Thinking and Language

Question 1

availability heuristic

Answer 1

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.

Question 1

morpheme

Answer 1

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

Question 2

belief perseverance

Answer 2

clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Question 3

algorithm

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

concept

Answer 4

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Question 4

linguistic determinism

Answer 4

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Question 6

aphasia

Answer 6

impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

Question 8

Broca’s area

Answer 8

controls language expression-an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Question 9

overconfidence

Answer 9

the tendency to be more confident than correct-to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Question 10

confirmation bias

Answer 10

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Question 10

intuition

Answer 10

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Question 11

heuristic

Answer 11

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

Question 12

telegraphic speech

Answer 12

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram-“go car”-using mostly nouns and verbs.

Question 13

one-word stage

Answer 13

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Question 14

cognition

Answer 14

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Question 14

insight

Answer 14

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Question 16

babbling stage

Answer 16

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.

Question 18

language

Answer 18

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Question 19

Wernicke’s area

Answer 19

controls language reception-a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

Question 20

grammar

Answer 20

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Question 22

framing

Answer 22

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Question 22

mental set

Answer 22

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Question 24

prototype

Answer 24

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).

Question 25

two-word stage

Answer 25

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.