Chapter 9 - Thinking and Language

Question 1

cognition

Answer 1

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

Question 2

concept

Answer 2

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, people or ideas

Question 3

prototype

Answer 3

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

Question 4

algorithm

Answer 4

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Question 5

heuristic

Answer 5

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually quicker than algorithms but more error prone

Question 6

insight

Answer 6

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Question 7

confirmation bias

Answer 7

a tendency to search for info that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Question 8

mental set

Answer 8

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

Question 9

intuition

Answer 9

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

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

belief perserverance

Answer 11

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

Question 12

framing

Answer 12

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

Question 13

convergent thinking

Answer 13

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Question 14

divergent thinking

Answer 14

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Question 15

phoneme

Answer 15

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Question 16

morpheme

Answer 16

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

Question 17

grammar

Answer 17

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

Question 18

semantics

Answer 18

set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds

Question 19

syntax

Answer 19

set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Question 20

babbling stage

Answer 20

begins at 4 months, stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

Question 21

one-word stage

Answer 21

from about age 1-2 a child speaks mostly in single words

Question 22

two-word stage

Answer 22

begins at age 2, a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Question 23

telegraphic stage

Answer 23

child speaks like a telegram “go car” - using mostly nouns and verbs

Question 24

aphasia

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Broca’s Area

Answer 25

controls language expression - an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech

Question 26

Wernicke’s area

Answer 26

controls language reception, a brain area involved in language comprehension and experiession - usually in the left temporal lobe

Question 27

linguistic determinism

Answer 27

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think