Psychology

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human language

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a communication system specific to Homo sapiens; it is open and symbolic, has rules of grammar, and allows its users to express abstract and distant ideas

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syntax

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the rules for arranging words and symbols to form sentences or parts of sentences in a particular language

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grammar

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the entire set of rules for combining symbols and sounds to speak and write a particular language

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protolanguage

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very rudimentary language; also known as prelanguage; used by earlier species of Homo

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cooing

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the first sounds humans make other than crying, consisting almost exclusively of vowels; occurs during first 6 months of life

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babbling

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sounds made as a result of the infant's experimentation with a complex range of phonemes, which include consonants as well as vowels; starts around 5-6 months

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one-word utterances

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single words, such as "mama," "dada," "more," or "no!"; occur around 12 months of age

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two- word utterances

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phrases children put together, starting around 18 months, such as "my ball," "mo wawa," or "go away"

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sentence phrase

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stage when children begin speaking in fully grammatical sentences, usually age 2.5-3

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child-directed speech

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changes in adult speech patterns, apparently universal, when speaking to young children or infants; characterized by higher pitch, changes is voice, use of simpler sentences, emphasis on the here and now, and use of emotion to communicate messages

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nativist view of language

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the idea that we discover language rather than learn it, that language development is inborn

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language acquisition devise (LAD)

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an innate, biologically based capacity to acquire language, proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of his nativist view of language

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linguistic determinism hypothesis

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the proposition that our language determines our way of thinking and our perceptions of the world; the view taken by Sapir and Whorf

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cognition

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mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, and storing knowledge

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cognitive psychology

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the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems

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mental representation

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a structure in our mind, such as an idea or image, that stands for something else, such as an external object or thing sensed in the past or future, not the present

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visual imagery

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visual representations created by the brain after the original stimulus is no longer present

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mental rotation

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process of imagining an object turning in three-dimensional space

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concept

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a mental grouping of objects, events, or people

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concept hierarchy

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arrangement of related concepts in a particular way, with some being general and others being specific

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category

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a concept that organizes other concepts around what they all share in common

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prototypes

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the best-fitting examples of a category

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reasoning

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the process of drawing inferences or conclusions fro principles and evidence

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deductive reasoning

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reasoning from general statements of what is known to specific conclusions. (general to specific)

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inductive reasoning

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reasoning to general conclusions from specific evidence (specific to general)

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casual inferences

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judgements about causation of one thing by another

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confirmation bias

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the tendency to selectively attend to info that supports one's general beliefs while ignoring info or evidence that contradicts one's beliefs

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critical thinking

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process by which one analyzes, evaluates and forms ideas

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metacognitive thinking

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process that includes the ability first to think and then to reflect on one's own thinking

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heuristics

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mental shortcuts; methods for making complex and uncertain decisions and judgements

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representativeness heuristic

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a strategy we use to estimate the probability of one event based on how typical it is of another event

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availability heuristic

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a device we use to make decisions based on the ease with which estimates come to mind or how available they are to our awareness

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conjunction fallacy

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error in logic that occurs when people say the combination of two events is more likely than either evet