Cognitive Psychology: Midterm 2 Terms

Ace your homework & exams now with Quizwiz!

Telegraphic Speech

-Part of grammar, specifically first word combinations -It is early sentences that consist solely of content words and omit the less meaningful parts of speech -Including those words that convey the most meaning and omitting the "little" words that make language easy to understand --Ex: Saying "Daddy Milk" to mean "Daddy give milk me" -During this time they mainly use nouns/verbs -Also has word order (action then object)

Paired Comparison

-Part of the habituation/dishabituation paradigm -A handy tool for decision making; it describes values and compares them to each other. -All the potential options are compared visually, leading to an overview that immediately shows the right decision. -This makes it possible to compare the relative importance of opposing criteria in a simple way. -If there is no objective data available for making the decision, this can be handy.

Sequential Comparison

-Part of the habituation/dishabituation paradigm -The process of taking a set of data and comparing it to data that either comes directly before or after it.

Meditational Deficiency

-Part of the rehearsal strategy -Children unable to benefit from a particular strategy (e.g. verbal rehearsal) even when it was available to them. -They won't recall more if they do not use them -This fails to explain why young children's recall usually increases when they are taught strategies

Utilization Deficiency

-Part of the rehearsal strategy -Children use strategies that do not initially help them remember better -This generally occurs with newly acquired strategies --If a skill they already use is successful, why use a new strategy

Production Deficiency

-Part of the rehearsal strategy -Young children do not spontaneously use strategies, but when they are trained to do so, they are able to benefit from the strategies. -The problem was that children were not choosing to use certain strategies, even though using it would have aided their memory -This fails to explain why 5-year-olds sometimes choose to rehearse and other times not.

Hemispheric Differences

-Particular linguistic functions tend to be located in particular parts of the left hemisphere. -There is evidence that the left hemisphere is already specialized for language activity in early infancy -Exact locations can be very difficult to pinpoint -Some people have language processing occurring primarily in their right hemisphere --Ex: 1/3 of left handers -In young childhood, if severe damage occurs in the left hemisphere, children can still learn language (and thus have language be done in the right hemisphere) thanks to plasticity.

Phonological Perception

-Phonology is: The rules governing the structure and sequencing of speech sounds. -The progress of sound production: --Crying: The earliest sounds produced by the infants (the first use of communication) --Cooing: 2 months of age; produce one-syllable vowel sounds (e.g., ah, oo) --Simple articulation: 5 to 6 months; add consonant sounds (e.g., ka, ga) --Babbling: end of first year; speech-like sounds (e.g., bababa, nanana) --Patterned speech: utter first meaningful words -Most children do not have full phonological proficiency until roughly school age.

Memory Reactivation

-Reactivation refers to the preservation of the memory for an event through reencounter with a reminder (a portion of the event) in the interval between initial experience and memory test. -A time window is the period within which a reminder can facilitate memory of the initial event. -A cue/reminder for memories -Reencounter with a portion of the event in the interval between initial experience and memory test. **Encountering a portion, but not the whole event

Recall

-Retrieval of what has been experienced in the past. -People of all ages find recognition much easier than recall -Longer delay with age: --9 months age infants remember actions after 1 day --14 months, 7 days --20 months, 30 days -Older children recall more complex events: --13 months age infants reenact 3-step-actions --24 months, 5-step-actions --30 months, 8-step-actions. -Older children's imitations benefit more from causal sequences --Ex: Did the doctor touch your tongue? -Imitation is specific to the activity the infant saw

Retrieval

-Retrieving memories when needed -If asked general questions, children might under report so asking specific questions can be helpful (but be careful they are not misleading). This leads to protecting memories instead of having them decay. -The conditions under which children are asked to retrieve information greatly influence what and how they remember. -Also easier for children to do if they are encouraged to think deeply about an event and if they were involved versus observers. -Also, frequency of the same questions asked can result in different answers by the child

