Unit 6 - Thinking, Language and Intelligence Psychology

Mental Imagery

Similar process to neural connections, we can also create mental pictures which we can manipulate in ways similar to real life objects

Concept

A mental grouping of objects, events, and or people. Members of a concpet tend to share features iwth one another. A concept incorporates phsycial features, actions, and what you can do with it.

Schemata

A way to describe a complex grouping of concepts

Artificial or rule governed

A number of particular features are required to belong to a concept. An thing only belongs to a concept if all required features are present. AN either/or category

Natural concepts or prototypes

Describing that in real life, things are not either/or. The boundaries of natural concpets are fuzzy

Prototype

A best example of a concept. Typically a mental image, and the most central member or the most representative of a particular object

Hierarhcial or theory based

As we gain more information about relationships between objects, events, or people, we can use our knowledge of the world to organize and form concepts

Basic level concepts

Learned first, higher and lower concpets are added later

Language

Communication using symbols, Has rules for combining symbols (grammar) and can generate a infinte number of novel ideas withing appropriate grammatical combination of symbols

Generativity

the ability to provide for a huge variety of meanings in a n unlimited number of combinations

Specialization

Purpose is only to communicate information to others

Arbitrariness

the combinations the language allows is chosen or determined at random

Displacement

language can be generated in the absence of a particular stimuli's, also, language can refer to past and future experiences

Novelty

language can be used to create new combinations of meaning that have not yet occurred. Thus language is NOT merely memorization and repition

Phoneme

speech sounds of a language, smallest units of sounds within a language

morpheme

smallest units of meaning of a language

Grammar

teh rules of combining sounds into meaningfuyl words and words into meaningful sentences

syntax

appropriate word order/sentence structure

Semantics

appropriate meanings

Phonation stage

birth to 2 months, crying is the primary source of communication, begins to make quasivowel sounds

Cooing or gooing stage

2 to 4 months , begin to make hard consonant sounds, require air to be constricted in some manner

Babbling stage

4 to 14 months broken into 3 substages

expansion stage

4-7 months, makes all types of sounds, learning to modulate voice, deaf infants will make these sounds so experience is not required

canoncial stage

7 to 10 months, dependent on hearing sounds, deaf babies will not continue to make sounds. begin to see repition of simple consonant vowel combinations

Contraction stage

10 to 14 months, narrow use of phonemes to only those in native language

one word stage

14 - 20 months, begin saying one word and is the first true linguistic stage. Varies amongst languages

telegraphic speech

stringing together words to convey meaning. Usually 2 to 4 words. Contains few modifiers or other connecting words. 21 months

5 years old

Typically know 2,000 words

Children tend to . . .

oversimplify grammar or overgeneralize until they learn exceptions to the rules of language

Whorfs linguistic relativity hypothesis

A disproven but still disucssed about how language and thought are related. How language influences how one percieves the world

Lumpers

believe that intelligence is one general ability that underlies most of intelligent behaviors,. The name is asccoiated with Charles spearmen, who referred to general intelligence as g

Splitters

Believe that there are several different kinds of intelligence that are relatively independent of one another

Fluid intelligence

one's ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

Crystalized intellignce

is rigid and does not change or adapt it is measured by tests that focus on content

Brain damage

when damage occurs to the cerebral cortex, indiviudal often show difficulties on one or more areas of cognitive functioning

Savants syndrome

individuals with intellectual disabilities who show superior ability in one intellectual realm such as music, art, math, or language

Mental age

chronological age that typically corresponds to a given level of performance. If you could answer questions to those of a typical 10 yr old, then your mental age is 10

Chronological age

actual age in years and months since birth, by william stern in 1912

IQ

intelligence quotient; created by Lewis Terman based off of Binet's concept of mental age; numerical value given to intelligence that is determined from the scores on an intelligence test; average score is 100; MA/CA X 100 = IQ

Stanford-binet scale

primarily verbal scales, tend to be more predictive for children

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

Verbal and performance scales

Size of brain and skull

overall brain and skull size have little to no relationship with intelligence. However brain to body ratios are somewhat predictive

Speed of processing

how quickly and efficiently the early steps in information processing are completed

Brain function

more intelligent people actually use their brains less , their brains are more efficient