cog psych Flashcards

Question

Discuss the constructionist view of inferences, describing the work of Huitema et al. (1993).

Answer 1

Constructionist view of inferences: readers usually draw inferences about the causes of events and the relationships between events -This perspective is called a "constructionist view" because readers actively construct cohesive explanations when they integrate the current information with all the relevant information from the previous parts of the text, as well as their background knowledge. -The constructionist view argues that people typically draw inferences, even when the related topics are separated by several irrelevant paragraphs. Huitema et al (1993): studied brief stories like: "1. Dick had a week's vacation due 2. and he wanted to go to a place 3. where he could swim and sunbathe. 4. He bought a book on travel. 5. Then he looked at the ads 6. in the travel section of the Sunday newspaper. 7. He went to his local travel agent 8. and asked for a plane ticket to Alaska. 9. He paid for it with his charge card."

Answer 2

As you might expect, people are more likely to draw inferences if they have a large working-memory capacity. -They are likely to draw inferences if they have excellent metacomprehension skills. These individuals are aware that they need to search for connections between two seemingly unrelated sentences -People are also likely to draw inferences if they have expertise about the topic described in the text. In fact, expertise in an area can compensate for a relatively small working-memory capacity. -Other research shows that people are not likely to construct inferences when they are reading scientific texts.

Answer 3

slips-of-the-tongue: Errors during speaking, in which sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words. Slips of the tongue are informative because they reveal people's extensive knowledge about the sounds, structure, and meaning of the language that they are speaking. -Gary Dell and his colleagues propose that three kinds of slips-of-the-tongue are especially common in English: 1. Sound errors, which occur when sounds in nearby words are exchanged—for example, snow flurries → flow snurries. 2. Morpheme errors, which occur when morphemes (the smallest meaningful units in language, such as -ly or in-) are exchanged in nearby words—for example, self-destruct instruction → self-instruct destruction. 3. Word errors, which occur when words are exchanged—for example, writing a letter to my mother → writing a mother to my letter. Furthermore, we are likely to create a word (e.g., leading), rather than a nonword (e.g., londing) when we make a slip-of-the-tongue error.

Answer 4

conic gestures: gestures with a form that represents the concept about which a speaker is talking. For example, a speaker telling her friend about a car crash that she witnessed on the way to work might vigorously push her left and right fists together as she explains the impact. Deictic gestures: involve pointing to some object or location while speaking, and are often accompanied by words like "This" or "That." Beat gestures: on the other hand, are gestures that occur in a rhythm that matches the speech rate and prosodic content of speech. These gestures do not convey specific information to a listener, but may be made by a speaker to help that speaker maintain a current speech pattern.

Answer 5

Cook and Tanenhaus (2009): asked participants to solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle by themselves. -Participants in one condition were asked to learn how to solve the puzzle while working with a "real-life" version of it. Crucially, the discs in this "real-life" version of the task were relatively heavy given their size, such that participants had to use some arm muscle in order to lift and move the discs. -In a second condition, a separate set of participants taught themselves how to solve the puzzle by working with it on a computer display. In this condition, however, participants were able to slide the discs across the display using the computer mouse without doing any heavy lifting. -After learning the puzzle, participants in both conditions became teachers. -They were asked to teach new participants (the new learners) how to solve the puzzle. -During the teaching session, the new learners were seated in front of a computer screen displaying the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, and the teachers explained to the new learners how to solve it. -The computer mouse-movements made by the new learners were recorded during the process. -Four aspects of the results reported by Cook and Tanenhaus highlight the powerful role that gesture plays during communication. -First, the teachers made gestures as they explained the puzzle to the new learners that contained information about how they themselves had originally learned the task. -Those who had to lift heavy discs produced higher gestures while explaining the puzzle to the new learners than those who just had to slide a cursor across the screen. -Second, new learners who received instructions from the teachers in the real-life condition made significantly higher and more arched movements while moving the discs around the computer display than did the learners who were taught by teachers in the computer condition. -Third, the content of the speech made by teachers in either condition did not differ in any respect. Thus, no information in the speech produced by any of the teachers explicitly mentioned things like "slide" or "lift." -This observation means that the different movements produced by the new learners did not occur due to speech differences. -Instead, differences in the height and shape of the gestures made by teachers in each condition were the cause of different movements in the new learners. -When speakers gesture, they may be transmitting information that they didn't know they were transmitting! And, the information transmitted through gesture even influenced someone else's behavior.

