Final Exam Content Flashcards
What is concept learning?
Hypothesis testing about a concept by making guesses about which attributes are essential for defining the concept
What is the problem with the hypothesis testing theory?
Role of confirmatory and disconfirmatory feedback
Participants will forget their hypothesis
What are the two parts of the hypothesis testing theory?
Conjunctive concept and disjunctive concept
What is the conjunctive concept theory?
members must possess both of two separate attributes
What is the disjunctive concept?
Members must possess either one of two separate attributes
Is the hypothesis testing theory appropriate in everyday life?
It can tell us how we might behave in a lab setting but not how we would behave and interact in everyday life, we are complex and not that simple
What is family resemblance?
members of a concept share family resemblances
What is the bird idea regarding resemblances?
These birds resemble each other somehow but how they share the resemblance may be different depending on the category
According to Rosch and Mervis (1975) members of a concept shares something in common with other members of a concept, although they may not all share the same thing
What is the superordinate level?
The most generic and inclusive level of a conceptual category is big and has the most amount of memories
What is the basic level?
Most useful level of a concept, characterized by neither too much not too little information
What is the subordinate level?
The most restrictive, specific level of a conceptual category
What are semantic networks?
A structure for how information is stored in long-term memory (semantic)
What does the strength of activation in semantic networks depend on?
Time, distance, and number of concepts activated
What are the concepts of semantic networks represented as?
Nodes
What are nodes interconnected by?
Means of links and pathways
What does activation spread from in semantic networks?
Concept to concept along connecting pathways
What does the spreading activation in semantic networks ?
related concepts
What happens when activation reaches a concept node?
It is summed up
If activation reaches a threshold what is activated?
The concept
What is semantic priming?
When concepts are activated in memory, activation spreads to semantic related concepts, making them easier to fully activate if needed
What is the classical view?
People create and use categories based on a system of rules
o Necessary and sufficient features. There is a specific feature we expect to see to help us identify something to give it semantic meaning
Defining features
What are examples of the classical view?
A chair must have legs, a plane must have wings
What are defining features?
What are the pros of the classical view?
It is easy to see how we classify novel members of a category
A very intuitive way of how we use concepts,
A very clear description of how we do this
What are the cons of the classical view?
How to identify poorly defined categories such as games
What will be that one feature to make all the members a part of that category (very hard to determine this)
Graded structure: some instances of a certain concept that seem more born to the category than other ones
Most problematic: how long it would take for us to make decisions
There should be a more economical concept and rules as to why something is occurring
What is the prototype theory?
Based on similarity among members and comparison to standards
People abstract the common elements of a particular concept and then store an abstracted prototypical representation in memory
What are the pros of the prototype theory?`
Normally it would take too long to decide, but this makes decision making super quick
What are the cons of the prototype theory?
How do we come up with prototype representations when we have these poorly defined categories
What is a prototype?
Member of a conceptual category exhibiting a collection of typical features or attributes
-Average a large number of examples of the concept
What is the exemplar theory?
Instead of using one thing to represent a concept we use multiple things
People consider each encounter that they have experienced with the members of that category
Based on similarity among members and comparison to standards
Concepts are represented by a variety of exemplars
Each concept is represented by any number of specific members of the concept
What are the pros of the exemplar theory?
We don’t have to come up with one prototype that relates to everything we can just get examples
What are the cons of the prototype theory?
With this we are not able to make decisions as you are having to make multiple comparisons
What is the essentialist approach?
People have a general idea of the essence of a particular concept
Members of a category have a fundamental similarity (essence)
What is the law of effect?
If a response in a presence of a stimulus is followed by a satisfying event, the association between the stimulus and the response will be strengthened; if the response is followed by an annoying event, the association will be weakened
What did Edward Thordike do .
The puzzle box where you can trap cats, and for the cats to get out of the boxes they must solve some challenges in the box
Look up the details of this experiment and put the details into your study cards
It starts narrowing down the behaviors needed to open the box (trial and error, operant conditioning)
But not because they are learning but rather, they are learning how to get out of the box
These behaviors are explaining insight vs. Trial and error
Late 1800s
What are verbal protocols?
transcription and analysis of people’s verbalizations as they solve the problem
What are the problems with verbal protocols?
o Depends on participants’ verbal activity
o Assumes verbal report is accurate
o Thinking out loud may interfere or change the nature of thought processes
What is problem solving?
o Involves a goal-directed sequence of steps and the cognitive operations used to work through a problem in the face of constraints that must be observed and obstacles that must be overcome
What is the initial state?
Where you are right now, the state that you start off in
What is the goal state?
Where you are trying to get
What are the components of problem solving?
Initial state
Goal state
Set of rules or constraints
Set of obstacles
Ill-defined problems –> well-defined problems
What is language?
a. Highly structured symbol system that allows for creative and meaningful communication
What is psycholinguistics?
a. Discipline devoted to understanding the properties of human language and the mechanisms responsible for language acquisition
What is the mental lexicon?
a. All the words (symbols) that allow for communication and comprehension
i. Sign language counts as a spoken language as well only way it isn’t is that it isn’t spoken
ii. Dimensions of semantic memory
iii. Each representation includes not only the meaning but also other information about the word (sound, written form, roles it can take in a sentence, etc.)
What is the lexical access?
Process by which a concept is activated within the lexicon
What are Hocketts features of language?
Semanticity, arbitrariness, displacement, prevarication, reflectiveness, productivity,
What is semanticity>
- Elements of language convey meaning
a. The relationship between the symbols and the meaning is completely arbitrary
What is arbitrariness?
- The connections between linguistic units and concepts or meanings referred to by those units are entirely arbitrary
What is displacement
Language allows us to talk about times other than the immediate present
What is prevarication?
the ability that language allows us for misrepresentation and deception
What is reflectiveness?
the ability that language allows us for misrepresentation and deception
What is productivity?
an infinite number of sentences can be produced by applying the rules of language
does language have its own reason?
Yes
What is the prospect theory? (Kahneman & Tversky)
Describes how humans make decisions and how we violate the expected utility model
Humans are NOT rational decision makers
Decisions are made based on the amount of gain or loss from what we have right now
What is the utility theory?
Decisions are made based on expected utility of outcomes and their probabilities
Humans are rational decision makers
What is decision making?
Involves a choice between alternatives
Involves risk and uncertainty
what is misperception of event clusters?
Tendency to misconstrue what a random sample should look like
Some random samples are more likely than others
What is a conjunction fallacy?
The mistaken belief that a compound outcome of two characteristics is more likely than one of the characteristics by itself
What does make the difference in language?
o If you try to study another language later in life some languages will seem easier than others
What are pragmatics?
Social rules of language
There’s more than what people are actually saying
Use of language in social contexts to bring about desired consequences
What is phonology?
- The smallest unit
- Analysis of the sounds of language as they are articulated and comprehended in speech
What is a phenome?
o The basic sounds that compose a language
Ex: phonemes are the sounds that represent a single to multiple letters
What are vowel phonemes?
Involve continuous flow of air through the vocal tract
What are consonant vowels?
Differ in place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing
How many phonemes are there and how many are vowel phonemes?
46 and 14
What is morphology?
- Analysis of how we manipulate and change phonemes to produce different words and word forms
- This is the smallest unit that have meaning, smallest units of language that have meaning
What are free morphemes?
Word morphemes; may stand alone
Unhappiness the free morpheme is happy, (un, happi, ness) 3 morphemes you have 1 free morpheme and 2 bound morpheme
What are bound morphemes?
Prefix or suffix morphemes; need to accompany a free morpheme in order to have meaning.
Cat when you add the s it gives cats meaning
Played 2 morphemes (play, played)
How do we combine phonemes to produce morphemes
What is regular form?
System of rules is implemented to make the necessary transformations (procedural knowledge)
What are irregular forms?
Have an associative system whereby regular-irregular pairs are committed to memory and used to retrieve each other (semantic memories)
Do kids up to a certain age make mistakes on the irregular forms?
Yes, younger kids are better with irregular forms than older kids
What is overregulation?
There is a rule to identify irregular forms but now that they aren’t young they overuse it
What is word frequency?
Finding that frequent words in the language are processed more rapidly than infrequent words
What is lexical ambiguity?
Occurs when a word with 2 possible meanings is encountered
What is semantics?
The meaning or interpretation given to the spoken or written word
What is syntax?
The rules governing the orders of words in a sentence
What is transformational grammar?
o Chomsky’s theory of the structure of language
o Language is hard wired
What’s the language acquisition device?
o Innate mechanism that allows the developing child to understand and produce language
what are the steps of language production ?
Conceptualization, planning, articulation, self-monitoring
What is conceptualization
Decide what we want to say
What is planning? `
organization of thoughts in terms of language?
what is articulation?
put the linguistic plan into action
What is self-monitoring?
keep track of what is being said and change it if necessary
What is the Watson selection task?
o Type of deductive reasoning
o Tell participants that they are going to be given four cards and in each of these four cards they are going to have one side with a letter and the other side with a number on the opposite side
o The researcher then gives them a statement they must evaluate to get some evidence for that statement and then they can turn two cards to see what is on the other side of the card, but they can only turn two cards
o Their job is to figure out what card to turn
o If a card has a vowel on one side, then it must have an even number on the other side
EK74
This would be a kind of confirmation bias
The part that we should actually look for is E and 7 because they can provide us with disconfirming evidence
What’s belief bias?
