PSYD13 Delkurs 1 - Language and Thinking Flashcards
Mental representations?
Images, ideas, concepts and principles
Define language?
A system of symbols and rules for combining these symbols in ways that can generate an infinite number of possible messages and meanings
Psycholinguistics?
The scientific study of the psychological aspects of language
Grammar?
The set of rules that dictate how symbols can be combined to create meaningful units of communication
Syntax?
The rules that govern the order of words, i.e. specifies the grammatical rules for combining words into sentences. Implicit for your mothertounge and also children
Example of syntax error?
The cats won’t eating
Semantics?
The meaning of words and sentences
Generativity?
The symbols of language can be combined to generate an infinite number of messages that have novel meaning
Displacement?
Language allows us to communicate about events and objects that are not physically present
Surface structure?
Consists of the symbols that are used and their order
Deep structure?
The underlying meaning of the combined symbols
Phoneme?
The smallest unit of sound that is recognised as separate in a given language, i.e. shortest segment of speech. Ex. log vs dog - the first letter = smallest unit of sound
Morpheme?
The smallest unit of language that has meaning or grammatical function, ex. “s” in english at the end of a noun = plural = morpheme
What is the hierarchy of language?
From inferior to superior: phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentence -> discourse
Discourse?
Where sentences are combined into paragraphs, articles, books, conversations, and so forth
Bottom-up processing
Individual elements of a stimulus are analysed and then combined to form a unified perception
Top-down processing?
Sensory information is interpreted in light of existing knowledge, concepts, ideas and expectations
Speech segmentation
Perceiving where each word within a spoken sentence begins and ends
What is the segmentation problem?
We cannot perceive each sound in a sentence because of silence in between sounds, ex. listening to a foreign language, or “I scream” vs “Ice cream”
Mental lexicon?
Our mental store of information about words. It consists of semantic information, syntactic information and details of words form (spelling and sound)
What is the Interactive Activation Competition model?
Is a model that shows that information flows up from feature level -> letter level-> word level, but also down from words to letters and letters to feature
Pragmatics?
Knowledge of the practical aspects of using language, is another example that shows the importance of top-down processing for language
Language acquisition device (LAD)?
An innate biological mechanism that contains the general grammatical rules (‘universal grammar’) common to all languages
Language acquisition support system (LASS)?
Factors in the social environment that facilitate the learning of a language
What conclusion can be drawn about the difference between human language and animal communication?
Humans can create new ideas and completely new sentences. Yes, Nim Chimpsky could “learn” words, but couldn’t combine symbols or create new sentences!
Define human language with 5 parts
1) Symbolic 2) Structured 3) Conveys meaning 4) Generative 5) Permits displacement
Does bilingualism affect other cognitive abilities?
It seems that bilingual children perform better in attention inhibiting tasks, because they have learnt how to consciously use selective attention to inhibit one set of responses while making other responses
What is the problem with research around bilingualism?
Publication bias, i.e. significant results have better chance of being published than non-significant results (null), which can have lead to a biased presentation of evidence
Null effect?
A non-significant finding, or one that does not support the hypothesis
Linguistic relativity hypothesis?
Language not only influences but also determines what we are capable of thinking
Propositional thought?
Expresses a proposition, or statement
Imaginal thought?
Images that we can see, hear or feel in our mind
Motoric thought?
Mental representations of motor movements
Propositions?
Statements that express ideas
Concepts?
Basic units of semantic memory - mental categories into which we place objects, activities, abstractions and events that have essential features in common
Prototypes?
The most typical and familiar members of a category or class
Deductive reasoning?
Conditional syllogisms (from general statements to a specific conclusion), i.e. from theory to confirmation by observation
Inductive reasoning?
Reasoning from the bottom up, starting with specific facts and trying to develop a general principle
What are 3 stumbling blocks in reasoning?
- Distraction by irrelevant information 2. Belief bias 3. Emotions and framing
Belief bias?
The tendency to abandon logical rules in favour of our own personal beliefs
Framing? (Risk aversion and risk seeking)
The idea that the same information, problem or options can be structured and presented in different ways, ex. when you have program A (200 saved) and B (400 killed) - its the same program but framed differently.
Mental set?
The tendency to stick to solutions that have worked in the past, note that mental set can be an obstacle in problemsolving
Problem-solving schemas?
Mental blueprints or step-by-step scripts for selecting information and solving specialised classes of problems
Algorithms?
Formulas or procedures that automatically generate correct solutions
Heuristics?
General problem-solving strategies that we apply to certain classes of situations
Means-ends analysis?
Identify differences between the present situation and the desired state, or goal, and then make changes that will reduce these differences
Subgoal analysis?
Formulating subgoals, or intermediate steps, towards a solution
Representative heuristic?
How closely something or someone fits our prototype for a particular concept, or class, and therefore how likely it is to be a member of that class - closely related to stereotypes
Law of large numbers?
Larger number of cases randomly drawn from a population, the more representative
Availability heuristic?
Causes us to base judgements and decisions on the availability of information in memory, i.e. events that are easily accessed from memory are often judged as more frequent, ex. people overestimate causes of death in US caused by what is shown in media
Confirmation bias?
Tending to look for evidence that will confirm what we currently believe rather than looking for evidence that could disconfirm our beliefs
Overconfidence?
The tendency to overestimate one’s correctness in factual knowledge, beliefs and decisions
Schema?
A mental framework, an organised pattern of thought about some aspect of the world
Script?
A mental framework concerning sequence of events that usually unfolds in a regular almost standardised order
Mental image?
A representation of a stimulus that originates inside your brain, rather than from external sensory input, ex. imagining an apple!
Metakognition?
Your awareness and understanding of your own cognitive abilities, i.e. thoughts about thoughts
Broca’s aphasia?
Frontal lobe lesion!
- Grammatical errors, difficulties producing language, hard to produce full sentences, only say adjectives or automatised sentences such as “I don’t know”, slow speech
- Not only trouble producing language but also comprehension of language that requires syntax
Wernicke’s aphasia
Temporal lobe lesion (in Wernicke’s area)
- No trouble producing language, however trouble with comprehension/understanding the semantic meaning
- The speech of patients with Wernicke’s Aphasia “is often meaningless and often contains semantic errors”. In other words, what they’re saying doesn’t make any sense
- Jargon = creates words/concepts that doesn’t exist
How can language affect how we perceive things, like for example colour?
In russia they have more words for shades of blue than we have, and therefore can differentiate between shades of blue that we cannot
What is Whorf’s linguistic hypothesis?
That we cannot understand all the thoughts of another person that speaks another language
