Psych Midterm #2

Imagine there is a 1 in 201 prevalence of morbus nose syndrome among people like you. You are planning to take a diagnostic test that has a 20% false positive rate (that tells you you're sick when you're not) and a 0% false negative rate (telling you you're healthy when you're not). The test comes out positive. Uh-oh! How worried should you be about your nose?

1 in 200 chances. This means that 1 person actually has it. 40 people are diagnosed but do NOT have it (20% of the 200). 160 actually have it. 1/41 people diagnosed actually have it

What information is there in speech beyond the sequence of consonants and vowels?

A lot - speech also gives information about who's talking.Also the grammar of the language has conventions about things like pitch (in English, higher pitch in many stressed syllables, rising pitch in yes/no questions, higher pitch for certain kinds of emphasis), or like the duration of speech sounds, or when we're allowed to let our voice turn all creaky, and so on.Examples given in class included the difference between "black bird"and "blackbird".

Suppose that a trait is considered 80% heritable, according to behavioral genetics research. Does that mean that it can't be changed by interventions?

no, it does not mean that. heritable traits can be changed with intervention sometimes.Not at all. Heritability of a trait in facts says nothing about its amenability to treatment. One example is short-sightedness, which is somewhat heritable but which has a perfectly fine treatment,i.e. glasses or contacts.

What is the A not B task, and how does it relate to cognitive control?

A 6 month old is shown two covered bins. A toy is placed in one of them in front of the child and covered back up. The bins are slid towards the child and the child can uncover the correct bin to find the toy. This process is repeated, using the same bin over and over, the child can correctly find the toy because of his or her goodshort-term memory and visual skills. When the researcher (in front of the child) switches the toy into the other bin the child will still reach for the original bin. This demonstrates a lack of cognitive control in 6 month olds. Although they know that the toy has gone in the new bin (as indicated by where they look when presented with this final trial), they cannot help their trained, automatic response to reach for the original bin. This response has become a habitual motor action, so once the bins are pushed towards them, they are controlled by their environment; they automatically perform the rehearsed action without being able to control it.

What is a gene x environment interaction? Give an examples of a gene x environment interaction.

A gene x environment interaction implies that the effects of some aspect of the environment will vary as a function of genetic differences among people. Examples: height and nutrition. * at a certain nutrition amount, your genes are going to max out, more nutritions won't make you grow past a certain point * however we do know that not enough nutrition can lead to very short people * the interaction is the relationship between these two things

Evocative gene-environment correlation

occurs when an individual's (heritable) behavior evokes a response from the environment. example: children who are aggressive are those who elicit harsh physical discipline leading to an association between physical discipline and aggressive behavior.

maturational reason (why its hard for adults to learn a new language)

Adults' difficulty in language learning is due to biological changes, analogous to those that have been well-documented in cases like songbird song learning. The adult brain is no longer equipped for the kind of rapid language learning that children show. Weakness: this is not really an answer, so much as a restatement of the problem. It is not very informative to just say "it's biological" and call it a day.

motivational reason(why its hard for adults to learn new languages)

Adults are not as motivated as children to learn language, and this is the cause of their difficulty. Weakness: this just seems implausible in many cases. Children have very little immediate need for language (e.g., they get fed and cared for even without it), whereas many adults, such as an immigrant who has just moved to a new country and needs to speak the language to be able to buy food, have obviously important, immediate needs for language.

As people age, what are the changes in their temporal focus and emotional well- being? What explains this change?

As people age, they tend to change from 'future-focused' to 'present-focused.' Anyone with a sense of limited future time span tends to be "present-focused". Studies have found that not only older people, but HIV positive patients who do not think they will live for long, and young people who are about to move across country tend to be 'present-focused.' For example, they wanted to spend time with people they are already familiar and close with rather than meeting new people.On average, people's emotional well-being actually improves as they age. A 10-year study using experience sampling method found that positive emotional experiences improve as people age and peak around 60-70. This might be because older people are better at managing emotions and focusing on positive experiences. For example, studies have shown that older people have better memory for emotionally positive photos than negative photos,and show stronger amygdala activation in response to positive images relative to neutral ones.

In Piagetian theory, what are "assimilation" and "accommodation"?

Assimilation is the process of putting new experiences into existing knowledge and existing theorys (aka fitting them into a schema). Accommodation is the process of changing existing schemas to fit new experiences. example: lets say i see a new type of bottle and i realize that although its different from anything i've seen before, its a water bottle (assimilation). But when i see a metal water bottle i am confused i didnt know water bottles could be metal, so i have to accommodate my schema of water bottles to include metal bottles.

Approximately when in the course of development do children lose the ability to make phonemic distinctions that are not used in their language (e.g., l versus r in Japanese, or e versus E in Spanish)?How do we know this?

At birth, all children can discriminate the phonemes that are used to tell apart words in any languages. By 6-12 months, infants no longer discriminate similar-sounding phonemes that their language treats as the same. We know this from studies in which infants of different ages are presented with one phoneme until they habituate to it, and then are presented with a different phoneme that their native language treats as the same. Very young infants dishabituate when the new phoneme is presented, indicating that they perceive it as different from the prior stimuli, whereas older infants (again,between 6 and 12 months) do not dishabituate, indicating that they perceive the new phoneme to be the same sound as the prior stimuli.

What does "attachment" mean in the context of development, and how do children differ in their attachment (pages563-567)?

Attachment is the strong, enduring emotional bond between a child and its caregivers that some psychologists consider the basis for relationships later in life. The main name to remember here is John Bowlby. He viewed attachment as also providing to the child the model that he or she will use in viewing all social relationships.While this is certainly possible, there are also alternative explanations of findings showing a relationship between attachment pattern early in life and outcomes later in life. in middle class families : roughly 60% secure, 10% anxious/resistant 15% anxious/avoidant, 15% disorganized

Active gene-environment correlation

occurs when individuals seek out environments that are congruent with their genetic predispositions.example: children who are aggressive may seek out aggressive peers leading to an association between peer group membership and aggressive behavior. All of these gene-environment correlations can make it hard to be sure how to explain similarities between parents and children.

What do London cab drivers tell us about memory?

Cab drivers are required to know a tremendous amount of information about the streets and routes in downtown. When compared to non-cabbie age-matched normal subjects, London cabbies were originally found to have significantly larger posterior hippocampi. The most intuitive interpretation is that learning The Knowledge increased the size of the posterior hippocampus. However, because this was a correlational study, there are many alternative interpretations (e.g.,reverse causation: people with larger PH have better memories, which makes them more likely to become London cab drivers). Draganski etal. (2004) suggest that the former interpretation is more likely given their experiment using juggling. Half of the subjects did nothing while the other half learned to juggle. They found that those who had learned to juggle showed an increase in grey matter. The experimental design with random assignment allows us to establish a *causal* relationship between learning and the neurological change.

