Cognitive Psych Exam 3

i wanna play roblox and lay around and be a big fat chud

Language

A mental system that enables humans to represent, process, and communicate information through the use of symbols and rules that link sounds (or signs) to meaning. (over 7,000 in the world, each has unique ways of thinking, change over time and vary)

Hierarchal Structure

Language is structured in levels where smaller and simpler units (at lower levels) combine to form larger and more complex units (at higher levels top)

Phonology

The basic sounds of speech

Morphology

The smallest language units that have meaning

Syntax

System of rules that govern how words are combined into phrases and how phrases are combined into sentences

Semantics

The underlying meaning of words, phrases, and sentences

Phonemes

The basic sounds of speech.

“bat” and “cat” differ by one phoneme

Morphemes

The basic units of meaning

kind, kind-ly, un-kind, un-kind-ly

Free morphemes

Units that stand alone and refer to objects, ideas, or actions.

Ex. “kind,” “talk”

Bound morphemes

Added units to free morphemes that add additional information

Ex. “talk-ed” - the “ed” tells us that this is past tense and has already happened

Free morpheme examples

Happy, boy, run, kind, agree, view, quiet, fast, fear

Bound morpheme examples (Derivational)

prefixes - re, un, dis, pre, mis, non

suffixes - ness, er, ful, less, ly, able

Bound morphemes example (Inflectional)

s, es, ed, ing, en, er, est

Syntax

The specific order of grammatical elements that determines the arrangement of words in sentence

subject → verb → object

adam → ate → an apple

Semantics

The overall meaning of words in a sentence

Johnny hit the ball vs. The ball was hit by Johnny

What is the correct hierarchal order of the structure of language from smallest to greatest?

Phonemes → morphemes → words → phrases

How many morphemes does the word “undoable” have?

Three

What are the steps of how we produce speech?

Airflow from the lungs, passes through larynx (where vocal cords are located), to oral and nasal cavities.

Alteration or interruption of airflow leads to speech!

Voicing

The way in which vocal cords vibrate during production of speech sounds. → whether or not vocal cords vibrate when making a sound

Can be voiced or unvoiced. voiced: b, d,v.

unvoiced: f, p, t

Manner of Production

Way in which speakers momentarily obstruct the flow of air out of lungs to produce a speech sound. Whether air is fully stopped or not. Continued airflow phonemes: f, h, s

Stopped airflow phonemes: b, p, t

Place of Articulation

The position at which speaks momentarily alter the flow of air out of the lungs to produce a sound. Where in the mouth air is restricted.

Closing of lips: b, p

Top teeth against bottom lip: f, v

Tongue against upper teeth: d, t

Speech segmentation

The process through which a stream of speech is “sliced” into constituent words (and within words - constituent phonemes)

Segmentation is not always automatic (complexity of speech perception)

We can hear pauses in wrong place causing misinterpretation

Difficulty: easier for native language listeners (leads to illusion of sounding faster)

Coarticulation

A trait of speech production in which the way a sound is produced is altered slightly by the immediately preceding and following sounds.

You do not utter one phoneme at a time, instead sounds tend to overlap

In some speech sounds, the flow of air out of the lungs is entirely interrupted for a moment; for other sounds, the flow of air is restricted but air continues to flow. This feature of sound production is referred to as ___

Manner of production

Although the words “pool” and “palace” both begin with the [p] sound, the actual production of the [p] sound is different due to a process known as ____

Coarticulation

What perceptual process BEST accounts for the common impression that unfamiliar languages are spoken more rapidly than one’s native language?

Non-native listeners cannot properly segment the speech stream

Phonetic Restoration Effect

A pattern where people “hear” phonemes that are not present but highly likely in a given context

Listeners hear a missing phoneme and know that a burst occurred, but listeners cannot tell where the burst

Pollack and Picket (1964)

Recorded naturally occurring conversations and took out individual words/phrases. Presented to participants either in isolation or with surrounding context

Results: no context = did poorly, with context = did much better

Categorical Perception

The pattern in which speech sounds are heard merely as members of a category (i.e., category of [z] sounds or category of [p] sounds)

better at hearing differences between categories, worse at hearing differences within categories

How is categorical perception studied?

It is studied by using Voice Onset Time (VOT). Start with a [ba] sound and gradually move to [pa] sound with slight changes

McGurk Effect

A perceptual phenomenon where conflicting auditory and visual information from speech can create an illusion, making a person hear something different than what is actually being said

ex: a [ba] sound seems to appear as a [va] sound when lip movements appear to change

When a listener hears a series of sounds that gradually change from /ba/ to /pa/ , they suddenly switch from hearing /ba/ to /pa/ at one specific point along the continuum. What does this illustrate?

The presence of sharp categorical boundaries

Sound

Sequence of phonemes

Orthography

Sequence of letters

Semantic Representation

Meaning

Generativity

Capacity to create an endless number of new combinations all built from the same set of fundamental units

Technological progress: spyware/malware

Sociopolitical changes: mansplaining

Syntax

Rules that govern the sequences or combinations of words in the formation of phrases and sentences

Many things an be grammatically correct but not meaningful

(does NOT depend on meaning!)

