Saturday, July 16, 2016

We Made It: End of Week One

The creepy basement, where music and laundry
occur. Also the only picture I took today.
It is the end of week one and I am honestly blown away. There has been so much to take in and I hope that, among all of the great things I have planned for this weekend, I also get some time to take it all in. Today was honestly not all that exciting, so I am struggling to think of things to write about.

I could talk for hours about the amazing content that we covered in class today about language development, because that was absolutely incredible. We looked at how humans learn, develop, and interpret language, which lead us into studies of animals who learned language and humans who did not. I enjoyed this section almost as much as social cognition because language is another thing that is hugely important to my everyday experience. 

My favorite activity was taking a test designed by psychologists and linguists to study how people figure out word patterns in speech. This fake language was comprised of seemingly arbitrary syllables arranged next to each other, but with carefully designed statistical probabilities and rules unknown to the listener. After listening to the seemingly random tape for several minutes, we were asked to determine if specific groups were possible words in the language. Somehow, this was actually an achievable task! It was a little mind blowing and let me know how far people have come in understanding speech.
The ILCers reunited. Thanks for the picture, Ernestina!
We got the evening off because the groups for our final project had to meet with our professor individually. I tried my best to be productive (do laundry, tidy up my dorm, get started on the homework) and even ended  up playing the piano for a while! After that ended up going to the lounge to play cards and watch Mean Girls. What a night, One of the highlights of the day was seeing Ms. Scott, even if it was only briefly, for the first time after being dropped off. Here's to an exciting weekend in Chicago!  

2 comments:

  1. Language. We are so hard wired for language. I am excited by what you are learning. Have a lovely weekend. Wonder what you will see and experience. When Hejhej and I passed through the Windy City in 1978 (can you believe it) we were dazzled by the myriad museums, and that huge huge lake. The first salad bar we ever saw was in Chicago: lettuce, hard boiled eggs and broccoli. Lol. Love and blessings, hugs and kisses!

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    1. William, you are absolutely correct about the nature of language. I too am excited about what our wonderful Alice is learning.

      Best as always,
      Mr. Leonard

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