Do children merely repeat what they hear adults say, or do they learn rules about language? What do children's mistakes tell us about language development?

Children do repeat some things, but children very often use language creatively and generatively. If children were simply parroting what they hear, it would be odd for them to regularly make mistakes that adults do not make. For example, kids often have trouble with irregular forms ("we goed camping) or with certain aspects of word meaning ("don't giggle me"). Therefore we believe that children acquire the rules of the language(s) they grow up with, and try to use those rules as they generate new language.

Children not only learn facts, but also develop theories or schemas about each domain. The example we talked about was the domain of biology. What do children know about biology?

Children have some very early intuitions about biology, mainly based on distinguishing between things that can move on their own, and things that can't. Once children start elaborating theories about living things, they start out with some ideas they'll eventually reject. When young children think about animals, they use human as a reference and consider humans to be the 'normal' case. They think that if human has a particular body part, other animals such as dogs or bees probably have it too; however, if dogs or bees have a particular body part,humans probably don't have it. In terms of inheritance, we know that physical features such as eye color and height are more likely to be inherited, and we generally don't think that beliefs and preferences are inherited. In contrast, young children think beliefs and preference are also inherited. Young children tend to give social and psychological answers rather than biological ones.For example, when asked why people need to eat, they would say because it's time to eat. More generally speaking, in domains like biology, physics, social relations, and so forth, children do develop theories of a sort,though such theories may or may not be right, and sometimes it's debatable whether a child has a real "theory", right or wrong, as opposed to a semi coherent collection of facts.

what three factors are important for a healthy sleep?

Duration - you must sleep for the right amount of time Continuity - your sleep must not be fragmented or disrupted Intensity - depth of sleep must be maintained in nonREM and REMsleep

Explain environmental control of behavior, and give an example(from any species).

Environmental control of behavior is the opposite of cognitive control. It means that an organism reacts to a cue in the environment immediately, without being able to actively choose if and when to react. For example, a moth will fly towards a light. It will not be able to decide to fly towards it at a later time; it will fly towards the light immediately when the light is presented.

What characteristics make expert thinking different from novice thinking?

Experts differ from novices in both the amount and type of their knowledge. Obviously, experts have much more knowledge (usually 10 years worth) that they can apply to problems. Also, they organize their knowledge in terms of higher-order concepts and patterns. For instance, chess novices think in terms of the positions of individual pieces ("rook on squareB3"), whereas chess masters think in terms of strategic groupings across the board ("rook flanked by pawns in top left of board threatening my bishop in the top right"). This kind of organization,in turn, makes it more likely that experts will rely on analogies to help them solve novel problems. As we saw in one of the classes on Memory, this chunking can lead to surprising feats of memory: when presented with a full chessboard for 5 seconds, grandmasters are able to recreate the positions of all the pieces nearly perfectly. Importantly, this effect only holds when the pieces are arranged according to the normal rules and conventions of chess; when presented with illegal or bizarre moves on the board, the grandmasters actually remember the pieces less accurately than novices. This suggests that the grandmasters were not better pattern-recognizers per se, but rather had a superior conceptual/organizational knowledge of chess.

Also, what is fetal alcohol syndrome?

Fetal alcohol syndrome is a developmental disorder that affects children whose mothers consumed substantial amounts of alcohol during pregnancy. Its effects include a range of psychological problems (learning disorders and behavior difficulties) and physical abnormalities (smaller stature and a characteristic pattern of facial abnormalities).

Sensorimotor period

First of Piaget's four intellectual stages. Lasts from approximately birth to about 2 years. the child has not yet achieved object permanence; the child first fails to reach for hidden objects and later makes the A-not-B error.

In class we raised the possibility that everyone in the room was a potential penny expert, having seen a penny perhaps 10,000 times.However, the clicker question suggests that only 40% could recognize the correct penny in a lineup. Nickerson found similar results. What explains this discrepancy? What does Brady et al. (2008) add to our understanding of the problem?

First, attention. Mere exposure, even in great quantities, does not necessarily lead to substantial declarative knowledge that would allow us to remember seemingly obvious facts (e.g., which way Lincoln is pointing on the penny). On the other hand, Brady et al. (2008) suggest that when people are paying close attention, even one exposure is sufficient to recognize, non-obvious information (e.g., whether,1,000 trials later, an image has been previously been presented).

How does the human language system differ from those of bees and many animals like dogs?

Human languages are "digital" , they are made up of discrete elements (e.g., phonemes to make words, words to make phrases) that are combined together to communicate meaning. (This is Humboldt's"infinite use of finite means").By contrast, bees, whose communication system is pretty sophisticated,employ an analog communication system in which the bee's movements signal the direction and distance of the food source from the hive. Finally, many animals communicate using a gradient communication system in which stronger signals are communicated by the volume or intensity of the utterance or sound (e.g., dogs barking).

How are adoption studies useful in understanding heritability?

In adoption study designs, any association between the family environment and child behavior cannot be confounded by genetic factors because the adoptees and their adoptive parents do not share their genes. e.g., Adopted children who have received harsh physical discipline by their adoptive parents are more aggressive than those who have not received harsh physical discipline.Thus the environment matters over and above genetic influences.

What is the difference between consonants and vowels?

In general speech is about what you do with your vocal apparatus as you breathe out. Consonants are formed by hindering the air as it exits - by blocking the flow completely as in sounds like /t/ or /g/, or just by giving it a hard time in one way or another (like forcing it through a narrow gap as in/s/, or letting just a little through your nose as in /n/). Vowels are formed by giving your vocal folds (2 membranes that can block airflow) just the right level of tension so they vibrate. Different vowels are made by adjusting the position of your tongue and lips to change which harmonics are reinforced.

What are the hallmarks of a sleep deprived person taking thePsychomotor Vigilance Test?

In the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, a subject simply has to click a button upon seeing a simple visual signal. A sleep-deprived person will be able to react like a control subject (not sleep-deprived) at first, but after a few seconds there are periodic long lapses between the presentation of the stimuli and the subject's reaction time. Sleep-deprived participants also are much more likely to false-alarm, saying the signal was there when it wasn't.

Why is cognitive control crucial in performing well on the Stroop Test?

In the Stroop test, a person is shown various words written in different color ink. The task is to recite the ink color instead of the word.It takes cognitive control to turn off our automatic response- reading words we see on a page. We must avoid this practiced response in order to succeed in the task. Our automatic response would be to read the word and thus say the wrong color out loud. It takes cognitive control to be able to stop ourselves from doing that and just recite the ink color.

