Psych Exam 4

Cognitive psych emerged from

behaviorism

Cognition

mental process of thinking, learning, and understanding

Cognitive processes mediate the relationship

between

behavior and environment

Knowledge

is stored representations

Thinking

is a manipulation of these representations

Thinking slow

deliberative, logical, rational

Thinking fast

instinctive and emotional

Heuristics

shortcuts used to reduce the amount of thinking that is needed to make decisions

Availability Heuristic

Decisions are influenced by how readily examples are recalled

Politics - Availability Heuristic

the more you mention an issue, the more people think how important it is

Advertising - Availability Heuristic

the more recognizable a product is, the more likely you are to buy it

Medicine -Availability Heuristic

symptoms are more likely to be associated with a common ailment than a rare one

Representativeness Heuristic

Making a judgment by comparing a person/object to a prototype

Conjunction Fallacy

likelihood of multiple events happening together is more likely than any of those events happening individually

Simulation Heuristic

people express more regret over outcomes that are easier to imagine, or “simulate”

Confirmation Bias

Tendency to search for information that confirms your expectation (and ignore information that refutes it)

Conf. Bias Example: Rosenhan Study

 Group of people reported hearing voices to a

mental health institution, no other symptoms

 All were admitted, acted normally after admission

 All of their therapists found instances from past

that would explain voices

Anchoring

Setting a reference point (usually first piece of information) to simplify a situation

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy if they are heavily invested in it (loss aversion)

Affective forecasting

predicting how we will feel with any given outcome- we are bad at this!

“Thinking Fast” vs. “Thinking Slow”

involve different decision-making processes – and thinking fast can lead to irrational decisions

Emotions

can also affect our decision-making abilities

Means ends analysis

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

Reasoning

A mental activity that consist of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions

Illusory truth effect

Error and reasoning that occurs when repeated exposure to a statement increases the likelihood that people will judge the statement to be true

Intelligence tests were created

to classify people and/or to predict their future performance

number of intelligence components

one to eight

Profiles of functioning

critically useful to determine strengths and areas in need of support

Class example- Bs and Ps

difference in voicing, p, delay in voicing

Two people who have never talked before, but share the same language, can easily communicate

true- despite completely different input(accents, voices, location)

It is possible for you to say a sentence that has never been said before…

and we’d all understand it

Ways to converse without words

eyes, hands, body language

can say one thing and mean the opposite

sarcasm, tone of voice, etc

Babies are native speakers in (babies are dumb)

two years

communication

(great song by the cardigans)

Communication

the use of a language, gestures, facial expressions (and a lot of other stuff) to exchange information

language

a system for exchanging information

speech

the act of vocal communication

communication exchange- steps 1-8

1. Sound travels in the ear, the ear translates it into

   electrical signals

2. Brain filters human speech from noise

3. Bottom-up processing takes sound bits and turns

   them into words, and then phrases then meaning

4. Top-down processing takes previous knowledge of

   concepts and applies them to sound combinations

5. The brain thinks about the information, and formulates

   a response

6. Massive coordination of face, hands, body posture,

   lungs, lips, tongue, jaw, throat, to give a response

7. Sound then travels to the other person’s ear

8. And this happens automatically

Top-down processing

takes previous knowledge of concepts and applies them to sound combinations

Bottom-up processing

takes sound bits and turns them into words, and then phrases- then meaning

A major debate is whether language in brain is…

modular in the brain, or is distributed throughout

Chomsky, Pinker, and others argued for distinct language area in the brain

Modern research: Systems/networks rather than areas

Language Modern research

Systems/networks rather than areas

Phonemes

 Smallest component of a

language

 In essence, a sound (b, k, t, o, th)

 Rarely carry meaning in isolation

 You lose the ability to perceive some phonemes!

babies during vocal exploration

cannot coordinate lips/toungue, make phonemes one can produce

trying out sounds as you realize you can make them (not nec in language)

begin narrowing in on language phonemes

Morphemes

Smallest meaningful unit of language

 Sassafrass is a morpheme

 Confusing – the –s in cats is a morpheme, but not in sassafrass

Typically root word and its affixes. Example

 Denationalization (5 morphemes)

 De-, nation, -al, -ize, -ation

 Nation, national, nationalize, nationalization…

 Could always keep going…pseudodenationalization?

