Language & Thought

Question 1

Phoneme

Answer 1

Smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than random noise.
—> Phonological Rules: Set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds.

Question 2

Morphemes

Answer 2

The smallest meaningful units of language.

• –> Morphological Rules: Set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words.
• –> Syntactical Rules: Set of rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences

Question 3

Complex Structures

Answer 3

Deep: Meaning of a sentence
Surface: How a sentence is worded

Question 4

Language Development Characteristics

Answer 4

1) Children learn languages at an astonishing rate.
2) Children make few errors while learning to speak.
3) Children’s passive mastery develops faster than their active mastery.

Question 5

Distinguishing Speech and Sounds (Infants)

Answer 5

Infants can distinguish between all human phonemes before 6 months of age.
Comprehension comes before production.
All infants go through the same babbling sequence (auditory ability is linked)

Question 6

Language Milestones

Answer 6

First words.
- Toddlers learn nouns (concrete objects) before verbs
Fast mapping.
- Fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure
Two-word speech: occurs at around 24 months of age
- Telegraphic speech: speech that is devoid of function morphemes and consists mostly of content words
Children overgeneralize grammar rules.
3 Years of age: Children generate complete simple sentences.
4-5 years of age: many aspects of the language acquisition process are complete

Question 7

Grammatical Rules

Answer 7

Evidence of the ease with which children acquire grammatical rules comes from some interesting errors that children make while forming sentences.

• Incorrect verb forms (“I want to jumping ___”)
• Overgeneralizations (“wented to the mall”)

Question 8

Language Development

Answer 8

General cognitive development (brain delays, etc.) or experience with a specific language (emphasis of certain emotions/concepts in certain languages).

Question 9

Behaviourist Explanations

Answer 9

State that language is learned through operant conditioning and imitation.
However,
- parents spend little time teaching language
- children generate more than simply what they hear
- the errors made cannot be explained through conditioning or imitation

Question 10

Nativist Explanations

Answer 10

Language is innate.

• Theory: Language development is best explained as an innate biological capacity.
• LAD: Collection of processes that facilitate language learning
• Genetic Dysphasia: syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language, despite having otherwise normal intelligence.

Question 11

Puberty

Answer 11

Language is harder to learn after puberty.
LA possible during a restricted period of development.
Second language learned in early childhood results in different brain representations than when learned later.

Question 12

Interactionist Explanations

Answer 12

Social interactions play a crucial role in language.
Social experience interacts with innate, biological language abilities.
EX: Nicaraguan deaf children’s sign language; innate ability to dissect social experiences and organize experiences

Question 13

Broca’s Area

Answer 13

Left frontal cortex; Language PROduction

Question 14

Wernicke’s Area

Answer 14

Left temporal cortex; language COMprehension

Question 15

Aphasia

Answer 15

Difficulty in producing or comprehending language

Aphasia can be in either area.

Question 16

Right Hemisphere

Answer 16

Contributes to language abilities.
Damage = some problems with comprehension
Activated during language tasks.

Question 17

Bilingualism

Answer 17

Learning a second language seems to increase the ability of the left parietal lobe to handle linguistic demands.
Makes brain matter more dense

Question 18

Non-human species

Answer 18

Ape vocal tracts not well equipped.
Limitations in size of vocab, types of words, complexity.
Success with ASL and computerized keyboards

Question 19

Linguistic Relativity

Answer 19

Language shapes the nature of thought; Sapir-Whorf

However, some researchers reject the idea that language ENTIRELY determines thought.

Question 20

Language and Time

Answer 20

Horizontal vs. Vertical concepts of time

Question 21

Concept

Answer 21

Mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, and stimuli

Question 22

Necessary Condition

Answer 22

Something that must be true of the object to belong to the category

Question 23

Sufficient Condition

Answer 23

Something that if it is true, proves the object is part of the category

Question 24

Family Resemblance Theory

Answer 24

Members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members.
Not featured in every member.

Question 25

Prototype Theory

Answer 25

People make category judgments by comparing new instances to the category's prototype

Question 26

Exemplar Theory

Answer 26

People make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category

Question 27

Brain Regions

Answer 27

Left hemisphere & visual cortex for Prototype. Right hemisphere & prefrontal cortex & basal ganglia for Exemplars. Prototype formation is more holistic, where exemplars is similar to decision making.

Question 28

Category-specific deficit

Answer 28

Inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category; ability to recognize objects outside that category remains. Categorizing is an evolutionary or genetic adaptation important for humans.

Question 29

Brain Areas activated

Answer 29

Regardless of sight ability, categories of things such as animals and tools are activated in the same place in both groups.

Question 30

Rational Choice Theory

Answer 30

Classical view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

Question 31

Irrational Reality

Answer 31

People are good at estimating frequency of an event. Harder to think in actual probabilities. When asking advice, use frequencies rather than probabilities.

Question 32

Availability Bias/Heuristics

Answer 32

Fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making, does not guarantee a solution will be reached.

Question 33

Availability Bias

Answer 33

Items more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently.

Question 34

Algorithm

Answer 34

Well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem

Question 35

Conjunction Fallacy

Answer 35

When people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either as an individual event.

Question 36

Representativeness Heuristic

Answer 36

Making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event

Question 37

Framing Effects

Answer 37

When people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed)

Question 38

Sunk-cost Fallacy

Answer 38

People make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation. - Loss Aversion

Question 39

Optimism Bias

Answer 39

Human decision making often reflects the effects of optimism bias, whereby positive events are expected more than negative ones.

Question 40

Prospect Theory

Answer 40

People choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains. (More likely to be risky if they are going to lose something)

Question 41

Decision Making and the Brain

Answer 41

People with prefrontal lobe damage do not show emotional reactions during risky decision making.

Question 42

SMART Design

Answer 42

``` Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Timely ```

Question 43

Means-end analysis

Answer 43

Process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal. **All endeavors should be based on trying to increase knowledge.

Question 44

Analogical Problem Solving

Answer 44

Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem.

Question 45

Insights

Answer 45

Involve spontaneous restructuring of a problem or unconscious incremental processes. Different brain activity shown with problems solved by SUDDEN insight, vs. deliberate strategies.

Question 46

Functional Fixedness

Answer 46

Tendency to perceive the functions of objects as fixed

Question 47

Genius and Insight

Answer 47

Friedrich Gauss | Use depths of frontal lobe

Question 48

Sudden Insight and Brain

Answer 48

Difference in subjective experience between sudden insight, and analytic strategies. Compound associates task. Insight solvers had brain activity 1/3 second before making choice

Question 49

Insightful Strategies

Answer 49

More likely to be creative the more the problem is shown. More often used by people with more-positive moods. Usually right-brain activity

Question 50

Reasoning

Answer 50

Mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions. Practical: Figuring out what to do, or reasoning directed towards ACTION Theoretical/Discursive: Reasoning directed towards arriving at a BELIEF

Question 51

Belief Bias

Answer 51

People's judgments about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are, rather than whether the arguments are logically valid. Syllogistic Reasoning: Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true

Question 52

Illusion of Explanatory Depth

Answer 52

Overestimation of depth of understanding; can occur as a consequence of attempting to generate detailed explanations