Phrase-Structure Rules

Constraints that govern what elements must be contained within a phrase

Commonly depicted by a tree structure

Sentence (S) = Noun Phrase (NP) + Verb Phrase (VP)

Prescriptive Rules (phrase structure)

Describes how something is supposed to be

Do not start a sentence with “and” or “but”

Descriptive Rules (phrase structure)

Describe the regularities in observations

No value with what is proper or good english

The sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is grammatically correct yet nosnensical. What does this example best illustrate?

Syntax and meaning are independent aspects of language

Rules that describe proper ways to speak, or the way in which language is supposed to be are called ___

Prescriptive rules

Parsing

Dividing an input into its appropriate elements.

The process of determining each word’s syntactic role in a sentence.

People tend to parse sentences as they hear them which can lead to errors

Garden-path sentences

Sentences that initially lead a reader to one understanding of how the sentence’s words are related but then requires a change in understanding later to comprehend the full sentence.

Initial interpretation turns out to be incorrect

Why are we led down garden paths?

People tend to choose the simpler phrase structure and interpretation.

People assume active voice before passive voice.

Can have the same deep structure but different surface structure

Prosody

Refers to the patterns of pauses and pitch changes that characterize speech production. It can be used to: highlight a particular part of a sentence, signal the different between a question and a statement, and help identify sarcasm

Which would be most helpful in speech perception because it provides cues to emotional context?

Prosody

Broca’s Area

Area in the left frontal lobe of the brain involved in speech production

Wernicke’s Area

Area in the left temporal lobe of the brain involved in speech comprehension

Aphasia

Language disorder that results in deficits in language comprehension and production

Damage to Broca’s area results in ____

Nonfluent/expressive aphasia. Interrupts ability to speak and leaves with limited language and writing fluency

Damage to Wernicke’s area results in ____

Fluent/receptive aphasia. Leads to inability to understand what is being said with some writing issues

Mike suffered a stroke 7 years ago. Although he can understand the things that people say to him, he struggles to form words himself. He most likely has experienced damage to which part of the brain?

Broca’s area

Judgement

Process through which people draw conclusions from the evidence they encounter. Provided by life experiences.

Ex: believe a coach with a lot of experience

Ex: all new yorker’s are mean despite meeting polite people

Frequency estimates

Assessment of how often various events have occurred in the past

Often no direct access to frequency information

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or rules of thinking that are reasonable efficient and usually lead us to the correct answer

pros: quick and efficient

cons: not always accurate

Attribute substitution

Strategy used in place of a needed type of information that is not accessible. Availability used in place of frequency

Representativeness used in place of probability

Availability Heuristic

Making judgment based on the availability of memories rather than the actual frequency of events

Assumption is that more available means more frequent (FALSE)

Tverysky and Kahneman (1973/1974)

Are there more words that start with the letter “r” or have the letter “r” in the third position of the word?

Try to come up with as many possible for each option!

Results: more with letter in the 3rd position (about 2,000-3,000), less with letter in 1st position (about 1,000-1,500)

Schwarz et al. (1991)

Students were asked to recall past events in which they had been assertive. One group told to give 6 examples and the other 12 examples.

Results: 6 examples → easier → more assertive

12 examples → harder → less assertive

Representativeness Heuristic

Tendency to place something in a category if it is similar to our prototype for that category.

Judging likelihood of category placement based on similarity

Ex: choosing not to hire someone because they are similar to your least favorite employee

Gambler’s Fallacy

Can come from representativeness. The mistaken belief that the outcomes of past events influence the probability of future random events

Reality - each coin flip is an independent event with 50% probability of heads or tails for each flip

Rashida is hiring a new lab employee. She notices that the new hire looks a lot like someone in the lab who was not very nice to her in high school. Based on this, she decides to not hire the new person. What type of heuristic is she using?

Representativeness heuristic

How do the availability and representativeness heuristics differ in the type of information being judged?

Availability is used to judge frequency while representativeness is used to judge probability

At a casino, a roulette wheel lands on red three times in a row. The player says that the next spin is going to land on black because “it’s overdue.” What does this line of thinking demonstrate?

Gambler’s fallacy, because past spins do not affect future spins

Covariation

Relationship between two variables such that the presence of one variable can be predicted from the presence of another variable. COVARIATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION

Direction of Covariation

Whether the # is positive or negative. + means that the variables go in the same direction, - means that the variables go in different directions

Illusion of Covariation

The tendency to perceive a covariation (or relationship) between two variables when none actually exists. Result of expectations selective attention, and memorable cases

Base-rate information

Information about the general frequency of occurrence or broad likelihood of a particular type of event

Ex: does a new drug covary with better medical outcome. 70% of patients taking is recover in 48 hours (not enough info). We also need info on how often people in general recover from colds within 48 hours

NEGLECTION OF BASE RATES CAN LEAD TO INACCURATE MEASURE OF COVARIATION

Kahneman and Tversky (1973) Task 1

Given only base-rate information. “If someone is chosen at random from a group of 70 lawyers and 30 engineers, what is their profession likely to be?”

