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PSYC1001 - Chapter 8
Textbook Material
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cognition | The mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge (thinking), originally studied via introspection, now via technology. |
| Language | A system that allows humans to convey information, express themselves, and form and maintain relationships with each other. |
| Symbolic (language system property) | A language system property that states that spoken sounds and written words are used to represent things. |
| Semantic (language system property) | A language system property that states that sounds and words have meaning. |
| Generative (language system property) | A language system property that states that states a limited number of symbols can be combined in an infinite variety of ways |
| Structured (language system property) | A language system property that states that rules govern the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences. |
| The hierarchy of language components | In ascending order, the components of all human languages are phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences. |
| Phonemes | The smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually. The English language is composed of about 40 phonemes, corresponding to the 26 letters of the alphabet and several variations. |
| Morphemes | The smallest units of meaning in a language. The English language has about 50,000 morphemes, which includes root words, prefixes, and suffixes. |
| Semantics | The area of language concerned with understanding the meaning of words and word combinations. A word’s meaning consists of both its denotation (its dictionary definition) and its connotation, (its emotional undertones and implications). |
| Syntax | A system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences. A sentence must contain a subject and a verb. |
| 1-5 months (milestone) | Crying, cooing, laughing (reflexive communication), which serve little communicational value. |
| 6-18 months (milestone) | Babbling (sounds that correspond to phonemes), which gradually starts to resemble language spoken by people in the infant’s environment. |
| 10-13 months (milestone) | First words, which resemble the syllables that infants most often babble. |
| 12-18 months (milestone) | One-word sentence stage – an average knowledge of 3-50 words, which often refer to objects and social actions, although their receptive vocabulary (understood) is larger than their productive vocabulary (spoken). |
| Overextension | A child incorrectly uses a word to describe a wider set of objects or actions than it is meant to (ex: “ball” for anything round). |
| Underextension | A child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of objects than it is meant to (ex: “doll” for only a favourite doll). |
| 18-24 months (milestone) | Vocabulary spurt – an average knowledge of 10,000 words by first grade. |
| Fast mapping | The process by which children map a word onto an underlying concept after only one exposure. |
| 2 years (milestone) | Combining words into sentences, characterized as telegraphic. |
| Telegraphic Speech | Speech that consists mainly of content words; articles, prepositions, and other less critical words are omitted (ex: “give doll” instead of “please give me the doll”). |
| 3 years (milestone) | Expressing complex ideas such as the plural or past tense, although hindered by overregularizations. |
| Overregularization | The incorrect generalization of grammatical rules to irregular cases where they do not apply (ex: “foots” instead of “feet”). |
| 4-5 years (milestone) | Longer, complex sentences and syntax. |
| 6 years (milestone) | Metalinguistic awareness – the ability to reflect on the use of language. As this develops, children begin to play with language, creating puns and jokes, use metaphors, and appreciate sarcasm and irony. |
| Bilingualism | The acquisition of two languages that use different speech sounds, vocabulary, and grammatical rules. |
| Behaviourist theory of language acquisition | Children learn language and syntax through imitation, reinforcement, and other principles of conditioning. Vocalizations that are not reinforced gradually decline in frequency, while the remaining vocalizations are shaped until they are correct. |
| Nativist theory of language acquisition | Children learn the rules of language, not specific verbal responses. Humans are equipped with a language acquisition device, an innate mechanism or process that facilitates the learning of language, consisting of brain structures and neural wiring. |
| Interactionist theory of language acquisition | Nativist and Behaviourist Theories both contribute to language development. Humans are biologically equipped for learning language, involving the acquisition of rules, and social exchanges with others play a critical role in moulding language skills. |
| Linguistic Relativity | The hypothesis that one’s language determines the nature of one’s thoughts, and different languages lead people to view the world differently. |
| Problem solving | Active efforts to discover what must be done to achieve a goal that is not readily attainable. |
| Problems of inducing structure | A class of problems in which people must determine relationships among numbers, words, symbols, or ideas. |
| Problems of arrangement | A class of problems in which people must arrange the parts of a problem in a way that satisfies some criteria. |
| Problems of transformation | A class of problems in which people must carry out a sequence of transformation in order to reach a specific goal. |
| Irrelevant information | An obstacle of problem solving in which people incorrectly assume that all numerical information in a problem is necessary to solve it. To combat this, it should be determined whether all the information presented is relevant to its solution. |
| Functional fixedness | An obstacle of problem solving in which items are perceived only in terms of their most common uses. People tend to overlook obscure features of problems. To combat this, problems should be decomposed into their constituent parts. |
