Week 12: Language, Language Use, and Development

Question 1

Learning Objectives:

Define basic terms used to describe language use.

Describe the process by which people can share new information by using language.

Characterize the typical content of conversation and its social implications.

Characterize psychological consequences of language use and give an example.

Question 2

language is ubiquitous

Answer 2

Existing or being everywhere at the same time

Question 3

Common ground

Answer 3

Information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation.

Question 4

audience design

Answer 4

Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge.

Question 5

Lexicons

Answer 5

Words and expressions

Question 6

Syntax

Answer 6

Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences.

Question 7

Language Situational Models

Answer 7

A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.

Question 8

Priming

Answer 8

The activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon

Question 9

__%–__% of everyday conversation, for both men and women, turned out to be gossip

Answer 9

60% to 70%

*People talk about themselves and others whom they know.
*humans can communicate and share their representations of their social world through gossip

Question 10

Ingroup

Answer 10

Group to which a person belongs

Question 11

Outgroup

Answer 11

Group to which a person does not belong.

Question 12

genera with larger neocortex

Answer 12

Part of the brain that supports higher-order cognition

Question 13

Social Brain Hypothesis
Dunbar

Answer 13

The hypothesis is that the human brain has evolved so that humans can maintain larger ingroups.

*language and human sociality are inseparable.

Question 14

Linguistic Intergroup Bias
By Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin (1989)

Answer 14

A tendency for people to characterize positive things about their ingroup using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expressions.

Question 15

social networks

Answer 15

Networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel.

Question 16

amygdala

Answer 16

brain structure that is critically involved in the processing of negative emotions such as fear

Question 17

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 17

The hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts.

*habitual uses of language can influence our habit of thought and action.

Question 18

On Monday morning, Chad asks Jason, “Did you see that amazing game yesterday?” Chad assumes that Jason knows which game he is talking about. This assumption of shared information is called ______in language.

Answer 18

common ground

Question 19

When he is talking to his best friend, Tom says, “Damon and I are going out for dinner.” When he is talking to a stranger, Tom says, “My partner Damon and I are going out to dinner.” Crafting what you say based on the knowledge of the person you are speaking to is called ______.

Answer 19

audience design

Question 20

The rules for how we arrange words and expressions together to communicate in a meaningful and understandable way are called the ______of language.

Answer 20

syntax

Question 21

Consider these two sentences: “The boy was sick from eating so much ice cream,” and, “That boy ate so much ice cream, it made him sick.” These sentences have similar ______but different syntax.

Answer 21

lexicons

Question 22

Evelyn meets Dee from Australia and is very attentive to Dee’s accent. If Evelyn is like most people, what will she start doing?

Answer 22

She will start mimicking the accent in conversations with Dee without realizing it.

Question 23

______occurs when thinking about one concept causes you to think about other related concepts.

Answer 23

Priming

Question 24

The basic notion that the language used by a given group of people has a significant impact on how they think is called the ______hypothesis, after its original founder(s).

Answer 24

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Question 25

Learning Objectives:

Explain what theory of mind is.

Enumerate the many domains of social life in which theory of mind is critical.

Describe some characteristics of how individuals diagnosed with autism differ in their processing of others’ minds.

Describe and explain some of the many concepts and processes that comprise the human understanding of minds.

Have a basic understanding of how ordinary people explain unintentional and intentional behavior.

Question 26

Theory of Mind

Answer 26

The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).

*Not really a theory
*“mentalizing” or “mindreading.”

Question 27

list of social interactions that rely deeply on theory of mind

Answer 27

Teaching another person new actions or rules by taking into account what the learner knows or doesn’t know and how one might best make him understand.

Learning the words of a language by monitoring what other people attend to and are trying to do when they use certain words.

Figuring out our social standing by trying to guess what others think and feel about us.
Sharing experiences by telling a friend how much we liked a movie or by showing her something beautiful.

Collaborating on a task by signaling to one another that we share a goal and understand and trust the other’s intention to pursue this joint goal.

Question 28

Theory of mind Pyramid

Answer 28

Mental State Interference

Projection
Simulation

Joint attention
Visual Perspective Taking

Imitation
Mimicry
Automatic Empathy

Identifying Agents
Recognizing Goals
Assessing Intentionality

Question 29

Agent Category
Theory of mind Pyramid

Answer 29

Allows humans to identify those moving objects in the world that can act on their own. Features that even very young children take to be indicators of being an agent include being self-propelled, having eyes, and reacting systematically to the interaction partner’s behavior, such as following gaze or imitating

Question 30

Recognizing Goals
Theory of mind Pyramid

Answer 30

To seek out, track, and often physically contact said objects.

*recognize goals to see the systematic and predictable relationship between a particular agent pursuing a particular object across various circumstances.

Question 31

Intentional

Answer 31

An agent’s mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.

Question 32

Intentionality

Answer 32

The quality of an agent’s performing a behavior intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention (which is in turn based on a desire and relevant beliefs).

Question 33

Imitation

Answer 33

human tendency to carefully observe others’ behaviors and do as they do

Question 34

Mimicry

Answer 34

Copying others’ behavior, usually without awareness.

Question 35

Sychrony

Answer 35

Two people displaying the same behaviors or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).

Question 36

Mirror Neurons

Answer 36

Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.

Question 37

Automatic Empathy

Answer 37

A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person’s expressive behavior and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.

Question 38

Joint Atention

Answer 38

Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.

Question 39

Visual Perspective Taking

Answer 39

Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person’s spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person’s thoughts, desires, emotions).

Question 40

Simulation

Answer 40

The process of representing the other person’s mental state.

Question 41

Projection

Answer 41

A social perceiver’s assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, know, or feels.

Question 42

False Belief Test

Sally ball in a basket
Person moves ball into box when Sally gone
Where Sally think ball is?
Where is ball?

Answer 42

An experimental procedure that assesses whether a perceiver recognizes that another person has a false belief—a belief that contradicts reality.

Question 43

People’s Explenations of Behaviour

Answer 43

People’s natural explanations for why somebody did something, felt something, etc. (differing substantially for unintentional and intentional behaviors)

Question 44

intentional behaviors

Answer 44

Must have a desire for an outcome (what we had called a goal), beliefs about how a particular action leads to the outcome, and an intention to perform that action; if the agent then actually performs the action with awareness and skill, people take it to be an intentional action.

Question 45

An object that can move itself and work toward a goal is known as a(n) ______.

Answer 45

agent

Question 46

Tomas uses a lot of hand gestures when he speaks with Cathy. Soon, Cathy unknowingly begins to use a lot of hand gestures in their conversation, too. This phenomenon is known as ______.

Answer 46

Mimicry

Question 47

At what age do most people start to develop a theory of mind?

Answer 47

fourth year of life

Question 48

The false-belief test is a procedure for determining if a child has developed what?

Answer 48

Explicit mental state inference

Question 49

What tool of theory of mind develops early in childhood and is automatic?

Answer 49

Assessing intentionality