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Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Language Development01:22

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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs.
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Purposive Learning01:22

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E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
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Language is a unique communication system that uses words and systematic rules to organize and transmit information. Unlike other forms of communication, which may involve postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations, language relies on symbols and grammar. This makes human communication distinct from that of other species, who also communicate but do not use language in the same way humans do.
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Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
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Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning
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How does linguistic context influence word learning?

Raquel G Alhama1, Caroline F Rowland2,3, Evan Kidd2,4,5

  • 1Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

Journal of Child Language
|June 20, 2023
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Children learn words by analyzing language patterns. Computational models show that adjusting for event frequency and local context aids vocabulary acquisition, with shared contexts making words harder to learn.

Keywords:
Vector Space ModelsWord learningsemantic networks

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Children utilize distributional information for language acquisition.
  • The precise mechanisms underlying early vocabulary development remain unclear.
  • Investigating pre-requisites for distributional learning models is crucial.

Approach:

  • Reviewed existing literature on language acquisition and distributional learning.
  • Conducted computational simulations using Vector Space Models (VSMs).
  • Evaluated VSMs against child vocabulary acquisition data, focusing on nouns and verbs.

Key Points:

  • Models adjusting for event frequency better match human vocabulary acquisition data.
  • The impact of context words on learning is predominantly local, particularly for nouns.
  • Words with higher contextual overlap are more challenging for children to learn.

Conclusions:

  • Distributional learning models, particularly those incorporating event frequency, offer insights into first word acquisition.
  • Local context plays a significant role in how children learn word meanings.
  • Understanding contextual overlap is key to explaining learning difficulties.