Week 8 (Language & Thought)

Question 1

Language is symbolic

Answer 1

We use spoken sounds and written words to represent
objects, actions, and ideas

Question 2

Language is semantic

Answer 2

It has meaning

Question 3

Language is generative

Answer 3

A language’s limited symbols can generate an infinite
variety of messages

Question 4

Language is structured

Answer 4

Rules govern how words can be arranged into sentences

Question 5

Phoneme

Answer 5

The smallest speech units in a language that can
be distinguished perceptually
▫ English is composed of ~40

Question 6

Morphemes:

Answer 6

The smallest units of meaning in a language
▫ Un-wise-ly

Question 7

Semantics

Answer 7

Area of language
concerned with
understanding
the meaning of
words and word
combinations
▫ Meanings might
be concerned
with denotation
and connotation

Question 8

Syntax

Answer 8

A system of rules that
specify how words can
be arranged into
sentences

Question 9

critical periods

Answer 9

Limited time span in an organism’s development
where it is optimal for certain capacities to emerge
because the organism is especially responsive to
certain experiences

Question 10

Up to 3 months of age

Answer 10

Babies have high phonemic awareness – they can
readily discriminate between phonemes in
language
▫ This high level of awareness disappears at 4-12
months

Question 11

6+ months

Answer 11

Infants start babbling, producing sounds that
correspond to phonemes and moving towards
consonant vowel combinations
▫ Becomes more complex and eventually resembles
the parents’ language
▫ Lasts until ~18 months
▫ Deaf infants: manual babbling

Question 12

At ~10-13 months of age

Answer 12

First words
Typically resemble the syllables that they
spontaneously babble
▫ Vocabulary starts to slowly grow

Question 13

18 months of age

Answer 13

Toddlers can typically say between 3-50 word
Receptive vocabulary is larger than their
productive vocabulary
▫ These words tend to mostly refer to objects,
followed by social actions

Question 14

18-24 months of age

Answer 14

Vocabulary spurt starts
By grade 1, the average child has a vocabulary of
~10,000 words
▫ By grade 5, this increases to ~40,000
▫ For some two-year olds, this means learning 20 new
words/week

Question 15

Fast mapping

Answer 15

the process by which children map a
word onto a concept after only one exposure

Question 16

Overextension

Answer 16

occurs when a child incorrectly uses a
word to describe a larger set of objects or actions than
is meant to

Question 17

Underextension

Answer 17

a child incorrectly uses a word to
describe a narrower set of objects than is meant to

Question 18

just under 2 years of age

Answer 18

combining words into
sentences

Question 19

telegraphic speech

Answer 19

consist mainly of content words, with other less
critical words omitted

Question 20

3 year of age

Answer 20

children learn to express more
complex ideas like the plural and past tense

Question 21

Overregularization

Answer 21

occurs when grammatical
rules are incorrectly generalized to irregular cases

Question 22

metalinguistic awareness

Answer 22

The ability to reflect on the use of language
▫ With this development comes “playing” with
language

Question 23

Behaviourist theories of langauge

Answer 23

Language is learned in the same way as everything
else: imitation, reinforcement, and other
established principles of conditioning

Question 24

Nativist theories of langauge

Answer 24

humans have a
native propensity to develop
language
 A language acquisition device
– an innate mechanism or
process that facilitates the
learning of a language

Question 25

Interactionist theories

Answer 25

both biology and
experience make important contributions to
language development

Question 26

Problems of inducing structure

Answer 26

find relationships between elements
analogies

Question 27

Problems of arrangement

Answer 27

combinations of things to get to goal
different objects must be arranged in a specific way to satisfy some criteria

Question 28

Problems of transformation

Answer 28

outside the box thinking
use what’s available to you in your environment

Question 29

Irrelevant information

Answer 29

People often incorrectly assume that all numerical
information in a problem is necessary to solve it

Question 30

Functional
fixedness

Answer 30

The tendency to
perceive an item
only in terms of its
most common use

Question 31

Mental set

Answer 31

Occurs when people
persist in using the same
problem solving strategies
that worked in the past

Question 32

Unnecessary constraints

Answer 32

Effective problem solving requires
specifying all constraints
governing the problem without
assuming constraints that don’t
exist

Question 33

heuristics

Answer 33

A guiding principle or “rule of
thumb” used in solving problems or
making decisions

Question 34

Special process view

Answer 34

insights arise from sudden,
unconscious restructuring of problems

Question 35

Business-as-usual view

Answer 35

insights arise from
normal, conscious, analytical, step-by-step
thinking

Question 36

Integrated view

Answer 36

Both the unconscious and
conscious processes outlined above contribute to
insights

Question 37

Analogies

Answer 37

recognizing similarities between the current
problem and past problems

Question 38

Representation

Answer 38

Problems might be
represented verbally,
spatially,
mathematically, etc.
* Changing your
representation is often a
good strategy when you
fail to make progress
with your initial
representation

Question 39

Incubation

Answer 39

occurs when new solutions surface
tor a previously-unsolved problem after a period
of not consciously thinking about the problem

Question 40

Subjective utility

Answer 40

what an outcome is personally
worth to an individual

Question 41

Subjective probability

Answer 41

an individual’s personal
estimate of a probability

Question 42

Availability

Answer 42

basing the
estimated probability of an
event on the ease to which
relevant instances come to
mind

Question 43

Representativeness

Answer 43

basing
the probability of an event on
how similar it is to the typical
prototype of that event

Question 44

The conjunction fallacy

Answer 44

Estimating the odds of two
uncertain events happening at
once is greater than the odds of
either event happening alone

Question 45

The sunk cost fallacy

Answer 45

Individuals continue to a
behaviour because they’ve
already invested time, money
and energy into the action or
decision, not because the
behaviour is rational

Question 46

The gambler’s fallacy

Answer 46

The belief that the odds of a chance event increase
if the event hasn’t occurred recently
▫ Reflects the pervasiveness of the
representativeness heuristic

Question 47

incubation effect

Answer 47

surfacing of new solutions for an unsolved problem after not consciously thinking about the problem

Question 48

theory of bounded rationality

Answer 48

asserts that people use simple strategies in decision making that result in “irrational” decisions

Question 49

framing

Answer 49

how decision issues are posed or how choices are structured

Question 50

behavioral economics

Answer 50

field of study that examines the effects of humans’ actual decision-making processes on economic decisions

Question 51

linguistic relativety

Answer 51

hypothesis that one’s language determines the nature of one’s thought

Question 52

semantic slanting

Answer 52

used when a person wants to say the same thing but affect their listener in a different way