Language and Thought Flashcards
What is language?
system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning
What is grammar?
set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
What are the 3 differences btw human language and animals?
- complex structure
- use words to define intangible things (democracy)
- use language to name, categorize, & describe things
What are phonemes?
smallest units of speech that distinguish one word from another
What are phonological rules?
indicates how phonemes can be combines to form words
What are morphemes?
- Phonemes are combined to form them
- smallest meaningful units of language
What are morphological rules?
indicates how morphemes can be combined to form words
What are the 2 types of morphemes?
- content morphemes: refer to things and events
- function morphemes: serve grammatical functions like tying sentences together
What are syntactic rules?
indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences
What is telegraphic speech?
sentences devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words
What is fast mapping?
in early childhood we can map a word to a concept with just a single exposure
What do critical periods suggest?
that childhood represents critical period for mastering certain aspects of language
What are the stages of language production?
- Babbling stage (4mo, sounds related to home language)
- One word stage (1-2y, single words)
- Two word stage ( 2y+, two-word statements)
- Telegraphic speech (mostly nouns and verbs)
What are Behavioural language explanations? (Skinner)
- we learn to talk the same way we acquire all other skills: reinforcement, shaping, extinction
- what is reinforced remains and what isn’t disappears from child’s repertoire
- maturing kids imitate speech patterns they hear
What is Nativism’s theory of language acquisition? (Chomsky)
- innate biological capacity for language
- brain simply acquires language through exposure to speech
- brain has universal grammar: collection of processes that facilitate language learning
What is genetic dysphasia?
- Inability to learn grammatical structure of language
- no intellectual weakness
What is interactionist theory on language acquisition?
- infants born with innate ability to acquire language
- relies on social development & interaction
- parents tailor their language to simplify language acquisition process (slow, enunciate)
What 2 brain areas deal with language?
Brocka’s area and Wernicke’s area
What condition is damage to Brocka’s area associated with?
Aphasia: difficulty comprehending/producing speech
What is Broca’s area?
- located in the left frontal cortex
- involved in the production of the sequential patterns in vocal and sign languages
What is Broca’s aphasia?
- difficulty in production of verbal language
- reduced functional morphemes
- understanding is relatively intact
- usually speak in short content morphemes
What is Wernicke’s area?
- located in the left temporal cortex
- involved in language comprehension (whether spoken or signed)
What is Wernicke’s Aphasia?
- caused by damage to Wernicke’s area
- can produce grammatical speech, but it tends to be meaningless
- have considerable difficulty comprehending language
What is Linguistic relativity hypothesis?
the idea that language shapes our thought
What are benefits of bilingualism?
tend to have a later onset of Alzheimer’s disease than monolinguals do, reflecting the fact that during their lives they have built up a greater amount of back-up cognitive ability, or “cognitive reserve”
What are limitations to animals learning human language?
- limited vocabularies
- limited conceptual repertoire
- limited understanding of grammar
How do words shape our understanding of sensory information?
- english has biases towards visual/auditory descriptors
- not consistent in many other languages
- english biases away from smell descriptors > consistent with most other languages
What are concept ?
- help to simplify thought
- mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events/other stimuli
What is prototype theory
- we classify objects by comparing the best/most typical member of the category best= archetype most typical= prototype
- prototype would have many of the features associated with that concept
- new items categorized based on similarity to prototypes
What is necessary condition?
something that must be true of the object for it to belong to the category
What is sufficient condition?
something that if it’s true of the object proves it belongs to that category
What is exemplar theory?
- we make category judgements by comparing new stimuli with instances already stored in memory
What are category specific deficits?
- we hold categories of objects in unique areas
- we can lose recognition of single item categories with targeted damage, with recognition of other categories preserved
What is the category specific deficit prosopagnosia?
- inability to recognise faces
- caused by damage to fusiform face area (inferior temporal cortex)
- all other visual recognition is intact
What does damage to the front left part of frontal lobe cause?
difficulty identifying humans
What does damage to the lower left temporal lobe cause?
difficulty identifying animals
What does damage to the region where temporal, occipital and parietal lobes meet cause?
difficulty retrieving name of tools
What suggests that some categories are innate and not learned?
category specific deficits can be acquired prior to language acquisition & life experience
eg. damage to infants brains
what is rational choice theory?
we rely on rational calculations to make choices that result in outcomes aligned with our best interests.
What is availability heuristic?
A rule of thumb that items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
What is heuristic?
fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached
How does availability heuristic affect our estimates?
- because memory strength and frequency are directly related
- frequent items are remembered more easily than infrequent items
What is an algorythm?
a well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem
What is representativeness heuristic?
mental shortcut that estimates the probability of an event based on how similar it is to a known situation
can lead to cognitive biases
What is a conjunction fallacy?
people think that 2 events are more likely to occur together than either individual event
What are framing effects?
when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is framed
What is sunk cost fallacy?
a framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation on the basis of what they have previously invested in the situation
What is optimism bias?
people believe that compared with other individuals they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future
Why does optimism bias occur?
- we want good things to happen in the future
- tend to more vividly imagine positive than negative future events
- we’re more likely to incorporate new positive info into our beliefs that new negative info
What is prospect theory? (Tversky, Kahneman)
- people choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and to avoid risks when evaluating potential gains
- people are more willing to take risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains
- in evaluating choices people compare them with a reference point
What is one assumption of prospect theory?
Certainty effect: when making decisions people give greater weight to outcomes that are a sure thing.
What are humans’ 2 main problems that complicate our lives?
- ill-defined problem: one that doesn’t have a clear goal/ well-defined path to solution
- well-defined problem: one with clearly specified goals and clearly defined solution paths
What is means-end analysis?
process of searching for the means/steps to reduce the differences between current situation and desired goal
What is analogical problem solving?
solve a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem
What is functional fixedness?
tendency to view objects as only working in a particular way
What is reasoning?
organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions
What is belief bias?
people’s judgements about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid
What is syllogistic reasoning?
a conclusion that follows from two statements that are assumed to be true
What is the illusory truth effect?
an error in reasoning that occurs when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge the statement to be true
repeated exposure= increases familiarity of statement
What is illusion of explanatory depth?
when people overestimate the depth of their understanding