Describe the resulting behavior in subjects when Professor Thompson-Schill used TMS to stimulate their prefrontal cortices during the uncommon use for objects task. Sometimes what might appear at first blush to be a disadvantageous biological feature could in fact have some value. Prof. Thompson-Schill discussed the positioning of the human larynx as one example (we can die from choking on food -- but we can also make avery wide range of speech sounds). What might be an advantage of a late-developing prefrontal cortex?

In this study, Professor Thompson-Schill's lab stimulated the left prefrontal cortex of subjects while they had to complete the uncommon use for objects task. In this task, the subjects were presented with an object and had to name an uncommon use for it (e.g.using goggles as contact cases). The results found were that with stimulation (i.e., turning off the prefrontal cortex and thus turning off cognitive control), the subjects performed faster on the task.They also had fewer stimuli that they couldn't provide answers for. With no stimulation or stimulation to the right prefrontal cortex (control), they had slower response time and could not give an answer for almost half of the stimuli. This is a clue that a lack of cognitive control at a young age due to slow development of the prefrontal cortex could have the positive benefits of added creativity.

In Erickson's 8-stage model of life-span development, what are the three stages that relate to adulthood?

Intimacy vs. isolation (20s through early 40s): The major concern during this stage is developing a intimate relationship. The key accomplishment of this stage is building a partnership. According to Erickson, failure to develop an intimate relationship may lead to isolation. Generativity vs. stagnation (40s to 60s): The goal of this stage is finding meaning in one's work,which produces a sense of generativity or a concern about contributing to the next generation or to causes that one will outlive. According Erickson, failure in this stage leads to a sense of stagnation. Integrity vs. despair (60s to death): The major task of this stage is finding meaning in the life thatone has led. According to theory, success in this stage leads to a sense of peace and satisfaction with one's life whereas failure leads to feelings of regret and disappointment and ultimately despair.

Preschool children who have a basic grasp of counting skills often fail Piaget's conservation of number test (when the experimenter spreads out the coins). What is one explanation for this finding?

It is possible that asking children the same question twice implies that the child made a mistake the first time around and that the adult is giving them a second chance to give the "correct"answer. For example, when the experimenter asks "how many coins are in the row?" and then asks "now how many coins are in the row?" after spreading out the coins, kids may assume that they were wrong the first time around and change their answer as a result. This is only possible if the child is unsure of her answer,however, so despite this alternative explanation, Piaget was correct in his observation that preschool children have a tentative grasp of numerical concepts. He may not have been correct in his prediction that preschool children inevitably fail this task, since other studies have shown that simplifying the task leads children who would have failed the standard tasks to succeed.

What is one way to resolve the discrepancy between what infants supposedly know (based on new techniques used by infancy researchers) and how they act (as described by Piaget)?

It's possible that children know more than they demonstrate by their behavior because they have a hard time inhibiting their typical response. We saw an example of this in the card-sorting task - even though children understand that the rule of the card game has changed,they can't stop themselves from sorting the cards according to the first rule. This inability to inhibit behaviors is thought to be a result of children's underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the brain area that normally provides us with cognitive control. In fact, adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex often fail a version of the card-sorting task, like children.Children's difficulty inhibiting their typical responses would explain why they make the A not B error, where they continue searching for an object in location A even when the experimenter begins to hide it in location B. Even though they sometimes look in the right direction (location B), demonstrating that they actually know where the object is hidden, their behavior doesn't reflect their knowledge. It would also explain why children fail the water conservation task - they're used to paying attention to the most obvious, familiar cue about water (if it's higher, there's more water), so they have trouble considering a second cue, like the width of the glass.

What examples did we see in class that suggest we do or do not think in language?

Language-based thinking ex: We may "think in language", when solving problems that involve a lot of "keeping track" of things (e.g., how do you get a fox, a chicken, and a bag of Doritos across the Styx; or what's 24 x 37?). Language helps us keep track of more information at once than we'd otherwise be able to. Language-less thinking example: When we looked at the pictures of possibly unfamiliar actors and actresses in class, we could all later identify on which side of the screen the person was on.Similarly, while we could have described that one paperclip-looking object as "the pointier one", people don't need a description to identify which object was presented earlier. These tasks may use language after thinking has occurred, but do not require it.These examples show thought without language. We can also imagine cases where if we did think using language, we would make thinking errors that we don't make, like being confused about the two meanings of the word "spring". Our thoughts also aren't consistently bedeviled by syntactic parsing ambiguities (like not being sure who's old in "old women and men").

We discussed five theories of why learning a second language is so difficult for adults. What are they?

Maturational,Motivational,Interference, Experiential and Cognitive.

What are the neural and hormonal mechanisms by which we synchronize our activity to the light-dark cycle?

Melanopsin receptors in the retinal ganglion cell layer of the eye transduce the light signal into neural impulses which travel along the retinohypothalamic tract to the biological clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). These neural impulses signal that the sun is up. The wavelength of the light matters for entrainment to the light-dark cycle. The melanopsin receptors in the retina are particularly receptive to blue light. Fluorescent lights do not have blue light, so humans don't entrain to them.

How does the light-dark cycle affect the release of melatonin and cortisol and how do these hormones affect sleeping and waking behavior?

Melatonin and cortisol are hormones that are involved in regulating the body's circadian rhythm. When the sun sets, the pineal gland releases melatonin into the bloodstream and signals all of the biological clocks in the body to synchronize. This signals tell the body to go to sleep. Cortisol is released by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis about halfway through the sleep cycle and peaks in the morning signaling the body to wake up.

Explain the logic of twin designs: why does the distinction between monozygotic and dizygotic twins help understand heritability?

Monozygotic (MZ) twins share 100% of their DNA, while dizygotic (DZ)twins share 50% of the DNA (just like all siblings who aren't twins). MZ twins share traits and behaviors because of their shared genetic information and their shared environment, but they differ in the unique environmental factors to which each twin is exposed. Psychologists are able to infer the source of individual differences in the population by comparing traits and behaviors of MZ and DZ twins - this type of study produces an estimate of heritability, or how much of the variation in a trait can be accounted for by genetic factors.

Suppose that a trait is considered 80% heritable, according to behavioral genetics research. If your parents have that trait, does this mean you are 80% likely to have it too?

No, it doesn't mean that. Heritability is not an estimate of individual risk. It is a population estimate and does not give us information about the individual risk for particular disorders/traits.

