PSYCH 120A FINAL

What are ad hoc categories? What is an example? What do they demonstrate?

"ad hoc" categories are categories which are not stored in memory, but come together as categories only as they relate to a specific goal (a uniting theory brings them together) EX: what category are these exemplars part of? move to remote region, change your identity, go to mexico -> things to do to avoid being killed by mafia -Demonstrates: that categories can be flexible depending on context

What is the intuitive argument for why language is not thought in the communicative view of language? What are some other examples that might indicate this?

-"Thought is rich, language is sketchy" (language is not enough to reconstruct thought, relies on other stuff) Other examples: -Homonyms: words associated with multiple concepts (bank, bat, date), but clearly distinct concepts -Context dependence: linguistic expressions (now, he) require context for interpretation, but the thoughts they express are specific -Semantic generality: some words fail to convey information that the speaker possesses and means (uncle, maybe) -Word vs thought: "while people often mean what they say, they do not exactly say what they mean"

What is a concept?

-A mental representation of objects, events, and ideas -fundamental unit of symbolic knowledge if your mind

What is the prototype theory of categorization? What does it state?

-The theory that we categorize items using characteristic features to compare to a prototype stored in memory -states that individual items can belong to multiple levels or hierarchies of categories -- "basic" categories (dog, apple)--distinctive, informative and efficient, "subordinate" categories (German shepherd, Granny Smith apple) -- more precise (more informative) but less distinctive (as different members can be very similar), and "supraordinate" categories (animal, fruit) -- not too informative, but still distinctive; we tend to categorize at the basic level

What is the evidence that we have a hierarchial representation of how elements relate to each other inour mind?

-We understand "meaningless" sentences (sleepless green ideas sleep furiously) --> syntax exists separately from individual meaning -Multiple interpretations of one sentences due to syntax (parsing ambiguity) -Garden path sentence (people derive the incorrect parsing, leading to dead end)

What are the types of concepts and their definitions?

-category: set of items that are perceptually, biologically, or functionally similar (aka share similar features); note that there may be overlap between features in categories -exemplars: individual items in a categories (like different chairs)

What role the knowledge and experience play in problem solving?

-how people approach a problem is based on their knowledge and experience of the past, whether for good or bad -Mental sets, Transfer, and analogy

What is the classical approach to categorization? What is the mental representation of a category like? What are the problems with the classical approach to categorization?

-in our mind, we have lists of "defining features" for categories; to be a member of a category, a thing must have all the features on the categories' list. -in other words, categories are defined by sets of features that are both necessary and sufficient for category membership -mental representation of a category is abstract (i.e. there is no info about individual exemplars) -Problems: 1) hard to define clear + finite, necessary + sufficient features of things 2) notion of typicality: Roche showed that if you give people list of animals and ask how birdy they are, people give different ratings for different animals, and people are systematic in the ratings they give; problem: if we categorize according to abstract list of features, it makes no sense to give different ratings to different exemplars as they are all part of the category and meet the list; problem

What is language? 2 definitions

-the ability to communicate complex ideas, share our thoughts and emotions and plans for the future -the system of symbols and rules that enable us to communicate

What is the exemplar theory of categorization? How does categorization occur? Are there prototypes in this theory? What effects does this theory explain?

-theory that proposes that we store in memory examples of items we have encountered in the past -categorization occurs by comparing new items to the ones you have in memory and looking for similarities between their characteristic features -can extract prototypes from exemplars, but not necessary -context effects and typicality effects

What are the typical milestones of language development?

0-3m: cooing 4-8m: bablling 8m-1y: single words 1-2y: two word phrases 2-3y: more word knowledge 3-4y: complex multiword speech

Examples of animals learning human language

1) Alex the parrot: trained to produce linguistic behaviors and use over 200 words, could use (and seemed to understand) abstract words like shape and color 2) Washoe the chimp: learned up to 250 sounds, including abstract ones like "more"; created novel compound from single signs: TOILET = DIRTY + GOOD REFRIDGERATOR = OPEN + FOOD + DRINK 3) Nim Chomsky: chimp raised in home environment by human surrogate parents, and teachers who communicated with him in ASL; meant to disprove innateness hypothesis; learned symbols and could make 2,3,4+ strings of utterances (with lots of repetition in each utterance), but did not learn how to form sentences--> was more imitation, and instead of expanding on input like human children, and when creating sequences with more than 2 utterances, just added repetitive utterances/context-general utterances; also, Nim remained at the same length sentences, while children would make longer ones over time; finally, Nim did not learn turn-taking in coversations as children did

What are the heuristics we use, and the evidence for them?

1) Availability heuristic: tendency to rely on info that quickly comes to mind when trying to make decision; Study: investigated people's estimates about risk of desk; found that people were very off, due to whether they personally knew anyone who had that cause of death, and the prevalence of stories about causes of death in media (newspapers more likely to report sensational causes of death like homicide, instead of prevalent ones like cancer, people exposted to violent media rated violence to be more prevalent) 2) Affect heuristic: tendency for people to overestimate risk of events that generate emotional reaction, like dread (i.e. sharks vs drowning) 3) Anchoring Heuristics: tendency for people to rely on initial pieces on info: Study 1: people watched roulette wheel land on low or high number, and asked to make estimate about percentage of UN countries from Africa --> people who saw higher number estimated higher number Study 2: asked participants to say last two digits of SSN, found that these number correlated price people were willing to pay for items in online auction --> people's values of things change, going against EUT and SEUT 4) Representativeness: tendency to judge how likely an event is based on: 1) how representative the event is of the population from which it's drawn and 2) how similar event would look like based on process that generated (i.e. randomness) --> e.g.: having 6 children be GBGBBG vs BGBBBB are equally likely

What are the heuristics we use for deductive reasoning?

