Ch 9 - Language and Thought Flashcards
agrammatism
a neurological condition arising from damage to a brain region just anterior to Broca’s area, where the patient is incapable of using words in grammatical sequence.
availability heuristic
judging easily-recalled events as more common.
bounded rationality
the fact that in many situations, our ability to make clear rational decisions is limited or “bounded” by things like a lack of information, time constraints, or emotions attached to aspects of the problem we are trying to solve.
Broca’s aphasia
a neurological condition arising from damage to Broca’s area where the patient is unable to produce coherent speech.
Broca’s area
a brain region located in the frontal lobe that is important for speech production.
child-directed speech
speech characterized by exaggerated emotional responses and a slower pace that is cross-culturally common among caregivers communicating with babies and young children.
cognition
mental processes of thinking and knowing.
cognitive control
the ability to direct thought in accord with one’s intentions.
decision making
evaluating and choosing from among options.
dysexecutive syndrome
impairments in the ability to control and direct mental activities.
executive function
the brain’s ability to control and manage the mental processing of information.
functional fixedness
tendency to view objects as having only one function.
heuristic
a shortcut thinking strategy.
lexical meaning
dictionary meaning of a word.
linguistic relativity hypothesis
hypothesis suggesting that the vocabulary available for objects or concepts in a language influences how speakers of that language think about them.
mental imagery
picturing things in your mind.
mental set
tendency to use problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past.
metacognition
thinking about one’s own thoughts.
morpheme
the smallest units of a language that convey meaning.
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
a mental disorder associated with abnormal anxiety-provoking thoughts that can lead to ritualistic behaviours.
overregularization
the process by which elementary school children over-apply newly learned grammatical rules to improperly “correct” an irregular part of speech, such as a verb (e.g., “goed” instead of “went”).
phoneme
the smallest unit of sound in a language; an individual sound such as ba, da, or ta
phonology
the study of how individual sounds or phonemes are used to produce language.
pragmatics
the practical aspects of language usage, including speech pace, gesturing, and body language.