Chapter 9 - Thinking and Language

Question 0

Concept

Answer 0

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 2

Prototype

Answer 2

A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).

Question 3

Heuristic

Answer 3

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

Question 4

Insight

Answer 4

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contaste with strategy-based solutions.

Question 5

Confirmation bias

Answer 5

A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Question 6

Fixation

Answer 6

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set.

Question 7

Mental set

Answer 7

A tendency to approach a problem in on particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Question 8

Functional fixedness

Answer 8

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Question 9

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 9

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they see, to represent, or match particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Question 10

Availability heuristic

Answer 10

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind we presume such events are common.

Question 11

Overconfidence

Answer 11

The tendency to be more confident than correct— to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements.

Question 12

Belief perseverance

Answer 12

Clinging to ones initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Question 13

Intuition

Answer 13

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought,and contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Question 14

Framing

Answer 14

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements.

Question 15

Language

Answer 15

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Question 16

Phoneme

Answer 16

In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Question 17

Morpheme

Answer 17

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word.

Question 18

Grammar

Answer 18

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Question 19

Semantics

Answer 19

The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning.

Question 20

Syntax

Answer 20

The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.

Question 21

Babbling stage

Answer 21

Beginning at about four months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household languages.

Question 22

One-word stage

Answer 22

The stage in speech development, from about she one to two, during which a child speaks, mostly in single words.

Question 23

Two-word stage

Answer 23

Beginning about age two, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two word statements.

Question 24

Telegraphic speech

Answer 24

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram —”go car”— using mostly nouns and verbs.

Question 25

Aphasia

Answer 25

Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s or Wernicke’s area.

Question 26

Broca’s Area

Answer 26

Controls language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Question 27

Wernicke’s area

Answer 27

Controls language reception—a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

Question 28

Linguistic determinism

Answer 28

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

Question 29

Algorithm

Answer 29

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier—but also more error-prone—use of heuristics.