UMich Psych 240: Exam 3

Broca's aphasia

difficulty with production, slow/halting speech, comprehension is intact

Wernicke's aphasia

difficulty with comprehension, speech fluent, but word salads

neural pathway for speaking a heard word

auditory, to Wernicke's area, to Broca's area, to motor area

properties of language

arbitrary, symbolic, generative, hierarchical

arbitrary

not physical combination of sounds that give words meaning, but the common set of conventions among the speakers

symbolic

words are symbols that refer to things/ideas/processes.

generative (productive)

possibilities for creating new utterances are virtually limitless. (can make sentences we've never heard in our life).

phoneme

smallest unit of speech sound used to distinguish words.

morphemes

smallest unit that signals meaning

words

combinations of one or more morphemes

phrase

organized grouping of words

sentences

organized grouping of phrases

syntax

a set of rules that determine the grouping and arrangement of words in phrases and of phrases in sentences.

lexical ambiguity

a word has two different meanings

syntactic ambiguity

words can be grouped together into more than one phrase structure

McGurk effect

the phoneme you hear depends on the visual input

cloze probability

how often does the final word finish that particular sentence

N400

ERP resoponse to unexpected words

evidence for critical period for language

sign language acquisition, social isolation in language, second languange acquisition in adults

three stages of skill acquisition

cognitive, associative, automatic

Point from Rosenbaum tapping experiment

motor programs are hierarchical

proprioception

our ability to sense where our body parts are in silence with our eyes closed called

Multiple learning systems

we have a fast and slow system that operate in parallel when developing a skill

Fitts' Law

response time for aimed movements increases with distance and with required precision

Functional fixedness

hinders solving the candle problem or two-rope problem because people see an object as having only a specific, familiar function.

isomorphic problems

term that refers to equivalent problems but with different representations (Number scrabble, tic tac toe)

means-end analysis

problem solving method that involves identifying the largest difference and setting subgoals to reduce the difference

point from Duncker's radiation/military problem

people fail to notice relevant analogies if the surface features are not similar

point of Luchin's water jug

getting stuck in a mental set can impair problem solving

normative theories

how people should reason

descriptive theories

how people actually reason

availability heuristic

suggests that we make judgments based on how easily things can be brought to mind

simulation heuristic

describes judgments of probability based on how easily it is to imagine a scenario in an event occurs

positive framing on risky decisions

leads to conservative decisions (risk-aversive)

negative framing on risky decisions

leads to risky decisions (risk-seeking)

difference between deductive and inductive reasoning

deductive conclusions should be guaranteed whereas inductive conclusions are probabilistic

figural effect

individuals are more likely to accept syllogisms when the terms are in linear order

formal rules

suggests that errors in logical may arise because individuals may misinterpret premises, some rules are unavailable, or there is no proof for conclusion

sunk-cost

decision to continue investing in something simply because you have invested in it before and you hope to get a return on your investment

difference reduction

heuristic that describes a strategy in which people only choose operators that move them closer to the goal

cognitive stage of learning

uses declarative knowledge and requires attention

fast system

uses explicit knowledge for learning

slow system

uses implicit knowledge for learning

cerebellum

coordinates motor movements and contributes to motor learning

basal ganglia

communicates with primary motor cortex and other structures involved in motor control

cortex

responsible for planning motor movements

neural basis of motor control

cerebellum, basal ganglia, and cortex

motor homunculus

part of the cortex, maps motor movements in specific body parts to specific regions of the primary motor cortex in the brain

reaching neurons

populations of neurons in the motor cortex that are selectively sensitive to certain directions of reaching

population coding

a movement in a particular direction is associated with the activation of a population of cells

Parkinson's disease

degenerative disorder primarily associated with deficit in the basal ganglia, loss of dopamine

declarative memory

spreading activation through a network

procedural memory

production system made up of if then rules