1) Belief bias: tendency to reject valid syllogism if conclusion is unbelievable, and accept invalid syllogism if conclusion is believable 2) Atmosphere effect: the tendency to expect the conclusion to match the atmosphere of the premises (some, all, no) 3) Confirmation bias: tendency for people to seek out confirming information rather than disconfirming (better at establishing syllogisms as valid than they are at establishing they are invalid) ==> Shown by the Wason task: participants shown rule, and asked to pick card to disprove it: they normally pick the cards that would confirm rule is true (MP (valid) and AC), while not choosing the ones that would confirm it is not true (DA and MT (valid))

What are the 3 views on whether language affects thought?

1) Communicative view: No, language is a conduit for thought, but not "thought" itself 2) Cognitive view of language #2: Yes, language is necessary for thought 3) Cognitive view of language #1: Yes, language is constitutive to thought (language is formative and tied to thought)

What are the limitations of prototype theory?

1) Context effects: typicality should depend on the number of shared features between category members, but instead it depends on context/experience --> if we forgot exemplars, then these context effects could not be explained 2) typicality effects: how do we account for atypical category members if they don't really share that many characteristic features?? Thus: cannot be that we see exemplars, extract prototype, and discard old exemplars, and use it to categorize new exemplars.

What are the theories of how humans make decisions?

1) Expected Utility Hypothesis: people, given the right info, will choose action that will lead to highest expected (objected value) 2) Subjective utility hypothesis: people, given right info, will generally choose action most likely to lead to highest subjective expected value 3) Dual systems approach: we have two mental systems: the first is fast, automatic, intuitive, nonconscious system (focused on pattern-matching and heuristics), and system 2 is a willfully controlled system that can think through a problem formally

What are the differences between experts and novices? For the first two, what is the evidence for it?

1) Experts extract features and patterns, while novices don't Evidence: Chase and Simon, expert chess players are better than novices in memory for chess arrangements (but not random arrangements) --> use chunking 2) Experts are better at ignoring irrelevant info: Study: Sheridan: tracked eye movements of expert and novice chess players, found that experts spent more time on relevant areas of the chessboard when deciding their next move --> experts have domain-related perceptual processing advantage 3) Experts spend more time analyzing problems, but less time thinking about steps to take after (match problem to prev problems, categorize problems based on principles current ones have in common with similar ones) 4) Task performance become automatic 5) Experts have more difficulty thinking outside of box than novice --> due to mental sets

What are the fallacies that we use, and what heuristic is it based on?

1) Gambler's fallacy: belief that probability of random event is influenced by previous random events; representative heuristic gone bad 2) Conjunction fallacy: when we forget that it cannot be more probable for someone to be A and B than A or B alone --> representativeness gone bad in Linda example

What are the three different types of inductive reasoning?

1) Generalization: we use a limited number of observations to draw a conclusion about the broader population or category 2) Statistical syllogism: we go from observations about a group to an inference about an individual 3) Argument from Analogy: we observe that two things share some set of properties, and conclude that they must share another property (i.e. might be life on europa as it has oxygen like earth)

What is the colorful debate, and what does each part say about language affecting thought?

1) Lenneberg and Roberts: compare color recall in english speakers (two separate color words for yellow and orange) and speakers of Zuni (only 1 color word for both). Showed color chip, then showed two color chips and asked participants which one they saw--> Zuni speakers tended to misrecall color when it was around yellow-orange --> language does affect memory? 2) Brown and Lenneberg: tested color recall (also using chips) for English speakers, found that colors with verbal label are better recalled than colors without label (like mix of red-blue) 3) Davies and Corbett: compared sorting patterns of green and blue color chips in speakers of Setswana (one word for blue and green), English (two words for blue and green), and Russian (3 words -- green, light blue, darkblue); Results: similar sorting patterns--> Setswana were more likely to group blue and green chips, but Speakers of Russian did not make 3 piles as expected 4) Robertson: compared color recollection in speakers of English (with blue/green boundary but no Wor/Nol boundary) and New Guinea Berinmo (with Wor/Nol boundary but no blue/green boundary) --> Results: Berinmo confuse blue/green color tiels while English confuse Wor/Nor color tiles 5) Kay and Regier: analyzed 100 (unwritten) languages, and found that the color labels cluster in specific parts of a spectrum (some colors are focal colors), and that the growth of color vocab is systematic across cultures: 2 color words => indicate bright and dark, 3 color words => indicate red area as well. Then reanalyzed data and found that the boundaries of colors across language is felxible, thus color perception is mostly universal but ihas some cross-linguistic flexibility at edges 6) Born: used habitutaion paradigm to look at color perception in children before they acquire color vocab (language), found that infants at around 6 months already seem to have color categories

What are the two parts of the Sapir Whorf theory? What is the early evidence for these parts? What are the criticisms of the early evidence?

1) Linguistic Relativism: answers question of "How language affects thought", says that different languages use different labels and different structures, which leads speakers of different languages to organize the world along different categories, which means that they have different mental representations of the world 2) Linguistic Determinism: answers question "What are the effects of language on thought"; has multiple forms: -strong: language determines thought -weak: language influences thought -weakest: language affects memory because the length of words and their frequency in a language makes it more/less easy to remember Early evidence: -Eskimo snow words (Eskimo people have a lot more words for snow, may conceptualize snow in more ways) -Timeless Hopi: no clear grammatical distinction between future and past, and no way to count specific amount of time --> Hopi speakers should be less inclined to conceptualize time in chronological way, and less able to recall past/predict future Criticisms: -fallacy: if a language does not distinguish between X and Y, it does not mean that i) there is no other way in that language to distinguish them, and ii) the speakers of that language think that X and Y are the same thing - does language actually reveal thought? Example that language does not reveal thought: Russians have special word for reflection off water/shiny surface, but other languages can understand concept as well -Eskimo language for snow: that the Eskimo people have more words for snow does not mean that they think differently about it -Hopi: expresses time in other ways other than grammar -Simplistic translations (Whorf used simplistic word by word translations which do not capture richness of language) -Circularity of argument: differences in languages => differences in thought, which is taken for evidence that different language affects thoughts -Confound of culture: hard to tell if difference in vocab has do with thoughts or culture/environments

What are the other two studies on insight problems, and what do they reveal about insight problems?

1) Maier: presented participants with two string problem (grab onto both strings hanging from ceiling, must use hammer as pendulum): if participants unable to solve problem, gave two hints (first: cause ropes to swing back and forth, two: provided participants with hammer and told participants problem could be solved with it) --> Results: participants who received hints were generally unaware of what gave them their "aha" moment -- often said useless/unrelated cues; overall, suggests lack of consciousness of the nature of insight Study 2: Anagram task Subjects report that the solution for anagrams come out of nowhere, but when they were shown anagrams for either 469 ms or 953 ms and asked to guess if they could form an English word, more people could solve the anagrams if shown for longer duration than shorter duration --> implies that although insight seems sudden, process is going on before we are conscious of it

What are the theories of deductive reasoning?

1) Mental rules: says that human reasoning uses propositional, language-like representations, and that people manipulate these representations by applying syntactic rules that remember logic rules --> if you can derive conclusion from premises, the arguent is valid; else, it is invald; also difficulty of inference increases if there is no rule for it/if there are many rules needed to perform inference Mental models: says that deductive reasoning involves diagrammatic representations, and that the output of our perceptual process is a "small scall model" of the real world; people use meanings of premises together with general knowledge to create mental models of possibilities compatible with premises --> if a conclusion is inconsistent with any of the models, it is invalid

What are better evidences for/against language affecting thought?

1) Navaho verb endings: showed Navaho-Navaho speakers, Navaho-English speakers, and English-English speakers 1 object and 2 other objects, and asked them to decide which object the first one was more similar to--1st object matched in either shape or color; expected NN speakers to choose similar shape and EE speakers to do either, as Navaho verb endings express the shape of the object it is concerned with (thus Navaho speakers must pay attention to shape of obj). Results: NN speakers grouped according to shape, NE speakers had reverse result, but EE speakers also grouped according to shape ---> does not support idea that language affects thought 2) Colorful debate

How do humans (infants) learn using induction?

1) One-shot learning, where a concept is learned from single example (ex children and language) --> requires massive leap of inductive reasoning 2) Bayesian inference: where people incorporate beliefs (priors) with new data to make an educated inference --> ex: circle more likely than pacman, so assumed circle is behind square

What are some problems with the behaviorist theory of language acquisition?

1) Poverty of the stimulus -- limited examples that demonstrate grammar that children learn 2) Plato's Problem: children with different linguistic environments arrivate at an accurate (and generally similar) grammar relatively rapidly and with finite input

What are the steps of problem solving? Which don't necessarily occur in a linear order?

1) Problem identification (Is there a problem?) 2) Definition of problem (representation of what the problem is about) 3) Constructing strategy for problem solving 4) Organizing information about problem (what do we know about the problem?) 5) Allocation of resources 6) Monitoring problem solving 7) Evaluating problem solving (seeing if you have solved problem) 3-6 don't necessarily occur linearly

What are the three theories within the cognitive view of language (that language is constitutive to thought)?

1) Sapir-Whorf: the world is a continous flux, so we use labels made available by our language to categorize things from continuum, serves as organizing principle; refers to language specific effects ("does being a speaker of one language make you think differently than a speaker of another language?") 2) Vygotsky: relationship between language and thought is a dynamic process; language and thought have independent origins, but become deeply interconnected, allowing for complex thought to arise; theory is about general effect of language on thought 3) Spelke: suggested that language does make us special as it allows us to combine modules of knowledge in our brain in ways could could not do if we did not have language (about language general effects)

What are the theories of how knowledge is stored?

1) Semantic Network Models 2) spreading activation model of semantic memory

What are the theories for how we parse sentences, and the evidence for and against?

1) Syntax first approach: we don't pay attention to meaning of words at first, but just build trees using categories; involves late closure, where we tend to attach incoming words to the phrase we are currently processing rather than assuming they belong to a different phrase coming up Evidence for: explains garden path sentences Evidence against: we seem to use meaning of words as we read and listen to the sentences in real time; evidence about this is the same that supports: 2) Intersectionist approach: (we use meaning of words as we read and listen to sentences in real time Evidence: A) Trueswell and colleagues: presented participants with sentences with parsing ambiguity, and tracked eye movements Sentences: some had parsing ambiguity, others didn't ("the defendent/evidence examined by the lawyer...--> second one not ambiguous based on semantic meaning, as evidence can't examine); people took longer to read ambiguous one than the nonambiguous one, showing that they used the meaning of the words to parse sentences B) Integration of non-linguistic info: Study by Tanenhaus et all. Tracked eye movements as participants shown visual scene (with one or two apples) and listened to sentence (put apple on the towel in the box). Participants in one apple condition looked at apple, then the empty towel, then the box showing that they interpreted that the towel was not describing the apple. Participants in the two apple condition looked at the apple on the towel, then at the box, showing that they used "on the towel" to interpret ambiguity --> study showed that participants used visual cues to interpret syntax of sentence in different ways

What is support for the prototype theory of categorization? What is the Lexical Decision task?

1) Typicality effects: behavior is directed differently towards atypical exemplars - when listing category members, we name typical members first -we are faster to put typical members into category than atypical ones - typical category members show priming effects that atypical members do not, according to the Lexical Decision Task Lexical decision task: -participants are shown strings of letters, and told to decide if the strings are words or nonwords. -if a typical item of a category was put as the first word, and the next word was also part of the category, participants were faster on the second word (as it was primed) -if first word was not a typical member/was a nonmember, participants were not faster on second word (no priming)

What are limitations of both exemplar theory of categorization and prototype matching theory?

1) Typicality ratings: both theories say that people providing consistent typicality ratings to items says that categories have fuzzy boundaries and are not rule based; however, it was found that these typicality ratings applied to categories that were rule based: study (Armstrong) found that participants systematically view 3 as a more typical odd number than 447--this is strange as we act as if the definition has fuzzy boundaries, but it does not; shows typicality ratings may be the result of the way the question is asked (experimental design) in both fuzzy and well-defined categories. 2) Lack of hard boundary between categories: prototype/exemplar provide a continuum of exemplars with differing typicality ratings, yet our categorization intuitions are all-or-none 3) These theories are similarity-based (judging category by how similar it is to exemplars/prototype), but what matters for "similarity" is vague (ex penguin is similar to tv as they are both black and white) and context dependent

What are the problems with the Expected Utility Hypothesis?

1) Value of something might be subjective 2) Loss aversion: when dealing with gains, people are risk averse, while when dealing with loss, people are risk inclined

What are the two types of problems and their definitions/characteristics? What are examples of each?

1) Well-defined problems: problems in which the initial state, the set of operations/moves allowed for the solution (the rules/strategies), and the final goals state that needs to be attained (the solution) are all known; EX: solving math problems, playing chess--> effectively solved by computers 2) Ill-defined problems: problems in which one or more of the three elements (initial state, rules of problem, the solution) are unclear; EX: finding an apartment, deciding what school to attend --> computers not very good at solving

Does creativity play a role in problem solving? What is the evidence for this? What role does creativity play in problem solving? What is the evidence for this?

1) Yes: Evidence: Study by Zirhlioglu - administered two scales: problem solving inventory, and how creative are you scale--> found positive relationship between problems solving abilities and creativity; problem: surveys are self reported 2) Creativity is antidote to functional fixedness: Example: candle study: participants asked to mount candle with matches in matchbox, tacks,without letting candle drip onto floor; solution was to mount on top of match box--> when shown matches outside of matchbox, participants were more likely to see it as a shelf and solve the problem

Examples of acquiring grammar without sufficient/with differing stimuli or abilities

1) children in different families may be exposed to different environments in quality and quantity of language 2) children acquire language uniformly and suddently despite different cognitive abilities 3) children acquire language uniformly even in the face of pathologies (blind children acquire color + sight-related words, children with Williams Syndrome acquire advanced language skills despite cognitive impairments) 4) Language learning is largely unguiding, when parents give feedback it is based on truth-value and not grammar 5) Children born in Pidgin language environment will try to systemize Pidgin language, leading to creole language with consistent system of grammar, large vocab, and can be native language 6) deaf isolates: people who can't hear and are not exposed to any real sign language develop rudimentary sign language of their own

What shows that semantic knowledge is not localized to the anterior temporal lobe?

1) damage to ATL doesn't always result in same pattern of semantic knowledge loss --> we would expect patients with similar damage to ATL to display similar behavioral impairments 2) neuroimaging research on healthy brains does not show ATL activation during tasks involving semantic memory, but instead distributed activity across variety of semantic processing tasks

What are barriers to problem solving?

1) irrelevant info: misguides people, leads them down dead-end paths (especially for ill-defined problems) 2) functional-fixedness: tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use 3) Fixation: people tend to focus on specific characteristic of a problem (part of functional fixedness)

What assumptions are the Expected Utility Hypothesis and the Subjective Expected Utility Hypothesis based on?

1) people have well specified preferences: preferences are complete (ppl are always able to decide preferences), transitive (A > B, B > C, then A > C), and independent (A > B => A + 10 > B + 10, and always like A over B) 2) people will choose option that maximizes their expected utility/subjective expected utility

What are the problems with EUT and SEUT? and what biases/heuristics cause these?

1) preference set is not complete: perception of value of something is pushed around by irrelevant factors (anchoring, endowment, framing) 2) Ability to estimate likeliness of events if not accurate (availability heuristic, representativeness, gambler's fallacy, conjunction fallacy) 3) Cognitive limitations: not enough mental capacity to "brute force" all available options

Characteristics of human language:

1) symbolic: makes use of arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning (except for onomotopeias) 2) discrete infinity (generative infinity): language is made of finite set of words, but can combine them into infinite potential meanings (is recursive) 3) Structure dependence: language is governed by rules that impart meaning and define which combinations of elements are acceptable and which are not (must know how elements relate to one another, as well as meaning of elements, to understand sentence) 4) Displacement: language allows us to think/communicate about things beyond what is immediately sensed (not present); honeybees can only talk about last piece of food they found 5) Organized at multiple levels: phonology (sounds), morphology (basic meaning), syntax, etc

What are the different theories of language acquisition?

1)Behaviorialist -- language is learned based on the same kind of mechanisms as other kinds of skill learning (trial and error with reinforcement, modeling of other people's language behavior) 2) Universal grammar (Noam Chomsky): innate capacity to learn language, given a modicum of input, that is genetically endowed and that constrains what can and cannot be learned -- no different than other neurocognitive systems

What is creativity? What are the three facets of intelligence according to Sterberg's Triarchic Theory of Human intelligence?

3 facets of intelligence: Analytical, Practical, Creative --> creativity is one of the facets of intelligence

What is problem solving?

A cognitive process that involves discovering and describing, analyzing, and solving problems (directed at transforming a giving situation into a goal situation when no obvious solution is available)

What is an argument? What are statements prior to conclusions called?

A set of 1+ statements (propositions); premises

What is analogy, and what is an example study of it?

Analogy: people can draw analogies between certain situations and the present problem to apply solution Study: present participants with doctor tumor laser problem --> 10% solve rate when some participants were given other stories to read, including story of general attacking fortress from multiple angles, 40% solve rate with no further help, and 40% solve rate after told it was relevant to doctor problem

What are the two approaches for studying problem solving? What do they say about problem solving?

