17 - Words and Concepts

Question 1

What are concepts and what do they enable us to do? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 1

Fundamental building blocks of thought that enable us to generalise from past experiences new observations

Question 2

What a superordinate? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 2

Represents a category of classification

Question 3

What is an adhoc category? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 3

Signifies a solution for an ambiguous task

Question 4

What does the classical view of concepts suggest? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 4

There are necessary conditions needed with the assumption that concepts have defining features

Question 5

What is the all or nothing approach to concepts? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 5

They either fit in to a defining category or they do not

Question 6

What are the issues with the classical view and the all or nothing view of concepts? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 6

• Concepts don’t have defining features

- Concepts are not arbitrary (random)

Question 7

What is the typicality effect? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 7

People respond faster to typical exemplars than to rare exemplars

Question 8

What did Rosch and Mervis (1975) state in relation to concepts? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 8

• There are no defining features, only characteristics of them
• Poorer examples show fewer of these characteristics

Question 9

What is pathology? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 9

Speech and language impairment don’t necessarily destroy thought and reason

Question 10

What is the difference between the signifier and the signified? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 10

• Signifier = symbol/image

- Signified = meaning is conveyed

Question 11

What is the relationship between the signifier and the signified? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 11

Connections between them are fundamentally arbitrary

Question 12

What is embodied cognition? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 12

The experience of living, sensing and perceiving the world informs our concept of it

Question 13

What did Pulvermüller et al (2005) find when transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to motor regions of the brain, around the arm and the leg? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 13

• Faster lexical decisions for leg related words, with leg region stimulation
• Faster lexical decisions for arm related words, with arm region stimulation
• Language is not modular, it is an integrated part of experience

Question 14

What three components make the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 14

• Linguistic relativity
• Linguistic determinism
• Untranslatable words

Question 15

In terms of the Spair-Whorf hypothesis, what is meant by linguistic relativity? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 15

Feature of language that influence patterns of thought

Question 16

In terms of the Spair-Whorf hypothesis, what is meant by linguistic determinism? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 16

Features of language determine patterns of thought

Question 17

In terms of the Spair-Whorf hypothesis, what is meant by untranslatable words? (Concepts Cognitive)

Answer 17

A language that doesn’t have a word for a particular idea/concept