Association

-The ability to associate stimuli with responses -This is present at birth

Processing Capacity

-The amount of information that someone can actively process at one time -The demand on cognitive resources that a task imposes reflects both the child's resources and the task --Older children store more material in their working memories

Metalinguistic Awareness

-The awareness of what you know and don't know about language -When toddlers with vocabularies as small as 25 to 75 words know more than one term for a given meaning, they tend to select the term that is easier to pronounce -Kids know what they can pronounce and what their parents can pronounce. --Ex: D: Say "jump" C: Dup D: No, "jump" C: Dup D: No. "Juuuuump" C: Only daddy can say "Dup!"

Time Window

-The certain period during which children can integrate information and strengthen initial memories (the time when the window is open) -The duration for which the time window is open is determined in large part by forgetting of the initial information (once the information is forgotten, the time window is closed). --Older children's time windows tend to be longer for any given task.

Plasticity

-The idea that brain functioning changes in response to experience. -This is a necessity for learning a language -The brain's placticity in the face of damage decreases with age --Ex: Brain damage at 1 vs. brain damage at 50 -If there is severe damage to the left hemisphere, plasticity allows children to still learn language with the right hemisphere, but it will weaken spatial abilities.

Infantile Amnesia

-The inability to remember events from the first 2 or 3 years of life (absence of autobiographical memory). -This is due to... --Immaturity of the prefrontal cortex --The absence of sense of self --Qualitiative differences between early and later memory systems (non verbal vs. verbal) --Absence of a social system within which to share and rehearse memories

Working Memory

-The part of short-term memory that is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing. -Actively "work" on limited amount of information (e.g., digit span). -Where active thinking occurs -Involves combining information coming into sensory memory with information stored in long-term memory and transforming that information into new forms

Encoding

-The process of representing information. --You encode important information when an event occurs -Two types include verbatim and gist -Memories are a mixture of what people see, what they know, and what they infer

Event Timing & Time Window

-This is a factor that can affect early memory -This is how information from 2 seperate events becomes integrated or linked --Similar events. Usually should be close together (1-2 days). -A limited period, timed from the onset of an event, within which subsequent information will be integrated with the memory representation of that initial event. -The time window for integrating information from an initial event and a subsequent event closes when the initial event is forgotten.

Sort-Recall Task

-Used in memory research where items are sorted into groups and then are recalled -Older children can do this better

Overregulation/Overregularization

-When a grammatical rule is applied to words where that rule would not apply --Ex: Using the past tense "ed" on words like run (runned) and eat (eated). -Sometimes children flip back and forth with this (may say runned one day then ran another then ranned). -Usually are produced occasionally by age 2 into the school years.

Selective Attention

-When one attends more selectively to information important for meeting their goals. -This becomes more prevalent between preschool and middle childhood -Older children can do this very well due to having greater systematicity. -With age, children's attention becomes more focused on relevant information and more systematic

Imagery Elaboration

-When the imagination taints memories -More likely to happen with young kids who have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality

Suggestibility

-When the recall of events can be greatly influenced by experiences that occur after the original event but before the time of retrieval, that is while the information is stored -Children younger than age 6 tend to be more suggestible than older children. But, anyone can be suggestible. --Ex: Leading questions --Ex: For very young children, if they are asked to draw or imagine fake events, they are more likely to view it as real later on.

Vocabulary Spurt

-When word learning accelerates -Average vocabulary size more than doubles between 18 and 21 months and again between 21 and 24 months -Shows children infer the meanings of new words from only a few exposures

Auditory Localization

A listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance.

Autobiographical Memory

A memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic (personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular time and place) and semantic (general knowledge and facts about the world) memory.

Prelinguistic

At a stage before the development of language (by the human species) or the acquisition of speech (by a child).

Memory Modification

Idea that memories can be edited

Specific Event Memory

Memory about personally experienced events.

Short Term Memory

Short-term memory (or "primary" or "active memory") is the capacity for holding, but not manipulating, a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time.

