Chapter 7 - Language and Thought Flashcards
8 questions
What is language?
A system for communicating with others using signals that convey meaning and are combined according to the rules of a grammar
What is grammar?
A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
Human language
- extremely complex: the range of ideas and concepts we can express is far wider than in any other species
- can refer to abstract intangible concepts that do not really exist in the physical world
- is used to name, categorize and describe things to ourselves when we think, which influences the way in which thought and knowledge are organized in the brain
Linguistics
The study of language and its rules
Psycholinguistics
The study of human use of language. It attempts to describe how we acquire, use, generate, and comprehend language
Phonemes
The smallest unit of sound that differentiates between words
Are sounds, not letters. The number of phonemes in languages varies between 12-85 (English and Dutch have ~40)
Form higher order structures such as syllables, words, sentences, etc.
Phonological rules
Indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds
Morphemes
The smallest units of meaningful language
Morphological rules
Indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words
Where are words stored?
Mental lexicons
~40,000 entries
Multi-linguals most likely have language-specific lexicons for each language
If a word is activated in the input lexicon…
it activates semantics (meaning of a word), syntax, orthography (writing), grammatical gender (depending on language), etc.
Syntax (syntactical rules)
Specify how the units of language can be combined to form phrases and sentences
What prosodic cues can give information in spoken language?
- intonation
- volume
- speaking rate
Prosody
Aids in syntactic grouping and is important for expressing emotions in spoken language
Each language has different prosodic rules
How are consonants and vowels percieved?
Categorically
Catagorical perception in babies
Have catagorical perception when less than 8 weeks old, and can distinguish almost every phonetic detail
Also applies to non-native phonemic contrasts. However, quickly fades as experience with the native language increases (perceptual narrowing)
Methods in infant research
- high-amplitude sucking (birth-4 months)
- head turn procedure (6-10 months)
How do children learn language?
Behaviorist explanation: conditioning
Nativist explanation: humans have an innate, biological capacity to learn language
- Chomsky: “the human brain is equipped with a Language Aquisition Device (LAD)
Interactionist explanation: Biological and cognitive mechanisms are necessary but not sufficient. Language development must occur in the context of meaningful social interactions
Genetic dysphasia
The inability to learn grammatical structure despite otherwise normal intelligence
Broca’s aphasia
Deficit mainly in production of language:
- non-fluent speech
- word finding problems
- comprehension problems for more complex grammatical structures
- writing impaired, but reading relatively intact
Wernicke’s aphasia
Deficit mainly in perception:
- unable to correctly understand spoken words
- produced speech is fluent and (mostly) grammatical correct, but meaningless
- difficulty with reading and writing
The Gardners (1978)
Raised Washoe the chimpanzee using sign language. Washoe was able to learn 160 signs which could be sued in combinations
Savage-Rumbaugh
Trained the bonobo Kanzi using a board with symbols. Kanzi was able to words and phrases, and at age 9 was able to correctly carry out 72% of 660 spoken requests
Vocal learning
The ability to modify acoustic and syntactic sounds, acquire new sounds via imitation, and produce vocalizations (with a genuine vocal organ, not lips, teeth, tongue etc.) is observed in bats, cetaceans (whales, dolphins), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), elephants, and three distantly related bird groups including songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds
Javal
Showed that our eyes do not move across text in a smooth continuous movement
Huey
Described reading as a succession of saccades and fixations. The eyes cannot focus while moving, and for accurate/detailed perception of letters, the information has to be in the fovea during a fixation
How long do fixations and saccades last?
Fixations last between 100 and 500 ms, depending on difficulty of the text
Saccades span about 7-9 characters. When texts get more difficult, saccades get shorter and more corrective regressions are made
What is required by the brain when reading out loud?
Requires us to map symbols onto representations in the brain
Dual-Route Model
The ‘route’ we take, depends on the words we’re reading
Horse-Race Model
Both routes are parallel but do not cooperate. First to finish wins
Interactive Activation Model
(Partially) activated words provide ‘top-down’ feedback to the reader
Which model helps to understand different types of acquired dyslexia?
Dual-Route Model
Surface Dyslexia
characterized by difficulty with whole-word recognition and spelling. Someone with surface dyslexia can usually master phonics but cannot read words that are spelled differently than they sound
Phonological Dyslexia
Impaired phonological route that manifests itself as an inability to correctly read non-words like ‘refki’
Deep Dyslexia
Readers cannot retrieve the meaning of a word, but seem to have access to the semantic representation
Developmental Dyslexia
The child fails to learn to read adequately despite normal education, intelligence, and an ability to learn
Linguistic Determinism Hypothesis
Language determines our experiences and is a defining framework
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Language may influence the way we think and perceive
Supported by the Himba study and Boroditsky’s study
Classical view of concepts
Concepts are sets of rules that specify necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership
- Necessary: must be true in order to belong to the category
- Sufficient: if true, the object must belong to the category
Family Resemblence Thoery
Members of a category have certain characteristic features, but not every member needs to possess all of these features, and some features are never shared
Prototype Theory
Categorization is organized around the properties of the most typical member of the category.
- Membership is ‘graded’; some objects fit the prototype better than others
Exemplar Theory
An object is compared with stored memories of all category members (exemplars) we have encountered
Rational Choice Theory
We make decisions by determining the value of an outcome and multiply that with the likelihood of occurring
Judging frequencies and proportions
People are good at judging frequencies but not good at judging proportions due to people often not thinking of the base-rate
Availability bias
Information that is more readily available, has a large impact on our decision. It is judged as having occurred more frequently and as being more representative
Confirmation tendency (bias)
More value is attributed to information that supports a presumption than information that disproves it
Conjuction fallacy
Believing that 2 events are more likely to occur together than seperately
Representativeness heuristic
Making a probability judgement by comparing something or someone to a prototype
Gambler’s fallacy
The incorrect belief that something happening more frequently than normal will happen less frequently in the future
Framing effects
the way in which a situation is phrased shapes the decision
Sunk-cost fallacy
People make decisions based on previous investments
Distractors influence choice
.
What is a heuristic
An efficient ‘rule of thumb’ (a ‘shortcut’) that is practical to use, but may not necessarily lead to the optimal answer
What did Kahneman find?
We have 2 systems of thinking:
- System 1
- System 2
What is an algorithm?
A procedure that is unique to every situation and always leads to the correct solution
When do we rely on heuristics instead of algorithms?
When:
- the problem space is too large
- the time to make a decision is limited
- the decision is unimportant
- we have access to very little information
- an appropriate heuristic comes to mind (by ‘accident’)
Analogical problem solving
Finding a problem (source) that is similar to the problem you need to solve (target) and applying the solution of the source onto the target
Means-end analysis
Generating sub-goals to reach desired goal
Functional fixedness
Our tendency to perceive an object’s function as fixed
Syllogistic reasoning
a form of deductive argument where the conclusion follows from the truth of two (or more) premises
