Language & Thought (Module 4 Ch 9) Flashcards
Memorize before 11/14
Cognitive Miser
Humans are cognitively lazy (we don’t want to use our cognitive resources if we don’t have to)
This can lead to poor decisions, but is also positively correlated with happiness
Reasoning
The process of drawing inferences from evidence
Inductive Reasoning
Drawing general conclusions from specific evidence
Tends to be less accurate
This is the reasoning detectives use
Casual Inferences
Judgements about causation used in inductive reasoning
Deductive Reasoning
Going from general statements (that we know to be true) and combining them to get specific ideas (which must also then be true)
Syntax vs Grammar
Rules for how we arrange words in sentences in order to create meaning
VS
General language rules that have no ties to meaning (including verb agreement, plurals, and possessives)
Who was Genie?
Grew up in an abusive household and didn’t learn to speak until she was about 12
Shifted our understanding of language from a critical to sensitive period
Homesign
A type of personalized sign language that occurs when deaf children are born to hearing parents (absence of known/formal sign language)
What are the 3 rules of identifying something as a language?
Symbolic - words or sounds represent non-tangible or abstract concepts
Generative - small number of symbols, but infinite number of words or messages
Structured - rules make the infinite creations understandable
Protolanguage
AKA Pre-Language
Rudimentary language used by early species of humans
Semantics
The different types of meanings behind words
Denotation vs Connotation
The dictionary definition of a word
VS
How you personally understand a word (ex: slang)
Sociocultural Acquisition Theory
Focuses on observational and interactional language learning from those around us
Helps us build our vocabularies and connotations as we grow up
Child-directed Speech
Universal changes in adult speech patterns (such as pitch, volume, and complexity of sentences) that occur when talking to young kids
Behaviorist Acquisition Theory
Defined by BF Skinner - language is learned through operant conditioning, with positive interactions with parents serving as the reinforcement
Nativist Acquisition Theory
Defined by Chomsky - language is an innate skill for humans rather than one learned through experience
Language Acquisition Device
A biologic directive that facilitates speech
Part of the nativist theory
Interactionist Acquisition Theory
Use a combination of sociocultural, behaviorist, and nativist theories to explain the acquisition of language
What are the five components of language?
Phonemes, Morphemes, Receptive Vocabulary, Productive Vocabulary, Telegraphic Speech
Phonemes
The sounds used for language
Smallest unit of speech
Do not have meaning by themselves
Morphemes
Smallest units of meaning
Prefixes, suffixes, and root words
Receptive Vocab vs Productive Vocab
The words we understand
VS
The words we actually use
Receptive always > productive
Telegraphic Speech
The way that children begin understanding and using language by combining a simple subject with a simple verb
Neural Commitment
Kids can discriminate phonetic sounds outside their native language until about 12 months, when the neural networks in the language areas of the brain wire/commit themselves to one language
Stages of Language development
Cooing (vowel sounds), Babbling (consonants+vowels), One-word Utterances, Two-word Utterances, Sentence Phase
Overextension vs Underextension
Using a word more liberally than it should
VS
Using a word more conservatively than it should
Overregularization
Applying regular grammar rules to irregular examples
Ex: saying gooses instead of geese
Field Dependence vs Field Independence
Relying on the context of a situation in order to solve the problem
VS
Ignoring the context of a situation in order to solve the problem
Eastern societies tend to us Dep. while Western tends to use Indep.
Irrelevant Information
Getting distracted by information that isn’t important when trying to solve a problem
Functional Fixedness
Having a hard time seeing an unusual function of an everyday object when solving a problem
Unnecessary Constraints
We put constraints on problems even when they aren’t actually there
Anticipated Regret
When we do or don’t make a certain decision because we think we’ll regret it later, even if we won’t
People are bad at predicting when they’ll feel regret
Theory of Bounded Rationality
Focusing on one or two aspects of a decision rather than all aspects of it, leading to illogical decision making
Conjunction Fallacy
Thinking two traits are more likely to occur together (being a feminist and a cat owner) than they occur individually (being just a feminist vs just a cat owner), even though it’s statistically inaccurate
Recognition Heuristic
Making a decision based on the option we recognize rather than facts or logic
Availability Heuristic
Making decisions based on the information that more easily comes to mind
Hindsight Bias
Once we know the outcome of an event, we think we always believed in that outcome
Affect Heuristic
People are more likely to make decisions based on emotions than logic or reason
Alternative Outcomes Effect
Thinking past random events will have an impact on future random events
AKA the Gambler’s Fallacy
Anchoring Heuristic
Making our decisions based off of other’s decisions that we’ve previously heard
Occurs because we don’t want to be wrong or rejected
Confirmation Bias
You process and remember information that agrees with you, and ignore or forget information that disagrees with you
Overconfidence
We have more trust or confidence in the accuracy of our decision making than we probably should
Ostrich Bias
Ignoring negative information and focusing on the positive (more optimistic view than we should)
Linguistic Determinism Hypothesis
Language determines our way of thinking and our perceptions of the world
Mental Representation
A structure in the mind (idea or image) that stands for something else (usually something external that cannot currently be sensed)
Visual Imagery
Visual representations created by the brain after the stimulus is no longer present
The “mind’s eye”
Mental Rotation
Imagining an object rotating in 3-D space
Category
Grouping ideas, objects, or events together based off of perceived similar features and the treating them as if they are the same
Ex: birds
Prototypes
The best-fitting examples of a category
Ex: “robin” can be representative of “birds” more accurately than “ostrich” or “penguin”
Concept
Mental grouping of objects, events, or people based on similarities
Mental representations of categories
Ex: animals is a category but animal is a concept
Concept Hierarchy
Looking at how concepts are related to one another in particular ways (broad or specific)
