4 PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE - TEXTBOOK Flashcards
What is language?
A system for communicating with others using signals that convey meaning and are combined according to grammatical rules
What three processes does the act of speech involve?
Conceptualization, formulation, articulation
In what three ways is human language different from monkeys?
Complex, words referring intangible things, language influences organization of knowledge in the brain
What is lexicalization?
The process whereby the thoughts underlying the words are turned into sounds
What is the smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than random noise?
Phoneme
What are examples of phonemes?
Ba’, ‘pa’
How many phonemes are there in English?
About 40
What makes something a phoneme?
Use as speech signal - not physical properties
What is the term for the set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech?
Phonological rules
What is an example of a phonological rule in English?
-ed’ to signify past tense
What are phonemes combined to create?
Morphemes
What are morphemes?
The smallest meaningful units of language
What is an example of a morpheme?
Cat+s, cat signifies animal and s signifies plural
What is grammar?
A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
What are the two categories of grammatical rules?
Rules of morphology and rules of syntax
What are morphological rules?
A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to create words
What are syntactical rules?
Rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences
What does the success of a conversation depend on?
Alignment of speaker and listener
What is alignment (in terms of conversation)?
The process whereby speakers share a reciprocal arrangement to exchange information
What four automatic mechanisms result in alignment of speakers?
Priming, inference, routine expressions, speech monitoring and repair
What is inference?
When speakers generate deeper conceptual understanding based on what has been said
What are routine expressions?
Unambiguous conventions that facilitate language
What is speech monitoring and repair?
When speakers interact to understand what others are saying by seeking clarification
Describe the rate of language acquisition in children.
Rapid
What develops faster, passive or active understanding of language?
Passive
What is fast mapping?
Children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure
At what age can infants distinguish all contrasting sounds in human language?
Birth to 4 months
At what age do infants begin to babble speech sounds?
4-6 months
What is the average size of vocabulary when starting school?
10,000 words
What is the average size of vocabulary when starting secondary school?
40,000 words
What is the average size of vocabulary when at university?
200,000 words
What is telegraphic speech?
Speech that is devoid of function morphemes and consists mostly of content words
What do young children have a tendency to do when learning grammatical rules?
Overgeneralize (e.g. you eated)
How do children acquire language according to a behaviourist theory?
Acquired through simple principles of operant conditioning - reinforcement, shaping and extinction
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
What is the nativist view of language development?
Language is an innate, biological capacity
What is a language acquisition device (LAD)?
A collection of processes that facilitate language learning
What is genetic dysphasia?
A syndrome characterised by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence
What is the effect of puberty on language learning?
Language acquisition becomes difficult after puberty
What is the most common criticism of the nativist view of language development?
Doesn’t explain how language actually develops
What is the interactionist explanation of language development?
Language development depends on biological and cognitive mechanisms and meaningful social interactions
What do interactionists believe about parental influence on language acquisition?
Parents tailor verbal interactions with children in ways that simplify language acquisition
How do deaf children that haven’t been taught sign language communicate?
They develop their own system of hand signals
Which area of the brain is involved in language production?
Broca’s area
Which area of the brain is involved in language comprehension?
Wernicke’s area
What is asphasia?
Difficulty in producing or comprehending language
What causes asphasia?
Damage to Broca’s or Wernicke’s area
What happens if the brain does not receive adequate language input?
Specialization of Broca’s/Wernicke’s can become permanently disrupted, impairing language
Can other species learn human sign language?
Yes - apes and chimps
Compare ape vocabulary with a child’s vocabulary.
Apes can learn 100s of words whereas 4 year-olds know 10,000
What type of words are apes able to master?
Names of concrete objects and actions, their conceptual repertoire is smaller
What is the grammatical ability of apes like?
Apes can only understand simple grammar
Can apes produce novel constructions of language?
Yes
How is reading and writing different to speaking and listening?
Reading and writing is not spontaneously acquired - requires learning through education
What is the lexicon?
Our mental dictionary
What is a grapheme?
Unit of written language that corresponds to a phoneme
What is the dual-route model of reading?
There are two routes for turning words into sounds - direct lexical route and indirect sublexical route
What is the direct lexical route?
Where the grapheme maps directly onto the phoneme
What is the indirect sublexical route?
Where the grapheme maps directly onto the pronunciation - does not involve lexicon
What is dyslexia?
A disorder involving difficulty with reading and writing
What is surface dyslexia?
Where people are unable to read irregular words
Which route is impaired in surface dyslexia?
Direct lexical route
What is phonological dyslexia?
Where people are unable to read pronounceable non-words
Which route is impaired in phonological dyslexia?
Indirect sublexical route
What is semantics?
Meaning of a word
What is semantic priming?
When the meaning of a word influences the processing of other words that are conceptually related
What is deep dyslexia?
Where readers are unable to retrieve the meaning of words
What is the linguistic determinism hypothesis?
Language shapes the nature of thought
What is the most commonly cited example supporting linguistic determinism?
The Inuit in Canada - different words for snow means the Inuit perceive snow differently
What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?
Language may influence the way we think and perceive
What three concepts have been studied to investigate the influence of language on thought?
Colour processing, time judgements and numerical cognition
What is a concept?
A mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events or other stimuli
What are concepts fundamental to?
Our ability to think and make sense of the world
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
What causes category-specific deficits?
Brain trauma in left hemisphere shortly after birth
What leads to a difficulty identifying humans?
Damage to front of left temporal lobe
What leads to a difficulty identifying animals?
Damage to lower left temporal lobe
What leads to a difficulty identifying tools?
Damage where temporal and occipital lobes meet
How did early psychological rules describe concepts?
Rules that specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a particular category
What is a necessary condition?
Something that must be true of an object in order for it to belong to a category
What is a sufficient condition?
If a specific something is true of an object, it proves it belongs to a certain category
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
What is the prototype theory of categories?
Our psychological categorization is organized around the properties of the most typical member - the best example
How do people make category judgements based on the prototype theory?
By comparing new instances to the category’s prototype
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
Which hemisphere is primarily involved in forming prototypes?
Left
Which hemisphere is primarily involved in recognizing exemplars?
Right
What is the base rate?
The actual likelihood of something happening
What are humans good at estimating?
Frequencies
What are humans bad at estimating?
Probabilities
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
What are three mindbugs that affect our estimation of probability and frequency?
Availability bias, representativeness heuristic, conjunction fallacy
What is availability bias?
Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
What are heuristics?
Fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached
What are heuristics nicknamed?
Mental shortcuts, ‘rules of thumb’
What is an algorithm?
A well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem
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
What is the representative heuristic?
A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event to a prototype
What are framing effects?
People give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased - framed
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
Framing effect - decision about current situation based on what has been previously invested
What is the prospect theory of decision making?
People choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks evaluating potential gains
What are the two stages of decision making according to prospect theory?
Simplify information, personal choice about what offers best value
What is the certainty effect?
People give more weight to certain outcomes when making decisions
What is the frequency format hypothesis?
Our minds have evolved to notice how frequently things occur rather than probability
What are the two systems involved in thinking ‘fast and slow’?
System 1 and System 2
What is thinking system 1?
System that operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control
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
How does prefrontal lobe damage affect decision making?
Can create inability to judge risk or decide importance of tasks
What are the two major types of problem that complicate our lives?
Ill-defined and well-defined problems
What is an ill-defined problem?
One that doesn’t have a clear goal or solution
What is a well-defined problem?
One with clearly specified goals and solution paths
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
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
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
What else is sometimes required over and above analogical problem solving to solve difficult problems?
Creativity and insight
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
Why is insight rare?
Problem solving suffers from framing effects
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
What is reasoning?
A mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions
What are the two types of reasoning?
Practical and theoretical reasoning
What is practical reasoning?
Working out what to do, or reasoning directed towards action
What is an example of practical reasoning?
Means-ends analysis
What is theoretical reasoning?
Reasoning directed towards arriving at a belief, using a series of inferences to arrive at belief
Which type of reasoning are we more adept in?
Practical reasoning
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
What is syllogistic reasoning?
Determining if a conclusion follows from two statements assumed to be true
What is the influence of prior beliefs on reasoning?
Prior beliefs can impair our ability to logically reason about arguments
