Language and Thought Flashcards
Cognition
The mental process involved in acquiring knowledge
Language
Symbols that convey meaning plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages.
Properties of Language
- Symbolic (representative of something)
- Semantic (meaningful)
- Generative (combine phonemes in unique ways)
- Structured (rules to language)
Phoneme
Basic sounds that make up language. Smallest denominators. About 100 exist, 40 are used in English.
Morpheme
Smallest units of meaning
Semantics
The area of language concerned with understanding the meaning of words and word combinations
Connotation
A word’s emotional overtone and context usage
Denotation
A word’s dictionary definition
Syntax
A language’s usage rules
Fast Mapping
Understanding the word and it’s underpinning after exposure to it just once
Overextentions
When a child incorrectly uses a words to describe a wider set of objects or actions
Underextentions
When a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of objects or actions than it is meant to.
Telegraphic Speech
Consists mainly of content words. Articles, prepositions and other less critical words are omitted.
Overregularizations
Occur when grammatical rules are incorrectly generalized to irregular cases where they do not apply
Metalinguistic Awareness
the ability to reflect on the use of language
Bilingualism
Using two languages that use different speech sounds, vocabulary and grammatical rules.
3 factors of influence on Language acquisition
- Age
- Acculturation (immersion. e.g. learning french in Paris vs in Toronto)
- Learner’s motivation and attitude towards the target group
3 types of Problems
- Problems of inducing structure
- Problems of arrangement
- Problems of transformation
Barriers to Problem Solving
- Irrelevant information
- Functional Fixedness (stuck on item’s common use)
- Mental Set (using strategies that worked in the past)
- Unnecessary constraints
Approaches to Problem Solving
- Trial and Error
- Algorithms
- Heuristics
- Subgoals
- Working backwardsto
- Searching for Analogies
- Changing representation of the problem
- Incubation (eliza voice take a break!)
Availability heauristic
Faulty descision making due to drawing on experiences to calculate probability
Representativeness heuristic
what we think is representative
conjunction fallacy
odds of two unvertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone (rooted in representativeness heuristic)
Behavioural Economics
field of study that examines the effects of human’ actual decision making processes over the idealized ones
