COGNI

• Imagery


  Mental pictures that readers experience when reading literature
• Imagery


  • Appeals directly to one or more of the five senses
  • An author achieves imagery through the use of words
• Visual Mental Imagery


  Our ability to reactivate and manipulate visual representations in the absence of the corresponding visual stimuli, giving rise to the experience of 'seeing with the mind's eye'
• Types of imagery


  • Visual: what you see
  • Auditory: what you hear
  • Kinesthetic: what you feel
  • Olfactory: what you smell
  • Gustatory: what you taste
• Visual imagery


  • The golden rays of the setting sun reflected upon the clear waters of the lake
• Auditory imagery


  • The trees rustled as the wind whistled gently through the leaves
• Kinesthetic imagery


  • My toes went numb, and a shiver ran through my body as I stepped into the cold river
• Olfactory imagery


  • The stench of rotting garbage overpowered my nostrils when I opened the bin
• Gustatory imagery


  • Her mouth watered, and her tongue burned as she bit into the sour, peppery mango chow
• Language


  The communication of information through symbols arranged according to systematic rules
• Language


  • A cognitive ability central to communication
  • Closely linked to the way in which we think about and understand the world
  • Without language, our ability to transmit information, acquire knowledge, and cooperate with others would become difficult
• Hellen Keller: 'I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free!... Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.... I learned a great many new words that day... words that were to make the world blossom for me.'
• Language


  • The use of an organized means of combining words in order to communicate with those around us
  • It also makes it possible to think about things and processes we currently cannot see, hear, feel, touch, or smell
• Not all communication – exchange of thoughts and feelings – is through language
• Communication


  • Encompasses other aspects – nonverbal communication, such as gestures or facial expressions, can be used to embellish or to indicate
  • Glances may serve many purposes
  • Communication can also include touches, such as handshakes, hits, and hugs
• Psycholinguistics


  The psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind. It considers both production and comprehension of language.
• Areas of study that have contributed to psycholinguistics


  • Linguistics: the study of language structure and change
  • Neurolinguistics: the study of the relationships among the brain, cognition, and language
  • Sociolinguistics: the study of the relationship between social behavior and language
  • Computational linguistics: the study of language that focuses on the system or concept that machines can be computed to understand, learn, or output languages
• Grammar


  The system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed
• Components of grammar


  • Phonology
  • Syntax
  • Semantics
• Phonology


  The study of phonemes, the smallest basic units of speech that affect meaning, and of the way we use those sounds to form words and produce meaning
• Phoneme


  The smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the element p in "tap," which separates that word from "tab," "tag," and "tan"
• Phonetics


  Deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken
• Phonology


  About patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc.
• Syntax


  The ways in which words and phrases can be combined to form sentences
• Syntax


  • "TV down the turn" is not a meaningful sequence, whereas "Turn down the TV" is
  • The changes in meaning caused by the different word orders in the following: "John kidnapped the boy," "John, the kidnapped boy," and "The boy kidnapped John"
• Semantics


  The rules governing the meaning of words and sentences. Semantic rules allow us to use words to convey the subtle changes in meaning
• Semantics


  • "The truck hit Laura" versus "Laura was hit by a truck"
• Language development


  1. Babbling (3 months - 1 year)

  2. Specialization in the language heard (6-8 months)

  3. Word formation begins (after 1 year)

  4. Two-word combinations (after 1 year)

  5. Language rules relatively complete by age 5
• Critical period for language development


  A period early in life in which a child is particularly sensitive to language cues and most easily acquires language

  
• Learning-theory approach to language acquisition

  The theory that language acquisition follows the principles of reinforcement and conditioning
• Nativist approach to language acquisition

  The theory that a genetically determined, innate mechanism directs language development
• Nativist approach


  • All the world's languages share a common underlying structure called universal grammar
  • The human brain has a neural system, the language-acquisition device that lets us understand the structure language provides and gives us strategies and techniques for learning the unique characteristics of our native language
• Evidence collected by neuroscientists suggests that the ability to use language is tied to specific neurological developments
• The apparent ability of certain animals, such as chimpanzees, to learn the fundamentals of human language contradicts the innate linguistic capability view
• Interactionist approach to language development

  Language development is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language
• Linguistic-relativity hypothesis


  The notion that language shapes and may determine the way people in a particular culture perceive and understand the world
• Most recent research refutes the linguistic-relativity hypothesis and suggests that thinking produces language
• Although research does not support the linguistic-relativity hypothesis that language causes thought, it is clear that language influences how we think
• Most evidence suggests that although language does not determine thought, it does affect the way people store information in memory and how well they can retrieve it
• The degree to which language is a uniquely human skill remains an open question