Psychology Exam 3

Phonetics (Level of Language)

1) Phonetics, Phonology This is the level of sounds. One must distinguish here between the set of possible human sounds, which constitutes the area of phonetics proper, and the set of system sounds used in a given human language, which constitutes the area of phonology. Phonology is concerned with classifying the sounds of language and with saying how the subset used in a particular language is utilised, for instance what distinctions in meaning can be made on the basis of what sounds.

Nativist Theory of Language

A biologically based theory, which argues that humans are pre-programmed with the innate ability to develop language. Noam Chomsky is the main theorist associated with the nativist perspective.

Functional Fixedness

A cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology that emphasizes holistic processing.

Assimilation

A cognitive process that manages how we take in new information and incorporate that new information into our existing knowledge.

Broca's Aphasia

A disordered way of speaking that can occur after brain damage to the Broca's Area, which is located in the front left side of the brain. It is characterized by the inability to form complete sentences, usually occurring after a stroke. Patients suffering from this type of aphasia (disruption in speech production, comprehension, and/or understanding) essentially speak in nouns and leave out words that form complete sentences like 'the', 'and', and 'is'.

Extralinguistic Cues

A general term that we use to describe cues that are not inherent in the language that can help us understand language. We talked about how the environment & context, prior knowledge, and lip movement can influence our ability to understand language.

Language Comprehension

A general term to describe our ability to understand language.

Gardenpath Sentence

A grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning.

Wernicke's Aphasia

A language disorder that impacts language comprehension and the production of meaningful language. The disorder is related to damage to the Wernicke's area. Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia have difficulty understanding spoken language but are able to produce sounds, phrases, and word sequences. While these utterances have the same rhythm as normal speech, they are not a language because no information is conveyed.

Analogical Representation

A mental representation that has some of the physical characteristics of an object (i.e. picture of a violin).

Expected Utility Theory

A model that represents preference over risky objects, by weighted average of utility assigned to each possible outcome, where the weights are the probability of each outcome. The primary motivation for introducing expected utility, instead of taking the expected value of outcomes, is to explain attitudes toward risk. Consider for example a lottery, which gives $100 and $0 with even chances, and a sure receipt of $50. Here typically one chooses the sure receipt, whereas the two alternatives yield the same expected return.

Phonemic Restoration Effect

A perceptual phenomenon where under certain conditions, sounds actually missing from a speech signal can be 'filled in' by the brain and clearly heard.

Habituation

A psychological learning process wherein there is a decrease in response to a stimulus after being repeatedly exposed to it. This concept states that an animal or a human may learn to ignore a stimulus because of repeated exposure to it.

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.

Accommodation

A term to describe what occurs when new information or experiences cause you to modify your existing schemas. Rather than make the new information fit into an existing schema, you change the schema in order to accommodate the new information.

Sexual Orientation

A term used to describe our patterns of emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction—and our sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions.

Preoperational Stage (Piaget's Stages)

Ages: 2 to 7 Years Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others. While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.

Concrete Operational Stage (Piaget's Stages)

Ages: 7 to 11 Years During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events. They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example. Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete. Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.

Sensorimotor Stage (Piaget's Stages)

Ages: Birth to 2 Years The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations. Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening. Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence). They are separate beings from the people and objects around them. They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.

Meaningful structure (Prop. of Language)

All languages are patterned so larger structures build in a sensible way on smaller ones

Multiplicity of structure (Prop. of Language)

All meaningful utterances can be analyzed at many levels.

Symbolic Representation

An abstract mental representation that does not correspond to the physical features of an object or idea (i.e. the word "violin").

Separation Anxiety

An anxiety disorder in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment (e.g., a parent, caregiver, significant other or siblings).

Framing

An example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented. Read these two questions and consider how you would respond if a person you liked called you and presented them to you: 1) "Would you like to go out tonight?"; and 2) "What time do you want to go out tonight?" These two questions are addressing the same basic issue, but they are framed differently -- they are presented in different ways and under different pretenses. The first, is framed in a more passive, open manner, while the second implies that you and this person ARE going out and the only issue is what time you will be going. It is all in how you ask!

Preferential Looking Paradigm

An experimental method in developmental psychology used to gain insight into the young mind/brain.Babies look longer at novel or interesting stimuli. When shown two stimuli simultaneously, if a baby looks longer at one, then the baby can tell the difference between them.

Gender Role

Behaviors that society deems appropriate for each sex.

Anxious/Ambivalent (Attachment Styles)

The child is inconsolably upset when the parent leaves, and will both seek and reject contact when they return.

Avoidant (Attachment Styles)

The child is not distressed when the parent leaves, but avoids the parent when they return.

Secure (Attachment Styles)

The child uses its parents as a secure base from which to explore the world. If the parent leaves, the child becomes upset, but is happy and easily comforted when the parent returns.

Pragmatics (Level of Language)

The concern here is with the use of language in specific situations. The meaning of sentences need not be the same in an abstract form and in practical use. In the latter case one speaks of utterance meaning. The area of pragmatics relies strongly for its analyses on the notion of speech act which is concerned with the actual performance of language. This involves the notion of proposition - roughly the content of a sentence - and the intent and effect of an utterance.

Zone of Proximal Development

The difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she cannot do. The take-home point of this theory is that the environment (i.e., culture and family environment) in which a person grows up plays a role in his/her cognitive development. This is in contrast to Piaget's idea that children explore the world on their own, and these explorations are what shape cognitive development. According to the Socio-Cultural Theory, the learner's interactions with his/her peers and adults are important to his/her cognitive development — this is the idea of zone of proximal development. The peers' and adults' role is to provide guidance and help the learner.

Moral Decision Making

The idea is that when we make moral decisions, we tend to rely on our intuition and emotional reactions to the situation. People make these decisions by reasoning the morality of the action and weighing that against its consequences.

Psychological Essentialism

The idea that certain categories, such as 'lion' or 'female', have an underlying reality that cannot be observed directly.

Bounded Rationality

The idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.

Language Acquisition Device

The innate biological ability of humans to acquire and develop language.

Descriptive Theory

The intellectual discipline that makes explicit the implicit structure of the behavioral sciences. It concerns conceptual, pre-empirical and theory-neutral formulations identifying the full range of a subject matter.

Sexual Identity

How one thinks of oneself in terms of to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted. Sexual identity may also refer to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with a sexual orientation or choose not to identify with a sexual orientation.

Associative Model

The ASSOCIATIVE part refers to the fact that 3 different types of associations are represented within the model. These associations describe the relationships among different parts of the network: possession (e.g., bird has wings), equivalence (e.g, robin is a bird), and ability (e.g., bird can fly).

Theory of Mind

The ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own. For example, you may view yourself as a happy, good natured person, but recognize that others may not always be exactly like you - others may be angry, hurtful, etc. The theory also states that there are mental conditions that prevent some people from being able to recognize mental states in others. Some conditions that interfere with this include autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, ADHD, etc.

Syntax (Level of Language)

This is the level of sentences. It is concerned with the meanings of words in combination with each other to form phrases or sentences. In particular, it involves differences in meaning arrived at by changes in word order, the addition or subtraction of words from sentences or changes in the form of sentences. It furthermore deals with the relatedness of different sentence types and with the analysis of ambiguous sentences.

Morphology (Level of Language)

This is the level of words and endings, to put it in simplified terms. It is what one normally understands by grammar (along with syntax). The term morphology refers to the analysis of minimal forms in language which are, however, themselves comprised of sounds and which are used to construct words which have either a grammatical or a lexical function.

Base Rate Neglect

This occurs when a person judges that an outcome will occur without considering prior knowledge of the probability that it will occur. They focus on other information that isn't relevant instead. Imagine that I show you a bag of 250 M&Ms with equal numbers of 5 different colors. Then, I ask you what the probability is I will pick a green one while my eyes are closed? I also tell you that green M&Ms are my favorite and yesterday I picked out twice as many green M&Ms than red ones. If you ignored the fact that there are 50 of each color, and instead focused on the fact that I picked out twice as many green M&Ms than red yesterday, you have commited a base rate fallacy because what I did yesterday is irrelevant information.

Assumptions (Problem Solving Obstacle)

When dealing with a problem, people often make assumptions about the constraints and obstacles that prevent certain solutions.

Dishabituation

When we respond to an old stimulus as if it were new again. When we repeatedly see or experience a stimulus, our response to it grows weaker.

Irrelevant or Misleading Information (Problem Solving Obstacle)

When you are trying to solve a problem, it is important to distinguish between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to faulty solutions. When a problem is very complex, the easier it becomes to focus on misleading or irrelevant information.

Communication (Prop. of Language)

language allows one to understand the thoughts of another

Pre-Conventional Stage (Stages of Moral Development)

Obedience and punishment orientation (How can I avoid punishment?) Self-interest orientation (What's in it for me?)

Strange Situation

A test to explore childhood attachments patterns. The procedure begins with the child and his mother in a room where the child is allowed to play and explore alone. A stranger enters the room, talks to the mother, and approaches the child while the mother leaves the room. After a short period, the mother comes back and reunites with the child. The mother and the stranger leaves, and the child is left to play alone. The stranger then comes back and attempts to interact with the child. The mother returns for a second reunion as the stranger leaves.

Prescriptive Theory

A theory that comprises a description of a specific activity, a statement of the goal of the activity, and an analysis of the elements of the activity, which together constitute a prescription for reaching the goal.

Socio-Cultural Theory

A theory used to describe awareness of circumstances surrounding individuals and how their behaviors are affected specifically by their surrounding, social and cultural factors.

False Belief Task

A way to think about whether a child has developed theory of mind. In the Sally-Anne task, children were told that two puppets (one named Sally and one named Anne) were playing with each other. At some point, Sally decided that she would like a drink, so she put her ball in the basket before she leaves for the kitchen. While Sally was away, Anne decided to play a trick on her and moved the ball from the basket into the box. The child is asked, when Sally comes back, where is she going to look for the ball. If a child does NOT have theory of mind, he will assume that Sally possesses the same knowledge that he does. Therefore, Sally will look for the ball in the box. On the other hand, a child that DOES have theory of mind will recognize that Sally wasn't there when Anne moved the ball, so there's no way for her to know that the ball had been moved. So, Sally should be looking for the ball in the basket.

Formal Operational Stage (Piaget's Stages)

Ages: 12 and Up At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems. Abstract thought emerges. Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning. Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.

Egocentrism

An inability on the part of a child in the preoperational stage of development to see any point of view other than their own. For example, little Suzy gets a phone call from her father, who asks little Suzy if Mommy is home. Instead of saying, "yes", little Suzy nods her head. Her father, hearing no response, asks again, to which little Suzy again nods her head. What little Suzy fails to appreciate is that her father is unable to see her nodding. Little Suzy can only take her own perspective - "I am nodding my head yes, why do you keep asking me this question?"

Grasping Reflex

An infant's clinging response to a touch on the palm of his or her hand.

Orienting Reflex

An infant's immediate response to a change in its environment, when that change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle reflex.

Sucking Reflex

An infant's response in sucking on any object put in it's mouth.

Rooting Reflex

An infant's response in turning toward the source of touching anywhere around his or her mouth.

Mental Set (Problem Solving Obstacle)

Another common problem-solving obstacle is known as a mental set, which is the tendency people have to only use solutions that have worked in the past rather than looking for alternative ideas. A mental set can often work as a heuristic, making it a useful problem-solving tool. However, mental sets can also lead to inflexibility, making it more difficult to find effective solutions.

Productivity (Prop. of Language)

Any language can produce an infinite number of sentences. Children are using language creatively every day of their lives.

Nature vs. Nurture

Concerned with the extent to which particular aspects of behavior are a product of either inherited (i.e., genetic) or acquired (i.e., learned) characteristics. Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.

Schema

Describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding.

Family Resemblance

Describes how people who are genetically related tend to have physical and personality similarities. You probably share some of the same physical traits as your parents and siblings along with their personality traits as well. In philosophy, family resemblance is the concept that things that appear to be similar because of one common shared feature may appear to be that way due to many shared similar features that overlap with each other. No one feature may exist in all of the objects.

Statistical Regularities

Extracted from the world around them to learn about the environment. Phenomenon was first identified in human infant language acquisition.

Well vs. Ill - Defined Problems

Ill-defined problems are those that do not have clear goals, solution paths, or expected solution. Well-defined problems have specific goals, clearly defined solution paths, and clear expected solutions.

Insight (Problem Solving Strategy)

In some cases, the solution to a problem can appear as a sudden insight. According to researchers, insight can occur because you realize that the problem is actually similar to something that you have dealt with in the past, but in most cases, the underlying mental processes that lead to insight happen outside of awareness.

Disorganized (Attachment Styles)

Inconsistent pattern of response (mix of avoidant and anxious/ambivalent).

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Individuals commit this fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort). This fallacy, which is related to status quo bias, can also be viewed as bias resulting from an ongoing commitment. According to the Expected Utility Theory, your decision should be based on the highest utility. Given that you have already spent $150, regardless of which trip you go on, you should go on the ski trip that you would enjoy more (Pocono). However, most people choose to go on the Vermont trip because they believe that going to Vermont will only be "wasting" $50. As opposed to going to the Poconos trip, which will be "wasting" $100. In other words, this decision is based on how much investment you have already made in the situation not purely based on utility.

Conventional Stage (Stages of Moral Development)

Interpersonal accord and conformity (Social norms) (The good boy/girl attitude) Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality).

Mental Set

Many people approach problems in similar ways all the time even though they can't be sure they have the best approach or an approach that will even work. Doing this is an example of mental set -- a tendency to approach situations the same way because that way worked in the past. For example, a child may enter a store by pushing a door open. Every time they come to a door after that, the child pushes the door expecting it to open even though many doors only open by pulling. This child has a mental set for opening doors.

Mental Imagery

Mental representations of physical objects or events that are no longer present. It is a quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli.

Definitional Theory

Mental representations of word meanings consist of a necessary and suffiecient set of semantic features - E.g. the representation of "apple" might be "round", "edible", "sweet", "red", "juicy."

Criticisms of Piaget's Theory

Much of the criticism of Piaget's work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of inspiration for the theory was Piaget's observations of his own three children. In addition to this, the other children in Piaget's small research sample were all from well-educated professionals of high socioeconomic status. Because of this unrepresentative sample, it is difficult to generalize his findings to a larger population. Research has disputed Piaget's argument that all children will automatically move to the next stage of development as they mature. Some data suggests that environmental factors may play a role in the development of formal operations. Most researchers agree that children possess many of the abilities at an earlier age than Piaget suspected-- they are far less egocentric than Piaget believed.

Conservation/Conservation Tasks

One of Piaget's developmental accomplishments, in which the child understands that changing the form of a substance or object does not change its amount, overall volume, or mass. You can often see the lack of conservation in children when there are, for example, several different sizes of juice on a table, and they choose the glass that is the tallest because they perceive the taller glass as having more juice inside of it (even though the tallest glass may also be the thinnest). All the glasses may have the same amount of juice in them, but children who haven't accomplished conservation will perceive the tall glass as being most full.

Gender Identity

One's personal experience of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth, or can differ from it completely.

Exemplar Theory

Proposes that human memory assigns objects and ideas into broad categories and when confronted with a new object, the mind is able to place the new object into its appropriate category. For instance, tables come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, yet that all have in common that they are solid objects with legs and a flat surface on top. Therefore, it is possible for a human to place a formal dining table, a TV tray and a medical examining table all into the exemplar category of "table."

Prototype Theory

Prototype theory is a mode of graded categorization in cognitive science, where some members of a category are more central than others. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently cited than, say, stool.

Problem Solving

Refers to cognitive processing directed at achieving a goal when the problem solver does not initially know a solution method. A problem exists when someone has a goal but does not know how to achieve it. Problems can be classified as routine or nonroutine, and as well defined or ill defined.

Overregularization Errors

Refers to grammatical errors that usually start in the early stages of a child's language development where language rules are applied too generally, rather than according to the idiosyncracies (words that don't follow the usual rules of the language) that all languages possess. For example, a child might refer to more than one mouse as mouses rather than mice.

Diagnosticity

Refers to how distinctive or characteristic is a piece of information. This was illustrated in the Linda/feminist/bank teller example. For instance, say you are in your house and you hear barking outside. You're likely to guess that there's a dog outside because barking is a diagnostic characteristic of dogs. In the Linda example, we interpreted the qualities of "outspoken, concerned with social justice, etc" as diagnostic qualities of a feminist. That's why we determine that Linda is likely to be a feminist.

Temperament

Refers to the characteristics and aspects of personality that we are born with. For that reason, they are similar to traits in that they are both innate (born with these things) and enduring. Infants who are anxious and nervous tend to be the same way when they are older.

Comfort Theory

Refers to the physical and emotional comfort that an infant receives from being in physical contact with its mother. For instance, we've all seen the reaction that a crying baby can have due to being picked up by its mother; it relaxes and stops crying. This is believed to be a result of its feeling of safety and security derived from this close contact. Example: monkeys preferred cloth mother to wire mother due to comfort/more reassuring feeling.

Conversion Error

Refers to the probability of making a wrong conclusion when doing hypothesis testing. When a researcher sets out to do a study, she typically has a hypothesis, or a prediction of what she thinks the results will be. She then conducts the study to find out whether her hypothesis is supported by data or not. Depending on the results of the study, she then makes a decision about his hypothesis. Of course, there is always the possibility of making a wrong conclusion, or committing a this error. There are two ways a researcher can make this type of error. She can either decide that his hypothesis is true when it is actually false, or decide that his hypothesis is false when it is in fact true.

Hierarchical Model

Refers to the suggestion that conceptual information can be represented in a HIERARCHICAL fashion. Where there're different levels (superordinate, basic, subordinate), with the lowest level representing the most specific (e.g., salmon), and the highest level being the most broad (e.g., living things). Everything that is true of the highest level (e.g., living things can move) is also true of lower level concepts (e.g., fish can move, bird can move, salmon can move).

Decision Making

Regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among seterm-40veral alternative possibilities. The process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker.

Arbitrariness (Prop. of Language)

Relation between a word and what it refers to is arbitrary. Ex. equivalent words in different languages Ex. subtract, take away, minus =arbitrary, essentially same thing

Erikson's Stages

See handout to study this.

Post-Conventional Stage (Stages of Moral Development)

Social contract orientation, Universal ethical principles

Permissive Parenting Style

The parents are very relaxed with the rules and allow Jamie to do what he wants. When they found out that Jamie had a flat tire, they would go overboard and offered to take Jamie's car to the shop and get the tire fixed for him.

Authoritative Parenting Style

The parents have rules about when Jamie should be home, and when Jamie broke curfew, his parents are upset and plan to punish him by removing his car privilege. However, before deciding on the punishment, Jamie's parents spoke with Jamie to find out what had happened. When they found out that Jamie got a flat tire and that's why he was home late, they lessened the punishment to taking his iPad away for a week instead. In this example, the parents have rules in place but they are also responsive to the child's needs.

Authoritarian Parenting Style

The parents would punish Jamie without asking or listening to the reasoning. All they care about is the fact that the curfew was broken. They have strict rules but are not sensitive to the child's needs.

Language Development

The process by which children come to understand and communicate language during early childhood.

Categorization

The process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood. This implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge.

Speech Segmentation

The process of identifying the boundaries between words, syllables, or phonemes in spoken natural languages. The term applies both to the mental processes used by humans, and to artificial processes of natural language processing.

Language Production

The production of spoken or written language. It describes all of the stages between having a concept, and translating that concept into linguistic form.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way). ... According to this view, it is through touching and handling objects that infants develop this understanding.

Representative Heuristic

These decisions tend to be based on how similar an example is to something else (or how typical or representative the particular case in question is). In this way, representativeness is basically stereotyping. While availability has more to do with memory of specific instances, representativeness has more to do with memory of a prototype, stereotype or average. Let me try to make this clear with an example: "Linda the bank teller" - this is one of the most famous examples. It comes from the work of Kahneman and Tversky. In this problem, you are told a little bit about Linda, and then asked what her profession is likely to be. Linda is described as an avid protester who went to an all girls' college. She is an environmentalist, politically liberal, etc. (I'm making up these details, but the information that subjects got in this study is quite similar). Basically, she's described in such a way that you can't help but think that she must be a feminist, because the prototype/stereotype that you have in your head is that women who are like Linda are feminists. So when people are asked if Linda is more likely to be a bank teller (working for The Man!) or a feminist bank teller, most people say the latter, even though that doesn't make any sense, in terms of probability. In this case, people use a shortcut that involved a stereotype to answer the question, and they ignored actual likelihoods.

Uninvolved Parenting Style

They are not very involved in the child's life at all. They are unlikely to have set rules, and even if they did, they wouldn't enforce the rules.

Trial-and-Error (Problem Solving Strategy)

This approach to problem-solving involves trying a number of different solutions and ruling out those that do not work. This approach can be a good option if you have a very limited number of options available. If there are many different choices, you are better off narrowing down the possible options using another problem-solving technique before attempting trial-and-error.

McGurk Effect

This effect describes the perceptual illusion that occurs when the visual perception of a sound (seeing lips move) is paired with the auditory information of a different sound which produces a perception of a different third sound. Hearing and visual cues work together when we are perceiving speech. When a person hears a different sound than what the visual information suggests it can cause a perceptual illusion. People who frequently watch dubbed foreign language films are immune to this effect because they are used to seeing lips move that are paired with different sounds.

Reading Comprehension

This has two routes: Direct route, where you can access word meaning directly from print. And the letter-to-sound conversion route, where you can use a sounding out strategy to figure out the correct pronunciation and then access meaning that way. Which route you use depend on the combination of frequency of the word (i.e., how often you encounter the word) and regularity (i.e., whether the letters map consistently onto the sounds).