Nativist Theory

Chomsky was a huge part of the nativist theory. He came up with the Language Acquisition Device.

Organizational Strategies

-A strategy for remembering that involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful (or manageable) clusters that are easier to retain. -Includes... --Spatial organization: 4-and 5-year-olds --Semantic organization: elementary school children -Many children display a fairly abrupt transition from not using organization strategies to using them quite consistently

Social Interactionist Theory

-An explanation of language development emphasizing the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults. -It is based largely on the socio-cultural theories of Vygotsky.

WUG Test

-An instrument developed to allow the investigation of how the plural and other inflectional morphemes are acquired in a certain language. -How children apply the use of nonsense words to real objects -Shows they learn by finding patterns in the language that they hear, rather than imitating others. -Children have implicit knowledge of English patterns for making nouns plural, verb tenses, and other basic morphological modifications to word stems. This is because they could attach the appropriate endings to nonsense words they could've never heard before --Ex: Can say plural wugs --Ex: Say "baby wug" --Ex: Can say he is "zibbing" if he knows how to "zib" --Ex: What would you call a man whose job was to zib? ----Adults say "zibber" ----Kids say "Zib man"

Phonemes

-Any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat. -Children can hear all phonemes until their first birthday when phonemes of their own language stay.

Semantics

-Basically, the meaning of words -Involves vocabulary, or way underlying concepts are expressed in the words and word combinations. -Process of Understanding words: --By 9-month infants: ----Begin to link labels more widely to objects in their environment ----Begin to respond appropriate to commends such as get the ball --First words: ----Produced between 10- to 13 months ----18-month-olds: 3 to 100 words --One-word Phrases ----12- to 18 months: Holophrases ----Also includes errors like overextensions and underextensions

Chomsky

-Believed in the nativist perspective of language development -He questioned how language is acquired. --Created the Language Acquisition Device --Also believed children had a "language organ" that helped them learn languages

Motherese

-Child directed speech -The speech that mothers and others use with infants and young children is special: high-pitched tones, simplified forms of adults words, repetitions. -This is important for learning language. --Melodies of the mother/fathers speech is what carries meaning before language (ex: universal melodies to convey things like "no").

Receptivity

-Children are very receptive to learning language -This is more likely to occur early on (making it harder to learn language in older age). -Grammar has a critical period

Semantic Bootstrapping

-Children's ability to use the semantic information in language to help them work out the most likely grammatical structure of new utterances -Children first identify the most common categories of meanings in the sentences they hear

Strategies

-Cognitive or behavioral activities that are under the deliberate control of the subject and are employed so as to enhance memory performance -Older children know a greater amount of memory strategies (they use strategies in more diverse situations) -Strategies include... --Searching for objects --Rehearsing --Organizing --Selective Attention

Gestural Language

-Communication by gestures -This includes sign language -Meaning of signs is based on location at which the sign is made, shape or configuration of the hands, and action or movement involved in making a sign

Brain Lesions

-Damaged or removed parts of the brain -Damage to broca, wernicke's, or any language area of the brain harms language competence more than comparable amounts of damage to corresponding areas of the right hemisphere.

Storage

-Encoded information is stored for later use -Storage of memories is better with age -Storage can be tainted by suggestibility

Grammar

-Focuses on the system of rules through which people form sentences -Includes syntax and morphology -There are 4 stages in the application of grammatical rules --Can't do it --Learn some irregular verbs ("went"; "broke"); have not yet achieved a grammatical rule (overregularization) --Learn general grammatical rules, which can be used with new as well as familiar words --Begin to approach the full adult usage and recognize when to apply the general rule and when it is inappropriate to do so.

Consonants

-Fundamental speech sound -A basic speech sound in which the breath is at least partly obstructed and which can be combined with a vowel to form a syllable. -With regards to how people speak, consonants involve impediments by the tongue, teeth, and lips, as well as by the vocal cords.

