FEM 4102

1. FEM 4102 COGNITION AND LANGUAGE

2. What is Cognitive Psychology? • What is Psychology? • What is Cognitive?

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

4. 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.

5. 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

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

7. What is Cognition?

8. INTRODUCTION • Cognitive science • The Scientific study of: • Thought • Language • The brain

9. 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

10. What is psycholinguistics?

11. 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

12. 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).

13. 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).

14. Linguistic-related areas: • Syntaxis the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined together to form sentences. • Semanticsdeals 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.

15. History Of Psycholinguistics

16. 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

17. First systematic studies- relationship between brain and language Phrenology/ craniology (Gall,ca,1800); Bumps on the skull  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

18. Empiricism of the 18th/19th century Paul Broca :anatomical inspection of the brain Damage can result in impaired language production. Carl Wernicke Damage can result in problems processing auditory language

19. History Of Cognitive Psychology

20. Influential Figures In The History Of Cognitive Psychology • Wilhem Wundt (1832-1920) • Edward Titchner (1867 – 1927) • http://video.about.com/psychology/Basics-of-Structuralism-and-Functionalism.htm • Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) • William James (1842-1910) • John Watson (1842-1910) • Noam Chomsky • Jean Piaget • Lev Vygotsky

21. 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 (self-examination of conscious experience) by objective observation of one’s consciousness. • Investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including feelings, emotions, volitions and ideas, mainly explored through

22. History Of Cognitive Psyhology • 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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