Psychology Chapter 9: Cognition and Language

Question 1

cognition

Answer 1

the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 2

concept

Answer 2

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Question 3

protype

Answer 3

a mental image or a best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures and the prototypical bird, such as a robin.)

Question 4

algorithm

Answer 4

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier- but also more error-prone- use of heuristics

Question 5

heurisitic

Answer 5

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more prone than algorithms

Question 6

insight

Answer 6

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution, contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Question 7

confirmation bias

Answer 7

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Question 8

mental set

Answer 8

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Question 9

intuition

Answer 9

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Question 10

availability heuristic

Answer 10

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Question 11

belief perseverance

Answer 11

clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the bias on which they have been formed is discredited

Question 12

framing

Answer 12

the way an issues is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

Question 13

language

Answer 13

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Question 14

phoneme

Answer 14

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Question 15

morpheme

Answer 15

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)`

Question 16

grammar

Answer 16

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Question 17

babbling stage

Answer 17

beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household usage

Question 18

one-word stage

Answer 18

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Question 19

two-word stage

Answer 19

beginning at about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Question 20

telegraphic speech

Answer 20

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - “go car”- using mostly nouns and verbs

Question 21

aphasia

Answer 21

impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage to either Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding)

Question 22

Broca’s area

Answer 22

controls language expression- a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

Question 23

linguistic determinism

Answer 23

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Question 24

overconfidence

Answer 24

the tendency to be more confident than correct- to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements