Chapter 7 psychology

• Cognition


  Thinking, and it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment, language, and memory
• Cognitive psychology is the field of psychology dedicated to examining how people think
• Concepts


  Categories or groupings of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories, such as life experiences
• Prototype


  The best example or representation of a concept
• Natural concepts


  • Created "naturally" through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences
• Artificial concepts


  • Concepts that are created through explicit instruction or education, rather than through personal experience
• Schemata


  Organized frameworks of knowledge that help us categorize new information and experiences
• Natural concepts


  Created "naturally" through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences
• Artificial concepts


  Concepts defined by a specific set of characteristics
• Artificial concepts


  • Geometric shapes like squares and triangles
  • Mathematical formulas like the equation for area
• Schema


  A mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts
• Role schema


  Makes assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave
• Event schema


  A set of behaviors that can feel like a routine
• Hearing your phone's ring tone

  Activates the event schema of locating the phone and answering it or responding to a text message
• Habits and event schemata are difficult to break once they have been acquired
• Language


  A communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another
• Language is a form of communication, but not all communication is language
• Many species communicate with one another through their postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations
• Lexicon


  The words of a given language, a language's vocabulary
• Grammar


  The set of rules used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon
• Morpheme


  The smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning
• Semantics


  The process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words
• Syntax


  The way words are organized into sentences
• Problem-solving strategy


  A plan of action used to find a solution
• Problem-solving strategies


  • Trial and error
  • Algorithm
  • Heuristic
• Algorithm


  A problem-solving formula that provides step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome
• Skinner's view of language acquisition

  Language is learned through reinforcement
• Heuristic


  A general problem-solving framework or mental shortcut
• Chomsky's view of language acquisition


  The mechanisms underlying language acquisition are biologically determined
• Stages of language and communication development

  • Reflexive communication (0-3 months)
  • Reflexive communication; interest in others (3-8 months)
  • Intentional communication; sociability (8-13 months)
  • First words (12-18 months)
  • Simple sentences of two words (18-24 months)
  • Sentences of three or more words (2-3 years)
  • Complex sentences; has conversations (3-5 years)
• Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language, and early on they can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages they are exposed to
• Phonemes


  The sounds that make up a language
• Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language (for example, they can tell the difference between the "s" in vision and the "ss" in fission)
• Early on, babies can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that do not occur in the languages that are used in their environments
• By the time that they are about 1 year old, babies can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments
• Babbling stage


  1. Babies produce single syllables that are repeated over and over

  2. More variations appear in the syllables that they produce

  3. Babies are just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with their caregivers
• Mental set


  Persisting in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now
• Functional fixedness


  The inability to perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for
• Babies who are raised in environments in which sign language is used will also begin to show babbling in the gestures of their hands during this stage
• During the Apollo 13 mission, NASA engineers had to overcome functional fixedness to save the astronauts