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Areas/Topics within Psychology that I’m most

interested in

The Psychology and reasoning behind liars

Language acquisition and development

Psychology of dreams/unconscious mind

Why do people lie?

White lies: To avoid embarrassment, or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings

To what extent is Psychology a Science?

-The analysis of research methods: Lab experiment, field experiment, correlational, case study, Interviews, questionnaires, observation, pilot study, content analysis

Neurology of lying: There is a distinct difference in the brains activity when someone’s tells a lie or a truth

Everyone tells lies once in a while although the number and severity of the lies varies from one person to another

-Why do we dream? And what causes them to happen?

-It was a dream that revealed to a scientist the molecular structure of carbon atoms in the benzene ring

“Dreams are metaphorical and not literal, they often mean the opposite of what they seem to mean.”

-Clinical dream interpretation: 1. Dream story must be put into language 2. Describe thoroughly and understand psychological associations to various dream images 3. Discover the links between all associations

Dream variation: Occurring dreams, nightmares, sleep paralysis

Research: 1. Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis 2. Dreams believed to have certain fixed meanings 3. The unconscious importance of dreams? Possible hints on how to improve our lives or to keep us from self-destruction 4. Psychotherapy – text of perception of a dream

Sociopaths: Someone who lies incessantly to get their way and so with little concern for others. They are often goal orientated.

Pathological/compulsive liars: Feel a compulsion to tell lies and may lie for no apparent reason or benefit. They lie out of habit – also tend to have/quality for a diagnosis of a mental health disorder

How do non-speaking infants become vocal toddlers?

How can we distinct one language from another?

What is language?

Speech, writing, reading

And can come in the form of receptive or expressive

Children learn through 4 stages: 1. Phonology – The sound system of a language 2. Semantics – The meaning conveyed by words and sentences 3. Syntax – The set of grammatical rules indicating how words may be combined to make sentences 4. Pragmatics – Principles determining modification of language to fit the context

Bilingualism

Is this a natural event or are we taught from those around us?

Chomsky – Idea of universal grammar (innate, biological grammatical categories)

Skinner- Accounted for language development by means of environmental influence

INITIAL IDEAS

Sample of research

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(First mind map covering some aspects of the Psychology of language acquisition and development. This has been produced into a digital version since, including more points of discussion and interest).

(Some of my note taking after watching a YouTube lecture on speech anatomy – understand the biological approach to how we speak).

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(An extract taken from ‘Foundations of Psychology by Nicky Hayes’ of a passage by Bransford and Johnson used to form an experiment to test how complex the relationship between thinking and language is through our ability to apply already existing knowledge that we have of the world in order to make sense of information. Thus supporting the environmental approach).

(Bernstein defined a ‘code’ as a set of principles of semantic organisation. He identified two main codes that are shown above).

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(A highlighted photocopy of books: Foundations of Psychology by Nicky Hayes, and Psychology an International Perspective by Michael Eysenck).

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Language Acquisition and Development: Possible areas to cover/subtitles

Understanding language acquisition through Linguistics – Direct investigations of the nature of language.

1. Psycholinguistics (relationship between language and mind; syntax/semantics)

2. Sociolinguistics (study of language in relation to society - understanding the way in which people use language and the manner in which they use it)

3. Ethnolinguistics (study of language in relation to culture – how people interpret the world)

Critical period (Lenneberg): Children produce language unproblematically during roughly, up to late childhood/early puberty. (Nature) Evidence: Children with downs syndrome.

Discourse analysis – looking at conversations that take place and investigating how patterns, speech styles and vocabulary can inform us about what is happening. (Evaluation – is this an effective way of analysing the language acquisition and development in children?)

Language as dependent on thinking – (Piaget) that knowledge is acquired through interaction with the environment. (Nurture)

Vygotsky – Language is an affirmative activity. Infants develop language because they hear it from other people. (Nurture)

Inner speech (dealing with sense) – (Vygotsky) can be telegraphic and abbreviated, often involving personally coded words. (Nurture)

Verbal deprivation hypothesis (Bernstein) – Sociolinguistic codes: 1. Elaborated codes- allows people to access universalistic forms of meaning 2. Restricted codes- much more context-dependent, and so only allowed for particularistic meanings. (Nature)

Intro: Outline the importance of language and other forms of communication.

Evidence and support is provided from many different fields of expertise. Research based on how children acquire language. Key properties of language.

Phonemes - Learning through the process of operant conditioning. (Skinner) (Nurture)

Findings from primary research: Number and length of utterances develop through clear social interaction: 2-word utterances, intonation patterns, higher receptive than expressive language, child-directed speech, imitation. Is the critical period of language acquisition evident?

Vocal tract anatomy – Tecumseh Fitch (Nature) auditory perception is genetically pre-programmed and indicates an innate preparedness to learn language. Contemporary Research - Linguistic

universals are evident across cultures regardless of the diverse environment a child is raised in suggesting an innate ability to acquire language. (Nature)

(LAD) language acquisition device – (Chomsky) recognition of the structure-dependence of language (Nature)

Conclusion: Interactionist Approach – The way a baby learns language is both biological and social. (Vygotsky) Socio-cultural model in two stages. 1. Observer interaction 2. Development of communication through imitation

Child-directed speech – Slow rate of speaking, restricted vocabulary, extra stress on key words. Length/complexity of mother’s language spoken to her child increases as child use of language develops. (Nurture)

Structural approach – (Chomsky) Syntactical categories noun phrase (‘NP’) and verb phrase (‘VP’) Phrase structure rules used to generate or construct sentences. (Nature)

Psycholinguistics – Role of the child: insightful, progressive discovery of grammatical structure. Role of the parent: The providing of a continuous language model. (Nature)

Primary Research Method: Naturalistic data gathered through spontaneous speech observations – Strengths: age-independent, no special task-demands (high ecological validity) analyse for different phenomena, frequency info available, possible input-analysis. Weaknesses: lack of data for low frequency phenomena, low reliability, underestimation of productivity.

Stages of language acquisition: 1. Holophrastic stage: one-word utterances (12-18 months) 2. Two-word stage: two-word utterances to form sentences (18-24 months) 3. Telegraphic stage (2-3 years) Multi-word utterances usually grammatically correct.

Operant conditioning – learning through positive reinforcement of grammatically correct language. (Nurture)

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Arguments against nature:

(Pinker) argued that exposer to language plays a more important role than simply “triggering” parameter settings.

Consider the linguistic universals of nouns and verbs, with nouns referring to objects and verbs to actions. Perhaps objects and actions are distinguished in all languages simply because the distinction is such an obvious feature of the environment.

Children’s language development follows a similar pattern across cultures.

Deaf children who have not been exposed to a language may make up their own language. These new languages resemble each other in sentence structure, even when they are created in different cultures.