Psychology Chapter 7
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39 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Language | A system for communicating with others using signals that convey meaning and are combined according to rules of grammar. |
| Phoneme | The smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than as random noise. |
| Phonological Rules | A set of rules that indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds. |
| Morphemes | The smallest meaningful units of language. |
| Grammar | A set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages. |
| Morphological Rules | A set of rules that indicate how morphemes can be combined to form words. |
| Syntactical Rules | A set of rules that indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences. |
| Deep Structure | The meaning of a sentence. |
| Surface Structure | How a sentence is worded. |
| Fast Mapping | The fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure. |
| Telegraphic Speech | Speech that is devoid of function morphemes and consists mostly of content words. |
| Nativist Theory | The view that language development is best explained as innate, biological capacity. |
| Language Acquisition Device (LAD) | A collection of processes that facilitate language learning. |
| Genetic Dysphasia | A syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence. |
| Aphasia | Difficulty in producing or comprehending language. |
| Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis | The proposal that language shapes the nature of thought. |
| Concept | A mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli. |
| Category-Specific Deficit | A neurological syndrome that is characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category while leaving the ability to recognize objects outside the category undisturbed. |
| Family Resemblance Theory | Members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member. |
| Prototype | The "best" or "most typical member" of a category. |
| Exemplar Theory | A theory of categorization that argues that we make category judgements by comparing a new instance with stored members for other instances of the category. |
| 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. |
| Availability Bias | Items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently. |
| Heuristic | A fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached. |
| Algorithm | A well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem. |
| Conjunction Fallacy | When people think that two events are more likely to occur together rather than either individual event. |
| Representativeness Heuristic | A mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgment by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event. |
| Framing Effects | When people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed). |
| Sunk-Cost Fallacy | A framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation based on that they have previously invested in the situation. |
| Prospect Theory | Proposes that people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains. |
| Frequency Format Hypothesis | The proposal that our minds evolved to notice how frequently things occur, not how likely they are to occur. |
| Means-End Analysis | A process of searching for the means or steps to reduce differences between the current situation and the desired goal. |
| Analogical Problem Solving | Solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem. |
| Functional Fixedness | The tendency to perceive the functions of objects as fixed. |
| Reasoning | A mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions. |
| Practical Reasoning | Figuring out what to do, or reasoning directed toward action. |
| Theoretical Reasoning | Reasoning directed toward arriving at a belief. |
| Belief Bias | People's judgments about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid. |
| Syllogistic Reasoning | Determining whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true. |
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