Vowels

-Fundamental speech sound -A speech sound which is produced by comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords but without audible friction, and which is a unit of the sound system of a language that forms the nucleus of a syllable. -With regards to how people speak, the only impediment to the airflow comes in the vocal cords. (No further blocking with the tongue, teeth, or lips) -Different vowels are distinguished primarily by the placement of the tongue.

Scripts

-General representation (knowledge) of what occurs and when it occurs in a situation --Ex: Birthday parties -By 3, they know scripts of their routine activities -Scripts are especially apparent in children's mistakes in remembering events that for the most part conform to the script but that deviate in certain particulars

Universal Grammar

-Has to do with Chomsky's "language organ" theory -The language organ embodies innate knowledge of aspects of grammar that apply across all the world's languages -This allows children to recognize which of the few possible types of grammar their native language uses and thus to learn it quickly, despite its complexity. -Research has shown that this is not true

Processing Speed

-How fast one can process information -This increases with age -Processing speed increases most rapidly at young ages, with the rate of change slowing thereafter, though speed continues to increase well into adulthood. -Recent research found that children who are more physically mature process information more quickly

Content Knowledge

-How much one knows in general -Greater content knowledge would lead older children to remember more, even if there were no other differences between them and younger children -Effects how much children remember --Can be based on TV/books and IQ -Effects what children remember --Given knowledge after an experience can influence what you remember --Can leas to incorrectly remembering something, but it usually helps

Dishabituation

-Increase in responsiveness after stimulation changes. -Respond to an old stimulus as if it were new again.

Spacing Effects

-Infants' long term retention is enhanced when information is distributed over multiple sessions instead of being presented in a single, massed session. -A time window is the period within which information from a second training session can be integrated with information from the session preceded it but after which it can not.

Inhibition

-Inhibiting ideas that are not useful in the situation -Frontal lobe plays a critical role in inhibition. --Ex: Simon Says -The growing ability to inhibit inappropriate responses and to block out interfering information seem to contribute to cognitive development during infancy and early childhood

Holophrase

-Involved in semantics -Single words that express the meaning of an entire phrase -Occurs because the cognitive demands of production appear to limit the meanings that toddlers can express --Ex: "Ball." Can imply "give me the ball" or "that is a ball"

Communication

-Involves the ways that phonology, syntax, and semantics are used to convey messages to other people and to understand what they have in mind -The ultimate purpose of language. -Can occur through speech or sign language -Early on can see turn taking

Metacognition

-Knowledge about one's own cognitive abilities -Also knowledge of relevant strategies and task difficulty. -Can be divided into 2 types of knowledge --Explicit, conscious, factual knowledge ----Info about tasks, strategies, and people --Implicit, unconscious, procedural knowledge

Behavioral Theory

-Language development by means of environmental influence. -Children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases. -This is not true

Lexical Development

-Lexicons: Sets of known words -This is the study of changes that occur in vocabulary knowledge over childhood. It concerns children's first steps in building a vocabulary, how children of different ages assign meanings to words, and how these meanings change in response to various experiences. -Findings suggest that infants may begin to form their lexicons by linking names to significant individuals in their social sphere -A few months later, infants begin to link labels more widely to objects in their environments. Thus, word comprehension appears to be well under way by 9 months of age - considerably before most infants produce any recognizable words. -By 18 months, vocab of 3-100 words is typical. Mainly refers to objects and actions that interest them (ball, doggie, more). Nouns are prevalent in early lexicons! -In children's first half year of speech (roughly 12-18 months), they usually speak in single words.

Episodic Memory

-Memory of specific, real-world experiences. -The memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. -It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place.

Explicit Memory

-Memory that is conscious and can be described verbally. -Also it can be visualized as a mental image -Infants cannot form explicit memories until 6 to 8 months of age -Associated with the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala

Long-Term Memory

-Mental system that contains our knowledge base. -Intended for storage of information over a long period of time -Some of this knowledge is episodic (specific episodes), some is semantic (enduring qualities of the world) and some is procedural (procedures like riding a bike).

