AP Psych-Thought, Language, Creativity, and Concepts

What are prototypes?

What are prototypes?

mental images (prototype --> type of "photo") of the best example of a concept (the individuals "papers" that we have things we see everyday day)

natural concepts vs artificial concepts

natural concepts --> ones that we come up with (we form them everyday)

artificial concepts --> ones that are accurate and defined by a set of rules (examples: math formulas, dictionary definitions)

What is an event-related potential?

very small voltages/waves in the brain shown on an EEG patterns that are associated with particular stimuli

What is a schema?

A schema is a cluster of related concepts that provide a general conceptual framework for thinking about a topic, event, object, people or situation. (like a file folder...this file folder contains all of our prototypes/"papers", of everything that we know about a particular topic

What is a script?

An organized knowledge framework that represents how an event typically unfolds (They basically dictate a person's predictions for a sequence of events)

What is the Innateness Theory of Language?

basically says that you're born with the ability to learn

What is the Language Acquisition Device?

a built-in mechanism in our brains for acquiring language

About how old is a child whenever they begin to babble (the naming explosion)?

18 months old

About how old is a child whenever they begin to use telegraphic speech?

2 years old

phonemes vs. morphemes vs. syntax

phonemes [think PHONEmes PHONETICS (sounds) ] --> set of basic sounds

morphemes --> the meaningful units that make up words (prefixes, roots, and suffixes)

syntax --> the set of rules that describes how words and phrases are arranged to make grammatical sentences

Who brought about linguistic determinism?

Benjamin Whorf

What is linguistic determinism?

the idea that our specific language determines how we think* (he believed that someone who lived in Africa would think differently than someone who lived in Asia)

WHAT IS ACTUALLY CORRECT

• words don't determine thinking, but they do influence it

What is creativity?

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Role of intelligence - If you have higher intelligence there is a chance for better creativity (correlation not causation)

convergent thinking vs divergent thinking

convergent thinking - leads to a single best solution

divergent thinking - expands the number of possible solutions (more than one solution...many possibilities)

Robert Sternberg's 5 components of creativity

1. Expertise

2. Imaginative thinking skills

3. A venturesome personality (extrovert in short)

4. Intrinsic motivation ("I'm doing it because I want to")

5. A creative environment