Behaviorist approach: theorized that problem solving is a reproductive process, and that you solve problems using prior experience + what is known, and using the trial and error method; said that the law of effect is applicable Gestalt Approach: theorized that problem solving is not only reproductive but also productive, and that it occurs when you are thinking about a problem and you restructure information (actively manipulate/change representation of information) in your mind

What goes against the SEUT and EUT theories? Name all of them and say how they violate the theories

Biases (systematic tendencies not based on rational reasoning) and Heuristics? (rules of thumb) Biases: 1) Framing effects: bias that occurs when decisions are influenced by the way info is presented --> equivalent info can be options more/less attractive based on highlighted features -->violates axiom of independence in preference set (always liking A more than B) 2) Endowment effect: people place higher value on objects they own over those their don't --> Study: people values mugs and chocolate equally, but when given mugs or chocolate, they rate the thing they have over the thing they don't --> violates independence again 3) IKEA effect: people willing to pay more money for items that they had assembled over those assembled by experimenters --> violates independence? 4) Emotions: people influenced by emotions when making decision leading to same result (trolley dilemma vs trolley dilemma but push someone onto track) --> violates independence axiom again Heuristics:

What are the two cortical regions of the brain involved in language?

Broca's area-located in frontal lobe Wernicke's area- located in temporal lobe

What is decision making?

Choosing a course of behavior actions from many possibilities

What is cognition, reasoning, and decision making?

Cognition: acquiring and processing info about world to make behavioral decisions Reasoning: process of drawing new conclusions from given set of info (beliefs, prior knowledge, and/or argument) Decision-making: choosing specific course of behavioral actions from among possibilities

What is confirmation bias, and what is a study that demonstrates it?

Confirmation bias: the tendency people have to look for evidence that can support their current hypothesis/belief and to not look for (or ignore) evidence against it Study: Nyhan: gave participants mock new articles that contained misleading claim from politician that agreed with participant's political beliefs; afterwards, some participants were also given factual correction --> participants who received correction had higher belief in misleading claim than those who did not receive it

What is continuity and discontinuity? How does Spelke explain these in her cognitive view of language and thought?

Continuity: we have the same sensory-motor apparatus/capacities as other creatures, specifically the same cognitive modules Discontinuity: human cognitive achievements are far greater than those of other creatures Explanation: natural language allows humans to uniquely develop new knowledge from old materials

What are the two basic classes of reasoning?

Deductive reasoning: is about certainty --> as long as premises of the argument are true, then the conclusion must be true (regardless of semantic meaning) Induction: about probability/strength --> premises do not guarantee that the conclusion is true, but may make it more/less likely to be true

What is the spreading activation model of semantic memory? What is the evidence for this? What effects does this model explain?

Definition: nodes are connected to each other via semantic relatedness (and not hierarchial structure); more similar concepts = more connections and shorter distance; when one node is active, activation spreads to all connected nodes, and the farther the activation must travel, the longer it takes and the weaker it becomes Evidence: Lexical decision task that demonstrates semantic priming between two related words -presented pair of related words (butter, bread), and pair of nonrelated words (butter, nurse): people faster at responding to butter if presented with bread compared to with nurse Model explains: -typicality effects: typical exemplars are semantically similar to each other, there fore close, and activation will spread quickly between them; on the other hand atypical exemplars are farther apart from other category members (as they as less semantically similar), so activation will take longer to travel to them --> activation spreads from typical to nontypical exemplars

What is the semantic network model, its properties, and evidence for/against it?

Definition: says knowledge is stored as concepts within a network of interconnected units called "nodes"; a node has a category name and its associated properties; the closer you are to a node, the faster it should be to verify that the current category has a property in that node (i.e. canary is bird is faster than canary is animal, canary is yellow (in current node) is faster than canary has wings (in bird node) -Properties: 1) property inheritance: subordinate categories inherit properties of connected superordinate categories 2) cognitive economy (effeciency): network stores a property only once at the highest level it applies to -Evidence: Participants had to verify "canary is bird" and "canary is animal", and " canary is yellow" and "canary has wings"; response time was as expected Counterevidence: in sentence verification task, "dog is animal" was faster than "dog is mammal", which is should be the reverse; "robin is bird" was faster than "chicken is bird", while there should be no difference

Describe Spelke's example of number cognition, and what it demonstrates. Explain the evidence for each of the abilities

Describes how humans process numbers with two old core knowledge modules and language. Old core knowledge modules: Analogue magnitude system (number sense that allows us to approximate magnitude of numerosity without counting [a few, a lot]) Object individuation system (allows exact representtion of small number of items (1 to 3-4) without having to count Evidence 1 for analogue magnitude system: tested numerosity on infants, habituating them to a certain numerosity of dots, then tested them on the same numerosity (looking time the same) and tested them on different numerosity (infants react to this) Evidence 2 for analogue magnitude: rats pushing levelrs were rewarded after certain number of times Results: if you set the number to be 4, then the rats press the level 4 times, but if you set the number to 8, then rats press around 8 times, but wider STD --> rats use approximate numerosity for 8+ Evidence of Object individuation: -Habituation paradigm for infants: showed stimuli of 2 dots until habituated; test: showed 2 dots again (still bored), then 3 dots (interested) -Study 2: placed object in case in view of infants, then screen raised, and hand places new object behind screen -after this, showed infants either 2 objects or 1 object (impossible) -Alternative: showed 2 objects, screen raised, and hand grabs one item; then screen removed, and show either 1) 1 obj (expected) or 2) 2 obj (impossible) --> infants looked longer for impossible cases, demonstrates that they can do small number calculations -Study 3: non-linguistic animals: showed animals two fruits on left, one on right. Raised screens, then moved one front from the left to right; Results: animals always went to the screen with 2 fruits, showing that they can do small number calculations

What are the two types of language?