Declarative Metamemory

-Metamemory: Knowledge about memory -Explicit, factual knowledge concerning relations between person/task characteristics and memory.

Procedural Metamemory

-Metamemory: Knowledge about memory -Knowledge concerning when memory activity (e.g., use of strategies) is required.

Recognition

-Noticing something is familiar -Present at birth (which is apparent based on habituation and dishabituation). --Infants recognition of the type of object they saw (for example an arrow) is quite durable, but their memory for its properties, such as size, orientation, and color, is less enduring. -People of all ages find recognition much easier than recall -Used with operant conditioning procedures --2-month-olds recognize mobile after 3 days delay --3-month-olds, after 8 days delay --6-month-olds, 21 days delay. --Ex: Where did the doctor touch you?

Simple Articulation

-Occurs around 5 to 6 months -This add consonant sounds to the cooing sounds (e.g., ka, ga)

Cooing

-Occurs at 2 months of age -This produces one-syllable vowel sounds (e.g., ah, oo) -Done by placing their tongue near the back of their mouth and rounding their lips.

Babbling

-Occurs at end of first year -This is speech-like sounds (e.g., bababa, nanana) -This is where consonants and vowels are combined

Categorical Speech

-Occurs when items that range along a continuum are perceived as being either more or less similar to each other than they really are because of the way they are categorized. -This happens with phonemes in speech, where babies prefer sounds similar to those spoken in their native language versus sounds from their non-native language and non-language sounds -Eventually, babies will be unable to hear those sounds after their first birthday

Underextension

-On error children make when picking up words -The young child's tendency to use general words to refer to a smaller set of objects, actions or events, than adults do --Ex: Calls only his cat "cat" -This is related to the meaning of a word -Underextensions actually are more common than overextensions

Overextension

-On error children make when picking up words -The young children's tendency to use relatively specific words to refer to a broader set of objects, actions, or events than adults do. --Ex: Calling all men "dada" -Overextensions are the most dramatic of these errors -Can be based on form --Ex: Round things like walnuts, stones and oranges might be called "balls." Though they share few functions, they do share similar appearances.

Verbatim

-One type of encoding representation -Includes the literal details of the situation: The exact words spoken, the expressions on the people's faces, the color of the walls, and so on.

Gist

-One type of encoding representation -Involves the meaning or essence of the events: Who did what to whom -Representations of the gist last much longer than the verbatim information -For younger kids, this is harder due to their lesser knowledge

Encoding of Distinctive Features

-One way content knowledge aids memory -By focusing attention on distinctive features, content knowledge helps children remember different entities -Part of how content knowledge helps memory is by enhancing encoding

Spreading Activation

-One way content knowledge aids memory -When people think about a topic, the topic becomes activated, in the sense that people can quickly retrieve information about it -This will spread to topics that are associated with it -Spreading activation may lead knowledgeable children to use strategies more often and to the strategies aiding their recall to a greater extent

Semantic Memory

-Organized knowledge system in long-term memory -It processes ideas and concepts that are not drawn from personal experience. -Semantic memory includes things that are common knowledge, such as the names of colors, the sounds of letters, the capitals of countries and other basic facts acquired over a lifetime.

Operant Conditioning

-A behavioral theory -Type of learning in which patterns of behavior that are learned and the frequency with which they are performed depend on whether the behaviors produce rewarding or desired outcomes. -Has an experimental group and a control group.

Memory Reinstatement

-A cue/reminder for memories -A brief exposure of the original event keeps memory going (throwing a new log on a fire that is dying out). **Whole event is show briefly

Retrieval Cues

-A cue/reminder for memories -Stimuli that help you retrieve a certain memory -A reminder just before or during memory test.

