Chapter 8: Language and Thought

Question 1

According to Skinner and other behaviorist’s children acquire language through?

Answer 1

imitation, reinforcement, and other aspects of learning and experience

Question 2

According to Chomsky and other Nativists humans?

Answer 2

are neurologically prewired to quickly acquire the rules of language.

Question 3

What is interactionist theory?

Answer 3

an innate predisposition and a supportive environment both contribute to language development.

Question 4

What does bilingualism do to language and thought processing?

Answer 4

• bilingualism is has little empirical support for the belief that it slows down language development
• bilinguals have a slight handicap in processing speed, but have better attention, working memory capacity and reasoning.

Question 5

What is linguistic relativity hypothesis?

Answer 5

asserts that one’s language shapes the nature of one’s thought processes.

empirical support for the linguistic relativity hypothesis has increased over time.

Question 6

What are the units of language?

Answer 6

1. Phonemes
2. Morphemes
3. Semantics
4. Syntax

Question 7

What is Phonemes?

Answer 7

the smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually

Question 8

What is Morphemes?

Answer 8

are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Example: friend, friendly, unfriendly

Question 9

What is Semantics?

Answer 9

is the area of language concerned with understanding the meaning of words and word combinations.

Question 10

What is Syntax?

Answer 10

is a system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences.

Question 11

What is the types of problems of inducing structure did Greeno distinguish?

Answer 11

problems of arrangement and problems of transformation.

Question 12

What are barriers of problem solving?

Answer 12

• distraction by irrelevant info
• functional fixedness is the tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use.
• mental set is when people persist in using strategies that have worked in the past but are no longer useful
• people often impose unnecessary constraints on their possible solutions
• the gamblers fallacy is the belief that the odds of a chance event increases if the event hasn’t happened recently
• over estimate that people have negative impact of losses.

Question 13

What are the approaches to problem solving?

Answer 13

• trail and error
• a heuristic is a rule of thumb
• it is often useful to formulate intermediate sub goals
• if you can spot an analogy between one problem and another, solution may become known.
• changing the representation of a problem
• incubation effects suggests that taking a break from a problem can sometimes enhance problem solving.

Question 14

What is the cross between culture and problem solving?

Answer 14

cross-culture disparities have been observed in problem solving
research suggests that Eastern cultures exhibit a more holistic cognitive style while Western Cultures display a more analytical cognitive style.

Question 15

What is Simons theory of bounded rationality?

Answer 15

asserts that people tend to use simple decision strategies that often yield seemingly irrational results because they can only judge so much information at once.

Question 16

What does Schwartz argue?

Answer 16

that in modern societies, people suffer from choice overload, which leads to rumination, regret and diminished well-being.

Question 17

What does research suggest about decision making?

Answer 17

that intuitive, unconscious decisions often are more satisfying than those based on conscious thought.

Question 18

What is risky decision making?

Answer 18

involves making choices under conditions of uncertainty.

Question 19

What is availability heuristic?

Answer 19

involves basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.

Question 20

What is representative heuristic?

Answer 20

involves basing the estimate probability of an event on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event.

Question 21

When does conjunction fallacy occur?

Answer 21

when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone.

Question 22

According to Gigerenzer, people mostly depend on what?

Answer 22

Fast and frugal heuristics that are much simpler than the complicated inferential processes studied in traditional cognitive research.