E-language: external languages like English, French, etc I-language: internal language: internalized set of constraints that allow us to learn, understand, and produce language

What is Expected Utility, and how is it calculated?

EU = probability of outcome (probability) times Utility (value) associated with outcome

What does it mean that modules are separate from each other?

Each modules is domain specific, task specific, informationally encapsulated, and isolated --> knowledge of one module cannot be combined with that of other modules

What is categorical syllogism and how does it work?

Has 3 statements (2 premises + conclusion), which are either true or false, with the truth value depending on relationship between assertation and actual world; Arguments are either valid or invalid, where validity is a formal property (is about structure of premises and conclusion, not truth value of conclusion)

Difference between human and animal languages?

Human languages: flexible and infinite Animal communication: usually rigid, small set of signals that stand for specific things which refer to details of their current environment

How do we measure creativity?

Ideational fluency: quantify creativeness by the number of ideas a person can generate about a particular topic or item

What is Broca's area important for? What is Broca's Aphasia? What are some prominent patients?

Important for forging and processing hierarchical structure of sentences, both production and understanding Broca's Aphasia: non-fluent aphasia, where patients have trouble with speech production (only short and simple sentences); reading and writing are not as affected, but deaf people sometimes have difficulty signing if Broca's area is lesioned Patient Tan: can only say "Tan"

What are insight and non-insight problems? Are these two different types of problems? What is the evidence for this?

Insight problem: the solution occurs suddenly onto your consciousness Non-insight problem: distinguished by the process of consciously working through each step of a problem to get solution Evidence: Study: Metcalfe: gave participants insight or non-insight problems to solve; asked participants every 15 second how close they were to a solution --> participants were able to predict how close they were to solution for non-insight problems, but could not predict for non-insight --> suggests that these are two different types of problems relying on different cognitive processes

What is insight? which theory is it a part of?

Insight: happens during productive process when information is restructured and solution suddenly comes into consciousness ("a-ha" moment); part of Gestalt approach of problem solving

What is the knowledge-based approach to categorization? What is this based on?

Knowledge-based approach to categorization: idea that we rely on our broad knowledge base and intuitive theories about how the world works to explain the reasons for category membership -- relies on Psychological essentialism (idea that all category members possess a fundamental essence that is unique to that category and determines membership); membership is based not on features, but on broad theories about essentialism which are implicit--the features we see are the result of the broader theory/idea

One example of nurture acquisition theory? What is the evidence for this? What is the counter arguments for this?

Language can be learned by Statistical learning: process by which learners acquire information about distributions of elements in the input (i.e. extraction of regularities from environment) Evidence: study by Saffran et Aslin: played series of syllables ("sentences") to infants, which has "words"; see if babies can learn words through statistical learning (which sounds go together and which don't) Test: gave infants real words or part words (having 1 syllable be part of one word and the other 2 part of another word) Results: infants listen longer to non-words (novel words) systematically ==> indicates they learned what is a word or not based on statistical learning; could learn word boundaries, grammatical categories, word referents, simple rule learning Counterargs: 1) difficult to transition to complex syntax 2) 1-shot learning of word referent (learn after only one example) 3) study done in artificial training conditions 4) uniformity of language learning (different environments would have different statistics == language learned differently)

What is language comprehension and the 3 basic aspects of language necessary to understand speech? What is the main problem of language comprehension?

Language comprehension: understanding the message that is meant to be conveyed by someone else 3 basic aspects: 1) phonological level 2) lexical level 3) parsing/syntax level Problem: that you must understand all of these from a sequence of sounds

What is lexical processing, and what are some examples of lexical ambiguity? How does the mind deal with lexical ambiguity and what is the evidence?

Lexical processing: matching speech units to their meaning Lexical ambiguity 1: homophones: words that sound the same but mean different things Lexical ambiguity 2: homographs: words that are spelled the same but have multiple meanings and pronunciations How we deal: Use context-- at first, people access all meanings of words, but then push away nonrequired meanings and only the context appropriate meaning remains EX: study by Swinney: had people do lexical decision task (decide if each string of letters is a word or not -- if there is any priming, then RT would be faster) Presented sentence with homophone (garden, bugs) from which context implied meaning, then participants did LDT on words associated with both meanings (ants and spy); both words had faster RT, meaning both were primed and the participants took into account both meanings; however, if LDT was done 200ms later, then only the meaning implied by the context remained primed (ant)--> thus people initially take into account both meanings, but then push the irrelevant one away

What is the method of repeated reproduction? What did this show?

Method where participants are shown a stimulus and asked to reproduce it from memory over and over; reproductions become less and less similar to the original stimulus with each attempt, and begin to look more like a familiar object --> shows that we use info from our schemata to help guide memory retrieval, and thus memory is reconstructive; implies that people with similar experiences will have similar schema

What is the evidence for knowledge-based approach to categorization?

Murphy and Allopena: Tried to train participants to categorize buildings with different sets of features -some sets of features made sense together, others did not -participants had difficulty learning the categories that didn't make sense --> shows that it's not just a list of features, but a theory of what it takes to belong to a category

What is the problem with having only the two old modules for number cognition? How does language help? What is the evidence for and against this?

Only two modules will not allow you to represent large, exact numbers. Natural language provides the medium for combining the representations delivered by core knowledge systems (number sense + subitizing (perceiving small numbers) + language = exact high number calculation) Evidence: Bilingual number cognition: Trained bilingual speakers of English and Spanish on various math tasks and knowledge in one of the two languages; tested in both languages using tasks --> if task was about exact small numerosity or approximate large numbers, they did equally well in both languages; if it was about exact large number numerosity, then they performed better when tested in the same language that they were trained in --> shows that language plays role in exact large number representation Counterevidence: -Rehsus monkeys can order exact sets of large numerosity (from 4 to 10) -Patients who get agrammatic aphasia (lose the ability to understand/process grammar of language) do not lose algebra skills -In several developmental disorders, dissociations between language abilities and arithmetic abilities are evident (autism: bad lang, good math skills; developmental dyscalculia: perfect lang, bad math)

What is an example of how computational complexity gets reduced in language?

