Language Learning and Theory of Mind

These flashcards cover key vocabulary terms and concepts related to language learning and theory of mind as discussed in the lecture notes.

Generativity

The ability to combine words or symbols of a language using rules to communicate a vast array of ideas.

Displacement

The ability to convey messages not tied to immediate context, communicating information about past or future events.

Semanticity

The extent to which a language uses symbols to represent ideas, events, and objects to transmit meaningful messages.

Phonemes

The basic speech sounds in a language that distinguish one word from another.

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning within a language.

Free Morphemes

Morphemes that are meaningful on their own and can stand alone as words.

Bound Morphemes

Morphemes that only have meaning when combined with other morphemes.

Semantics

The relationship between words and their meanings.

Syntax

Grammatical rules of language for combining words to form phrases and sentences.

Pragmatics

The social rules of language that allow people to use the same language in different contexts.

Categorical Perception

The ability to ignore irrelevant acoustic variability in speech sounds while distinguishing phonemes.

Common Ground

The shared knowledge set between a speaker and listener in a conversation.

Social Brain Hypothesis

The hypothesis that the human brain has evolved to maintain larger ingroups and facilitate social living.

Linguistic Intergroup Bias

The tendency to characterize ingroup positive behaviors and outgroup negative behaviors in more abstract ways.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The theory that a person's language greatly influences their thoughts and behaviors.

Theory of Mind

The ability to reason about other people's knowledge and beliefs, understanding how these relate to their actions.

Automatic Empathy

The automatic adoption of another person’s internal state due to mimicking behavior.

Joint Attention

The ability to share attention with another individual towards the same object or event.

Mental State Inference

The ability to take another person's perspective based on stored knowledge and perceived facts.

False Belief Tasks

Tests used to determine children’s theory of mind by assessing their understanding of others' beliefs.