Question: The plural s of cat (cat-s) and the plural of dog (dog-s)

are the same morpheme but different phonemes! Why?

z phoneme(voicing) vs s phoneme(voiceless)

each affect changes the meaning

how to count morphemes

Kids learn rules and exceptions to the rule in steps

1. Kids pair a word with a meaning before learning the rule

2. Then kids learn a rule

3. Then kids learn the exception to the rule, and there are a

lot in English

Overgeneralization

when children learn a rule and apply it to every circumstance before learning the exception, naturally occurs

lexicon

 fancy word for

vocabulary

 This is directly related to concepts

 The total lexicon of a language is

always changing

 New: looksmaxxing, glow-up, vibe

coding

 Dead: sternforemost, snollygoster

 Words with added meaning: Sigma

Syntax

the structure of language – how we order words to create meaning

Chomsky argued for

a universal syntax, or rules that are present in all languages

universal syntax

rules that are present in all languages

recursion

syntactic rule of repetition- cannot be used for all words

semantics

how words, phrases, and sentences communicate meaning

operates through multiple levels

 Lexical

 Syntactic

 Irony

Prosody

 Patterns of stress and intonation in a language

 Can change the meaning of words

 Can add additional information to a word

 Can structure a conversation

Gestures

on top of and coordinated with prosody

 Beats

 Iconic gestures – gesture resembles object

 Emblems – gesture represents a word

 Metaphoric gestures – abstract ideas/concepts

is american sign language actually a language

yeth! has its own structures and phenomes and morphemes distinct to it

 Behaviorists language

(Skinner et al.)

 Language is completely learned, taught

Nativists language

(Chomsky, Pinker)

 The ability to understand and communicate through language is

innate

 Language “module” or “organ” in the brain

Interactionists language

(Bruner et al.)

 Nature and nurture

Language/Communication Explosion development

 9-12 months, first words

 1-1.5 Years

 Several words, hard to understand

 Babbles with prosody

 1.5-2 Years

 Puts words into simple phrases

 Articulation improving

 2-3 Years

 3 years…Full Conversations

Language

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

Grammar

A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages

Phonemes

The smallest units of speech that distinguish one word from one another

Phonological rules

Indicate how phone names can be combined to form words

Morphemes

The Smallest meaningful units of language

Morphological rules

Indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words – different for different languages

Content morphemes

Refer to things and events – example: dog

Function Morphemes

Serve grammatical functions – example: or

Syntactic rules

Indicate how words can be combined to form phrases in sentences

Within the First __ Months of life, children lose this ability:

6; distinguishing among all the contrasting sounds that occur in all human languages

Telegraphic speech

Devoid a function Morphemes And consist mostly of content words

Nativist theory of language

Language development is best explained as an innate biological capacity

Universal grammar

A collection of processes that facilitate language learning-Chomsky

Areas of the brain primarily linked to language

Bruce and Wernicke’s

Aphasia

Difficulty in producing or comprehending language

Brock’s area

Located in the left frontal cortex, involved in the production of the sequential patterns and vocal and sign language – damage to the area causes issues in speech production

Wernicke’s area

Located in the left temporal cortex, involved in language comprehension, damage can produce grammatical speech, but it tends to be meaningless

There is evidence that multilingualism protects against

Signs of accelerated aging

JB

69-year-old man who’s concept of colors remained intact despite the language decline and deterioration

Concept

A mental representation that groups are categorize shared features are related objects, events, or other stimuli

Prototype theory

Concept that we classify new objects by comparing them to the best or most typical member of a category- Visual cortex

Category specific deficit

Neurological syndrome, characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category, even when the ability to recognize objects outside the categories is undisturbed

Rational choice theory

The classical view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

Exemplar theory

Concept that we make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories of other instances of the category-prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia

Humans are bad at measuring__ But better at measuring__

Probability, frequency

Availability heuristic

A rule of thumb that items that are more readily available in memory, our judge is having occurred more frequently

Heuristic

Fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision-making, but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached

Algorithm

Well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgment by comparing an object or event with a prototype of the object or event

Conjunction fallacy

People think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event

Framing effects

A bias, whereby people give different answers of the same problem, depending on how the problem is framed

Sunk cost fallacy

A framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation on the basis of what they have previously invested in the situation

Optimism bias

People believe that compared with other individuals they are more likely to experience, positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future

Prospect theory

Proposes that people choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and to avoid risk risks when evaluating potential gains

Three ways to collaborate with algorithms

1. Informing – finding, generating, remembering information

2. Recommending – ordering, identifying, and suggesting high value options

3. Deciding – suggesting or making a decision on behalf of a person

In the example in the textbook risky decisions made by participants with prefrontal damage seems to grow out of

Insensitivity to the future consequences of their behavior

Ill defined problem

One that does not have a clear goal or well defined path to a solution