Human Cognitive Process Ch. 13 Vocabulary Farmer/Matlin

lifespan approach to development

we focus not only on development in infancy and young childhood but instead on developmental issues that occur throughout one's lifetime, including adulthood and older adulthood.

conjugate reinforcement technique

a mobile hangs above a young infant's crib; a ribbon connects the infant's ankle and the mobile, so that the infant's kicks will make the mobile move (the response is a foot kick, and the reinforcement is the movement of the mobile)

spaced learning

practice is distributed over time

massed learning

learn the material all at once

autobiographical memory

refers to your memory for experiences and information that are related to yourself

Script

a simple, well‐structured sequence of events—in a specified order—that are associated with a highly familiar activity

source monitoring

the process of trying to identify the origin of a particular memory

memory strategies

intentional, goal‐oriented activities that we use to improve our memories.

utilization deficiency

some young children may not actually use the strategies effectively

prospective memory

remembering to do something in the future

explicit memory task

requires people to remember information that they have previously learned

implicit memory task

requires people to perform a perceptual or cognitive task

Chunk

a memory unit that consists of several components that are strongly associated with one another

cognitive slowing

a slower rate of responding on cognitive tasks

Metacognition

a term that refers to your thoughts about thinking; it is your knowledge about your cognitive processes, as well as your control of these cognitive processes

Metamemory

a term that refers to your knowledge, monitoring, and control of your memory.

theory of mind

a term that refers to your ideas about how your mind works, as well as how other people's minds work

Dementia

a medical disorder that memory problems and other cognitive impairments

memory self‐efficacy

a person's belief in his or her own potential to perform well on memory task

Phonemes

the smallest sound units in a language

Cooing

sounds that involve vowels such as oo

Babbling

vocalization that uses both consonants and vowels, often repeating sounds in a series such as dadada

child‐directed speech

the language spoken to children. Uses repetition, short sentences, simple vocabulary, basic syntax, a slow pace, a high pitch, exaggerated changes in pitch, and exaggerated facial expressions.

Motherese

a term that linguists previously used for child‐directed speech

fast mapping

using context to make a reasonable guess about a word's meaning after just one or two exposures

Overextension

the use of a word to refer to other objects in addition to objects that adults would consider appropriate (referring to dogs, wolves, bears, and fish as dogs)

Morphemes

the basic units of meaning, which include endings such as ‐s and ‐ed, as well as simple words such as run

Morphology

the study of the basic units of meaning.

Overregularization

The tendency to add the most customary grammatical morphemes to create new forms of irregular words (ex., 'mouses', 'runned')

rule‐and‐memory theory

children learn a general rule for past‐tense verbs, which specifies that they must add ‐ed; however, they also store in memory the past tenses for many irregular verbs

Syntax

refers to the grammatical rules that govern how words can be combined into sentences