Language Development and Decision Making

A series of flashcards summarizing key concepts related to language development, decision-making processes, and reasoning.

What is language according to the lecture notes?

A system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and convey meaning.

What is a phoneme?

The smallest unit of speech that distinguishes one word from another.

What are morphemes?

The smallest meaningful units of language.

What developmental milestone occurs between 0-4 months?

Infants can tell the difference between phonemes.

What is telegraphic speech?

Short phrases that don't use conjugations and consist mainly of content words.

What is the behaviorist explanation of language development?

Language is learned through operant conditioning and imitation, according to B.F. Skinner.

What is Chomsky's theory on language acquisition?

Language is an innate biological capacity with universal grammar processes that facilitate language learning.

What crucial roles do Broca's area and Wernicke's area play in language?

Broca's area is involved in language production and structuring words; Wernicke's area is involved in language comprehension.

What is a common misconception related to risky decision making?

That perceived risk correlates directly with actual risk, which is often not the case.

What is the availability heuristic?

A rule of thumb where items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently.

What does the conjunction fallacy imply?

It leads people to think two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event.

What are well-defined and ill-defined problems?

Well-defined problems have a clear goal and solution path; ill-defined problems lack clarity in these areas.

What is means-end analysis?

A process of searching for means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal.

What is the 'Aha' moment in problem solving?

A sudden realization of a solution that feels different from solving through step-by-step analysis.

What is functional fixedness?

The tendency to perceive the function of objects as unchanging.

What is belief bias?

Judgments about whether to accept conclusions depend more on their believability than on logical validity.

What is the illusion of truth?

An error in reasoning where repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge it as true.

What did studies suggest about children's reasoning compared to older adults?

Both groups struggle to inhibit knowledge and beliefs that inhibit logical reasoning during syllogism tasks.

What is the illusion of explanatory depth?

An illusion where people overestimate the depth of their understanding of a concept or object.