cognition pt 3

Question 1

availability heuristic

Answer 1

faulty heuristic in which you make a decision based on information readily available to you

Question 2

language

Answer 2

a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another.

Question 3

lexicon

Answer 3

refers to the words of a given language. Thus, it is a language’s vocabulary.

Question 4

grammar

Answer 4

refers to the set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon. For instance, the English version of this dictates that most verbs receive an “-ed” at the end to indicate past tense.

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

a basic sound unit of a given language, and different languages have different sets of phonemes. these combine and form morphemes (e.g. “I” is this and morpheme)

Question 6

morpheme

Answer 6

formed when phoneme is combined. the smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning (e.g., “I” is both a phoneme and this)

Question 7

semantics

Answer 7

refers to the process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words.

Question 8

syntax

Answer 8

refers to the way words are organized into sentences

Question 9

overgeneralization

Answer 9

refers to an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule. For example, in English, it is usually the case that an “s” is added to the end of a word to indicate plurality. For example, we speak of one dog versus two dogs. Young children will overgeneralize this rule to cases that are exceptions to the “add an s to the end of the word” rule and say things like “those two gooses” or “three mouses.” Clearly, the rules of the language are understood, even if the exceptions to the rules are still being learned