| Mental set | An obstacle of problem solving in which people persist in using problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past. To combat this, it should not be assumed that a method used to solve part of a problem will work for the rest of the problem. |
| Unnecessary constraints | An obstacle of problem solving in which people unnecessarily place constraints on problems. To combat this, constraints that don’t exist (not in the problem statement) should never be assumed. |
| Insight | Also known as an "aha" moment, it is the sudden discovery of the correct solution following incorrect attempts based primarily on trial and error. |
| The special process view (insight) | The view that insight arises from sudden restructurings of problems that occur at the unconscious level. |
| The business-as-usual view (insight) | The view that insight arises from normal, step-by-step, analytical thinking that occurs at the conscious level. |
| The integrated view (insight) | The view that both sudden, unconscious restructuring and gradual, conscious analytical thinking can contribute to insight. |
| Trial and Error | A problem solving strategy that involves trying possible solutions and discarding those that are in error until one works, which is only effective when there are few possible solutions to be tried. |
| Heuristics (problem solving) | A guiding principle or “rule of thumb” used in solving problems or making decisions. |
| Forming subgoals (heuristic) | A heuristic that involves dividing a problem into intermediate steps. |
| Searching for analogies (heuristic) | A heuristic that involves comparing multiple problems together to determine whether they are similar. |
| Changing the representation of a problem (heuristic) | A heuristic that involves approaching a problem from a different angle (ex: spatially rather than mathematically). |
| The incubation effect | New solutions surface for a previously unsolved problem after a period of not consciously thinking about the problem, which may be because people continue to work on a problem at an unconscious level after conscious effort has been suspended. |
| Holistic cognitive style | A style of problem solving exhibited by East Asian cultures that focuses on context and relationships among elements (wholes), potentially due to the fact that Eastern cultures emphasize the group and interdependence. |
| Analytic cognitive style | A style of problem solving exhibited by Western cultures that focuses on objects and their properties (parts), potentially due to the fact that Western cultures emphasize the individual and independence. |
| Decision making | The evaluation of alternatives and the making of choices among them. |
| Choice overload | People feel overwhelmed by decisions involving a large array of options and are more likely to defer making a decision, feel less confident and less satisfied when they do make a decision, and experience post-decision regret. |
| Choice mindset | A tendency to think about or interpret behaviour as a matter of choice, which can lead to analytical thinking and increase personal motivation, but can also make people oblivious to discrimination and social inequalities. |
| Risky decision making | Making choices under conditions of uncertainty. At best, people know the probability of an event occurring. Determining a decision's expected value indicates whether it should be made, although people often act inconsistently with expected values. |
| Subjective utility | What an outcome is personally worth to an individual, providing an explanation for why people act inconsistently with expected values. |
| Heuristics (decision making) | Mental shortcuts used by people trying to estimate probabilities. |
| The availability heuristic | A heuristic that involves basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which relevant instances come to mind (ex: believing there are more words that start with the letter R than have the letter R in the third position). |
| The representativeness heuristic | A heuristic that involves basing the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event (ex: believing it is more likely to flip a random combination of heads or tails rather than all heads). |
| Base rates | Factors that are often ignored when using the representativeness heuristic (ex: guessing that a person is a librarian instead of a salesperson, even though the latter is a more common job than the former) and that people struggle to apply to themselves. |
| The conjunction fallacy | A cognitive bias that occurs when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone. |
| The sunk costs fallacy | A cognitive bias that occurs when individuals continue a behaviour because they have already invested time, money and energy in the action or decision, not because the continuation of the behaviour itself is rational. |
| Behavioural economics | A field of study that examines the effects of humans’ actual (not idealized) decision processes on economic decisions. It was long assumed that everyone is systematic and rational when making decisions, but this is not the case. |
| The theory of bounded rationality | People tend to use simple strategies in decision making that focus on only a few facets of available options and often result in “irrational” decisions that are less than optimal. |
| Framing | The way in which decision issues are posed or choices are structured (ex: presenting a surcharge as the loss of a gain instead of the gain of a loss). |
| The recognition heuristic | A heuristic that involves assuming the recognized of two alternatives has the higher value, which applies to all quick decision-making strategies and is just as successful as taking the time to carefully decide. |
| Dual-process theories | People depend on two very different systems of thinking when making decisions. Both systems are necessary, conflict sometimes, but typically work to support each other. |
| System 1 (dual-process theories) | The system that consists of fast, simple, effortless, automatic judgements (fast and frugal heuristics). |
| System 2 (dual-process theories) | The system that consists of slower, more elaborate, effortful, controlled judgements (studied in traditional decision research). |
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archmall
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