Intro to psychology Chapter 8

Priming

(Answer) a concept gets it started. Reading or hearing one word makes it easier to think or recognize a related word. Seeing something makes it easier to recognize a related object. (important in language) Analogous to a pump: If you put some water in the pump to get it started, you can continue using the pump to draw water from a well.

ADHD symptoms

1) Mild abnormalities in certain brain areas, on average, especially in the frontal cortex 2) greater overall brain activity, implying a lack of inhibitory transmission Varies from one person to another, is doubted to be a single disorder

Functional fixedness

A special case of confirmation bias. tendency to adhere to a single approach or a single way of using an item.

Sunk cost effect

A special case of framing effect: willingness to do something because of money or effort already spent Suppose that months ago you bought an expensive ticket for today's football game, but the weather is miserably cold. You wish you hadn't bought the ticket. Do you go to the game? Many people attend the game anyway because they don't want to waste the money.

Peter Wason

Did an experiment with the sequence 2 4 6 and found that most people process the same information over and over until proven wrong, without searching for alternatives, even when there is no penalty for asking questions that give them a negative answer.

Laszlo Polgar

Hungarian author who set out to demonstrate that almost anyone can achieve expertise with sufficient effort. He devoted enormous efforts to nurturing his three daughters' chess skills. All three became outstanding, and one, Judit, became the first woman and the youngest person ever to reach grand master status. Based on these results, it became popular to say that expertise depends on 10,000 hours of practice. According to later research, that rule is only an approximation, because it overlooks individual differences

Behavior therapies

Method of treatment for ADD or ADHD that are more effective than stimulant drugs for improving social skills, improving academic performance, and decreasing conduct problems

Attentive process

Procedure that requires searching through the items in a series. Finding a bird that faces the right in a crowd of the same type of birds facing towards the left. You have to check each bird separately. The more birds present, the longer you will probably need to fin the unusual one. Example: Where's Waldo books

Highly confident people

Pros: People who tend to get good job offers and promotions. politicians win elections. If you act certain of winning a fight, a stronger opponent may back down. Cons: If the stronger opponent doesn't back down, you could get badly hurt. leaders often blunder into costly mistakes. Investors may lose money, especially by expecting that stocks that have been growing in value will continue to do so

Saccades

Quick eye movements from one fixation point to another last only 25 to 50 ms, a normal reading pace is about four fixations per second

2 1/2 Years

Sages of Language Development: Longer phrases and short sentences with some errors and unusual constructions. Can understand much more.

Bottom-up process (preattentive)

Sometimes, something such as a loud noise or flashing light suddenly grabs your attention. Psychologists call this a (answer) because the peripheral stimuli control it. Magicians use this tendency. They set up next tricks when audience is focused on one surprising thing

1 Year

Stages of Language Development: Babbling that resembles the typical sounds of the family's language; probably one or more words including "mama"; language comprehension much better than production.

4 Years

Stages of Language Development: Close to adult speech competence.

6 months

Stages of Language Development: More distinct babbling. first it's only haphazard sounds, but soon they start repeating the sounds they have been hearing.

2 years

Stages of Language Development: Speaks in two-word/telegraphic phrases. "more page"

3 years

Stages of Language Development: Vocabulary near 1,000 words; longer sentences with fewer errors.

1 1/2 years

Stages of Language Development: Can say some words (mean about 50), mostly nouns; few or no phrases. They seldom put words together Children who convey much information by gesture alone or word plus gesture at this age are likely to develop better-than-average vocabulary and complex sentence structure by age 3 1/2.

3 months

Stages of Language Development: Random vocalizations

Change blindness

The failure to detect changes in parts of a scene

Choice business

The phenomenon when people act as if they don't know what they had chosen. We can suspect that people often chose without knowing a reason and then made up a reasonable-sounding explanation afterward.

Cognition

Thinking and using knowledge (Answer) Psychologists also deal with how people organize their thoughts into language. begins with attending to something and categorizing what it is.

Exercise, adequate sleep, and Behavioral therapy (either in addition to the drugs or instead of them)

To minimize use of medications for ADD or ADHD, what other procedures work?

Young, older

United States and in Iceland found that stimulant drugs are prescribed more often for children who are (Answer 1) for their grade than those (Answer 2) for their grade. That is, if the cutoff for entering first grade is 6 years old, those who are just barely 6 are more likely to get an ADHD diagnosis, and to be treated with stimulant drugs, than those who are almost 7

Preattentive process

Visual information that stands out immediately Finding a naked man in a crowd full of fully clothed people. He stands out and is unusual, therefore making him easier to find.

Ritalin (methylphenidate) or Adderall (Amphetamines)

What are the most common treatments for ADD or ADHD (stimulant drugs)

Fixations

When your eyes are stationary you read during this. most of these last about 200 to 250 milliseconds. Briefer on familiar words like legal than on harder words like luau or words with more than one meaning like lead

Philip Tetlock

Who Found that from predictions of world events from various people: comparisons of prediction to actual results were low of accuracy. Later research did, however, show ways to improve accuracy. People who pay attention to their errors learn to reduce their biases, and people who work together in groups profit by sharing information and ideas

Eleanor Rosch

Who argued that many categories are best described by familiar or typical examples called prototypes.? After we identify good prototypes of country music or a bald person, we compare other items to them. Depending on how closely something matches, we call it a member of the category, a nonmember, or a borderline case. For example, cars and trucks are members of the category "vehicle." Flowers are nonmembers. Escalators and water skis are borderline cases.

