Ch. 9: Language & Thought Flashcards
What is language?
a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning; allows individuals to exchange information about the world, coordinate group action, and form strong social bonds
What is grammar?
a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
What 3 unique things distinguish human language from other animals’ communication?
- The complex structure (most humans can express a wide range of ideas and generate infinite novel sentences)
- Humans use words to refer to intangible things (ex. “democracy”)
- We use language to name, categorize, and describe things to ourselves when we think, which influences how knowledge is organized in our brains
What are phonemes?
the smallest units of sound that are recognizable as speech rather than as random noise (think of a child sounding out a word or learning the sounds each letter makes)
What are phonological rules?
indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds (ex. “ts” is an acceptable sound in German but not English)
What are morphemes?
the smallest meaningful units of language, made up of phonemes combined together (the “d” sound is recognizable as a speech sound but has no meaning; “dog” carries meaning, and if we added an “s” to the end that would also be a morpheme)
What two categories do all grammar rules fall into?
Morphological rules and syntactic rules
What are morphological rules?
indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words; content and some function morphemes can stand alone as words (about 50% of morphemes); the remaining function morphemes get added to content morphemes to change meaning (ex. -s, -en, re-) and are what permit us to express abstract ideas
What are the two types of morphemes?
Content and function morphemes
What are content morphemes?
Refer to things and events (ex. cat, take)
What are function morphemes?
serve grammatical functions, such as tying sentences together (and, but) or indicating time (when)
What are syntactic rules?
indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences (ex. Every sentence must contain at least one noun and at least one verb)
What are 3 important characteristics of childrens’ language development?
- Children learn language at an astonishingly rapid rate
- Children make few errors while learning to speak, and the errors they do make usually result from applying but over-regularizing grammatical rules they’ve learned
- Children’s passive mastery of language develops faster than their active mastery (they understand language better than they speak it)
When do infants lose the ability to distinguish between the sounds of all languages?
6 months old
What is babbling, and when does it start? What does it indicate?
- between 4 and 6 months
- babbling = combinations of vowels and consonants that sound like real syllables but are meaningless
- indicates that an infant is in a state of focused attention
What evidence do we have that babbling is part of the language learning process, rather than infants simply imitating sounds?
All infants, regardless of language or ability to hear, go through the same babbling sequence
At what age are first words typically spoken or signed?
10-12 months
What is fast-mapping?
the process whereby children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure; enables them to learn at a rapid pace
What is telegraphic speech?
devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words (“more milk” “throw ball”); however, sentences are generally grammatical and words are ordered in a manner consistent with the syntactic rules of the language
Why is it that 2 or 3 year olds appear to understand grammar better than 4 or 5 year olds?
very young children are simply memorizing particular sounds that express what they want to communicate while older children are applying grammatical rules (but overregularizing them; ex. Overregularizing the rule of the past tense being indicated by -ed leads to the word “runned”)
What are the two possible explinations for children’s sequential language development?
○ The orderly progression could result from general cognitive development that is unrelated to language specifically (ex. Infants start with 1 or 2 word utterances because their short term memories are limited to that much, and so more cognitive development is needed before they can put together sentences)
The orderly progression might depend on experience with a specific language (more experience = more knowledge = more complex speech)
What is the behaviourist explination of language development?
• We learn to talk the same way we learn any other skill: reinforcement, shaping, extinction, and other basic principles of operant conditioning
• Babbles that contain meaningful sounds are more likely to be reinforced, ungrammatical sentences are ignored or punished while grammatical ones are reinforced, etc.
Offers a simple account of language development, but cannot account for many fundamental characteristics of language development
What is the nativist theory of language development?
language development is best explained as an innate, biological capacity; the brain is equipped with universal grammar
What is universal grammar?
a collection of processes that facilitate language learning
What is genetic dysphasia?
a syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence; tends to run in families and is linked to a single dominant gene
What piece of evidence suggests that the nativist theory of language development is more correct than a behaviourist one?
If we learned language through imitation like behaviourists theorized, infants would only distinguish the phonemes they’d actually heard; however, they can distinguish between phonemes from all languages; the nativist explanation also covers why Deaf infants babble even though they have never heard speech
What is the main criticism of nativist theories of language development?
they do not explain how language develops, only why
What are interactionist explanations of language development?
- Hold that, although infants are born with an innate ability to acquire language, social interactions play a crucial role in language learning
- Parents tailor their verbal interactions with children in ways that simplify the language acquisition process (ex. Speaking slowly, enunciating clearly, using simpler sentences)
What two areas of the brain are language processing concentrated in?
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
Where is Broca’s area, and what is it involved in?
located in the left frontal cortex and is involved in the production of the sequential patterns in vocal and sign language
What happens in Broca’s aphasia?
People with Broca’s aphasia can understand language relatively well (although have more difficulty as grammatical structures get more complex) but struggle with speech production and typically speak in short phrases consisting mostly of morphemes (function morphemes are usually missing and grammatical structure is impaired)
Where is Wernicke’s area, and what is it involved in?
located in the left posterior temporal cortex and is involved in language comprehension
What happens in Wernicke’s aphasia?
people with Wernicke’s aphasia can produce grammatical speech, but it tends to be meaningless and they have difficulty understanding language; damage to this area impairs our ability to make judgements about word meaning but our ability to identify non-language sounds is unimpaired
What is the arcurate fasciculus?
the pathway which connects Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
What is aphasia?
Difficulty producing or comprehending language
What are the 4 kinds of evidence that suggest that the right cerebral hemisphere contributes to language processing?
- When words are presented to the right hemisphere of healthy participants using divided visual field techniques, the right hemisphere shows some capacity for processing meaning
- Individuals with damage to the right hemisphere sometimes have subtle problems with language comprehension
- A number of neuroimaging studies have revealed evidence of right-hemisphere activation during language tasks
- Some children who have had their entire left hemispheres removed during childhood as a treatment for epilepsy can recover many of their language abilities
What are the benefits of bilingualism later in life?
- Bilingual individuals tend to have later onset of Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that they have built up a greater amount of cognitive reserve/back-up cognitive ability in their lifetime
- Grey matter in the part of the left parietal lobe that is involved in language is denser in bilingual individuals, with increased density for those most proficient in their second language
Do apes have a critical period for learning language like humans do? How do we know?
The fact that young apes acquired language systems better and more quickly than older apes suggests that they, too, have a critical period for acquiring communicative systems
What are apes’ limitations in learning, comprehending, and using human language?
- Limited vocabularies (hundreds of words compared to a human 4-year-old’s 10 000)
- Limited conceptual repertoire (primarily sign and respond to names for concrete objects and simple actions; the words they master are simpler than those that humans can understand, like “economics”)
- Limited understanding of grammar (strings of signs rarely exceed 3-4 words and are rarely grammatical
What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?
the idea that language shapes the nature of thought ex.( the Inuit have many different terms for snow, suggesting that they perceive and think about snow differently than English speakers)
What is the Stroop effect?
Interference in effortful processing of colour, caused by automatic processing of conflicting information (ex. the word “blue” being written in yellow)
What does “cognitive miser” mean?
We have limited cognitive resources that must be conserved, so we use mental shortcuts to process information rapidly and efficiently
What are our two systems of thought?
System 1: Automatic
System 2: Controlled
What kind of thought is “system 1” responsible for?
unconscious, simple, unaware thoughts; fast and tends to take mental shortcuts
What kind of thought is “system 2” ressponsible for?
conscious, deliberate, and effortful thought; a slow and taxing system that cannot be used all the time
What are the default priorities of our “system 1” thought?
Self
Threats
Speed
What is a concept?
a mental representation of a category defined by prototypes and exemplars
What is a prototype when it comes to thought?
An abstraction of a typical member of a category; the faster, heuristic process in creating concepts
What is an exemplar when it comes to thought?
Memories of specific members of a category; the slower, more analytical process in creating concepts
What is a schema, and what are its functions?
a mental network of associated concepts linked by meaning and relevance
- organize existing knowledge
- interpret new information
- make predictions and fill in gaps
- streamline processing of new information
What is a stereotype?
A type of schema about a social category; identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of a group despite large variability within that group
Why are schemas resistant to change?
- Activated automatically
- Shape information processing
- Biased information processing confirms the schema
- Disconfirmation takes controlled effort
What is a necessary condition when it comes to concepts and categories?
something that must be true of the object in order for it to belong to the category
What is a sufficient condition when it comes to concepts and categories?
something that, if it is true of the object, proves that it belongs to the category
Which hemisphere of the brain is primarily involved in forming prototypes?
Left
Which hemisphere of the brain is primarily involved in forming exemplars?
Right
What is a category-specific deficit?
an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category, although the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed; the type of category-specific deficit suffered depends on where the brain is damaged
What is rational choice theory?
we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two (expected gain = probability x value)
Are we better at estimating frequency or probability?
We are quite good as estimating frequency (the number of times something will happen), but not probability (the likelihood that something will happen)
What is availability bias?
items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently; affects our estimates because memory strength and frequency of occurrence are directly related (we mistakenly believe that familiarity = frequency)
What are heuristics?
fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached; mental shortcuts that are often, but not always, effective when approaching a problem (ex. Availability bias)
What is a conjunction fallacy?
people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event alone; in actuality, the more pieces of information the less likely they are to all occur at the same time
What is a representativeness heuristic?
making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event with a prototype of the object or event despite the existing base rate (the existing probability of an event)
What is the framing effect?
people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed)
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
people make decisions about a current situation on the basis of what they have previously invested in the situation, even though that investment is gone (sunk) either way
What is optimism bias?
people believe that, compared with other individuals, they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future
What is prospect theory, and in what two phases does it take place?
people choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and to avoid risks when evaluating potential gains; these decision processes take place in two phases:
- People simplify available information (comparing each option on each factor is simply too much work, so we focus only on differences that matter in order to be more efficient)
- People choose the prospect that they believe offers the best value (“best value” is objective)
What is the certainty effect?
when making decisions, people give greater weight to outcomes that are a sure thing (You will surely gain $50 or you have a 15% chance of gaining $200)
What are the two types of problems we face in life?
Ill-defined problems and well-defined problems
What is an ill-defined problem?
a problem that does not have a clear goal or well-defined path to a solution (being a better person, falling in love, achieving success)
What is a well-defined problem?
a problem with clearly specified goals and clearly defined solution paths (ex. Following directions to a destination, solving math problems, playing chess)
What is means-ends analysis, and what are its steps?
a process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal; usually takes the following steps…
1. Analyze the goal state
2. Analyze the current state
3. List the differences between the current state and the goal state
4. Reduce the list of differences by
○ Direct means (a procedure that solves the problem without intermediate steps)
○ Generating a subgoal (an intermediate step on the way to solving the problem)
○ 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; depends on learning the principles that underlie a particular type of problem rather than finding another problem that is only similar on a surface level (ex. Equating invading a fortress to destroying a tumor)
What is insight, and what may cause it?
spontaneous restructuring of a problem; solutions seem to appear out of the blue, regardless of whether a person anticipates solving the problem; may be caused by processing that occurs outside of conscious awareness (a problem unconsciously activates relevant information in memory, activation spreads through the memory network and recruits further relevant information, and when sufficient information has been activated it crosses the threshold of awareness so we experience a sudden flash of insight)
Slightly before an insight, there is greater activity in the anterior cingulate (frontal lobes), which control cognitive processes like switching attention from one thing to another
What is functional fixedness?
the tendency to perceive the functions of objects as unchanging; constricts our thinking
What is reasoning?
a mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions; we rely on logic to assess the results of the reasoning process
What is logic?
a system of rules that specifies which conclusions follow from a set of statements
What is belief bias?
people’s judgements about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid
What is syllogistic reasoning?
assesses whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true
Explain the relationship/distinction between truth and validity in reasoning
If statements are true and an argument is valid, then sound conclusions will be reached. However, if a faulty argument is used even when statements are true (all football players are athletes, LeBron James is an athlete, therefore LeBron James is a football player), the argument is invalid
What is the illusory truth effect?
when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge the statement to be true; exposure increases the familiarity of a statement, which is mistakenly accepted as evidence to support it
What is the comparison effect?
An error in value judgement in which we assign value by comparing one option to another; the context in which a decision is made affect the outcome
What is the decoy effect?
The biasing of choice towards option B over option A by introducing an undesireable option C
What is gain/loss framing?
When the same situation leads to different decisions depending on whether its framed as a gain or a loss
What is loss aversion?
The fact that we strive to avoid losses more than acquire gains because the pain from loss is disproportionately greater than the pleasure from an equivalent gain
What are mood effects?
emotional states that can bias our judgements
