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55 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Define language What makes language unique? |
- system of communicating using sounds or symbols; enables us to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences - makes it possible to create new/unique sentences using parts bc: 1. hierarchical: consists of parts that are put together to make larger parts 2. governed by rules: can put parts together in certain ways but not in others bc everyone who uses it must be able to understand each other
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Compare Skinner's and Chomsky's theories of language acquisition |
Skinner: Language learned through reinforcement; can be studied w/o reference to the mind Chomsky: Human language coded in genes; underlying basis of all language similar; children produce sentences they have never heard and that have never been reinforced; saw language as a way to study the mind |
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Charles Hockett's features of language? (all 13) |
1. A speaking and hearing mode 2. Sound goes out in all directions but perceived as coming from 1 source 3. Sound is transitory - disappears quickly 4. Anything you can hear you can also say 5. We can hear our own speech, modify if necessary 6. The purpose of linguistic signals is communication not some other biological function 7. Specific sounds are directly tied to meaning 8. No inherent logical connection between a sound and its meaning 9. Language can be broken down into small units that can be recombined in other ways 10. We can communicate about things not present 11. We can say things never said before 12. Language is learned after birth through social interaction 13. Messages are made up of smaller units that are meaningless on their own until they are combined |
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What is meant by "language is universal?" |
- All humans with normal capacities use develop a language and learn to follow its complex rules - Lang is universal across cultures - Lang's dev. is similar across cultures - Langs are "unique but the same" - different words/sounds/rules but all have nouns, verbs, questions, negatives, past/present tense |
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Define/give examples of phonemes |
- shortest segment of speech - if changed, changes meaning of a word - sounds, not letters - number of phonemes varies language to language - word "bit" /b/ /i/ /t/ |
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Define/give examples of morphemes - be able to count how many morphemes a word/group of words has - free morphemes vs. bound morphemes |
- smallest units of language that have definable meaning or grammatical function - although endings such as "s" and "ed" are not words, are still morphemes because they change the meaning of a word - car = one morpheme - cars = two morphemes - carseat = two morphemes - free morpheme: town, dog, ball, house; can combime -bound morpheme: -ed, -s, -ing, -er |
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Explain phonemic restoration effect - why is it useful? - describe a study that demonstrates it |
- occurs when phonemes still perceived in speech when sound of phoneme covered up by an extraneous noise - helps us understand the meaning of a spoken sentence even when part of it blocked out by noise - Warren (1970): “The state governors met with their respective leg-slatures convening in the capital city.” |
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Explain speech segmentation |
- Our ability to perceive individual words even though often no pauses between words in the sound signal - easiest to do when you are fluent in a language bc know what words mean/able to understand context - certain sounds are more likely to follow one another within a word, and some sounds are more likely to be separated by the space between two words ex. pretty *space* baby |
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Explain coarticulation |
- Withintalkers, a single phoneme sounds different depending on context - Whenyou produce one phoneme, previous/next phonemes are produced at same time - Acrosstalkers, phonemes vary by •Dialect •Age,Gender •Style(casual/slang versus formal) •Speed |
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Explain/give examples of lexical ambiguity |
- some words have more than one meaning; context clears up when all meanings of word have been briefly accessed - homonyms & homophones: read, till, rose, jam, date, bank |
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meaning dominance - biased dominance vs. balanced dominance |
- The fact that some meanings of words occur more frequently than others; ex. "bug" as type of insect has higher meaning dominance than "bug" as hidden listening device - biased dominance: When words have two or more meanings with different dominances, as in "bug" example - balanced dominance: In other cases, a word has more than one meaning but the meanings are equally likely. For example, cast (members of a play) and cast (plaster cast) are equally likely. -dif btwn balanced and biased influences how ppl access meanings of words as they read them |
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Explain garden path sentences/syntactic ambiguity |
- begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else |
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Explain word frequency effect - Describe study that demonstrates it |
- refers to the fact that we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words like "home" than to low-frequency words like "hike" - lexical decision task: words or nonwords?; easier when real words are high-frequency words - eye movement tests |
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Explain word superiority effect - describe a study that demonstrates it |
- refers to the finding that letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are contained in a nonword - Reicher (1969): letters in words not processed one by one; rather, each letter is affected by context in which it appears |
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Explain difference between syntax and semantics |
semantics: meaning of words and sentences syntax: rules for combining words into sentences |
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How are syntax and semantics processed differently in the brain? |
Broca's area: language production, linked to syntax Wernicke's area: language comprehension, linked to semantics |
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Explain sentence parsing - syntax first/late closure approach - interactionist approach |
- The grouping of words into phrases, is a central process for determining the meaning of a sentence - syntax first: grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of rules that are based on syntax. If, along the way, readers realize there is something wrong with their parsing, they take other information into account in order to reinterpret the sentence - late closure: when a person encounters a new word, the person’s parsing mechanism assumes that this word is part of the current phrase, so each new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible - interactionist: The idea that information provided by both syntax and semantics is taken into account simultaneously as we read or listen to a sentence |
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anaphoric inference |
- connecting objects and people -ex. Pat ordered a cup of coffee. He used cream and sugar |
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instrument inference |
- making inference about tool or method - ex. Billy called his grandma. (telephone) |
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causal inference |
- inferring that events in one clause caused by events in a previous clause -ex. Hannah ate the entire pizza. She felt sick. |
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Explain the Tanenhaus et al. (1995) study and its findings |
- developed technique called visual world paradigm: involves determining how subjects process info as they observe a visual scene - "place the apple on the towel in the box" - measured eye movements to determine how they interpreted the sentence - when two apples, used interactionist approach - result: the way a person interprets a sentence, as indicated by their eye movements, is determined by the scene they are viewing; interactionist approach |
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Explain effects of syntactic and semantic coordination on communication |
syntactic coordination: using similar grammatical constructions |
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Name/describe studies that support the Sapir-Whorf including research on color and space |
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – the nature ofthe language of a culture can affect the way people think - Winawer and coworkers (2007): Twocultures had differences in how participants responded to blue squares based onhow they were categorized |
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Define problem as it relates to cognition |
- an obstacle between a present state and a goal - not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle - initial state ----> problem space ----> goal state |
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How do we restructure problems? How does restructuring problems help us solve them? Is restructuring problems easy to do? |
- restructuring: changing the problem's representation - can lead to insight |
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What is insight? How does it happen? What research supports its existence? |
- sudden realization of a problem's solution - requires restructuring - Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987): designed experiment to distinguish between insight and noninsight problems - insight problems = sudden realization |
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fixation |
- One of the major obstacles to problem solving, according to the Gestalt psychologists - people’s tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of the problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution |
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Explain the difference between functional fixedness and mental set - give examples of each |
- functional fixedness: focusing on familiar functions or uses of an object; ex. the candle, matchbox, thumbtack problem; 2 string, chair, pliers problem - mental set: a pre-conceived notion about how to approach a problem, which is determined by a person’s experience or what has worked in the past |
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Luchin's (1942) water jug problem |
- showed how mental set can arise out of the situation created as a person solves a problem - Each problemspecifies the capacities of jugs A, B, and C and a final desired quantity - The taskis to figure out how to use the jugs with these capacities to measure out thedesired quantity - found that mental set can influence problem solving bc of preconceptions about the way to solve a problem |
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Explain concept of means-end analysis |
- part of info processing approach - reduces differences between initial and goal states - can be done using subgoals |
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Explain concept of subgoals |
- Small goals that help create intermediate states that are closer to the goal. Occasionally, a subgoal may appear to increase the distance to the goal state but in the long run can result in the shortest path to the goal - ex. in Tower of Hanoi problem, to free up the medium- sized disc, need to move the small disc from the middle peg back to the peg on the left. |
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Describe Kaplan and Simon's (1990) research on mutilated checkerboard problem; what was the goal of the study? |
- black pink, bread butter, regular - wanted to see if subjects' conditions with different info influenced their ability to solve prob |
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Explain what an analogy is - What is difficult about making analogies? What helps us do it? |
- using the solution to a similar problem to guide solution of a new problem - Russian marriage problem --> checkerboard problem - analogical transfer: transferring experience solving one problem (source problem) to solving another problem (target problem) - not easy; see Gick and Holyoak study |
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Explain Gick and Holyoak's (1980,1983) research using fortress problem, radiation problem, other variations |
- stomach tumor radiation problem: only 10% solved -after reading fortress story, 70% still couldn't solve radiation problem - however, when told to think about fortress story, success rate jumped to 75% - demonstrated that problem solving has 3 steps: 1. Noticing that there is an analogous relationship between the source problem and the target problem 2. Mapping the correspondence between the source story and the target problem. 3. Applying the mapping to generate a parallel solution to the target problem. |