Parallel interpretation: when we unite two ambiguous sentences, we tend to interpret them in the same way --> shows there are some "spontaneous" constraints in our processing of language; our cognitive system imposes some constraints on meaning interpretation

What is prosody and what is an example sentence?

Patterns of stress and intonation of a speaker that can convey critical information beyond; i.e "She said she did not take his money"

What are phonetic properties and the two types of linguistic units?

Phonetic properties: actual sounds that speaker is making Unit 1): phonemes (smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of the word) Unit 2): morphemes: smallest unit of meaningful speech

What is the second communicative view of language, and what is an example of this?

Piaget's theory, which says language depends on cognition (until you develop certain cognitive skills, you can't develop certain linguistic skills) Example: Study by Tommasello: tried to teach kids 2 types of verbs: 1 type referred to objects in sight, the other referred to non-visible objects: saw that kids at stage 6 (with obj permance) could learn both types, but kids at stage 5 (without object permanence) could only learn first type Shows: there are pre req skills that must be learned before language skills

What is one example of an innate hypothesis? How does it work? How many parts does children's learning have for language?

Principles and Parameters--people come into world with principles and parameters, which allow you to, after hearing some language, develop a fully fledged language Principles: finite set of fundamental principles that are common to all language (e.g. trace erasure principle) Parameters: finite set of binary parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst languages (e.g. null subject parameter-- do finite verbs allow for null subjects, question movement parameter --must interrogative phrases move to front of the clause) Children's learning has two parts: 1) structural learning (parameter setting) 2) lexical learning (learning language specific symbolic assocation between meaning and sound)

What is the symbol grounding problem?

Problem that any symbol system can only replace one symbol with another and that this process could continue infinitely; thus, there must be a way to connect the symbolic representation to the real world (symbol needs to be grounded)

What is the common-sense problem?

Problem where computers don't know basic human knowledge, which must be programming into them

Which categorization theory do researchers think that we use?

Prototype matching or exemplar retrieval, based on circumstance

What is the evidence that we do what prototype theory says (we abstract prototypes)? How does it go against the prototype theory?

Random Dot Pattern Experiment (Posner and Keele): -Experimenters created 4 random patterns of dots (prototypes), which each had distortions -12 exemplars for each prototype were created Task: -trained participants to recognize groups from exemplars only (participants never see prototype) Test: -show participants old distortions (exemplars they were trained on), new distortions (exemplars they never saw before), new distortions even more distorted (never seen before), and unseen prototypes themselves Results: people do well on old distortions, less well on new distortions (but still good), but as well as old distortions with prototypes (old distortions == prototypes) ==> shows that people are extracting the prototype from the exemplars and suggests that in our mind, we are inferring prototypes Contrary to prototype theory: people do remember old exemplars (whereas prototype theory says that individual exemplars are forgotten) ==> Overall, we extract prototypes but don't forget exemplars

What is the law of effect, and which theory/approach to studying problem solving does it support?

Says: response that produces positive effect in situation becomes more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a negative effect become less likely to occur again

What is segmentation and what are the problems associated with it? Evidence for these problems? What are the ways we solve this problem (and what is the evidence for our solutions?)?

Segmentation: having to infer from a sequence of sounds the phonemes, then the morphemes, then words, then syntax, and then assign meaning Problems: phonological ambiguity: coarticulation (the pronunciation of a phoneme changes according to what is the following phoneme) Example: Study by Pollack: recorded conversations of people waiting for psych experiment to start, then played people's individual words for them --> participants could not identify their own spoken words about 50% of time, showing that isolated words are ambiguous How we solve: a) use top down processing to interpret ambiguous input (called Phonemic Restoration Effect) Ex: study by Warren: recorded spoken sentence then replaced an individual phoneme from the recording and replaced it from a non-speech sound; played recording to participants and asked if they noticed any sound missing --> most did not notice, and if they did they chose the wrong sound b) Use visual cues to help understand auditory sequence of words Ex: McGurk Effect --> hear different sounds based on visual articulations, demonstrates that the brain uses info from other senses like visual info c) Statistical learning (Saffran et al)

What is semantic dementia?What stuff in the brain causes this?

Semantic dementia: neurodegenerative disease characterized by inability to name objects, but not due to a language deficit or perceptual deficit; is associated with degeneration of neural in anterior temporal lobe

What is the evidence that similarity criteria are context dependent?

Study by Media et al.: showed shapes that could be interpreted as 2D or 3D object -when shown next to 2D object, shape is seen as 2D -when shown next to 3D object, shape is seen as 3D

What is evidence for the exemplar theory?

Study: Allen and Brooks -trained participants to recognize drawings of creatures as diggers or builders based on the following rule: builders have 2 of 3 of these features: long legs, angular body, and spots; all others are diggers -asked participants to classify the following new creatures: 1) new builders (angular body and long legs): look like builders from training phase 2) other new builders (long legs and spots, but shape was much different): look like diggers from training phase Results: -creatures in 1) similar to previously seen builders were misclassified as Diggers only 20% of the time, but creatures in 2) dissimilar to previously seen buildings misclassified creatures as Diggers 45% of the time despite having two Builder features -->Shows: instead of using rule to categorize new creatures, participants categorized new item according to how similar they were to previously seen items, thus supporting the exemplar theory

What is Subjective Utility and how is it calculated?

Subjective Utility = the Probability of an outcome times the Subjective utility associated (value someone associates) with an outcome

What is the schema view of knowledge?

The idea that knowledge is organized in schemata-- a schema is our organized knowledge-base about a particular topic that includes everything we know about it

What is syntax?

