Chapter 9 Language and Communication Flashcards
Language
A system for communicating with other using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and convey meaning.
Grammar
A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages.
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than as random noise.
Phonological Rules
A set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds.
Morphemes
The smallest meaningful units of language.
Morphological Rules
A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words.
Syntactical Rules
A set of rules that indicate how words can be combined to form sentences.
Deep Structure
The meaning of a sentence.
Surface Structure
How a sentence is worded.
Fast Mapping
The fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure.
Telegraphic Speech
Speech that is devoid of functional morphemes and consists mostly of content words.
Nativist Theory
The view that language development is best explained as an innate, biological capacity.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
A collection of processes that facilitate language learning.
Genetic Dysphasia
A syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence.
Aphasia
Difficulty in producing or comprehending language.
Broca’s Aphasia
Struggle with speech production.
Wernicke’s Aphasia
Difficulty comprehending language.
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
The proposal that languages shapes the nature of thought.
Concept
A mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or oher stimuli.
Family Resemblance Theory
Members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be posessed by every member.
Prototype
The “best” or “most typical” member of a category.
Exemplar Theory
A theory of categorization that argues that we make category judgements by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category.
Category Specific Deficit
A neurological syndrome that is characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category, though the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed.
Rational Choice Theory
The classical view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, then multiplying the two.
Availabilty Bias
Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occured more frequently.
Heuristic
A fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached.
Algorithm
A well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem.
Conjunction Fallacy
When people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event.
Representativeness Heuristic
A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event.
Framing Effects
When people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed).
Sunk-Cost Fallacy
A framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation.
Prospect Theory
The proposal that people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains.
Frequency Format Hypothesis
The proposal that our minds evolved to notice how frequently things occur, not how likely they are to occur.
Means-End Analysis
A process of searching for the means or steps to reduce differences between the current situation and the desired goal.
Analogical Problem Solving
Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem.
Functional Fixedness
The tendency to perceive the finctoions of objects as fixed.
Reasoning
A mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions.
Practical Reasoning
Figuring out what to do, or reasoning directed towards action.
Theoretical Reasoning
Reasoning directed toward arriving at a belief.
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.
Syllogistic Reasoning
Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true.
