology is the scientific study of human thoughts and the mental process that underlie behavior  which includes memory, problem solving, perception and language • Thus …..The study of THINKING.

8. Cont • The Emergence of Cognitive Psychology was the result of…. • Criticism towards Behaviorism • Development of computers • i.e. Human being (brain/mental) are just like a computer… they process information

9. Cognitive Psychology assume that….. • Assumptions that guide: • Mental Processes Exist • Mental Processes can be Scientifically Studied • Humans are Active Information Processors

10. What is Cognition?

11. INTRODUCTION • Cognitive science • Oxford Dictionary: (psychology) action or process of acquiring knowledge, by reasoning or by intuition or through the senses (proses memperolehipengetahuansecarataakulan (dayafikir) atauintuisi (gerakhati) ataumelaluideria. • The Scientific study of: • Thought • Language • The brain

12. Memory & cognition • Cognition • The collection of mental processes and activities used in: • Perceiving • Remembering • Thinking • Understanding • As well as the act of using these processes

13. What is psycholinguistics?

14. Psycholinguistics • Psycholinguistics is the Psychology of Language. • The study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language i.e….study how the brain processes language. • Studies the comprehension & production of language in it spoken, written and signed forms. • Psycholinguistics is interdisciplinary and is studied by people in a variety of fields, such as psychology, cognitive, science, and linguistics

15. Psycholinguistics • Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structure, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. • Developmental psycholinguistics studies children’s ability to learn & process language  usually with experimental or at least quantitative methods (as opposed to naturalistic observations such as those made by Jean Piaget in his research on the development of children).

16. Linguistic-related areas: • Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds. • Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).

17. Linguistic-related areas: • Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined together to form sentences. • Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences. • Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

18. History of psycholinguistics

19. Egyptian times Heart was assumed to be the seat of the soul and memory Plato Brain as seat of intelligence Pre-19th century thoughts on language mostly in philosophy, not much systematic research Isolated studies

20. First systematic studies- relationship between brain and language Phrenology/ craniology (Gall,ca,1800); Bumps on the skull taken to reflect areas of enlargement in the brain Located language in anterior parts of the brain at the protrusion of the eye socket below the eye

21. Empiricism of the 18th/19th century Paul Broca(physician,ca.1860):anatomical inspection of the brain Damage can result in impaired language production Carl Wernicke (German physician) Damage can result in problems processing auditory language

22. History of cognitive psychology

23. Influential figures in the history of cognitive Psychology • Wilhem Wundt (1832-1920) • Edward Titchner (1867 – 1927) • Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) • William James (1842-1910) • John Watson (1842-1910) • Jean Piaget • Lev Vygotsky

24. History of cognitive psychology • Wilhelm Wundt • German physiologist • Established the first psychology laboratory • Wundt believe that psychology is based on the observation of experience • Introspection – looks carefully inward Wundt’s system of “internal perception”, or the self-examination of conscious experienceby objective observation of one’s consciousness.

25. History of Cognitive psychology • EDWARD TITCHNER • 1st school of Thought • Structuralism • Focus on the components of the mind. • Believed that if the basic components of the mind could be defined and categorized  then the structure of mental processes and higher thinking could be determined. • All consciousness was capable of being reduced to three states, i.e. sensation, images & affections

26. History of cognitive psychology • HERMANN VON EBBINGHAUS • Father of Memory Research • A German psychologist who • Pioneered experimental study of memory, and discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect • The first person to describe the learning curve

27. LEARNING CURVE BY HERMANN

28. History of cognitive psychology • WILLIAM JAMES • A pioneering American Psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor • 2nd school of thought • Function of mental processes, including consciousness; how a mental process operates • How the mental process functions in the evolution of the species, what adaptive property it provides that would cause it to be selected through evolution

29. History of cognitive psychology- the effects of behaviorism • JOHN WATSON • Founder of behaviorism • Observable behaviors • Emphasis on external behavior of people and their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people • The analysis of behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to get insight in the human actions • No mental processes

30. LEV VYGOTSKY’S THEORY OF SOCIOCULTURAL INFLUENCES • Psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that children’s sociocultural environment plays an important role in how they develop cognitively. In Vygotsky’s view, the acquisition of language is a crucial part of cognitive development. After children acquire language, they don’t just go through a set series of stages. Rather, their cognitive development depends on interactions with adults, cultural norms, and their environmental circumstances.

31. Jean piaget’s stage theory • The scientist best known for research on cognitive development is Jean Piaget, who proposed that children’s thinking goes through a set series of four major stages. Piaget believed that children’s cognitive skills unfold naturally as they mature and explore their environment.

32. LANGUAGE • Language is the dress of thought. (Dr. Samuel Johnson) • Can be defined as “the communication of information by means of symbols arranged according to rules of grammar”. • Language make it possible for one person to communicate knowledge to another and for one generation to communicate to another. It creates a vehicle for recording experiences. • It allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of other people, to learn more than we could learn from direct experience. • Language also provides many units of thinking.

33. THINKING PROCESS • The Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out that people differ from lower organism in their capacity for rational thinking. • Thinking enables us to create computers, and scan the interior of the body without surgery.

34. THINKING PROCESS • WHAT IS THINGKING? • THINKING MEANS ATTENDING TO INFORMATION, REPRESENTING IT MENTALLY, REASONING ABOUT IT, AND MAKING JUDGEMENTS AND DECISIONS ABOUT IT. • It refers to conscious, planned attempts to make sense of the world and change it. • Mental processes such as dreaming and daydreaming may be unplanned and seem to proceed more or less on their own. • Humans tend to use language not only in communicating but also in thinking. • Intelligence provides the foundation for our capacity to think and solve problems.

35. INDIVIDUAL COGNITION • What are the relationships between language and thinking? • The relationships between language and thinking are complex and not always obvious. • For example can you think without using language?? The answer seems to be yes, but of course, you would not be able to use thoughts that entail symbols that are arranged according to rules of grammar.

36. INDIVIDUAL COGNITION • Mental activity involved in understanding, processing, and communicating information. • Jean Piaget believed that language reflects knowledge of the world but that much knowledge can be acquired without language. For example, it is possible to understand the concepts of roundness or redness even we do not know or use the words round or red