The systematic way in which CATEGORIES of words can be combined and sequenced to generate meaningful phrases and sentences; rules apply to grammatical CATEGORIES

What is a prototype?

The typical member of a category; does not have to actually exist, but could just be an abstraction that has all the characteristic features of a category

What is the hub-and-spoke model? What is the evidence for this?

Theory for how brain might implement semantic knowledge storage; states that generalized and abstract semantic knowledge is stored in a semantic memory "hub" in the anterior temporal lobe, and that context-dependent + modality-specific details about items are stored in "spokes" distributed across cortex Evidence: use TMS to create a "lesion" and inhibit neural function over anterior temporal lobe and inferior parietal lobule (cortical region involved in visually-guided hand movements, corresponding to "spoke") while participants named pictures of both living and non-living things; Results: when ATL stimulated, took participants more time to name all pictures of objects --> supports role of ATL as general semantic hub as it was difficult for participants to retrieve all types of semantic info when area not functioning; when IPL stimulated, took participants more time to name non-living things that could be manipulated with the hands, but no effect on speed of living things/non-living things that could not be manipulated by hand

What is Vygotsky's theory of language and thought? What are the three phases?

Theory: relationship between language and thought is dynamic Phases: 1) Language and thought are unrelated, children have non-verbal thoughts and their babbling is pre-intellectual 2) then there is loose correlation between children's actions and the meaning/timing of their words (i.e. seeing animal and saying "dog") --> external speech 3) External speech terns into internal speech which child can use to "direct their thoughts" and make more complex thoughts possible

What defines a conditional/hypothetical syllogism?

They consist of a conditional claim, which states a rule that relates two propositions -- the antecedent and the consequent

What is transfer? What are the types of transfer? What things can affect transfer? What is a study that shows transfer?

Transfer: influence of previous problem solving experience on present problem solving 2 dimensions of transfer: 1D: positive/negative: positive--> experience allows for faster problem solving, negative --> experience disrupts problem solving (ff, mental set) 2D: near/far: near-->beneficial effect of previous problems on problems in similar context, far --> beneficial effects of previous problem on different contexts Things that can affect transfer: task similarities (similarities between problems in superficial and structural features), context similarity (similarity in physical/social context), and time interval (period of time between past and present problem) Study: Told participants problem of weighing elephant statue equal to gold for tax purposes, asked US and Chinese students to solve --> Chinese students had higher rate of solving, most likely to transfer from traditional story about weighing an elephant

What is the Dual Systems Model? What heuristics/biases is System 1 involved in? How does System 2 work with System 1?

Two systems: System 1: fast, intuitive, nonconscious (based on pattermatching and heuristics) System 2: willfully controlled system that thinks through problem Heuristics: uses belief bias (which makes us consider argument valid as conclusion is believable), and may result in availability and representativeness (as probabilities aren't thoroughly calculated) How they work together: System 2 intervenes and overwrites sytem 1 when: there is more time, there is an explicit need for reasoning, system 1 doesn't generate answer

What is the first communicative view? Who supports it? What is the idea of it? What is it based on?

Universalism, supported by Pinker, Chomsky, Fodor Idea: we develop concepts on basis of biology (hardwired into our brain), then we develop language to convey these concepts Based on: 1) Fodor's Language of Thought: idea that thought takes place in mentalese, an innate and compositional mental language; thus mind is equipped to have thoughts, and we don't need language to have them--> we then map mentalese to natural language with the process of translation 2) Chomsky's transformational grammar: there is a process of translation from a mental representation of meaning to natural langauge (for expression) and vice versa (for comprehension) 3) Finding that language is modular (encapsulated) and independent of other cognitive functions (e.g. Broca's area, Wernicke's area, language faculty)

Under what circumstances do people perform logical reasoning better under? What is the evidence for this? What are the theories for why this might be the case?

When dealing with real world, concrete scenarios; Wason task, but shown rule "if a person is drinking alcohol, they must be 21 years old" --> people choose right cards to prove rule Theories: 1) better because we do it all the time 2) better because as we are a social species, we have developed special module in mind that allows us to detect violations of societal norms

What is a mental set? What are examples of mental set problems?

Where you have a certain representation of a problem, its context, or a procedure for solving it --> may cause you to adopt an ineffective strategy in problem solving, make assumptions, find it hard to approach problem in new way Study 1: participants trained on number of Roman numeral problems of same type, participants develop a mental set that solution is obtained via manipulation of numbers; however, when different type of problem arises, participants struggle to find new solutions

What is the argument: P -> Q, Q, therefore P?

affirming the consequent; is invalid

What does inductive reasoning help with?

computational complexity --> reduces uncertainty and predicts possible events

What is the argument: P -> Q, not P, therefore not Q?

denying the antecedent; is invalid

What is Wernicke's aphasia? What are examples of its effects? Example of patients?

fluent aphasia, impaired comprehension (to various degrees) and impaired production of meaningful sentences (but still grammatical) Ex of symptoms: words used were wrong words, but order of stringing words together seems fine Ex patient: guy on cruise ship

What did Noam Chomsky say about language?

innate hypothesis: language is an innate skill for humans, no different than other capabilities (i,e, seeing shape)

What is the argument: P -> Q; P, therefore Q? Is it valid?

modus ponens/affirming the antecedent; is valid

What is the argument: P -> Q, not Q, then not P?

modus tollens/denying the consequent; is valid

What is graceful degradation? What is an example of this?

phenomenon where a connectionist network/brain doesn't lose all function as a result of restricted damage (i.e. damage to some units), but only some limited deficits occur; example is category-specific deficits of semantic knowledge, where patients lose their knowledge of living things (one category) but maintain their knowledge of non-living things (another category)

What is inductive reasoning, and what is it based on?

reasoning that is about the probability/strength of a conclusion given a set of premises; these are based on our previous experiences