Chapter 9: Language and thought Flashcards
1
Q
Language
A
A generative system for communicating with others using arbitrary signals (symbols) that are combined according to rules of grammar (structured) and that convey meaning (semantic)
2
Q
Grammar
A
Set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
3
Q
What are the unique aspects of human language
A
-More complex than other forms of language
-Involves words representing intangible things (democracy, unicorn)
-Used to categorize, name and talk to ourselves
-structures unique to each language
4
Q
Surface structure
A
-Related to the ideas of syntax. It is the literal order of the letters and words
-What we see/order of the words
5
Q
Deep structure
A
The meaning of the sentence
6
Q
Phoneme
A
Smallest unit of speech that distinguish one word from another (p,b,k..)
7
Q
How many phenomes are used in the world and how many in english?
A
About 100 in the world and 44 for English
8
Q
Phenological rules
A
How to combine phoneme to form words
9
Q
Morphemes
A
-Phonemes are combined to make morphemes
-Smallest meaningful units of language (the, kid, s, ing)
10
Q
Content Morphemes
A
Refer to things or events (dog, jump)
11
Q
Function morphemes
A
-Not words on their own and get added to content morphemes as a prefix of suffix
-Serve grammatical function (and, or, re, s)
12
Q
Syntactical rules
A
How words can be combined to form phrases and sentences
13
Q
What are the two types of language processing?
A
1) Bottom-up processing
2) Top-down processing1
14
Q
1) Bottom-up processing
A
-Building up from sensory signals to a concept
-Takes more time than top-down processing
15
Q
2) Top-down processing
A
-Having a concept/expectation at the beginning and imposing it on incoming sensory signals
-eg) Pragmatic
16
Q
Pragmatic
A
-Social context of language
-Language occurs in a social context and pragmatic knowledge helps understand what other people are really saying and make sure that other people get the point of what you are communicating
17
Q
Children language development
A
-they can learn 1000 words in 4 years
-Their errors occur while applying overregularizing grammatical rule
-Language comprehension is faster than production
18
Q
6 Months language development
A
Loose ability to distinguish contrasting sounds
19
Q
Between 4-6 months language development
A
Babbling (occurs in deaf infants as well which shows language development is ingrained in humans)
20
Q
Between 0-4 months language development
A
Can tell difference between speech sounds (phonemes); coos, especially in response to speech
21
Q
Between 6-10 months language development
A
Understands some words and simple requests
22
Q
Between 10-12 months language development
A
Begins to use single words
23
Q
Between 12-18 months language development
A
Has vocabulary of 30-50 words (simple nouns, adjectives, and action words)
24
Q
Between 18-24 months language development
A
-Telegraphic speech
-Vocab consists of 50-200 words; understands rules
25
Telegraphic speech
Two-word phrases are ordered according to syntactic rules (more milk)
-Devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words
-Words tend to be grammatical
26
Between 24-36 months language development
Has vocab of about 1000 words; produces phrases and incomplete sentences
27
Between 36-60 months language development (4-5 years)
-Vocab grows to more than 10,000 words; full sentences are produces
-mastery of grammatical morphemes (-ed)
-Tend to overgeneralize rules
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Explanation #1 for language development
General cognitive development
29
Explanation #2 for language development
Experience with a specific language
30
Behaviorist explanation
-Skinner
-Language is learned though imitation, reinforcement, shaping, extinction
31
Cons with behaviorist explanation
-Parents spend little time teaching language yet kids still learn
-Children generate more than what they hear
-Errors made cannot be explained through conditioning or imitation (errors are not random)
32
Nativist explanation
-Noam Chomsky
-Opposite to behaviorist explanation
-Language learning capacities are built into to the brain
-we are born with units of language in our brain
33
Nativist theory
Language development is an innate biological capacity
34
Innate
inborn, natural
35
Universal grammar
Collection of processes that facilitate language
36
Pros to nativist explanation
-Language ability is partly separate from general intelligence
-Language acquisition is possible during a restricted period of development (harder after puberty)
37
Interactionist explanations
-Social interactions play a crucial role in language
-social experiences interacts with innate, biological language abilities
-Exposure to language is also important in development
38
Where is Broca's Area?
Left, frontal cortex
39
Broca's aphasia (damage to broca's area)
-Difficulty in producing language
-You can understand and read but not speak
40
Where is Wernicke's Area?
Left, temporal cortex
41
Wernicke's aphasia (damage to Wernicke's area)
-Difficulty in language comprehension
-Meaningless talk
42
What hemisphere is significant for language?
-Language is heavily left-lateralized function
-Right hemisphere has some capacity for processing verbal meaning
-Left hemisphere is more significant but would be useless without the right one
43
What does damage to the right hemisphere do for language?
Damage relates to subtle language comprehension problems
44
Bilingualism and alzheimers
Individuals who are bilingual tend to have a later onset of Alzheimer's disease (back up cognitive ability or cognitive reserve)
45
Visual cortex
-Has not been shown to be related to language BUT this is not the case for congenitally blind people
46
Unmasking hypothesis
-Absence of visual input at any time of line "unmasks" the hidden ability of visual regions to become involved in language processing, this occurs even in individuals who first became blind as adults
47
Brain plasticity in relation to blindness
There is a sensitive period in brain development during which visual cortex can be most effectively co-opted to perform language functions
48
Linguistic relativity hypothesis
- Originated by Benjamin Whorf
-Language shapes the nature of thought
-The way in which individuals encode information about the world influences and correlates with the cultural world view of the speakers
-little support from various cases
49
Why was Whorf only "half right"?
