Language

Question 1

What is phonology?

Answer 1

the way a word sounds

Question 2

What is orthography?

Answer 2

how a word it written/spelled

Question 3

What are the two types of concept?

Answer 3

natural kind terms

artefacts

Question 4

What is a natural kind term concept?

Answer 4

things that exist in the natural world e.g. animals/plants

Question 5

What are artefact concepts?

Answer 5

things people have made to serve a particular function

Question 6

What are the 3 theories on what a concept is?

Answer 6

classical
prototype
theory

Question 7

What is the classical concept view?

Answer 7

that a meaning of a concept can be expressed as the set of attributes that define the concept

Question 8

What is the Hierarchical Network Model in the classical concept view?

Answer 8

the semantic distance effect; retrieval time is determined by the number of links through which activation must spread

Question 9

What are the assumptions of the classical concept view?

Answer 9

• concepts have defining features
• features associated with a concept are entirely arbitrary
• instances are or a not members of a category

Question 10

What is the issue with assuming concepts have defining features?

Answer 10

it is hard to give clear cut definitions or find defining features of a concept

Question 11

What is the issues with assuming arbitrariness of features?

Answer 11

some feature examples are more typical of a concept than others; more typical examples are reacted to more quickly within a given category

Question 12

What is the probabilistic concept view?

Answer 12

there are no defining features, only characteristic ones; a concept is represented as a summary of the features typical of that concept

Question 13

What are the three categories developed by Rosch?

Answer 13

superordinate; general category
basic level; specific category
subordinate; specific type within that category

Question 14

What are the problems with the probabilistic view?

Answer 14

• combination of concepts is difficult
• categories are based on more than just features; needs, goals, interests
• concepts are not just the sum of attributes, it is the relationship between the attributes also

Question 15

What is Medin’s theory of concepts?

Answer 15

psychological essentialism; people act as though concepts have essences and underlying natures when they in fact can consist of just a set of exemplars

Question 16

What are the 3 theories on how words are recognised?

Answer 16

direct access
indirect access
dual-route

Question 17

What is the direct access hypothesis?

Answer 17

visual information is processed directly into meaning

Question 18

What is an issue with the direct access hypothesis?

Answer 18

we wouldn’t be able to read aloud non words and would have difficult with irregular words

Question 19

What is the indirect access hypothesis?

Answer 19

letter strings are sounded out phonologically and processed into meaning

Question 20

What is the dual-route hypothesis?

Answer 20

the use of either direct or indirect processing; whichever can be achieved quicker

Question 21

What factors can affect ability to read a word?

Answer 21

spelling to sound regularity
frequency a word occurs
semantic priming

Question 22

How does spelling to sound regularity affect reading?

Answer 22

irregular words take longer to read aloud

Question 23

How does the frequency a word is used affect reading?

Answer 23

more frequently used words are recognised more quickly (perhaps as units); shown by shorter eye fixation time

Question 24

How does semantic priming affect reading?

Answer 24

people are better at making a lexical decision when given a one word context

Question 25

What is Morton’s Logogen Model?

Answer 25

every known word has an associated logogen

a certain level of activation of the logogen is required for recognition

Question 26

How does activation of a logogen affect recognition of a word?

Answer 26

more frequent words have lower thresholds

more recently used words have lower thresholds

Question 27

What is the Dual-Route Model?

Answer 27

there are two routes for reading; lexical and sub-lexical, both are taken and the faster route wins

Question 28

What is the purpose of the lexical route?

Answer 28

for reading irregular words; uses memory

Question 29

What is the purpose of the sub-leixcal route?

Answer 29

for reading non-words; uses a set of known rules

Question 30

What evidence is there for two-routes?

Answer 30

non-words cannot be pronounced by the lexical route and irregular words cannot be pronounced by the sub-lexical route

Question 31

What is dyslexia?

Answer 31

an impaired ability to read that cannot be explained by visual impairment, low intelligence or motivation

Question 32

What is acquired dyslexia?

Answer 32

people who had developed a typical reading ability by lost it

Question 33

What is developmental dyslexia?

Answer 33

people in whom the ability to read has never properly developed

Question 34

What is surface dyslexia?

Answer 34

impaired ability to read irregular words; overregularisation (in tact sub-lexical route)

Question 35

What is phonological dyslexia?

Answer 35

impaired ability to read non-words (in tact lexical route)

Question 36

What issues are there with making inferences?

Answer 36

can make us believe we have remembered information that was never presented to us in the first place; verbatim memory is notoriously unreliable

Question 37

What is Bartlett’s Schema Theory?

Answer 37

memory is determined not only by what is presented but also by prior knowledge a person brings

Question 38

What is Piaget’s theory on language?

Answer 38

developmentally, thought precedes language, language requires the construction of an underlying conceptual structure

Question 39

What is Vygotsky’s theory on language?

Answer 39

developmentally, language precedes thought, thought is a form of inner, self-directed speech

Question 40

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of language?

Answer 40

speakers of different languages use markedly different grammars which point them towards different observations

Question 41

What are the Whorfianism degrees?

Answer 41

linguistic determinism

linguistic relativism

Question 42

What is linguistic determinism?

Answer 42

language determines thought, different languages incorporate different world views

Question 43

What is linguistic relativism?

Answer 43

language biases our perception of the world, native language influences the way its speakers think of and perceive the world

Question 44

What is the implication of Whorfianism degrees?

Answer 44

fundamental categories are not in the world, but are imposed by ones culture and can be challenged

Question 45

What did Heider discover?

Answer 45

despite the lack of labels for colours other people may have (e.g. the Dani tribe), everyone has the same categorical representation

Question 46

What did Roberson et al. discover?

Answer 46

people with fewer categories for colours perceive the colours in those categories as more similar than people who have more categories e.g. Berinmo people

Question 47

What evidence is there for concept without language?

Answer 47

deaf adults are found to have concepts even when they lack language
human babies and monkeys can represent concepts in the absence of language
people with speech and language deficits do not show impaired thinking and reasoning

Question 48

What is Pinker’s theory on language and thought?

Answer 48

people do not think in their spoken language but in ‘mentalese’

Question 49

How does ‘mentalese’ relate to spoken language?

Answer 49

knowing a language is knowing how to translate ‘mentalese’ into strings of words and vice versa

Question 50

What is the concept of synonymy?

Answer 50

several sentences can refer to the same event