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Psych 101 > Language and Thought > Flashcards

Language and Thought Flashcards

1
Q

What is language?

A

system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning

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2
Q

What is grammar?

A

set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages

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3
Q

What are the 3 differences btw human language and animals?

A
  1. complex structure
  2. use words to define intangible things (democracy)
  3. use language to name, categorize, & describe things
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4
Q

What are phonemes?

A

smallest units of speech that distinguish one word from another

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5
Q

What are phonological rules?

A

indicates how phonemes can be combines to form words

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6
Q

What are morphemes?

A
  • Phonemes are combined to form them
  • smallest meaningful units of language
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7
Q

What are morphological rules?

A

indicates how morphemes can be combined to form words

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8
Q

What are the 2 types of morphemes?

A
  • content morphemes: refer to things and events
  • function morphemes: serve grammatical functions like tying sentences together
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9
Q

What are syntactic rules?

A

indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences

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10
Q

What is telegraphic speech?

A

sentences devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words

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11
Q

What is fast mapping?

A

in early childhood we can map a word to a concept with just a single exposure

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12
Q

What do critical periods suggest?

A

that childhood represents critical period for mastering certain aspects of language

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13
Q
A
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14
Q

What are the stages of language production?

A
  • Babbling stage (4mo, sounds related to home language)
  • One word stage (1-2y, single words)
  • Two word stage ( 2y+, two-word statements)
  • Telegraphic speech (mostly nouns and verbs)
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15
Q

What are Behavioural language explanations? (Skinner)

A
  • we learn to talk the same way we acquire all other skills: reinforcement, shaping, extinction
  • what is reinforced remains and what isn’t disappears from child’s repertoire
  • maturing kids imitate speech patterns they hear
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16
Q

What is Nativism’s theory of language acquisition? (Chomsky)

A
  • innate biological capacity for language
  • brain simply acquires language through exposure to speech
  • brain has universal grammar: collection of processes that facilitate language learning
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17
Q

What is genetic dysphasia?

A
  • Inability to learn grammatical structure of language
  • no intellectual weakness
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18
Q

What is interactionist theory on language acquisition?

A
  • infants born with innate ability to acquire language
  • relies on social development & interaction
  • parents tailor their language to simplify language acquisition process (slow, enunciate)
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19
Q

What 2 brain areas deal with language?

A

Brocka’s area and Wernicke’s area

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20
Q

What condition is damage to Brocka’s area associated with?

A

Aphasia: difficulty comprehending/producing speech

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21
Q

What is Broca’s area?

A
  • located in the left frontal cortex
  • involved in the production of the sequential patterns in vocal and sign languages
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22
Q

What is Broca’s aphasia?

A
  • difficulty in production of verbal language
  • reduced functional morphemes
  • understanding is relatively intact
  • usually speak in short content morphemes
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23
Q

What is Wernicke’s area?

A
  • located in the left temporal cortex
  • involved in language comprehension (whether spoken or signed)
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24
Q

What is Wernicke’s Aphasia?

A
  • caused by damage to Wernicke’s area
  • can produce grammatical speech, but it tends to be meaningless
  • have considerable difficulty comprehending language
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25
Q

What is Linguistic relativity hypothesis?

A

the idea that language shapes our thought

26
Q

What are benefits of bilingualism?

A

tend to have a later onset of Alzheimer’s disease than monolinguals do, reflecting the fact that during their lives they have built up a greater amount of back-up cognitive ability, or “cognitive reserve”

27
Q

What are limitations to animals learning human language?

A
  • limited vocabularies
  • limited conceptual repertoire
  • limited understanding of grammar
28
Q

How do words shape our understanding of sensory information?

A
  • english has biases towards visual/auditory descriptors
  • not consistent in many other languages
  • english biases away from smell descriptors > consistent with most other languages
29
Q

What are concept ?

A
  • help to simplify thought
  • mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events/other stimuli
30
Q

What is prototype theory

A
  • we classify objects by comparing the best/most typical member of the category best= archetype most typical= prototype
  • prototype would have many of the features associated with that concept
  • new items categorized based on similarity to prototypes
31
Q

What is necessary condition?

A

something that must be true of the object for it to belong to the category

32
Q

What is sufficient condition?

A

something that if it’s true of the object proves it belongs to that category

33
Q

What is exemplar theory?

A
  • we make category judgements by comparing new stimuli with instances already stored in memory
34
Q

What are category specific deficits?

A
  • we hold categories of objects in unique areas
  • we can lose recognition of single item categories with targeted damage, with recognition of other categories preserved
35
Q

What is the category specific deficit prosopagnosia?

A
  • inability to recognise faces
  • caused by damage to fusiform face area (inferior temporal cortex)
  • all other visual recognition is intact
36
Q

What does damage to the front left part of frontal lobe cause?

A

difficulty identifying humans

37
Q

What does damage to the lower left temporal lobe cause?

A

difficulty identifying animals

38
Q

What does damage to the region where temporal, occipital and parietal lobes meet cause?

A

difficulty retrieving name of tools

39
Q

What suggests that some categories are innate and not learned?

A

category specific deficits can be acquired prior to language acquisition & life experience
eg. damage to infants brains

40
Q

what is rational choice theory?

A

we rely on rational calculations to make choices that result in outcomes aligned with our best interests.

41
Q

What is availability heuristic?

A

A rule of thumb that items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently

42
Q

What is heuristic?

A

fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached

43
Q

How does availability heuristic affect our estimates?

A
  • because memory strength and frequency are directly related
  • frequent items are remembered more easily than infrequent items
44
Q

What is an algorythm?

A

a well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem

45
Q

What is representativeness heuristic?

A

mental shortcut that estimates the probability of an event based on how similar it is to a known situation

can lead to cognitive biases

46
Q

What is a conjunction fallacy?

A

people think that 2 events are more likely to occur together than either individual event

47
Q

What are framing effects?

A

when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is framed

48
Q

What is sunk cost fallacy?

A

a framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation on the basis of what they have previously invested in the situation

49
Q

What is optimism bias?

A

people believe that compared with other individuals they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future

50
Q

Why does optimism bias occur?

A
  • we want good things to happen in the future
  • tend to more vividly imagine positive than negative future events
  • we’re more likely to incorporate new positive info into our beliefs that new negative info
51
Q

What is prospect theory? (Tversky, Kahneman)

A
  • people choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and to avoid risks when evaluating potential gains
  • people are more willing to take risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains
  • in evaluating choices people compare them with a reference point
52
Q

What is one assumption of prospect theory?

A

Certainty effect: when making decisions people give greater weight to outcomes that are a sure thing.

53
Q

What are humans’ 2 main problems that complicate our lives?

A
  • ill-defined problem: one that doesn’t have a clear goal/ well-defined path to solution
  • well-defined problem: one with clearly specified goals and clearly defined solution paths
54
Q

What is means-end analysis?

A

process of searching for the means/steps to reduce the differences between current situation and desired goal

55
Q

What is analogical problem solving?

A

solve a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem

56
Q

What is functional fixedness?

A

tendency to view objects as only working in a particular way

57
Q

What is reasoning?

A

organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions

58
Q

What is belief bias?

A

people’s judgements about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid

59
Q

What is syllogistic reasoning?

A

a conclusion that follows from two statements that are assumed to be true

60
Q

What is the illusory truth effect?

A

an error in reasoning that occurs when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge the statement to be true
repeated exposure= increases familiarity of statement

61
Q

What is illusion of explanatory depth?

A

when people overestimate the depth of their understanding

Psych 101 (8 decks)

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