Lecture Chapter 8 Flashcards
Thinking
Mental activities (conscious and non conscious) used to form judgements, reason, evaluate, solve problems, and act
What is thinking intimately tied to?
Learning, memory, and emotion
How do we study thinking?
Content of thoughts: mental representation
Types of mental representation
Analog, symbolic
Analog
Capture some characteristics of that which they represent
Symbolic
Bear none of the characteristics of that which they represent
T/F: organization is shaped by experience
True
Symbols
Simple (ex. beer and wine)
Complex: (ex. weekend out means drinking and driving which is dangerous)
Cognitive economizing
Once node is activated, similar/linked info also activates
Ways of using information
Problem solving and decision making
Problem-solving
Identifying what steps need to be taken or what needs to be done to achieve a desired outcome
Decision-making
Using existing knowledge/evidence to make decisions about an action
What should we do when making decisions?
Weigh all potential outcomes, assess likelihood of each outcome, and assess risk of each outcome
T/F: we don’t rely on shortcuts to make decisions
False
T/F: we use symbols to fill in gaps when info is missing
True
Do we like having options?
Yes lol
Are more options better for decision making?
Naur (no)
Availability heuristic
Using ease of retrieval to generate frequency estimates
When are availability heuristics common?
When decisions rely on evaluations of frequency
T/F: we can remember all situations but still use availability heuristics to form conclusions
False, we use availability heuristics because we cannot remember all situations
Are availability heuristics immune from errors?
No
Example of availability heuristic
Doctors who encounter an unusual illness are more likely to order tests for that illness on other patients following that patient
Language building blocks
Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, prosody, and pragmatics
Phonemes
Smallest unit of sound
How many phonemes do most languages contain?
A few dozen
T/F: all phonemes overlap across languages
False
How do we study what babies know?
Babies will suck more on a pacifier when interested and when they are less interested they will stop sucking. Known as the “habituation paradigm”
Who can perceive most and perhaps all phonemes sound in human language?
Infants
Morpheme
The smallest meaningful combination of sounds in a language
Words
Arbitrary symbols with referents or meanings assigned to them by users
Syntax
Rules of how you put morphemes together to form meaning
T/F: syntax does depend on meaning
False, it depends on rules and organization
Prosody
Melody to convey meaning
What is it called when we speak to infants and dogs in a higher pitched voice?
Parentese
Pragmatics
Rules regarding how we use language to get what we want
T/F: pragmatics differs among cultures
True
Our ability to learn language is due to _______
More nature than nurture
Is cognitive economizing good?
Yes
Within each building block there is
comprehension component and production component
How do we combine and use the blocks to convey and understand meaning?
Semantics
2 main theories about how we learn meaning and reference
Definitional Theory of Meaning, Prototype Theory of Meaning
Definitional Theory of Meaning
The full meaning of each word is captured by required set of features
Prototype Theory of Meaning
The members of a set or category that captures the greatest number of category features is used as word exemplar
Advantages of Definitional Theory of Meaning
A thing either fits or doesn’t fit the definition, no in-between
Disadvantages of Definitional Theory of Meaning
doesn’t capture the fact that some members are better exemplars of category than others
Advantages of Prototype Theory of Meaning
provides insight into how we conceive of overlapping ideas and objects
Disadvantages of the Prototype Theory of Meaning
many words have no clear mental images or prototype but still have meaning
What do kids know very early on in development?
Recursion
Recursion
the combination of sentences into one
Reference
each word stands for something
Semantic Underextension
Daddy refers only to my father and school refers only to my sisters classroom
Semantic Overextension
Making the meaning too broad
Ex. fly = all small insects
Syntactic Overregularization
Kicked, played → goed
Dogs, cats → sheeps
How do children learn language from a nurture perspective?
Imitation and conditioning
How do children learn language from a nature perspective?
We are born with an innate capacity to acquire language