Tendency to ignore the form of an argument and focus instead on prior knowledge
Deny the antecedent or affirm the consequent
* If a student attends UK then they live in Kentucky
o A common mistake is people will flip the then with a if
o Flip the if with the then
What is illicit conversation ?
tendency to revery the elements in an “if-then” statement and then evaluating the evidence against the reversed conditional
What is confirmation bias?
Tendency to search for evidence that confirms a conclusion
What is indicative reasoning
o The process of reasoning from the particular to the general
Data: PSY 215 covers a lot of material
Data: Students tend to retake PSY 216
Data: Final grades in PSY 312 are low
Conclusion: psychology classes are difficult
What is the problem with inductive reasoning?
People have a tendency to look for evidence consistent with their hypothesis
What is judgement?
extension of inductive reasoning
What are heuristics?
Informal “rule of thumb” method for solving problems which is faster and more manageable but that does not guarantee to solve the problem correctly
What are availability heuristics”?
The frequency or probability of some event based on how easily examples or instances can be recalled
We remember the ones we changed and got wrong more than the ones we changed and got right
What is the study under judgement and decision making?
100 people are in a room, 70 of them lawyers and 30 of them engineers, you selected Jack
* Jack is a 45 year old man, he is married and has 4 children, he is generally conservative, careful, and ambitious. He shows no interest in political and social issues and spends most of his free time on his many hobbies, which includes home carpentry, sailing, and mathematical problems.
o What is the likelihood that Jack is an engineer?
o People normally say that Jack is very likely to be an engineer
This is odd because probability states that he is more likely to be a lawyer
o Jack is a 30 year old man, he is married with no children. A man of high ability and high m
* This is a failure to consider base rates (the true possibility of something to occur)
What is base rate?
How often a certain event tends to occur
What is the wholistic strategy?
Looks at the whole person and not just their mental health needs to provide support
what is the partist strategy?
Focusing on an individual aspect of the person to identify a problem and not the whole
What are natural categories in psychology?
Groupings of concepts that are formed naturally through our shared experience often based on direct observation with objects
What are artifact categories?
mental groupings we create for human-made objects, based on their function, design, and intended use
What is the dual process view in psychology?
provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled)
What is deductive reasoning?
reach a specific conclusion based on general premises that are assumed to be true
What is syllogistic reasoning?
conclusion is drawn from two or more premises (major and minor premise)
What is conditional reasoning?
conclusions are drawn based on “if-then” statements
What is inductive reasoning?
draw a general conclusion based on specific observations or experiences
What is the expected utility theory?
rational individual should choose the option with the highest “expected utility” when faced with uncertain outcomes
What is loss aversion ?
people tend to feel the pain of a loss much more intensely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain
What is the endowment effect?
people tend to value an item they own significantly higher than they would if they did not own it
What is Gestalt psychology?
how the human brain perceives the world around us, and how it organizes information into patterns and configurations
What is general problem solving ?
mental process of identifying, analyzing, and finding solutions to problems across various situations
What are algorithms in psychology?
set of step-by-step procedures that are used to solve problems or make decisions
What are heuristics in psychology?
mental shortcuts that the brain uses to make decisions and solve problems
What is trial and error in psychology?
problem-solving method that involves trying different techniques and strategies to find a solution
What is means-end-analysis in psychology?
one identifies the difference between their current state and a desired end goal, then breaks down the problem into smaller steps (“means”) to gradually reduce that gap and reach the desired outcome
What did Kohler say?
Insight: deep, useful understanding of the nature of something, especially a difficult problem
What is mental set in psychology?
Tendency to become used to a single approach or way of thinking about a problem, making it difficult to recognize or generate alternative approaches
What is functional fixedness in psychology?
someone is unable to think of alternative uses for an object beyond its typical, intended function
What are analogies in psychology?
helps people understand unfamiliar or abstract ideas by relating them to something they already know
What is behavioral economics?
Uses psychological principles to account for why people do not always make optimal or rational decisions
According to Dr. Ariely, why is it surprising that on days that we gain 2% on the stock market we are happy but on days that we lose 2% we are really miserable?
- Because one should expect that there would be a symmetry between how we feel in these 2 situations since the amount we lose or gain is the same
What is the goal state in dunkers candle problem?
A lit candle mounted on a corkboard wall that does not drip wax on table
What is the solution to the candle problem?
Use the box to create a shelf that is then attached to the corkboard with the tacks so the lit candle can rest on it
The word “deepness” contains how many bound and free morphemes?
one free and one bound morpheme
The sounds of the letters b, z, c, and d are examples of:
phonemes
According to the
view of concepts, people categorize new instances
by comparing them to representations of previously stored instances.
exemplar
A language universal is:
a language feature that is true of all language users