Answer 6

In recent years, cognitive psychologists have become increasingly interested in a concept called embodied cognition. Embodied cognition emphasizes that people use their bodies to express their knowledge. -In other words, there is an ongoing connection between your motor system and the way we process spoken language, for example, when you make gestures or indicate some kind of motion. -Notice that the embodied cognition approach focuses on concrete physical actions, rather than the abstract meaning of language. -However, the recent attention to embodied cognition has convinced many psychologists that we frequently think nonverbally, and that much of our cognitive processing involves using our perceptual and motor systems in order to mentally simulate events. -Given the emphasis on action, research on gesture is often discussed in relation to theories of embodied cognition. -During naturalistic communication, speakers make gestures and listeners have the ability to access information contained in those gestures. -This observation is but one example of how information not contained in a verbal linguistic signal contributes to communication.

Answer 7

The critical period hypothesis: your ability to acquire a second language is strictly limited to a specific period of your life. Specifically, the critical period hypothesis proposes that individuals who have already reached a specified age—perhaps early puberty—will no longer be able to acquire a new language with native-like fluency. Fortunately, however, the current research evidence does not support a clear-cut, biologically based "deadline" for learning a second language a. Age of acquisition is not related to vocabulary in the new language. b. Age of acquisition is related to phonology. c. Age of acquisition is sometimes related to grammar for people whose first language is different from English; but, there may be no relationship when the first language is similar to English.

Answer 8

Bilinguals acquire more expertise in their native (first) language. For example, English-speaking Canadian children whose classes are taught in French gain greater understanding of English-language structure. Bilingual children are also more likely to realize that a word such as rainbow can be divided into two morphemes, rain and bow 2. Bilinguals are more aware that the names assigned to concepts are arbitrary. For example, many monolingual children cannot imagine that a cow could just as easily have been assigned the name dog. A number of studies have examined metalinguistics, or knowledge about the form and structure of language. On many measures of metalinguistic skill—but not all of them— bilinguals outperform monolinguals. 3. Bilingual children are better at following complicated instructions and performing tasks where the instructions change from one trial to the next. For example, Bialystok and Martin (2004) asked preschoolers to sort some cards that featured either a blue circle, a red circle, a blue square, or a red square. The researchers first instructed them to sort the cards on one dimension (e.g., shape). Later, the researchers instructed them to sort the cards on the other dimension (e.g., color). Bilingual children were much faster than monolingual children in switching to the new dimension. 4. Bilinguals perform better on concept-formation tasks and on tests of nonverbal intelligence that require reorganization of visual patterns. Bilinguals also score higher on problem-solving tasks that require them to ignore irrelevant information 5. Bilinguals excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language task, while ignoring more obvious linguistic characteristics 6. Bilingual children are more sensitive to some pragmatic aspects of language. For example, English-speaking children whose classes are taught in French are more aware than monolinguals that—when you speak to a blindfolded child—you may need to supply additional information. 7. Bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than monolingual adults with dementia The disadvantages of being bilingual are relatively minor. People who use two languages extensively may subtly alter how they pronounce some speech sounds in both languages. Bilingual individuals may also process language slightly more slowly, in comparison to monolinguals. Furthermore, bilingual children may have somewhat smaller vocabularies for words that are used in a home setting. However, these disadvantages are far outweighed by the advantages of being able to communicate effectively in two languages

Answer 9

Pragmatics: focuses on the social rules and world knowledge that allow speakers to successfully communicate messages to other people a. Common ground: occurs when conversationalists share the similar background knowledge, schemas, and perspectives that are necessary for mutual understanding -For example, speakers should make certain that their listeners are paying attention and they have the appropriate background knowledge. If their listeners look puzzled, speakers need to clarify any misunderstandings. Unfortunately, however, speakers often think that they are communicating effectively, even when their listeners cannot understand their message b. directive: a sentence that asks someone to do something.

cog psych Flashcards

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