People are mostly accurate in their estimation (0.70 likelihood of being a lawyer)

Kahneman and Tversky (1973) Task 2:

Given base-rate information and diagnostic information (information about a particular case often based on common stereotypes)

“Someone is chosen at random from a group of 70 lawyers and 30 engineers. The person that is chosen shows no interest in political or social issues and spends most of their time on hobbies that include carpentry and mathematical puzzles. What is their profession likely to be?”

People only relied on the descriptive information!

The term “illusory covariation” refers to an error in which people tend to do what?

Perceive two variables as being somehow linked to each other when they are not

In Kahneman and Tversky’s (1973) study, participants tended to ignore base-rate information if they are also given ___

Diagnostic information

Dual-Process Model

Model of thinking claiming that people have two distinct means of making judgementsT

Type 1 Thinking (dual process model)

Used for judgement and reasoning strategies that are fast and effortless. Reliance on heuristics but prone to errors

Type 2 Thinking (dual process model)

Used for judgement and reasoning strategies that are slower and require more effort. more likely to be correct but takes longer

When do we use Type 1 thinking?

Used for fast and effortless decisions. Dominant under time pressure and when distracted

When do we use Type 2 thinking?

Used when triggered by certain clues. Dominant with ample time and attention can be focused

Base-rate neglect is more likely when ___

When information is presented as probabilities or proportions

Ex: only 5% of people in the group are lawyers

Base-rate neglect is less likely when ___

When information is presented as frequencies.

Ex: In a group of 100 people, only 5 of them are lawyers

Education can influence the likelihood of reasoning with type 2 thinking. How?

People can be trained to understand that large samples of data are more reliable than smaller samples

Ex: taking a statistics class

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)

A test used to measure a person’s tendency to override an initial, intuitive response (Type 1) and instead engage in deliberate, reflective thinking (Type 2)

Usually has 3 questions with potential obvious wrong answers. Ex: a bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Many people tend to perform poorly. Those who perform better often have better scientific reasoning, greater skepticism, and are more analytic in moral decision making

Which way of presenting base-rate information would generally be easier for someone to understand?

As a frequency

Each question on a Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has a tempting, quick answer that is usually incorrect. Which type of thinking is this test designed to measure?

Type 2 thinking - slow, deliberate, reflective

Induction

Pattern of reasoning in which a person seeks to draw general claims from specific bits of evidence

specific, repeated observations → general, probable conclusions

High risk of error!

Deduction

Pattern of reasoning in which a person starts with general claims or assertions and seeks to draw specific claims

general rule → specific, guaranteed conclusion

Low risk of error

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to be more alert to evidence that confirms your beliefs rather than evidence that might challenge them

Evidence of confirmation bias

Look for confirming evidence to support belief, fail to use disconfirming information, take confirming information at face value, show better memory for confirming information, and fail to consider alternative hypothesis

Beliefs Perseverance

The tendency to continue endorsing a belief or claim even when disconfirming evidence is undeniable

Ross et al. (1975): participants read suicide and asked to determine which were authentic and which were fake

above average feedback → higher social sensitivity

below average feedback → lower social sensitivity

Melinda believes that clowns are evil. She meets two men who are very ncie and then learns that they are clowns at children’s birthday parties. Despite this, she does not adjust her belief and continues to think that clowns are evil. This is called ___

Belief perseverance

All week, Maya has stopped by the same cafe at 8:30am, and each time the line has been very long. It is now Friday at 8:30am, and she assumes the cafe will e crowded again. What type of reasoning is she using?

Inductive reasoning

Categorical Syllogisms

A type of logical argument with two premises containing a statement about a category and a conclusion

(Premises are assertations used at start that may or may not be true)

Premise 1: all (d)ogs are (a)nimals

Premise 2: All (p)oodles are (d)ogs

Conclusion: all (p)oodles are (a)nimals

Valid syllogism

A syllogism in which the conclusion logically follows from the premise

Ex. premise 1: all dogs love food

premise 2: fido is a dog

conclusion: fido loves food #true

Invalid Syllogism

A syllogism in which the conclusion is not logically demanded by the premises

Ex. premise 1: all dogs love food

premise 2: john loves food

conclusion: john is a dog #FALSE

Conditional Statements

A statement of the format “if x then y,” with the first part (the antecedent) providing a condition under which the second part (the consequent) is guaranteed to be true

Selection task (Four Card Task)

“If a card has a vowel on one side, it must have an even on the other side/” Which cards must be turned over to put this rule to the test?: a, 6, j ,7

Easier Selection Task (better performance on task with different content)

“If a person is drinking beer, then the person must be at least 21 years of age.” Which cards must be turned over to put this rule to the test? - drinking a beer, 22 years of age, drinking a coke, 16 years of age

Consider the following: “All busy people are stressed out. All professors are busy.: Which would be a valid conclusion to this syllogism?

Therefore, all professors are stressed out

Evidence from the Four Card Task suggests what?

People’s reasoning can be improved is a problem contains the right triggers, such as content