4 PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE - TEXTBOOK Flashcards
1
Q
What is language?
A
A system for communicating with others using signals that convey meaning and are combined according to grammatical rules
2
Q
What three processes does the act of speech involve?
A
Conceptualization, formulation, articulation
3
Q
In what three ways is human language different from monkeys?
A
Complex, words referring intangible things, language influences organization of knowledge in the brain
4
Q
What is lexicalization?
A
The process whereby the thoughts underlying the words are turned into sounds
5
Q
What is the smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than random noise?
A
Phoneme
6
Q
What are examples of phonemes?
A
Ba’, ‘pa’
7
Q
How many phonemes are there in English?
A
About 40
8
Q
What makes something a phoneme?
A
Use as speech signal - not physical properties
9
Q
What is the term for the set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech?
A
Phonological rules
10
Q
What is an example of a phonological rule in English?
A
-ed’ to signify past tense
11
Q
What are phonemes combined to create?
A
Morphemes
12
Q
What are morphemes?
A
The smallest meaningful units of language
13
Q
What is an example of a morpheme?
A
Cat+s, cat signifies animal and s signifies plural
14
Q
What is grammar?
A
A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
15
Q
What are the two categories of grammatical rules?
A
Rules of morphology and rules of syntax
16
Q
What are morphological rules?
A
A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to create words
17
Q
What are syntactical rules?
A
Rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences
18
Q
What does the success of a conversation depend on?
A
Alignment of speaker and listener
19
Q
What is alignment (in terms of conversation)?
A
The process whereby speakers share a reciprocal arrangement to exchange information
20
Q
What four automatic mechanisms result in alignment of speakers?
A
Priming, inference, routine expressions, speech monitoring and repair
21
Q
What is inference?
A
When speakers generate deeper conceptual understanding based on what has been said
22
Q
What are routine expressions?
A
Unambiguous conventions that facilitate language
23
Q
What is speech monitoring and repair?
A
When speakers interact to understand what others are saying by seeking clarification
24
Q
Describe the rate of language acquisition in children.
A
Rapid
25
What develops faster, passive or active understanding of language?
Passive
26
What is fast mapping?
Children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure
27
At what age can infants distinguish all contrasting sounds in human language?
Birth to 4 months
28
At what age do infants begin to babble speech sounds?
4-6 months
29
What is the average size of vocabulary when starting school?
10,000 words
30
What is the average size of vocabulary when starting secondary school?
40,000 words
31
What is the average size of vocabulary when at university?
200,000 words
32
What is telegraphic speech?
Speech that is devoid of function morphemes and consists mostly of content words
33
What do young children have a tendency to do when learning grammatical rules?
Overgeneralize (e.g. you eated)
34
How do children acquire language according to a behaviourist theory?
Acquired through simple principles of operant conditioning - reinforcement, shaping and extinction
35
What are three limits of the behaviourist theory?
Parents don't spend much time teaching grammar, children generate more grammatical sentences than they hear, overgeneralization errors are not duplications of heard language
36
What is the nativist view of language development?
Language is an innate, biological capacity
37
What is a language acquisition device (LAD)?
A collection of processes that facilitate language learning
38
What is genetic dysphasia?
A syndrome characterised by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence
39
What is the effect of puberty on language learning?
Language acquisition becomes difficult after puberty
40
What is the most common criticism of the nativist view of language development?
Doesn't explain how language actually develops
41
What is the interactionist explanation of language development?
Language development depends on biological and cognitive mechanisms and meaningful social interactions
42
What do interactionists believe about parental influence on language acquisition?
Parents tailor verbal interactions with children in ways that simplify language acquisition
43
How do deaf children that haven't been taught sign language communicate?
They develop their own system of hand signals
44
Which area of the brain is involved in language production?
Broca's area
45
Which area of the brain is involved in language comprehension?
Wernicke's area
46
What is asphasia?
Difficulty in producing or comprehending language
47
What causes asphasia?
Damage to Broca's or Wernicke's area
48
What happens if the brain does not receive adequate language input?
Specialization of Broca's/Wernicke's can become permanently disrupted, impairing language
49
Can other species learn human sign language?
Yes - apes and chimps
50
Compare ape vocabulary with a child's vocabulary.
Apes can learn 100s of words whereas 4 year-olds know 10,000
51
What type of words are apes able to master?
Names of concrete objects and actions, their conceptual repertoire is smaller
52
What is the grammatical ability of apes like?
Apes can only understand simple grammar
53
Can apes produce novel constructions of language?
Yes
54
How is reading and writing different to speaking and listening?
Reading and writing is not spontaneously acquired - requires learning through education
55
What is the lexicon?
Our mental dictionary
56
What is a grapheme?
Unit of written language that corresponds to a phoneme
57
What is the dual-route model of reading?
There are two routes for turning words into sounds - direct lexical route and indirect sublexical route
58
What is the direct lexical route?
Where the grapheme maps directly onto the phoneme
59
What is the indirect sublexical route?
Where the grapheme maps directly onto the pronunciation - does not involve lexicon
60
What is dyslexia?
A disorder involving difficulty with reading and writing
61
What is surface dyslexia?
Where people are unable to read irregular words
62
Which route is impaired in surface dyslexia?
