Unit 8 Thinking and Language Flashcards
cognition
the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
concept
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
prototype
a mental image or 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 to a prototypical bird,
such as a robin).
chair=shinji chair
algorithm
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.
heuristic
a simple thinking strategy
that often allows us to make judgments
and solve problems efficiently; usually
speedier but also more error-prone than
algorithms.
insight
a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it
contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
confirmation bias
a tendency to
search for information that supports our
preconceptions and to ignore or distort
contradictory evidence
fixation
the inability to see a problem
from a new perspective, by employing a
different mental set.
mental set
a tendency to approach a
problem in one particular way, often a
way that has been successful in the past.
functional fixedness
the tendency to
think of things only in terms of their
usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.
representativeness heuristic
judging
the likelihood of things in terms of how
well they seem to represent, or match,
particular prototypes; may lead us to
ignore other relevant information.
availability heuristic
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.
overconfidence
the tendency to be
more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and
judgments.
belief perseverance
clinging to one’s
initial conceptions after the basis on
which they were formed has been
discredited.
intuition
an effortless, immediate,
automatic feeling or thought, as
contrasted with explicit, conscious
reasoning.
framing
the way an issue is posed;
how an issue is framed can significantly
affect decisions and judgments.
language
our spoken, written, or
signed words and the ways we combine
them to communicate meaning.
phoneme
in language, the smallest
distinctive sound unit.
morpheme
in a language, the smallest
unit that carries meaning; may be a
word or a part of a word (such as a
prefix).
grammar
in a language, a system of
rules that enables us to communicate
with and understand others.
semantics
the set of rules by which
we derive meaning from morphemes,
words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning.
syntax
the rules for combining words
into grammatically sensible sentences in
a given language.
babbling stage
beginning at about 4
months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously
utters various sounds at first unrelated
to the household language.
one-word stage
the stage in speech
development, from about age 1 to 2,
during which a child speaks mostly in
single words.
two-word stage
beginning about age
2, the stage in speech development
during which a child speaks mostly twoword statements.
telegraphic speech
early speech
stage in which a child speaks like a
telegram—“go car”—using mostly nouns
and verbs
aphasia
impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage
either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing
understanding).
Broca’s area
controls language
expression—an area of the frontal lobe,
usually in the left hemisphere, that
directs the muscle movements involved
in speech.
Wernicke’s area
controls language
reception—a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression;
usually in the left temporal lobe.
linguistic determinism
Whorf’s
hypothesis that language determines
the way we think.