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How do experts differ from novices? |
- experts faster at solving problems but not always better - experts faster because: possess more knowledge about their fields, knowledge organized differently, spend more of their time analyzing problems - experts not always better because: no better than novices when given probs outside their field; less likely to be open to new ways of looking at a problem |
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How is creativity defined in Finke's (1995) research using preinventive forms? |
- innovative thinking, novel ideas, new connections between existing ideas, divergent thinking, open-ended, thinking of large number of potential solutions - creative cognition: technique to train people who think creatively - preinventive forms: ideas that precede creation of finished creative product |
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Difference between inductive and deductive reasoning - give examples of each |
- deductive reasoning: determiningif a conclusion is logical, top-down approach; beginningwith a theory and looking for evidence that supports or refutes it; - inductive reasoning: Reasoning based on observations, bottom-up approach; beginningwith specific observations and working your way up to a theory; all the food I've had at this restaurant has been great, this will be great too |
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What is the availability heuristic? - give example |
- states that events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered - ex. cause of death test |
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What is the representativeness heuristic? - give example |
- states that the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles the properties we usually associate with class B - ex. speaks quietly, wears glasses, reads a lot - more people guessed librarian than guessed farmer - ignores base rates, fails to consider conjunction rule, believes small samples representative, confirmation bias |
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Explain Fox's research on student course evaluations; how does it relate to the availability heuristic? |
•Fox(2006)•Method•Studentsasked to list either 2 or 10 ways a course could be improved•Thenasked to rate course on a scale from 1 to 7. |
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What is an illusory correlation? - name a time you have experienced one - how do they relate to stereotypes? |
- correlations occur when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlation or it is much weaker than it is assumed to be - stereotype about the characteristics of a particular group may lead people to pay particular attention to behaviors associated with that stereotype, and this attention creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype |
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What is the conjunction fallacy? |
- occurs when it is assumed that more than one specific condition is more probable than a single general one |
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What is the confirmation bias? - give example |
•Lordand coworkers (1979): Hadthose in favor of capital punishment and those against it read the same article.Thosein favor found the article convincing. Thoseagainst found the article unconvincing. |
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How do emotions affect decision making? |
- Expected emotions: Emotions that people predictthatthey will feel concerning an outcome – often predicted inaccurately - Incidental emotions: Emotions thatare not specifically related to decision-making |
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Categorical syllogisms |
- 2 premises and a conclusion ex. some psych majors are friendly; some friendly people are concerned about poverty; therefore, some psych majors are concerned about poverty |
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conditional syllogisms |
- tellsus about the relationship between conditions ex. Ifthe sun is shining, then I am wearing sunblock.I amnot wearing sunblock. Therefore, the sun is not shining |
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antecedent and consequent |
antecedent: proposition contained in “if...” part of premise 1 consequent: proposition contained in “then...” part of premise 1 |
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What does it mean to affirm or deny the antecedent or consequent and which leads to a valid conclusion? |
1. Affirming the Antecedent: the “if...” part is confirmed (leads to correct conclusion) *2. Affirming the Consequent: the “then...” partis confirmed (leads to incorrect conclusion) *3. Denying the Antecedent: the “if...” partis denied (leads to incorrect conclusion) 4. Denying the Consequent: the “then...” part is denied (leads to correct conclusion) |
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Explain the Wason four card selection task - which are the correct cards to turn over in this task? |
•All cards have a letter on one side and avowel on the other. •If a card has a vowel on one side, thenit has an even number on the other side. |
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Give examples of concrete vs abstract versions of the Wason task. |
- cards - underage drinking |
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How do permissions schemas and the evolutionary approach (e.g., social exchange theory - detecting cheaters) affect performance on the Wason task? |
•Permissionsschemas: People seem to perform better when the problem is more like the real world. •Cosmides and Tooby’s social exchange theory: we are, perhaps, programmed to detect cheaters |
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Information-processing approach to problem solving |
- idea of problem solving as a search - problem space: Initialstate, Intermediate states, Goal state - illustrated by tower of hanoi problem |
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operators |
- in info processing approach, actions that take the problem from one state to another |
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intermediate state |
- created by each action involved in a sequence of choices of steps in solving a problem |
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Gick and Holyoak lightbulb problem |
- High surface similarities aid analogicalproblem solving - Surface features: Specific elements of agiven problem - Making structural features more obviousaids analogical problem-solving - Structural features: The underlyingprinciple(s) that govern the solution to a problem |