-Either thought or language ability can be severely impaired while the capacity for the other is spared
-overly simplistic to talk in general terms about whether language influences thought
-Language can influence thought by highlighting specific properties of concepts and by allowing formulation of verbal rules that help solve problems
50
Concept
Mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli
51
What are the 2 rules that specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership into a category
1) Necessary condition
2) Sufficient condition
52
1) Necessary condition
Something that must be true of the object to belong to the category
53
2) Sufficient condition
Something that, if it is true of the object, proves to belong to the category
54
What are the two major theories that explain how people perform categorization
1) Prototype theory
2) Exemplar theory
55
1) Prototype theory
-New objects classified by comparing them to the "best" or "most typical" member (the prototype) of a category
-The left hemisphere and visual cortex are involved in forming prototypes
-More holistic process involving image processing
56
2) Exemplar theory
-Category judgements are made by comparing a new instance with stored memories for all other category cases
-Right hemisphere, prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia are involved in forming exemplars
-Involves analysis and decision-making
57
Holistic
Integrates all aspects of an individual
58
Category-specific Deficit
-Neurological syndrome characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a specific category
-Ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed
59
Blind since birth
-Activity of category-preferential regions and temporal lobe region that responds to faces
-Category-preferential regions showed highly similar activity patterns in the blind and sighted individuals
-Category-specific organization of visual regions does not depend on an individuals visual experience
-Category-specific brain organization is innately determined
60
Rational choice theory
-Classical view that decisions are made by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome and multiplying the two
-Individuals use rational calculations to make rational choices and achieve outcomes that are aligned with their own personal objectives
-Weighing probabilities
61
Frequencies VS probabilities
-People are good at estimating the frequency of an event
-People are poor at tasks that require thinking in terms of probabilities
-Performance can vary depending on how the problem is described
62
Heuristics
-Fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached
-Using whatever knowledge you already have
-Faster, but you may not reach a solution
63
Algorithm
-The well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem; in contrast to heuristics
- Following steps to a solution
-Slower and more meticulous but will get you to the answer
64
Availability Heuristic
-Items more readily available to in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
-Describes our tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future
65
Representative heuristic/Power of steryotypes
-Mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event with a prototype of the object or event
-Fast way of comparing by comparing a sample to an already defined prototype
-Causes generalization which is not good
66
Conjunction Fallacy
People think that two events are more likely to occur together than either as an individual event
67
Framing effects
-People give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem has been phrased (or framed)
-Can cause bias
68
Sunk-cost fallacy
-People make decisions about a current situation based on what they previously invested in a situation
-All investments become a heavy load
-Bias
69
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
-Greater in individuals from North America than individuals from Eastern cultures
-Different cultures show different levels of optimism bias, may be a clue to understanding its origins
70
Prospect theory/Loss aversion theory
-Prospect theory assumes that losses and gains are viewed differently, and thus individuals make decisions based on perceived gains instead of perceived losses
-If two choices are put before an individual, both equal, with one presented in terms of potential gains and the other in terms of potential losses, the former option will be chosen
-Choose a prospect we believe will offer the best value
-People are more willing to take risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains
-Certainty effect
-Reference dependence
71
Certainty effect
Greater weight to outcomes that are a sure thing
72
Reference dependence
-Compare with reference point
-Satisfaction is impacted by our reference point
-You are either satisfied or dissatisfied
73
Gambling disorder
Persistent and problematic gambling behavior pattern leading to significant distress of impairment
74
DSM
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
75
What does damage to the prefrontal lobe do?
-You do not show emotional reactions during risky decision making
-Cannot assess risks
-Insensitivity to future consequences
-Similar effects in substance dependent individuals
76
Ill-defined problem
Does not have a clear goal or well-defined path to a solution
77
Well-defined problem
One with clearly specified goals and clearly defined solution path
78
Means-ends analyssi
-Process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal
-Step 1) Analyze the goal state
-2) Analyze the current state
-3) List the differences between the two states
-4) reduce the list of differences by generating sub goals or analogical problem solving
79
Analogical problem solving
Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem
80
Creativity and insight
-Some problem solving involves brilliant flashes of insight and creative solutions that have never before been tried
-Relies on restructuring a problem so that it turns into a problem that you already know how to solve
-Insightful problems are rarely incremental, relies on spontaneous reconstructing of a problem
-Insight problem solving may be impacted by processing outside conscious awareness
81
Insight (Sudden "aha!" moment)
-This sudden moment is different than step-by-step analysis
-Researchers use compound remote associates task to study brain activity associated with insight
-EEG data revealing insight problem solvers activity one third of a second before the solution was reported
-fMRI results indicating only right temporal area that showed greater activity for insights solutions than for analytic strategies
82
Framing effect/Functional fixedness
-Tendency to perceive the function of objects as unchanging
-Consider the functions of an object only by how it is designed
83
Reasoning
-Mental activity that consist of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions
-"Building a house"
84
Logic
A system of rules that specifies which conclusions follow from a set of statements
-Tool for evaluating reason
-"Carpenters tool to build house"
85
Belief Bias
Judgements about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid
86
Syllogistic reasoning
-Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true
-Form of deductive reasoning
-Belief-laden trials and reasoning
-Belief-neutral trials and reasoning
87
Belief-laden trials and reasoning
-Belief bias, holistic observation
-Increased activity in areas involved in retrieving and selecting facts from long-term memory during belief-laden reasoning
88
Belief-neutral trials and reasoning
-Conclusion is not something we don't expect
-Increased activity involved in mathematical reasoning and spatial representation during belief-laden reasoning
89
Illusionary truth effect
-Occurs when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge that statement to be true
-Constant exposure to fake news/facts makes up more likely to believe these facts
-Increased exposure increases the familiarity of a statement, which is mistakenly accepted as evidence that the statement is true
90