Habituation

-A gradual reduction in the strength or frequency of a response as the result of repetitive stimulation. --Ex: When infants are repeatedly shown a stimulus, such as an object or a picture, they lose interest in it and look less and less. Thus, they habituate to it

Whole Object Constraint

-A learning constraint -The tendency to assume that a label for an object refers to the object as a whole (rather than one of its parts)

Taxonomic Constraint

-A learning constraint -The tendency to assume that if a new word is used to label an object, the word can also be used to refer to other objects in the same class. --Ex: Learn what a cat is first. Dogs look similar so they assume it's a cat.

Mutual Exclusivity Constraint

-A learning constraint -The tendency to assume that if an object has a known name, then a novel word probably refers to a different object --Ex: A laptop cannot be a computer, in their eyes it's a different object.

Rehersal

-A memory strategy -Repeating information over and over -Children younger than age 6 or 7 are not as likely to use rehearsal as a memory strategy

Rehearsal

-A strategy (a development of memory strategy) for remembering that involves repeating the item one is trying to retain -Single rehearsal (tree, tree, tree) & cumulative rehearsal (tree, table, chair, tree, table, chair). --Young children do not rehearse --Training young children aids performance --Older children rehearse more systematically -Includes productional deficiency and mediational (utilization) Deficiency

Elaborational Strategy

-A strategy for remembering that involves adding something (or creating meaningful links). -This includes imaginary and verbal elaboration

Morphemes

*See Card D* -The smallest grammatical unit in a language -The smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a string of letters (which is called a phoneme). There are two main types of morpheme: free morphemes and bound morphemes. -In English, the adjective comes before the noun

Second Language Learners

*See Card E* -Learning two languages requires more effort than one -There are many benefits to this! --They can recognize larger range of pho-names --Increases executive function -Age of arrival was closely related to ultimate level of grammatical mastery

Implicit Memory

*See Card F* -Memory without awareness -Memory that can be detected in others, less direct ways, such as patterns of solution times or physiological responses --Ex: Perceptual learning tasks; fragment-completion tasks; motor skills -Fragmented images become easier to recognize with more information. This works with memory! (From vague to clear). -Associated with the stratum and cerebellum

Language Acquisition Device

*See Card A* -Comes from the nativist perspective of language -Basically, this allows kids to learn language anywhere. Social relationships are necessary for this to happen. -In Chomsky's theory, a biologically based innate system for picking up language that permits children, no matter which language they hear, to speak in a rule-oriented fashion as soon as they have learned enough words. -This also permits children, as soon as they learned enough words, to combine them into grammatically consistent expressions and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear --Ex: Grammar

Localization

*See Card B* -Where language is located. -Specifically, that the brain activity that underlies a specific cognitive function is concentrated in a particular part of the brain. -Left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex -Broca's area: located in the frontal lobe, controls language production. -Wernicke's area: located in the temporal lobe, is responsible for interpreting language.

Word Comprehension

*See Card C* -The ability to understand the meaning of words -Vocabulary increases, especially around age 3, going from knowing 270-450 words at 2 to 896 words at 3.

Retrieval Strategies

The resourceful moves that children may make when actually trying to recover things from memory storage.

Deferred Immitation

Watching someone perform an act and then performing that action at a later date.

Language Explosion

When language soars from to 2 to 3 years of age, from 20-200 words for the 2 year old to 1,000 words with appropriate grammar for the 3 year old.

Verbal Elaboration

When we remember things that were said that were never particularly said


Related study sets

Prep for National Exam-Income Approach

View Set

Chapter 5: Civil Rights (Inquizitive)

View Set

practice quizzes CORRECT answers 1

View Set

DE HISTORY quizzes 1-4 questions

View Set

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Chapters 3, 4, 5, & 6 Study Guide (3/5/18)

View Set

Chapter 17: Gene Expression - From Gene to Protein

View Set

Exam 2 - Neuropharm pt2, cardiovascular (practice questions + quizzes)

View Set