Susan Carey

Who calculated that children between the ages of and 6 learn an average of nine new words per day. But how do they infer the meanings of all those words? A parent points at a frog and says "frog." How does the child guess that the word means "frog" rather than "small thing," "green thing," or "this particular frog"? Indeed, why does the child assume the sound means anything at all?

Tversky and Kahnman

Who demonstrated, most people avoid taking a risk to gain something (e.g., saving lives), because we know that even a small gain will feel good. However, we willingly take a risk to avoid loss (e.g., not letting people die), because any loss will feel bad. Similar results have been found in other studies, with people of all ages

Daniel Kahneman

Who described human thinking in terms of two systems? System 1 and system 2? Won the Nobel Prize in economics for research showing examples of inappropriate use of heuristics. For example, consider the saying: "If something looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck."

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler

Who reasoned that if people use mental images, then the time it takes to rotate a mental image should be similar to the time needed to rotate a real object? "When people have to rotate a mental image to answer a question, the farther they have to rotate it, the longer it will take to answer the question"

Productivity

ability to combine words into new sentences that express an unlimited variety of ideas. Only human language has this property. People constantly invent new sentences that no one has ever said before.

Algorithm

an explicit procedure for calculating an answer or testing every hypothesis Suppose you are a traveling salesperson in Ames, Iowa. You want to visit 10 cities and return home by the shortest route. You might list all possible routes, measure them, and determine which one is shortest.

Representativeness heuristic

assumption that an item that resembles members of a category is probably also in that category usually correct, except when we deal with uncommon categories. If you see something that looks like a rare bird, you should check carefully to make sure it isn't a similar, more common species.

Far transfer

benefit from practicing something not similar to it. More difficult to demonstrate. Tom receives an allowance of $2 per month beginning on his sixth birthday. The allowance increases by $0.20 each month. How much will he receive on his seventh birthday? People find it difficult to solve. does occur, requires extensive practice of the first skill. Small or inconsistent effect Computer games that require attention, memory, and planning improve academic progress for low-performing children

Near transfer

benefit to a new skill based on practice of a similar skill. robust phenomenon, easy to demonstrate.

Language Acquisition device

built-in mechanism for acquiring language, suggested by Noam Chomsky and his followers One line of evidence for this theory is that deaf children who are not taught a sign language invent one of their own and try to teach it to their parents or to other deaf children Further evidence is that children learn to use complex grammatical structures, such as "Is the boy who is unhappy watching Mickey Mouse?" even though they don't hear that kind of expression very often. To pick up that kind of grammar so quickly, children must have a predisposition of some sort. Still, the exact nature of that predisposition is uncertain.

critical thinking

careful evaluation of evidence for and against any conclusion thought that for decades, college professor have emphasized this

System 2 (Type 2 thinking)

cognitive processing for mathematical calculations, evaluating evidence, and anything else that requires attention. Relies heavily on working memory and if your working memory is already loaded, because you are trying to remember something else, you tend to fall back onto the other system

System 1 (Type 1 thinking)

cognitive processing for quick, automatic processes (such as recognizing familiar faces and routine actions) and for questions we think are easy. Generally proceeds without much effort. We rely on this whenever we can because it saves time and energy

Mariam Mosing (and colleagues)

compared thousands of pairs of adult twins. They found that even in cases where one twin had practiced a musical instrument extensively and the other one hardly at all, both twins were about equally good at discriminating pitches, melodies, and rhythms That is, although practice undeniably improves someone's skill at playing an instrument, it doesn't measurably affect hearing. The reason that most of the top musicians hear so well is that people who hear well are more likely than others to become musicians.

Broca's aphasia

condition characterized by difficulties in language production. resulted from people with damage in the frontal cortex, including Broca's area especially impaired with using and understanding grammatical devices such as prepositions, conjunctions, and word endings. For example, one person who was asked about a dental appointment slowly mumbled, "Yes ... Monday ... Dad and Dick ... Wednesday nine o'clock ... 10 o'clock ... doctors ... and ... teeth" Serious language impairment occurs only if the damage extends beyond Broca's area, and even into the interior of the brain, but what matters here is the nature of the impairment, not the exact location of the damage.

Attention deficit disorder (ADD)

condition marked by easy distraction, impulsiveness, moodiness, and failure to follow through on plans

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

condition marked by easy distraction, impulsiveness, moodiness, and failure to follow through on plans, plus excessive activity and "fidgetiness" Can result from fetal alcohol exposure, lead poisoning, epilepsy, or emotional stress There is genetic predisposition, but no common gene produces a large effect. Many genes can produce a small to moderate effect. Another possibility is epigenetics (changes in the expression of genes, rather than changes in the genes themselves.)

Wernicke's aphasia

condition marked by impaired recall of nouns and impaired language comprehension results from damage in the temporal cortex, including Wernicke's area Difficulty with nouns and impaired comprehension fit together: If you cannot remember what something is called, you will have trouble processing a sentence based on that word. Because these people omit or misuse most nouns, their speech is hard to understand. For example, one patient responded to a question about his health, "I felt worse because I can no longer keep in mind from the mind of the minds to keep me from mind and up to the ear which can be to find among ourselves"

Base-rate information

data about how common two categories are. Use this to decide whether something belongs in one category or another

Transformational grammar

described by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, a system for converting a deep structure into a surface structure. The deep structure is the underlying logic or meaning of a sentence. The surface structure is the sequence of words as they are actually spoken or written. According to this theory, whenever we speak, we transform the deep structure of the language into a surface structure.

Prototypes

familiar or typical example of a category

Williams Syndrome

genetic condition characterized by mental retardation in most regards but surprisingly good use of language relative to other abilities

Morpheme

linguistic unit of meaning. For example, the noun thrills has two (Answer) (thrill and s). The final s is a unit of meaning because it indicates that the noun is plural. Harp has one (Answer), and harping has two, but harpoon has just one, as it is not derived from harp. help us break an unfamiliar word into meaningful parts. For example, we can see reinvigoration as re-in-vigor-ation, meaning the process of increasing vigor again.

Phoneme

linguistic unit of sound. such as f or sh. Machines that talk to you, such as a GPS, take a written word, break it into phonemes, and pronounce the phonemes. For some words with irregular spellings, the machine's pronunciation may be wrong or hard to understand.

Choice-delay task

opportunity to choose between a small immediate reward and a larger delayed reward Would you prefer a small reward now or a bigger reward later? Obviously, it depends on how much bigger and how much later. On average, people with ADHD are more likely than other people their age to opt for the immediate reward.

Stop-Signal task

procedure in which a person responds as quickly as possible to a signal but inhibits the response in the event of a second signal Most people with ADD or ADHD have trouble inhibiting their response after short delays.

Spreading activation

process by which the activation of one concept activates or primes related concepts. For example, if you hear flower, you are primed to think of rose, violet, and other flowers. If you also hear red, the combination of flower and red primes you to think of rose. Priming that word helps you recognize it more easily than usual if it were flashed briefly on a screen or spoken very softly.

Satisficing

searching only until you find something satisfactory

Heuristics

strategy for simplifying a problem and generating a satisfactory guess provide quick guidance when you are willing or forced to accept some possibility of error, and they work well most of the time System 1 relies heavily on this Examples: If you want to guess which child is oldest, choose the tallest. If one product is more expensive than another, it is probably of higher quality. If the instructions for a task are difficult to understand, the task itself is probably difficult to do, but probably also important We also follow several (answer) that are not defensible at all. We tend to distrust people whose names are difficult to pronounce. If a medicine or food additive has a name that is difficult to pronounce, people assume it is unsafe also used for questions such as "Which job shall I take?" or "How shall I spend my money?" You don't have all the information you need, and there is no single correct answer. Instead, you generate a few possibilities, consider them, and try to make the best choice you can.

R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner

taught a chimpanzee named Washoe to use the sign language of the American deaf (Ameslan). Washoe eventually learned the symbols for about 100 words, and other chimps learned to communicate with other visual symbols

Confirmation Bias

tendency to accept a hypothesis and then look for evidence to support it instead of considering other possibilities People listen mostly to others who agree with them on matters of science, politics, or religion—and then they accuse their opponents of being biased. Once we have made a decision, we look for reasons to stick with it.

Framing effect

tendency to answer a question differently when it is worded differently An example: A company that provides health insurance will charge higher rates to overweight people. If they describe it as "a discount for lower weight," people like it better than if they call it "a penalty for higher weight," even though the effect is the same

Availability heuristic

tendency to assume that if we easily think of examples of a category, then that category must be common. Leads us astray when One category gets more publicity than another or is more memorable

word superiority effect

tendency to identify a letter more accurately when it is part of a word than when it is presented by itself

Stroop effect

tendency to read a word instead of saying the color of ink in which it is printed. People do better on this task if they blur their vision, say the colors in a different language, or manage to regard the color words as meaningless.

Attention

the tendency to respond to and remember some stimuli more than others

Maximizing

thoroughly considering as many choices as possible to find the best one People with this quality usually make better choices, according to objective criteria. However they have more difficulty making a choice and they are usually less satisfied with their choices. In romantic relationships, they tend to feel less satisfied with their partner and less committed to the relationship. Side Note: people are most likely to make a good choice if they consider no more than 20 possibilities

James Johnston and James McClelland

who briefly flashed words on the screen and asked students to identify one letter at a marked position in each word

Top-down process (attentive)

you can deliberately decide to shift your attention. When you increase your attention to something in your visual field, the part of your visual cortex sensitive to that area becomes more active and receives more blood flow If you focus on a word, such as THIS, and attend to the letters, you increase activity in the language areas of the brain, but if you attend to the color, you shift activity to the color-detecting areas