Language, Problem Solving, and Creativity: A Comprehensive Study Guide

Chapter 10: What is Language / Psycholinguistics

Definition of Language and Psycholinguistics
- Language is a system for communicating with others.
- Psycholinguistics studies how people comprehend, produce, develop, and represent language.
- It encompasses spoken and written forms, involving biological, cognitive, and social dimensions.
Key Components of Language
- Phonology: The sound system of a language, including phonemes and how sound units interact.
- Morphology: How words are constructed from smaller meaningful units called morphemes.
- Syntax: The rules governing how words combine to form phrases and sentences.
- Semantics: The meaning conveyed by words, phrases, and sentences.
- Pragmatics: How context influences meaning and how speakers use language in real communication.
Language Comprehension
- Parsing: The process of breaking down heard or read sentences into their grammatical structure (e.g., identifying subject/verb).
- Ambiguity: Sentences can be lexically or structurally ambiguous; context is crucial for resolution.
- Extralinguistic context (e.g., social or physical cues) aids comprehension. Eye-tracking studies show that misparsing leads to eye backtracking.
Language Production
- Involves processes from thinking of what to say, selecting appropriate words, arranging them syntactically, to articulation.
- Errors in speech (e.g., slips of the tongue, tip-of-tongue phenomena) provide insights into the production process.
Biological / Brain Bases of Language
- Brain regions: Specific areas like Broca's area (associated with speech production and syntax) and Wernicke's area (associated with language comprehension) are critical.
- Aphasia: Language disorders resulting from damage to these brain areas illustrate the distinct roles of different regions in language production versus comprehension.
Language Development and Acquisition
- Children learn phonetics, grammar, and meaning, often during critical periods influenced by exposure.
- Theoretical perspectives include:
  - Nativist: Emphasizes innate language capacity.
  - Environmental: Focuses on learning from the environment.
  - Interactionist: Combines both innate predispositions and environmental input.
Representation of Language in the Mind
- Mental lexicon: How words and their meanings are stored.
- Questions arise about the abstractness of rules, storage of irregular forms, and generalization.
- The debate between universals (features common to all languages) and language-specific features.
Other Issues / Interesting Effects in Language
- Coarticulation: In speech perception, sounds influence each other.
- Speech segmentation: How listeners identify word boundaries even without clear acoustic cues.
- Evidence from psycholinguistic methods: Reaction times, priming, eye movement, and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) provide insights into language processing.

Chapter 13: Definition and Nature of Problem Solving

Definition and Nature of Problem Solving
- Problem solving is the process of determining the steps required to move from a current state to a desired goal state.
- Problem space: Encompasses all possible states reachable in solving a problem. Many problems have vast or complex problem spaces, making exhaustive exploration impractical.
General Problem Solving Strategies / Heuristics
- Trial and error: Trying various solutions until one works, suitable for simple problems.
- Hill-climbing strategy: Choosing the option that appears to move one closer to the goal at each step. A limitation is that it may sometimes require moving temporarily away from the goal to achieve it.
- Means-ends analysis: Comparing the current state to the goal state, identifying operations (

PSYC206 Topic 9

PSYC206 Topic 9