Direct lexical route
63
What is phonological dyslexia?
Where people are unable to read pronounceable non-words
64
Which route is impaired in phonological dyslexia?
Indirect sublexical route
65
What is semantics?
Meaning of a word
66
What is semantic priming?
When the meaning of a word influences the processing of other words that are conceptually related
67
What is deep dyslexia?
Where readers are unable to retrieve the meaning of words
68
What is the linguistic determinism hypothesis?
Language shapes the nature of thought
69
What is the most commonly cited example supporting linguistic determinism?
The Inuit in Canada - different words for snow means the Inuit perceive snow differently
70
What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?
Language may influence the way we think and perceive
71
What three concepts have been studied to investigate the influence of language on thought?
Colour processing, time judgements and numerical cognition
72
What is a concept?
A mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events or other stimuli
73
What are concepts fundamental to?
Our ability to think and make sense of the world
74
What is category-specific deficit?
A neurological syndrome characterised by the inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category while the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed
75
What causes category-specific deficits?
Brain trauma in left hemisphere shortly after birth
76
What leads to a difficulty identifying humans?
Damage to front of left temporal lobe
77
What leads to a difficulty identifying animals?
Damage to lower left temporal lobe
78
What leads to a difficulty identifying tools?
Damage where temporal and occipital lobes meet
79
How did early psychological rules describe concepts?
Rules that specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a particular category
80
What is a necessary condition?
Something that must be true of an object in order for it to belong to a category
81
What is a sufficient condition?
If a specific something is true of an object, it proves it belongs to a certain category
82
What is the family resemblance theory of categories?
Members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member
83
What is the prototype theory of categories?
Our psychological categorization is organized around the properties of the most typical member - the best example
84
How do people make category judgements based on the prototype theory?
By comparing new instances to the category's prototype
85
What is the exemplar theory of categories?
Category judgements are made by comparing a new instance with stored memories of other instances of the category
86
Which hemisphere is primarily involved in forming prototypes?
Left
87
Which hemisphere is primarily involved in recognizing exemplars?
Right
88
What is the base rate?
The actual likelihood of something happening
89
What are humans good at estimating?
Frequencies
90
What are humans bad at estimating?
Probabilities
91
What is rational choice theory?
We make decisions by determining the likelihood of something occurring and then multiplying the likelihood by the perceived value of the outcome
92
What are three mindbugs that affect our estimation of probability and frequency?
Availability bias, representativeness heuristic, conjunction fallacy
93
What is availability bias?
Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
94
What are heuristics?
Fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached
95
What are heuristics nicknamed?
Mental shortcuts, 'rules of thumb'
96
What is an algorithm?
A well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem
97
What is conjunction fallacy?
People think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event whereas probability of being true actually decreases with every event that is added on
98
What is the representative heuristic?
A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event to a prototype
99
What are framing effects?
People give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased - framed
100
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
Framing effect - decision about current situation based on what has been previously invested
101
What is the prospect theory of decision making?
People choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks evaluating potential gains
102
What are the two stages of decision making according to prospect theory?
Simplify information, personal choice about what offers best value
103
What is the certainty effect?
People give more weight to certain outcomes when making decisions
104
What is the frequency format hypothesis?
Our minds have evolved to notice how frequently things occur rather than probability
105
What are the two systems involved in thinking 'fast and slow'?
System 1 and System 2
106
What is thinking system 1?
System that operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control
107
What is thinking system 2?
System that allocates attention to more taxing mental activities and is often associated with a subjective experience of making choices
108
How does prefrontal lobe damage affect decision making?
Can create inability to judge risk or decide importance of tasks
109
What are the two major types of problem that complicate our lives?
Ill-defined and well-defined problems
110
What is an ill-defined problem?
One that doesn't have a clear goal or solution
111
What is a well-defined problem?
One with clearly specified goals and solution paths
112
What is means-ends analysis?
A process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the difference between the current situation and the desired goal
113
How can the differences between the current and desired state be reduced?
Direct means, generating a subgoal, finding a similar problem that has a known solution
114
What is analogical problem solving?
Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem
115
What else is sometimes required over and above analogical problem solving to solve difficult problems?
Creativity and insight
116
How do flashes of insight occur?
Likely that insight is unconscious incremental process of activating information in memory until an awareness threshold has been reached and we experience a sudden flash of insight
117
Why is insight rare?
Problem solving suffers from framing effects
118
What is functional fixedness?
The tendency perceive the functions of objects as fixed and interferes with our ability to think of novel uses for objects
119
What is reasoning?
A mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions
120
What are the two types of reasoning?
Practical and theoretical reasoning
121
What is practical reasoning?
Working out what to do, or reasoning directed towards action
122
What is an example of practical reasoning?
Means-ends analysis
123
What is theoretical reasoning?
Reasoning directed towards arriving at a belief, using a series of inferences to arrive at belief
124
Which type of reasoning are we more adept in?
Practical reasoning
125
What is the belief bias?
The tendency for people's acceptance of conclusions to be based on how believable the conclusions are instead of logical validity
126
What is syllogistic reasoning?
Determining if a conclusion follows from two statements assumed to be true
127
What is the influence of prior beliefs on reasoning?
Prior beliefs can impair our ability to logically reason about arguments