Describe two procedures used to test infants' knowledge/abilities. How do these procedures take advantage of habituation?

One procedure involves hooking up a baby's pacifier to a computer and speakers and giving her access to a particular stimulus as long as she continues to suck her pacifier. It is then possible to measure the amount of sucking the baby does to keep experiencing this stimulus. This procedure uses habituation by waiting until babies get tired of (i.e. habituate to) a stimulus and their sucking consequently reduces, and then introducing a different stimulus in order to determine whether the baby perceives it as novel. If the baby does perceive it as novel, her sucking should pick up again, but if she doesn't, her sucking will continue to decline. This procedure is often used to learn how infants categorize and discriminate among stimuli. Another procedure involves measuring the amount of time infants spend looking at a particular stimulus, based on the assumption that, like us, babies look longer at things that interest them. First babies are presented with a stimulus until they habituate to it and are no longer interested in looking at it. The experimenter then presents another stimulus, and measures the amount of time the baby spends looking at it. The longer the baby looks, the more the baby is interested in/surprised by the stimulus. This procedure is often used to test how much babies know about what is possible and impossible in the world. In experiments about possible and impossible events, there are usually two kinds of test trial: one that shows an impossible event (actually a kind of magic trick; researchers don't actually violate the universe's physical laws), and one that shows a possible event. Often the possible event is superficially more different from the habituation event than the impossible event is. That way, if you get a preference (longer looking) for the impossible event, it can't be because of some simple perceptual confound.

How does fMRI work?

Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin have different magnetic properties. These differences can be detected by the fMRI machine. We can tell how much oxygen is in different parts of our brains at different times by tracking hemoglobin. We do this by taking pictures of the brain at two-second intervals for an hour. Each picture displays where oxygenated and deoxygenated blood is. There will be more oxygenated blood in activated parts of the brain, this means we can see which parts of the brain are active during various tasks.

What are the three types of gene-environment correlations?

Passive gene-environment correlation parents, Evocative gene-environment correlation parents and Active gene-environment correlation parents

What are the principles of cooperative conversation proposed by Paul Grice? Can you give an example?

Paul Grice proposed four principles of cooperative conversation: quantity: be as informative as necessary (no more, no less) quality: tell the truth relevance: be relevant manner: be clear, brief, unambiguous We assume people are cooperative in these ways. Example conversation from class: Person A: Where can I get expensive wool shirt? Person B: Do you know where Sugarcube is? In this example, Person B's response seems to be unrelated to Person A's question. However, we assume that they followed principles of cooperative conversation so that we can infer that Person B is responding by suggesting a store to get the shirt.

Was Piaget right when he claimed that infants lack"object permanence?" Provide evidence for your answer.

Piaget believed infants didn't develop this level of understanding until the age of the least 8 months. he claimed that infants do not have object permanence because for example they thought the toy disappeared when the screen when horizontal and disguised it.According to recent experiments, we believe that babies have object permanence. Baillargeon's drawbridge study showed that infants looked longer when a drawbridge went through a box than when it stopped in front of a box, even when they couldn't directly seethe box and the possible event was technically more novel. This experiment demonstrated that babies know that an object exists even when they can't see it, which is the definition of object permanence, despite the fact they fail Piaget's hidden object task (where they don't look for an object if it is hidden in front of them).

Are young children egocentric? How do we know?

Piaget's 3-mountain task, in which children weren't able to describe the perspective of a doll that differed from their own,suggested to him that children are egocentric and can't take another's perspective. When the task is simplified, however,children are able to pass it, demonstrating that they can take someone else's perspective. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are just as free from egocentrism as adults - in fact, some of their behaviors seem very egocentric - but it does suggest that they have the ability to see things from another's viewpoint when asked to do so.

Which parts of Piaget's theories have held up over time,and which parts are no longer believed to be accurate?

Piaget's notion of constructivism - the idea that throughout life, we systematize our knowledge and learn to interpret phenomenon according to our structures of knowledge - is still widely accepted.We also still believe that children are inherently motivated to learn and that it is possible to answer important questions about human nature by observing children's behavior, and that Piaget's observations were largely generalizable(even though he originally studied his own kids only). Piaget's idea of domain-general stages, that children are in a certain stage regardless of the domain being considered, has not lasted. In essence, we now know that very young children know more than Piaget believed, although their knowledge does not come through when the standard Piagetian tasks are used.

Who are the Pirahã and why are people fighting about them?

Pirahã speakers, who live in a remote area in Brazil, are bad at tasks involving sets of things of a given count, even things we imagine would be easy, like matching the number of stones on a table. This could be interpreted as innumeracy: in order to do any mathematical operations one needs a linguistic system as a crutch:without the number eight, the Pirahã are unable to perform tasks requiring knowledge that number, like setting aside exactly 8things. The counterargument is that the Pirahã people simply do not care about large numbers. Unsurprisingly, a culture that has no concern for large numbers will not spend too much time devising words for them.

What is deliberate practice?

Practice with: 1. Your full attention, and attention to feedback 2. Focused on specific goals 3. Fixing what "when wrong" in prior practice 4. Repetition of these steps A study on piano players who can sight-read showed that there was a correlation of .67 between sight-reading and hours of practice. There was also a correlation of .28 between sight-reading and working memory. This suggests that practice and cognitive ability both matter independently. We all have a certain amount of innate ability, but we to a large extent we can compensate for non-stellar innate abilities by practicing.

What are some steps you can take to learn better? Do people at selective universities generally study using the best strategies?

Really try to understand what you're trying to learn;memorize over a long time period instead of cramming right before you need to know the information. don't waste your time "re-learning" things you already know (but test yourself on them anyway), and use recall-based methods (testing) more than recognition-based methods (re-reading your notes). In general, most people do not study optimally. The use of flash cards is a good way to implement recall-based learning.

What is the difference between recall and recognition? Would you rather take a recall-based or recognition-based midterm?

Recall is coming up with information about a memory when given a cue to that memory, like imagining what a penny is like when someone asks you to imagine a penny. Recognition is just identifying something as familiar, when cued with the training object (or some variant of it). Recognition is generally much easier.

What is the "strange situation" in attachment research?

Researchers (starting with Mary Ainsworth) described four types of attachment styles using the "strange situation" method. The first is secure attachment, which describes a child who explores the environment, is mildly upset when the mother leaves the room and enthusiastic when she returns. The second is anxious/resistant attachment, which describes a child who does not explore the room,does not become upset when the mother leaves, and acts ambivalently to the mother when she returns. The third is anxious/avoidant attachment,which describes a child who is distant when the mother is present and typically ignores her when she returns. The fourth type is disorganized, which describes a child who is confused and inconsistent and lacks an organized method for dealing with stress.