Bounded Self-Interest

This incorporates the comforting fact that humans are often willing to sacrifice their own interests to help others.

Heuristics (Problem Solving Strategy)

This is a mental rule-of-thumb strategy that may or may not work in certain situations. Unlike algorithms, heuristics do not always guarantee a correct solution. However, using this problem-solving strategy does allow people to simplify complex problems and reduce the total number of possible solutions to a more manageable set.

Split Brain

This is a procedure used to treat severe epilepsy, and because of this procedure, we can ask questions about the role of the right hemisphere in language processing. When the split brain patient was shown images to both the left visual field and the right visual field. Based on the contralateral projection idea that we discussed, information presented to the left visual field first reaches the right visual cortex, and information presented to the right visual field first reaches the left visual cortex. For individuals with intact corpus callosum, the information is then transferred to the other hemisphere. Ultimately, both hemispheres have access to the same information.

Algorithms (Problem Solving Strategy)

This is a step-by-step procedure that will always produce a correct solution. A mathematical formula is a good example of a problem-solving algorithm. While an algorithm guarantees an accurate answer, it is not always the best approach to problem-solving. This strategy is not practical for many situations because it can be so time-consuming. For example, if you were trying to figure out all of the possible number combinations to a lock using an algorithm, it would take a very long time!

Dual Code Representation

This is a theory of cognition according to which humans process and represent verbal and non-verbal information in separate, related systems. For example, the brain uses a different kind of representation for the word "tree" than it does for the image of a tree. Something verbal can trigger a thought of something nonverbal and vice versa. For example, the image of a circle can bring to mind the word "circle," and "circle" can prompt one to visualize a circle. Paivio argued that all cognition involves associations between verbal and non-verbal systems. Some psychologists believe dual-coding theory explains phenomena such as intelligence and memory. Critics argue that the brain processes information using only one kind of representation.

Semantics (Level of Language)

This is the area of meaning. It might be thought that semantics is covered by the areas of morphology and syntax, but it is quickly seen that this level needs to be studied on its own to have a proper perspective on meaning in language. Here one touches, however, on practically every other level of language as well as there exists lexical, grammatical, sentence and utterance meaning.

Anchoring

This occurs when we make a decision or evaluation based on the first piece of information received. Our first impression acts as an anchor or reference point to which all subsequent and related information is compared. If the anchor contains incomplete or irrelevant information we can end up making a bad decision. Retailers rely on the anchoring effect to sell goods and services. For example, if we are shopping for a bicycle and we see an ad for one at 30% off, we will approach that item with the impression that it is a great deal, even though it may still be more expensive than other bikes and may be out of our budget.

Dual Process Model of Thinking

This provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process.

Functional Fixedness (Problem Solving Obstacle)

This term refers to the tendency to view problems only in their customary manner. Functional fixedness prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that might be available to find a solution.

Differentiation

Typically refers to a developmental process when a skill becomes more sophisticated and broken into subsets. For example, a child may first learn the skill of walking, which can later become more sophisticated and break into skipping, running, jumping, and more.

Right Hemisphere's Role in Language

Understanding emotional content--Both sides of the brain perform functions related to language. But in most people, grammar and vocabulary are localized to the left side of the brain, while understanding the emotional content of language is a function of the right hemisphere.

Social Cues in Language Development

Used by infants to help them learn new words, especially when there are multiple objects present.

Availability Heuristic (Decision Making)

When you make a judgment about something based on how available examples are in your mind. So, this heuristic has a lot to do with your memory of specific instances and what you've been exposed to. An example: Judging the frequency of deaths from different causes (morbid, I know). People tend to overestimate the number of deaths from, say, airplane crashes, but underestimate the number of deaths from, say, asthma. This is because people hear about deaths from airplane crashes in the news, so they can bring to mind a fair number of examples of this, but they can't bring to mind examples of people dying from asthma. This is why reading the news can actually be misleading, since rare instances can be covered to the point of seeming commonplace.

Imprinting

Why do chicks (baby birds...jeez) follow the mother bird and do whatever she does? The reason is that they are going through a process of imprinting, in which certain birds and mammals form attachments during a critical period very early in their lives. During this point in development, the birds are so available to form attachments, that even if there is no mother bird, or no bird at all, they may develop attachments to a substitute. For example, if you hatched several baby geese and raised them without having a mother goose around, the chicks may perceive you as the mother and imprint to you. They would follow you around, try to mimic lots of your behaviors, etc., just as if you were the mother. This is the way they learn the behaviors and characteristics of their species.

Critical Period

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