Psychology Chapter 7 Cognition and Language Review

________ is a flexible system that enables us to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

Language

What are the three main building blocks of thought?

Language, images, and concepts

______ is a heuristic that combines hill-climbing and subgoals, aims to reduce the discrepancy between the current situation and the desired goal at a number of intermediate points.

Means-end analysis

______ are the smallest meaningful units of speech, such as simple words, prefixes and suffixes.

Morphemes

What is linguistic determinism?

Patterns of thinking are determined by the language one speaks.

What are the basic units of a language that indicate changes in meaning?

Phonemes

What is the first step in problem solving?

Problem representation

What is a mental model of the most typical examples of a concept to classify new objects?

Prototypes

Name the three ways in which human language differs from nonhuman communication.

Semantic (meaningful), displacement (not limited to here and now), productivity (able to produce new words, phrases, and sentences).

What is the criteria for assigning meaning to the morphemes in a language?

Semantics

What s a good example of the use of an algorithm?

Solving a math problem with a formula

Differentiate between surface structure and deep structure

Surface structure is particular words and phrases and deep structure is the underlying meaning.

_____ is the rules for arranging words into grammatical phrases and sentences.

Syntax

What king of processing does speaking use?

Top-down processing (we move from the underlying idea to the words)

GAME CARD

Use the tacks and box to mount the candle on the wall.

When does a novice preform better than an expert?

When a novel or creative response is required.

Brainstorming is a way to overcome mental sets. What is brainstorming?

When someone collects numerous ideas and evaluates them only after all possible ideas have been collected.

What is working backwards?

Working from the desired goal back to the given conditions.

An ______ is a problem-solving method that guantees a solution if it fits the problem and is carried out correctly.

algorithem

Most concepts that people use in thinking ________________.

are fuzzy and overlap with one another.

Another common heuristics is __________, in which we base a judgement or decision on information that is most readily available to memory, whether or not that information is accurate.

availablity

What is the type of primate that consistently show signs of self awareness?

chimpanzees and orangutans

The term "thinking" is a synonym for ________________.

cogntion

What heuristic involves the tendency to notice and remember evidence that supports our beliefs and to ignore evidence that does now support them?

confirmation bias

Name some situations in which the compensatory model does not work well

day-to-day decisions, when it is impossible to quantify pros and cons, where alternatives are equally attractive or unattractive, or when consequences of some decisions are uncertain.

People from Eastern cultures tend to think ______ whereas Westerns tend to think ______.

holistically; analytically

A ______ is a tendency to perceive and approach problems in certain ways.

mental set

A factor that can help or hinder problem solving is _______.

mental set

What are the decision-making heuristics?

representativeness, availability, confirmation bias

What is the heuristic in which we judge a new situation in terms of resemblances to a more familiar model?

representatives

How do non humans communicate?

signs

What is a general or global statements about the animal's current state?

signs

_______ are intermediate, more manageable goals that may make it easier to reach the final goal.

subgoals

When there are only a limited number of solutions to a problem________ might be the best way to find the correct one.

trial and error

GAME CARD

Arrange the sic toothpicks found in the game bag into four equilateral triangles. Each side of every triangle must be only one match in lenght

Who came up with the term linguistic determinism?

Benjamin Whorf

What kind of processing does understanding speech use?

Bottom-up processing (moving from specific words and phrases to their underlying meeting)

The process whereby we acquire and use knowledge

Cognition

The ________ model of decision making is when you select a set of criteria, rate each of the choices on those criteria, and add up the ratings to see how well each choice matches the criteria.

Compensatory

A ___ is a mental category for classifying people, things or events. They can be organized in hierarchies.

Concept

_________ thinking refers to thinking about alternative realities that are counter to the facts as a way of mentally reversing a course of events that led to a negatve experience? (What ifs.../If only....)

Counterfactual

Unlike other kinds of problem solving, _______ ______ starts off with knowledge of all possible solutions or choices.

Decision Making

What is problem representation?

Defining or interpreting the problem.

What is the perspective or phrasing of information that is used to make a decisions that can intentionally or unintentionally sway the descion?

Framing

What is the language rules that determine how sounds and words can be combined and used to communicate meaning within a language?

Grammar

What are rules of thumb that help simplify problems though they do not guarantee a solution?

Heurstics

What is a heuristic in which each step moves the problem solver closer to the final goal?

Hill-climbing

Name two heuristics.

Hill-climbing, subgoals, means-ends analysis, working backward

What is a nonverbal mental representation?

Image

What is functional fixedness?

The tendency to assign a fixed function to something we learn to use in a particular way.

What is hindsight bias?

The tendency to view outcomes as inevitable and predictable after they are known