What are the four intellectual stages in Piage's stage theory?

Sensorimotor period,Preoperational period, Concrete operational period and Formal operational period

What are some of the main similarities and differences between human language and some forms of animal communication?

Similarities: Some species of animals have different vocalizations to distinguish between predators. For example, vervet monkeys have different alarm calls depending on whether the predator is a snake,eagle, or leopard, and other vervets respond differently to these various calls. A similar pattern has been found for dolphin whistles.Studies have shown that many primate species can recognize the meaning of several different sounds. For example, in one study, baboons were played a threatening grunt from Hannah, a low-ranking female and a submissive scream from Sylvia, a high-ranking female. Baboons were startled to hear this pairing. (i.e., since when does a peon threaten a then cowed superior?) However, when baboons heard a submissive scream from Hannah and a threatening grunt from Sylvia, they showed to surprise. This finding suggests that the baboons were taking into account the context of the vocalizations (i.e., who was communicating what to whom) much like humans do during communication. Differences: Unlike humans, the sound production of animals is limited restricting their repertoire of vocalizations. In addition, humans combine together sounds to enlarge (to nearly infinite) the number of messages that they convey. The kind of novel, creative communication does not seem to appear in the animal world.

What are the strong and weak versions of the Sapirian/Whorfian hypothesis?

Strong version: We require language to think, and the particular language we speak determines the contours of our thought. For example,speakers of a language without a formal pronoun (e.g., English speakers, who lack a formal pronoun like French"vous") are less likely to think about the social world in terms of formal and informal relationships. The evidence does not favor this position, which your book refers to as "a kind of mental straight jacket limiting how we can think or what we can think". Weak version: Language helps shape our thoughts. For example, we regularly store some non-linguistic information (e.g., the wavelength of light) in linguistic terms (e.g., "Prussian blue"). This process facilitates the mental use of that information. This version seems more tenable, however such facilitating effects may be quite small and don't imply radically different world views.

What evidence from studies of commercial pilots indicates that our circadian clock has a strong influence over the timing of our sleep periods (sleep duration)?

Studies have explored the sleep duration of pilots during layovers in different time zones from the one in which they live. The results showed that the pilots' sleep duration were consistently shorter during layovers in other time zones and only became normal again when they finally returned to their original time zone (time zone of entrainment). Other evidence indicates that it takes about one day per hour of time-zone difference to adjust to a new time zone such that sleep duration becomes normal again.

What is TMS?

TMS is transcranial magnetic stimulation. A pair of electrodes is put on the head of a subject. They are used to stimulate specific parts of the brain. This stimulation causes the specific areas of the brain to briefly turn off. In effect, the researcher is giving the subject a temporary lesion to a specific part of the brain. In this way,researchers can study the effects of a loss in a certain brain region,without having to wait for someone to get accidentally injured in real life.

Why do teenagers tend to engage in risky and destructive behaviors?What are the potential explanations from neuroscience?

Teenagers do not yet have fully developed frontal lobes, which are critical for cognitive control. Frontal lobe development permits more cognitive control, less leaping-to-conclusions, and more reasoned behavior. L. Steinberg suggests that There is also increased density of dopamine receptors in striatum in the teenager years, and that this might contribute to teenagers tendency for sensation seeking.

What are teratogens? Give a few examples.

Teratogens are environmental factors that can disrupt healthy neural development. Examples include lead, mercury, alcohol, cigarette smoke, X-rays, and diseases such as rubella.

Why is the arbitrary relationship between words and their referents helpful in allowing us to decode language?

The association between words and their meanings is almost entirely arbitrary. For example, similar entities such as hawks and falcons are referred to by words that sound very different. In contrast,different entities such as cloud and crowd are referred to by words that sound very similar. The arbitrary relationship between words and their meanings is extremely useful in helping us to interpret language because it allows us to use context to disambiguate meaning. For example, as discussed in lecture, if all spices had names that sounded similar (e.g., oregano, ogerano, oregona), it would be very difficult to disambiguate which spice the person was referring to. Since this is not the case, however, when one is cooking and somebody begins to say,Please hand me the ore..., it is easy to extrapolate that the person was referring to oregano.

Researchers have proposed that there are two binary dimensions that describe parenting, yielding four possible styles (as described by Diana Baumrind). Describe these dimensions and styles. Why do parents adopt a particular style (569-570)?

The first dimension is how accepting parents are of children and how responsive they are to the child's needs and the second dimension is how demanding they are of their child's behavior.The first style Baumrind described are authoritarian parents:high on demandingness but low on responsiveness, and have firm rules that they don't explain to their children and who often severely punish them. Permissive parents: low on demandingness but high on responsiveness and set few rules and restrictions, have loose schedules, and rarely use punishment. authoritative: high on responsiveness and demandingness. These parents exercise power and have rules that they enforce, but they also respond to their children's opinions and requests. disengaged: low on both responsiveness and demandingness, and they have few rules and are insensitive to their child's needs. There are several reasons that parents adopt a particular style - one possible factor is situational (for example, poverty is associated with lower levels of involvement) and the other has to do with the child's characteristics. This is similar to what Dr. Jaffee brought up in lecture, which is that children elicit certain behaviors from parents. There may also be additional factors, like the personality traits of parents or their cultural background, which contribute to their parenting style.

In an experiment by Nisbett and Schacter (1966), participants were asked to endure a series of electric shocks, with each shock slightly more severe than the one before. Half of the participants received a pill beforehand that did nothing, but they were told that it would have the side effects of shaky hands, butterflies in the stomach,irregular breathing, etc. The other half were not given this pill with the explanation. Which group of subjects had a higher maximum shock they would voluntarily accept? Why?

The group given the placebo pill accepted a level of shock that was four times the strength of the control participants' maximum. This is because when all of the subjects experienced the shocks, their natural reactions were shaky hands and nervous stomachs. Those who did not receive the pill attributed these feelings to the shocks, while those who took the pills attributed the feelings to the side effects of the pills. The pill group therefore didn't worry as much about what the shock was doing to them,and they were less influenced by their physical symptoms. However,when asked if they thought about the pill during the shocks, they said no. This tell us that the assessments of pain and where it was coming from were going on unconsciously.

What physiological signs characterize REM sleep?

The heart rate and respiration rate quicken. EEG readings indicate high-frequency waves similar to those that occur during wakefulness.The eyes periodically move back and forth rapidly under the eyelids.Finally, the skeletal muscles are paralyzed.

Interference reason (why its hard for adults to learn new languages)

The native language interferes with the learning of the new language. For instance, a native English speaker would think "cat" whenever he sees a cat, making it harder to learn the Spanish word "gato." Weakness: this makes sense for some aspects of language, such as speech-sound categories, but less for others. For example,what is it about English that would make it hard for an English native speaker to learn the German genders for nouns -- what's interfering,exactly?

What is the empiricist-nativist debate, when it comes to language acquisition?

The nativist position posits that we have innate learning mechanisms that impose biases in interpretation in certain domains. Humans are human because certain knowledge is "built in." Language is developed through activation of an inborn capacity for language, like a bat"learning" to fly; this is not really learning at all, but a bit more like maturation. This is Chomsky's position. The empiricist position argues that we have only general learning mechanisms that apply across domains. Humans are human because of shared experiences and possibly a drive to be social and know about each other. Language is developed through observations using the same kinds of learning we use for learning other things.

Describe two errors children usually make in Piaget's "sensorimotor" stage and the reasons Piaget provided for these behaviors.

When children are in the sensorimotor stage, they don't search for objects once they are out of sight (lack of "object permanence") and they also make the "A not B error". Piaget explained this behavior as the child being unable to separate the world from his own actions and movements. The child's reaching behavior defines his experience of the object,so he continues to reach toward the same hiding place to access it.The child can't conceptualize the object apart from his experience reaching for it.These errors are indicative of Piaget's conception of the sensorimotor stage overall, which he believed was defined by cognition that is purely physical (based on movements and sensory information). In this stage, Piaget believed that children cannot think about the past or future, cannot differentiate between themselves and the world (they believe that the world is a product of their own movements and perceptions), and lack object permanence.(** Piaget's explanations for these phenomena are no longer believed by most psychologists**)

What is evidence supporting the sensitive period hypothesis of language learning?

The sensitive period hypothesis asserts that the brains of young children are adept at language learning, as children's brains mature, language learning becomes much more difficult. Much of the evidence for this hypothesis comes from studies of second-language learning as well as studies of late exposure to a first language.Studies of second-language learning show that very young children acquire second languages at native levels. However, adults are much more deficient at learning a second language. In a study of Chinese and Korean speakers who came to the United States at various ages, researchers found that those who been exposed to English before age 7 performed as well as native English speakers. Those who had been exposed to English after age 7 showed deficits in their performance such that the older participants were when they immigrated the less well they learned English. These studies of second language learning do not rule out the hypothesis that learning a first language interferes with acquiring a second language. As a result, studies have examined individuals who have acquired their first language at different ages. In studies of children learning American Sign Language (ASL), researchers have found that individuals who learned ASL from birth used it correctly. Those who were first exposed to ASL after the age showed subtle deficits,and those who were first exposed to ASL in adolescence or adulthood showed much greater deficits in its usage.

Concrete operational period

The third of piaget's four intellectual phases. About 7 to 12 years. The child passes conservation tasks and can focus on more than one dimension of a problem, but lacks formal operations.

What about the people who can perform amazing, genius-like tasks? What explanation can we offer for their ability?

There are many examples of people with amazing talents. One woman could multiply two 13-digit numbers in her head, for example. Although it would seem that she holds special, innate skills, the reality is that she built her skills through practice. Her IQ was normal and she was not particularly special when it came to any other cognitive tasks outside of the math domain. Some scientists agree with the 10,000 hour rule. This rule states that to become a master at any skill, one needs to devote 10,000 hours of practice to it. We know that chess masters average having had about 11,000 hours of practice at chess before becoming masters.

Describe the Karpicke & Roediger study in which subjects had to learn English translations for Swahili words. What do its results tell us?

There were four conditions for learning 40 Swahili words. The first was to repeatedly study all 40 words, and then repeatedly be tested on all of them, for 320 trials. The second was to study only the answers the subject had gotten wrong in the previous trial, and then be tested on all 40 words. The third was to study all 40, but only be tested on prior wrong answers. The fourth was to only study the ones the subject got wrong, and only be tested on the ones the subject got wrong.The first two conditions yielded about the same result - 80% correct upon testing. The second two trials yielded very bad results. We learned that skimping on testing is not useful. On the other hand, it is okay to save some time by just studying the answers one got wrong, as long as one continues to test on all of the material.

What are "conservation tasks" and how did Piaget explain children's behaviors when confronted by these tasks?

They believe that pouring water into a thinner glass creates more water (lack of conservation of volume),thinning out a ball of play-dough creates more (or sometimes less)play-dough (lack of conservation of substance), pushing a stick to one side changes the amount of "stick"; (lack of conservation of length),and spreading apart pennies creates more pennies (lack of conservation of number).Piaget believed that in the preoperational stage, although children are free of sensorimotor thinking, they lack the capacity to compute "operations", or aspects of logical thinking. One such operation is "reversibility" - the notion that for transformations like squashing clay, you can put it back to its original state, and therefore haven't changed its quantity. Piaget believed that a obstacle to understanding these tasks is the child's tendency to only focus on one thing at a time - in this case, on one dimension. In the case of water in two differently-shaped glasses, they know that the height of water is relevant, but they can't simultaneously considerthat the width of the glass is important as well.

What is a "discordant monozygotic twin design"?

This design examines MZ twins who have had different experiences (one twin has been exposed to a certain experience while the other has not). If the twins differ in their outcomes, it is likely that the difference in experience caused the difference in outcome. Other explanations are ruled out with this design. For example, these differences could not be due to the family environment or genetic differences because the twins share both. e.g., A discordant MZ twin study was been conducted on pairs of MZ twins in which one twin had been bullied and the other had not. The twin who had been bullied had more internalizing symptoms (was more anxious and depressed) than the twin who had not been bullied.

What is "spreading activation"?

This idea depends on the notion that our knowledge is like a giant web in which related things are, in some sense, close to one another.When we think about one thing (e.g. if someone says to us,"armadillos!!") this tends to "activate", or make more available to our minds, related things (Texas, tumbleweed, maybe anteaters). The example given in the text (p. 347) is about word recognition: if you've just heard the word "armadillo", you'll respond faster to related words. And the effect will be related to how related those next words are -- the closer they are to armadillos in our minds, the greater the advantage will be. This is probably the reason why it's easier for us to come up with "50animals" than "50 words". In the former case we're digging into a rich semantic network, where spreading activation will make lots of related words readily available; in the latter case, our whole lexicon is available in the task but nothing springs to mind.

experiential reason (why its hard for adults to learn new languages)

This theory says that the learning environment of children is more conducive to learning language and that if we could just structure the learning environment of adults to resemble it, they would learn languages more easily. Weakness: it is unclear what this means, exactly. What aspects of children's environment are so conducive to language learning? What would it mean to structure classrooms to be more like children's experiences?

Explain the activation-synthesis hypothesis (from textbook).

Unlike previous theories which claim a specific function of dreams,the activation-synthesis hypothesis does not view dreams as having a function and proposes that they are just the byproduct of brain activity. According to this hypothesis, activity in the pons (a structure in the brain stem) activates areas in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) which is a brain area that processes visual information. Activity in the LGN causes activity in the occipital cortex, an area in which most visual processing/analysis occurs.Consequently, this hypothesis provides an explanation for why many dreams consist of extremely vivid images and scenes. The activation-synthesis hypothesis also posits that the weird story like character of dreams comes from the brain trying to make some sense of the images coming from "lower" brain areas.

What is the anchoring effect? What is a study that shows the effect?

When people make judgments with uncertainty, they start with anchors and adjust away from that anchor. Because adjusting requires conscious effort, they tend to under-adjust, which results in biases. Rather bizarrely, we use even anchors that we know to be random. In a study by Dan Kahneman, he asked participants questions "what proportion of the African nations are members of the UN"? Before participants gave estimation, they got a random number, say 10, and they were asked if they thought the answer was higher or lower than 10%. Afterwards, they were asked to give their own estimation. People who started from 10% gave a much lower estimate than people who started with 65%. Participants knew the number was random and should not affect the answer to the question, but they anchor their estimation with this random number and under-adjust, resulting in this bias in estimation.

Describe the brain activity observed when subjects in Professor Thompson-Schill’s experiments had to think of either common or novel uses for various objects.

When subjects had to name common uses for everyday objects (ie they saw a picture of a chair and said it was for sitting), their left prefrontal cortex lit up. It is hypothesized that the left side lit up because this task had to do with reporting what they saw, and therefore language. When subjects had to name uncommon uses for everyday objects (ie saying they would break apart the chair and use it for firewood), their prefrontal cortex decreased in activation and their occipital lobes lit up. More specifically, the left fusiformgyrus was activated. The hypothesis here is that the visual centers of the brain lit up more because the subjects had to focus on visual aspects of the stimuli to figure out what to do with it.

Can infants learn before birth? (i.e., can fetuses learn?) Can you give an example?

Yes they can. In a study done by DeCasper and Spence (1986),pregnant mothers read to their unborn infants twice a day. Once the children were born,researchers set up an apparatus so that if infants sucked on a pacifier in one way, they heard the story their mothers had read before they were born; if they sucked in another way, they heard an unfamiliar story. Infants adjusted their sucking pattern so that they could listen to the story to which they had been exposed in utero, they preferred the story they knew.

Does learning change your brain? In what sense?

Yes! The brain changeswhen we learn. We dont know exactly why/how.In some cases, though, we can measure anatomical changes that are a consequence of learning. Jenkins & Merzenich (1990) showed that repeated tasks (e.g., owl monkeys keeping their fingertips on the spinning disc) altered the size of cortical regions related to that task, enlarging the neural area responsible for sensing the fingertips relative to more proximal parts of the hand. Draganski et al. (2006) suggest that humans exhibit similar neuroplasticity. He used anatomical MRI to scan medical students' brains 3 months before a huge exam, a day after the exam, and three months after the exam. He found that the posterior parietal cortex and a portion of the hippocampus were larger the day after the exam,presumably (though not proven to be) as a result of having studied very intensively in the preceding 3-month period. The portion of the hippocampus was also even larger when measured three months after the exam (although the reason for this is uncertain).

Are there thoughts without language? Can you give an example?

Yes. 1) In the example given in class, you needed to remember 4 photos of 4 different people. When you were presented with a new photo, you needed to think about which old photo matches the new target. In this process, you thought about the problem but most likely you didn't think "in language." 2) We know that babies can think, but their language couldn't possibly support the kinds of thinking we know they can do. 3) People without exposure to language can still think. Consider Helen Keller,or in general, deaf persons who have not learned sign language.

content morpheme

a morpheme that carries the main semantic and referential content of a sentence. In English content morphemes are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs

function morpheme

a morpheme that, while adding such content as time, mode, individuation and evidentiality also serves a grammatical purpose (ex: the suffixes -s and -er or the connection words "and" or "if")

What is the availability heuristic?

a strategy for judging how frequently something happens (or how common it is) based on how easily examples of it come to mind. for example: to find out if more words start with R or have R as the third letter try to make a list of both and see which list has more words on it **careful because sometimes doesn't produce accurate results, in this case list of words that start with R was longer but there are actually more words with R as the third letter)

What's the difference between analogical and symbolic representation?

analogical representation: An idea that shares some of the actual characteristics of the object it represents ex: a picture of a cat symbolic representation: a mental representation that stands for some content without sharing any characteristics with the thing it represents. ex: The word "cat"

How do children learn new words?

children learn words from hearing them being said. Sometimes people will directly try to teach a child a word by pointing at something and repeating its name.Other times children put things together by deduction, they hear a new word (but the same new word) said more than once in different contexts and they use their knowledge to deduce that that new word must apply to a certain thing in both contexts. There are two completing hypotheses:1. Over many instances, children work out what was and wasn't present or going on at the time, over their memories of essentially all the instances when they heard the word 2. Over many instances, children start with a guess or hypothesis and keep that hypothesis as long as it works; they abandon it once it's been disproved and start with a new hypothesis. Either way, for many words children need to rely on their ability to guess at what an adult might have been commenting on - a skill that relies on social cognition.

Explain what "framing effects" are in decision-making, and how they have been studied. Come up with an example of a framing effect that was not discussed in class or in the book, preferably one with real-world consequences.

framing: the way a decision is phrased or the way options are described. Aspects of the framing can influence decisions by changing the point of reference **examples about framing a question with two treatment options (A or B) in terms of how many people would live vs how many would die** example: a dog is really sick, there is an experimental treatment that could help.A) the treatment is 50% effectiveB) the treatment is 50% a failure —> more people are likely to choose treatment if you present them with the wording in A One famous and intuitively clear one is how food products are labeled. Consumers are more likely to buy beef that is labeled "80% lean" than beef that is labeled "20% fat"

How does speed of mental processing change developmentally?

generally slows as you get older. crystallized intelligence remains constant, same with semantic memory. 1) from infancy to early adulthood In a study on brain functioning, participants were asked to do simple tasks such as digit-symbol code translation task, circling 2 same digits in a string of numbers, touching the light that is lit, etc.,the results show that the performance on such simple tasks gets faster and faster from infancy to early adulthood and peaks around 20 years old. 2) from early adulthood on As people age, speed of processing, working memory, and long-term memory tend to deteriorate and world knowledge tends to stay stable or even improve. (lecture)

Provide evidence for the claim that infants understand basic logical concepts like probabilit

infants are much more surprised when a researcher pulls 5 yellow balls out of a bin that is mostly full of pink balls because they know that this event is unlikely, they stare longer. Studies by Xu and colleagues demonstrated that infants look longer at improbable versus probable outcomes. When infants were shown a group of ping-pong balls that a woman picked out of a container, they were surprised when the colors didn't match the distribution of the balls in the container (when she mostly picked out yellow balls, but the container held mostly pink balls). By 8 months, infants were no longer surprised if she took them out of her pocket, and by 11months, they were no longer surprised when she looked in the box while choosing, implying that they understood that the rules of probability don't apply when somebody deliberately chooses something (in this case, ping pong balls).

