Psychology Chapter 9

Phonemes

Smallest distinct sound units in human language (letters)

Morphemes

Smallest language unit that carries meaning

Nativist

Argue that language is innate, universal grammar

Interactionist

social interactions play a crucial role on language

Receptive language

Infant ability to understand what is said to them around 4 months

Productive language

Infant ability to produce words begin at 10 months

Overgeneralization

If i knowED the last bug i eatED

Overextension

A child calling a 4 legged animal a dog

Broca’s area

Controls language expression in the left frontal lobe

Wernicke’s area

controls language reception in left temporal lobe

Linguistic relativity

people’s perception is relative to their spoken language

Cognition

mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, judging, problem solving and remembering

Concepts

mental categories that group objects, activities, abstractions, or qualities having a common property

Mental image

a representation in the mind that mirrors or resembles the thing it represents

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

the structure of language influences cognition

Words influence but do not determine thinking

Dunning Kruger Affect

People assess their cognitive abilities as greater then it actually is

System 1

FAST, 98%, operates automatically and involuntarily, unconscious

System 2

SLOW, 2%, analyze or solve problems

Heuristics

Rule of thumb

Past experiences or intuitive guesses rather then facts

Confirmation Bias

the tendency to gather to gather evidence confirms preexisting expectations

Belief Perseverance

a tendency to cling to beliefs in the face of contrary beliefs

Functional fixedness

bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used

Mental set

tendency to approach a problem with a mind set that has worked successfully in the past

Availability heuristic

a mental shortcut that involves judging the possibility of an event based on how easily the event can be recalled from memory

Representativeness heuristic

a mental shortcut that involves estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent or match, particular stereotypes, which can lead us to ignore relevant information

Framing effect

a cognitive bias that sways decisions and judgments by influencing the way an issue is posed

Gamblers fallacy

a failure to recognize the independence of chance events, leading to the mistaken beliefs that one can predict the outcome of a chance event on the basis of the outcomes of past events

Sunk cost fallacy

tendency to follow through with something that we’ve already invested heavily in even when clearly giving up is a better idea

Divergent thinking

expands the number of possible problem solutions

Convergent thinking

narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution