PSY305 EXAM II Vocabulary

Language

a structured, rule-governed system of arbitrary symbols (sounds, gestures, or written) used to represent, process, and communicate information, thoughts, and feelings

pragmatics

how language users interpret intended meaning beyond the literal words spoken. It analyzes how factors like social norms, tone, and situational context allow people to understand language that is ambiguous, ironic, or indirect

semantics

the meaning of words (bucket vs. pail)

propositions

represent more complex meanings, including relations among entities

“Shakespeare is England’s greatest dramatist.”

syntax

ability to string words together into legal sentences within a language; permissible sentence frame

 

–Article + N + V + article + N

•The dog chased the cat.

morphology/morphemes

how words are formed using the smallest meaningful units “morphemes”

e.g. “cat” and “-s” make “cats” plural cat

free/bound morphemes

free - can stand alone “cat”

bound - needs a free morpheme “-ed”

lexicon

The hypothesized place in memory where words and their meanings are stored

inflection/prosody

rhythm, stress, and intonation—the "melody"—of spoken language

phonology/phonemes

study of how sounds are organized. phonemes are the smallest units of sound.

e.g. /p/ in pat

Places of articulation

what body parts move to make what sound

e.g. upper teeth on lower lip to pronounce f and v

Bilabial

using both lips to pronounce b,m,p, w

Labiodental

lower lip + upper teeth to pronounce F and V

Velar

Back of the tongue touches the soft palate (velum), such as /k/, /g/

Alveolar

Tongue tip or blade touches the ridge behind the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/

Manner of Articulation

how we close/open our mouth and use our nose to move air to make sound

e.g. close mouth forces air thru nose to produce “mmm” sound

Stops

Complete, temporary blockage of airflow, followed by a sudden release (e.g., /p/ in "pen," /b/ in "bat," /k/ in "kick").

Fricatives

Partial blockage forcing air through a narrow space, causing friction (e.g., /f/ in "fish," /s/ in "sun," /v/ in "van," /z/ in "zoo").

Lexical ambiguity

when a single word or phrase has multiple potential meanings, causing confusion in speech or writing

Speech errors

"slips of the tongue," are

involuntary deviations from intended speech, including substitutions, shifts, additions, or deletions of sounds and words

Blends

Combining two words into one (e.g., "person" and "people" → "perple")

Transpositions

Swapping syllables within a word, such as "animal" becoming "aminal". 

Spoonerisms

specialized form of transposition where the initial sounds or consonants of two words in a phrase are exchanged.

• Example: "You have hissed all my mystery lectures" instead of "You have missed all my history lectures".

Perseveration

These reflect a "lingering" of a previous sound or morpheme. It is common when speakers are tired, distracted, or when producing novel sentences.

e.g. “black blat” instead of black cat

Anticipation

happens when a later sound is produced prematurely, replacing an earlier one

e.g., "free throw" → "threethrow"

Tip-of-the-tongue

can’t remember a word, but can often recall one or more features of the target word, such as the first letter, its syllabic stress, and words similar in sound, meaning, or both sound and meaning

Transmission Deficit Model

predicts that supplying phonological information (e.g., the first letter or sound) will help resolve TOT states by strengthening the weakened connections. 

Partial Activation theory

posits that "tip-of-the-tongue" (TOT) states occur when a target word's representation in memory is activated, but not strongly enough to reach the threshold for full recall.

e.g. first letter or syllable

Skinner

said language is learned like every other behavior: through imitation, and reinforcement

Associative chaining

accounts for syntax: it is the stringing together of words based on strength of associations of word pairs, as they fit a given context.  All of grammar learned through associationist tenets (past tense, etc.).

Chomsky

maintained children possess an innate "Universal Grammar" mechanism. Chomsky’s critique shifted psychology toward cognitive processes

Nativism

Learning syntax of a language is a biologically programmed skill allowing children to abstract universal grammatical speech from utterances they hear (the Universal Grammar).

Generativity

language uses a finite set of algebraic rules to "generate" an infinite number of grammatically correct sentences

Language universals

are features or characteristics that are common to all human languages, suggesting that certain structural aspects of language are innate.

Modularity

Language is a domain-specific skill, mutually independent of other cognitive abilities

Critical period (Lenneberg)

a window of opportunity for acquisition of that skill, aka for language it ends at puberty, as hormones

“cement” the lateralization of the brain

lateralization

the brain using certain areas for certain jobs

Genie

case study where a girl isolated until age 14, was able to learn vocabulary (similar to an L2 learner) but failed to acquire complex grammatical structures, demonstrating the impact of missing the critical period.

Agrammatism/Broca’s Aphasia

impairment of grammatical structure in speech and writing. . Individuals know what they want to say but produce slow, broken speech, often limited to short phrases (under 4 words), while retaining relatively good understanding

Telegraphic speech

Omission of Function Words: Small grammatical words, such as "the," "a," "in," and "is," are omitted

Agent vs. patient

who is doing vs. who is being done to

Wernicke’s aphasia

Damage to Left posterior superior temporal gyrus and/or middle temporal gyrus that causes nonsensical, but fluent speech with more simple sentence structures

Neologisms

a newly made up word

Semantic paraphasias

The substituted word is related to the intended word

(e.g. "I spent the whole day working on the television… I mean computer;" “mother” for “wife,” “knife” for “fork”)

Phonological Paraphasias

most spoken words said correctly. Other words mispronounced, syllables out of sequence, etc.

(e.g. "I slipped on the lice (ice) and broke my arm;"

“ephelant” for “elephant,” “bife” for “knife”)

Anomia

type of aphasia characterized by a consistent, frustrating difficulty with finding words or recalling names of everyday objects, people, or places

Conduction aphasia

rare, fluent language disorder caused by brain damage, characterized by severe difficulty in repeating words or phrases, despite having well-preserved comprehension and spontaneous speech

Arcuate fasciculus

a bundle of white matter axons in the brain that acts as a vital neural pathway connecting Broca’s area (speech production) and Wernicke’s area (language comprehension)

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

the language a person speaks influences their cognition, perception, and view of the world

e.g. spanish vs german word for bridge

Universalism

that we all perceive concepts the same way; differences are in talking about these concepts

Concepts, categories

mental image of sum

Nominal categories

categories we gave names, but might not be deep, like “Things that start with the letter B”

Natural categories

categories that occur naturally in the world and share real similarities, like birds or emotions

Artifact categories

contain human-made objects, like chairs, phones

Living/Nonliving & Animate/Inan. Categories

biologically alive or not, can move and not move

Superordinate

most generic category (animal)

Basic level

most informative category (dog)

Subordinate

most specific category

Classical view

categories are defined by strict rules or defining features

Necessary & jointly sufficient features

A feature that must be present vs A set of features that together define the category

Family resemblance view

Members of a category share many overlapping features, but no single feature is required

Prototype

the best or most typical example of a category

Peripheral Members

Members that are less typical examples of the category

Linguistic hedges

Words that show uncertainty about category membership.

Characteristic features

Features that are common in a category but not required

Exemplar view

Instead of one prototype, we store many specific examples of category members.

Psychological essentialism

The belief that categories have an underlying “essence” that makes them what they are

Knowledge-based theories

Categories are influenced by our knowledge and understanding of the world, not just features.

Example: A whale

Ad hoc categories

Categories created for a specific goal or situation, like camping items

Category Specific Impairments

Brain damage that causes difficulty recognizing one type of category but not others

Semantic Networks

A model of memory where concepts are connected like a network, “A robin is a bird”

“Birds have wings” → Therefore robins have wings

Expected Value theory

people are rational, logical thinkers and decision makers so they should make decisions by choosing the option with the highest average payoff

Prospect theory

how people actually make decisions under risk, which often differs from expected value theory.

Two key ideas:

1. People hate losses more than they like gains

2. People evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point (usually their current state)

Loss aversion

losses feel worse than gains feel good

Availability heuristic

people estimate probability based on how easily examples come to mind.

e.g. After seeing news reports about plane crashes, people think flying is dangerous.

But statistically: car accidents are far more common, plane crashes are just more memorable

Representative heuristic

people judge probability based on how much something resembles a typical case, steryotype over stats

Conjunction fallacy

when people think two events together are more likely than one event alone.

Base rates

actual statistical probabilities of events in the population

Law of large numbers

larger samples give more accurate results

Anchoring & adjustment

Anchoring happens when people rely too heavily on the first piece of information they hear.

Then they adjust from that anchor, but usually not enough.

Framing effects

when the way information is presented changes decisions, even if the facts are the same.

Illusory correlations

when people believe two things are related even when they are not.

Hindsight bias

the tendency to believe after something happens that you knew it all along

Confirmation bias

the tendency to look for information that supports our beliefs and ignore evidence that contradicts them

Bayes’ theorem

a mathematical formula for calculating conditional probabilitie

Monty hall problem

Switching doubles your chance of winning by picking 1 of the 3 doors with a car instead of the goat

Frequency formats

Information expressed as frequencies rather than percentages, which makes reasoning easier

Satisficing

choosing the first option that is good enough, rather than the best possible option.

Fast & Frugal Heuristics

Simple decision rules that allow people to make quick, effective decisions with little information.