What is one problematic assumption of twin studies and what are the arguments for and against accepting the estimates that result from these studies?

one problematic assumption is that the two siblings are raised the same way. Twin study designs assume that the major differences between MZ and DZ twins result from genetic factors, since the extent to which twins share environments is the same for MZ and DZ twins. On the one hand,this is a problematic assumption because we know that it isn't quite true - MZ twins experience more similar environments than DZ twins. This is because people respond to each member of a MZ twin pair more similarity than they respond to each member of a DZ twin pair.On the other hand, studies of DZ twins mistakenly classified as MZ twins and treated as such show that these DZ twins are not behaviorally more similar than any other DZ twins (who were not mistaken as MZ twins at birth). These studies suggest that the similar treatment of MZ twins probably has more to do with their shared genetics rather than other people's perception of their similarity. This assertion is strengthened by the fact that estimates from these studies match estimates from twin studies. Finally, other methods aside from studies of twins (which do not rest on the same assumption) have found similar estimates, supporting the notion that these estimates are accurate and that the violation of this assumption not does invalidate the findings from twin studies.

Passive gene-environment correlation

parents create a home environment that is partly determined by the parents' genetics. And of course parents pass on their genes to their children.example: Parents who are aggressive are more likely to use more harsh physical discipline with their children. Additionally, aggressive parents transmit a genetic risk for aggressive behavior to their children as well. As a result, the association between physical discipline and aggressive behavior in children may be genetically confounded.Spanking one's child may just be a marker for genetic risk for aggressive behavior that is being transmitted to the child.

What does "pruning" refer to in brain development?

pruning is the process in which the brain gets rid of unnecessary and excess neurons/ neural connections. often these are connections connecting two other neurons. For example: the prefrontal lobe has the maximum amount of neurons when humans are around 12 months old-6 years. The pruning process starts around late teens and humans only keep 65% of the neurons as adults.

What is the spacing effect?

technique of spacing out your studying over time. Helpful because memory is tied to context. It is helpful to learn separate chunks of information on separate days because the unique cues from those days will be an extra help when it's time to recall the information. Sobel et al. (2011) studied this studying technique in fifth graders. Half of the subjects studied new words twice on day one and were tested in five weeks. This was the massed exposure condition. The other half studied once on day one, one more time one week later, and then were tested five weeks after that. This was spaced exposure condition. Those in the spaced exposure condition achieved higher scores, even though they were tested 6 weeks after first learning the words.

object permanence

the conviction that an object exists even when it is out of sight.

Is there evidence that language can affect color perception?

the different color labeling practices adopted in different languages can influence the ways that nonlinguistic categorization is carried out by the brain, with left-hemisphere advantages observed primarily in tasks that require the participant to discriminate between categories that are differently labeled in his or her language. Moreover, these left-hemisphere advantages develop in childhood, in conjunction with the acquisition of the language's particular color terminology

Formal operational period

the last of Piaget's four intellectual stages.About 12 years and up.The child can reason about abstract and possible/hypothetical things

What is dual-process theory? What is the difference between system 1 and system 2?

the proposal that judgement involves two types of thinking: a fast, efficient, but sometimes faulty set of strategies and slower, more laborious but less risky set of strategies. System 1: is automatic thinking. A lot of heuristics we have such as availability heuristics and representative heuristics result from system 1 thinking. System 2: effortful thinking. Evidence shows that people are more likely to use system 2 thinking when the problem is easily quantified. For example, some argue that people tend to be relatively sophisticated when thinking about sporting events. In such cases, each player's performance is easily assessed via the game's score or a race's outcome, and each contest is immediately understood as a "sample" that may or may not be a good indicator of a player's (or team's) overall quality.

Preoperational period

the second of Piaget's four intellectual stages. From about 2 to 7 years. the child fails conservation tasks; centration (focusing on only one dimension of a problem).

What is "theory of mind" and do children have it

the set of interrelated concepts we use to make sense of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as those of others. For example, having the idea that other people have thoughts in their heads, and that other people's thoughts could be different from ours. Children seem to have some sense of theory of mind that they continue to develop as they grow. Infants have been shown to have some limited understanding of other people's intentions and goals. Children as young as 18 months understand that people have different preferences and that they make choices according to their preferences. By the time children are about 4.5 years old, they also show an understanding that beliefs can be true or false and that different people have different beliefs.

morpheme

the smallest significant unit of meaning in a word ( ex boys has two morphemes boy and -s)

phoneme

the smallest significant unit of sound in a language. Alphabetic characters roughly correspond to phonemes (ex: apt, tap and pat are all made up of the same phonemes)

What is confirmation bias? Do you think it is problematic?

the tendency to take evidence that is consistent with your beliefs more seriously than evidence inconsistent with your beliefs. While we might debate whether it is okay to be biased in interpreting information, it is especially problematic to interpret neutral,ambiguous, or false information as though it supported your beliefs.

What does the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell" tell us about language?

we as listeners apply a learned model of language to create the most likely syntactic interpretation, given what we've heard so far. The model relies on lots of different sources of information - the context, the frequency with which a given verb serves a particular grammatical role, how groups of words have typically played out in our past experience, and so on. We can trip up when hearing sentences where these probabilities lead us astray, as in the "horse raced..." sentence. All this guesswork we do as sentence unfold lets us understand speech extremely quickly, even if we pay a cost of occasional mis-parses we then have to recover from.

What's special about the way we talk to infants and children?

when we talk to babies (2 months) to infants( 2 years) we often emphasize certain words. we speak more slowly in general and use lots of intonation. We also tend to speak in the present and talk about what is happening now and what is visible.Parents often use a softer, breathier voice, and big melodic sweeps in pitch are common.This is there to help manage the infant's attention and convey emotion.