AP Psychology Cognition: 61-99

B.L. Whorf's theory of language acquistion

widely known for his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought

Prototype

a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied

Morpheme

a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided

Critical Period

a period during someone's development in which a particular skill or characteristic is believed to be most readily acquired

Algorithm

a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations

Noam Chomsky

an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics"

Fixation

an obsessive interest in or feeling about someone or something

Phoneme

any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another

Metacognition

awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes

Functional Fixedness

cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used

Convergent

coming closer together, especially in characteristics or ideas

Telegraphic Stage

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words

Overconfidence

effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high

Heuristics

enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves

Framing

example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented

Mental Set (expectancy theory)

framework for thinking about a problem

Language Acquisition Device

hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for children's innate predisposition for language acquisition

Concept/Concept Formation

inductive teaching strategy that helps students form a clear understanding of a concept (or idea) through studying a small set of examples of the concept

Universal Grammar

linguistic theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, that argues that the ability to learn language is innate, distinctly human and distinct from all other aspects of human cognition

Availability Heuristic

mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind

Insight (learning)

occurs in human learning when people recognize relationships (or make novel associations between objects or actions) that can help them solve new problems

Wernicke's Aphasia

sensory aphasia, is a type of aphasia in which an individual is unable to understand language in its written or spoken form

Grammar

set of rules that governs the way people compose and use language

Babbling Stage

stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not yet produce any recognizable words

Belief Perseverance

tendency to cling to one's initial belief even after receiving new information that contradicts or dis- confirms the basis of that belief

Divergent

tending to be different or develop in different directions

Intuition

the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning

Syntax

the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

Linguistic Determinism

the idea that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception. The term implies that people of different languages have different thought processes

Cognition

the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses

Language

the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way

Overgeneralization

the process of extending the application of a rule to items that are excluded from it in the language norm, as when a child uses the regular past tense verb ending -ed of forms like I walked to produce forms like *I goed or *I rided

Broca's Aphasia

the result of damage to the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe, or the front portion, of the brain that is dominant for language. It is characterized by the inability of the patient to form complete sentences in either speech or writing

One-word Stage

the stage in which children speak mainly in single words

Semantics

the study of a meaning

Confirmation Bias

the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories

Two Word Stage

this stage children start using two-word sentences more than just using single words for everything

Representativeness Heuristic

used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty