Cognitive Psych Exam 3

Inference

The logical interpretations and conclusions that were never part of the original stimulus material.

Episodic memory

Memory that contains information about events that have happened to us.

Semantic memory

Includes general knowledge, lexical or language knowledge, and conceptual knowledge.

Category

A set of objects that belong together which the cognitive system considers to be at least partly equivalent.

Concept

A mental representation of a category.

Situated Cognition Approach

The approach which emphasizes that our knowledge depends on the context surrounding us.

Prototype

The item that is most typical and representative of the category.

Prototype Approach

We decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing that item with a prototype.

Prototypicality

The degree to which members of a category are representative of their category.

Graded Structure

Members of categories are not all created equally in terms of prototypicality.

Typicality Effect

When judging whether an item belongs to a particular category, typical items are judged faster than atypical items.

Semantic Priming Effect

People respond faster to an item if it was preceded by an item with similar meaning.

Family Resemblance

No single attribute shared by all examples of a concept.

Superordinate-level Categories

Higher-level or more general categories.

Basic-level Categories

Moderately specific categories.

Subordinate-level Categories

Lower-level or more specific categories.

Exemplar Approach

We first learn some specific examples of a concept (exemplars), then classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles those specific examples.

Node

One unit located within the network.

Spreading Activation

A single activation expands or spreads from one node to other connected nodes.

Declarative knowledge

Knowledge about facts and things.

Propositional network

A pattern of interconnected propositions.

Proposition

Smallest unit of knowledge that can be judged either true or false.

Spontaneous Generalization

Using individual cases to draw a conclusion about a general category.

Default Assignment

Drawing a conclusion about a specific member of a category using our category knowledge.

Schema

Generalized, well-integrated knowledge about a situation, an event, or a person.

Script

Simple, well-structured sequence of events.

Life Script

A list of events that a person believes would be most important throughout his or her lifetime.

Heuristic

A general rule that is typically accurate.

Boundary Extension

Our tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown.

Abstraction

A memory process that stores the meaning of a message but not the exact words.

Verbatim Memory

Word-for-word recall.

Constructive model of memory

People integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas; later, they cannot untangle the constructed information from the verbatim sentences.

False Alarm

Occurs when people 'remember' an item that was not originally presented.

Pragmatic view of memory

People pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals.

Gender Stereotypes

Widely shared sets of beliefs about the characteristics of different genders.

Phoneme

The basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds a, k, and th.

Morpheme

The basic unit of meaning.

Morphology

The study of morphemes.

Syntax

The grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into sentences.

Grammar

Encompasses both morphology and syntax; examines both word structure and sentence structure.

Semantics

The area of psycholinguistics that examines the meanings of words and sentences.

Pragmatics

Our knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use.

Ambiguous Sentences

Sentences may have identical surface structures but very different deep structures.

Transformational Rules

The rules we use to convert deep structures into surface structures that we can actually speak and write.

Lexical Ambiguity

The fact that a single word can have multiple meanings.

Syntactic Ambiguity

When a sentence has an ambiguous structure, sometimes without punctuation.

Neurolinguistics

The discipline that examines the underlying neurological structures and systems that support language and language-related processes.

Aphasia

An acquired difficulty communicating, typically as a result of damage to the brain.

Broca’s Aphasia

An expressive-language deficit aphasia as a result of damage to Broca’s area.

Wernicke’s Aphasia

A receptive-language deficit aphasia as a result of damage to Wernicke’s area.

Lateralization

Each hemisphere of the brain has somewhat different functions.

Mirror system

A network of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex that are activated when you watch someone perform an action.

Dual-Route Approach to reading

Skilled readers employ both a direct-access route (recognize word directly through vision) and an indirect-access route (recognize word by first sounding out the word).

Discourse

Interrelated language units larger than a sentence.

Theory of Mind

In everyday life, people try to figure out the mental state of other people.

Metacognition

Your knowledge about your cognitive processes, as well as your control of these cognitive processes.

Metacomprehension

Your thoughts about your own comprehension.

Slip-of-the-tongue errors

Errors in which sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words.

Prosody

The melody, intonation, rhythm, and emphasis of speech.

Narrative

Type of discourse in which someone describes a series of actual or fictional events.

Iconic gestures

Gestures that represent the concept about which a speaker is talking.

Deictic gestures

Gestures that point to an object or location.

Beat Gestures

Gestures occurring in rhythm that matches the speech rate and prosodic content.

Common Ground

Occurs when conversationalists share similar background knowledge, schemas, and perspectives necessary for mutual understanding.

Directive

A sentence that requests someone to do something.

Direct request

Resolves the interpersonal problem in a very obvious fashion.

Indirect request

Uses subtle suggestions to resolve an interpersonal problem, rather than stating the request in a straightforward manner.

Frame

Mental structures that simplify reality.

Working memory

The brief, immediate memory for material that you are currently processing; also coordinates ongoing mental activities.

Bilingual Speaker

A person who is fluent in two different languages.

Multilingual Speaker

Someone who speaks more than two languages.

Simultaneous Bilingualism

Bilinguals/Multilinguals that learn two languages simultaneously during childhood.

Sequential Bilingualism

Bilinguals/Multilinguals whose native language is referred to as their first language, and the nonnative language that they acquire is their second language.

Age of acquisition

The age at which you learned a second language.

Critical period hypothesis

Your ability to acquire a second language is strictly limited to a specific period of your life.

Phonology

The sounds of speech.

Translation

Converting a text written in one language into a second written language.

Interpreting

Converting a message in one language into a second language.

Effects of Negation and the Passive Voice

The impact that negation and passive voice structures have on comprehension.

Syntactic Complexity

The complexity of sentence structures used in language.

On-line language processing measures

Metrics used to evaluate real-time processing of language.

Effects of syntactic ambiguity

The impact of ambiguous sentence structures on comprehension.

Factors affecting reading comprehension

Various elements that influence how effectively a reader understands text.