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PSY 201: Chapter 9
Language and Thought
Question | Answer |
---|---|
Language | A system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and convey meaning |
Grammar | A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages |
Phoneme | The smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than as random noise |
Phonological rules | A set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds |
Morphemes | The smallest meaningful units of language |
Morphological rules | A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words |
Syntactical rules | A set of rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences |
Deep structure | The meaning of a sentence |
Surface structure | How a sentence is worded |
Fast mapping | The fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure |
Telegraphic speech | Speech that is devoid of function morphemes and consists mostly of content words |
Nativist theory | The view that language development is best explained as an innate, biological capacity |
Language acquisition device (LAD) | A collection of processes that facilitate language learning |
Genetic dysphasia | A syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence |
Aphasia | Difficulty in producing or comprehending language |
Linguistic relativity hypothesis | The proposal that language shapes the nature of thought |
Concept | A mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli |
Family resemblance theory | Members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member |
Prototype | The "best" or "most typical" member of a category |
Exemplar theory | A theory of categorization that argues that we make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category |
Category-specific deficit | A neurological syndrome that's categorized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category though the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed |
Rational choice theory | The classical view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two |
Availability bias | Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently |
Heuristic | A fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached |
Algorithm | A well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem |
Conjunction fallacy | When people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event |
Representativeness heuristic | A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgment by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event |
Framing effects | When people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed) |
Sunk-cost fallacy | A framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation |
Prospect theory | The proposal that people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains |
Frequency format hypothesis | The proposal that our minds evolved to notice how frequently things occur, not how likely they are to occur |
Means-end analysis | A process of searching for the means or steps to reduce differences between the current situation and the desired goal |
Analogical problem solving | Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem |
Functional fixedness | The tendency to perceive the functions of objects as fixed |
Reasoning | A mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions |
Practical reasoning | Figuring out what to do |
Theoretical reasoning | Reasoning directed toward arriving at a belief |
Belief bias | People's judgments about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid |
Syllogistic reasoning | Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true |