What cognitive processes are involved in language comprehension?

Language comprehension involves cognitive processes such as perception, attention, memory, and reasoning.

Perception is the first cognitive process involved in language comprehension. It is the process of recognising and interpreting sensory stimuli, in this case, spoken or written words. This involves the auditory or visual system that helps us to perceive the sounds or symbols of a language. For instance, when someone speaks to us, our auditory system perceives the sounds, and our brain interprets these sounds as words and sentences.

Attention is another crucial cognitive process in language comprehension. It refers to the ability to focus on specific information while ignoring other stimuli. When we listen to a conversation or read a text, we need to pay attention to understand the message. This involves selective attention, where we focus on relevant information and ignore irrelevant distractions. For example, in a noisy environment, we can still understand what someone is saying by focusing our attention on their words and ignoring the background noise.

Memory plays a significant role in language comprehension. It involves the storage and retrieval of information. Our working memory allows us to hold and manipulate information in our mind over short periods, which is essential for understanding sentences and discourses. For example, when we read a sentence, we need to remember the beginning of the sentence to understand the end. Moreover, our long-term memory stores our knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, which we retrieve when we listen to or read a language.

Reasoning is the cognitive process that allows us to make sense of the language. It involves interpreting the meaning of words and sentences based on our knowledge and logic. For instance, we use reasoning to infer the meaning of a sentence when the words are ambiguous or when the sentence is grammatically complex. We also use reasoning to understand metaphors, idioms, and other figurative language.

In conclusion, language comprehension is a complex cognitive process that involves perception, attention, memory, and reasoning. These cognitive processes work together to help us understand spoken and written language.