PSY305 Cognitive Development Dr. Reeves 2015 Exam 3

nominal categories

dependent on a definition; e.g. what is a prime number? how to define a bachelor?

natural categories

appear naturally in the world; e.g. animals, plants, rocks, minerals

artifact categories

human-made, typically to serve some function; e.g. furniture, vehicles

living/non-living & animate/inanimate categories

further distinctions thought to have an innate basis are living vs. nonliving, or animate vs. inanimate

superordinate

e.g. animal

basic level

e.g. dog, fish, bird

subordinate

e.g. salmon, clownfish, shark

classical view

part of componential/feature based theories: contains theory of necessary and jointly sufficient features; concepts have precise definitions based on defining features

necessary and jointly sufficient features

necessary: must have a given feature or set of features; jointly sufficient: if have all the criterial features, must be in the category

family resemblance theory

by rosch; part of componential/feature based theories; graded structure, prototype, peripheral members, linguistic hedges, goodness-of-example tests, verification tasks; categories structured according to overlapping/ characteristic features, rather than sets of necessary and jointly sufficient features

prototype

best example of a category- most central, but is not a chimeric averaged prototype

peripheral members

least characteristic members, may be considered members of similar categories

Wittgenstein experiment

Wittgenstein (1953) examined examples of games, but could not find any necessary and jointly sufficient features or features that were common to all games but not present in non games.

Rosch experiment

Rosch (1975) asked subjects to rate "goodness of example" members of 6 superordinate categories

Armstrong, Gleitman & Gleitman experiment

Armstrong, Gleitman & Gleitman (1985) asked Ss to rate the "goodness of example" of both:
1-Prototype categories from Rosch (fruit)
2-Well-defined categories: odd numbers, plane figures, females;
also asked SS to engage in a category verification task; found that categories structured according to overlapping [characteristic] features, rather than sets of N & JS features

linguistic hedges

e.g. technically speaking, a whale is a mammal; loosely speaking, a tomato is a vegetable

characteristic features

there are no necessary and jointly sufficient features for categories; rather, there are overlapping characteristic features among members- features which are common to many, but not all, the members of the set

exemplar theory

by Hintzman; part of componential/feature based theories; claims that we implicitly store information about every exemplar of a category to which we've been exposed. New examples automatically activate similar exemplars

psychological essentialism

by Keil, Medin, and Gelman; part of knowledge-based theories; claims that people act as if they know that many concepts have underlying essences. These essences then predict more obvious features, and help explain correlations of features

Keil's experiment

transformation of raccoon to skunk

Malt experiment #1

Malt (1994): Water is the quintessential "essential" category. Psychological Essentialism predicts that the relative quantity of pure H2O in substances should determine whether they are categorized as "water" or not.

Malt experiment #2

On a 1-7 scale, subjects asked to judge the typicality of 43 waters

knowledge-based theories

psychological essentialism; other knowledge-based views such as labov's cup/bowl experiment (context matters), or barsalou's ad hoc categories

labov's cup/bowl experiment

context matters

barsalou's ad hoc categories

we don't have statically stored "great gifts for mother's day" but can easily construct such a category on-line, based on our goals

category specific impairments

by Carmazza and Shelton; theory is that functionally distinct category representation is based on an evolutionary need to distinguish living from non-living item- and with living, animate from inanimate things.

sensory/functional distinction

by warrington and mccarthy; part of category specific impairments; theory is that differential weighting of features per category type may exist;

"Visual Crowding" View

claims that living things may be most often impaired because the degree of overlap in visual (and other) features among living things is greater than the featural overlap among non-living things. Thus, less discriminability means that living things (including fruits, vegetables) are more likely to be impaired

distributed models of categorization: Humphreys & Forde

HIT (Hierarchical Interactive Theory)—hierarchical distribution of attributes. lesions at different levels of processing. different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and categories of object

distributed models of categorization: Cree & MacRae

modality-specificity and distribution of knowledge types—concepts are tightly tied to perception (feature informativeness, concept confusability, visual complexity, familiarity, name frequency—contribute to why knowledge about living things is most often impaired)

pragmatics

rules of conversation

semantics

the meaning of language

propositions

sentences are expressed propositionally

syntax

ability to string words together into legal sentences within a language

morphology

the study of morphemes and how they are used

morphemes

the smallest meaningful units of language

free morphemes

stand alone; words such as daughter, swim, lone, fair, is

bound morphemes

are appended to words to alter or accent a word's meaning; such as a- in alone, -ly in lonely, -ing in swimming

lexicon

????; words; the vocabulary a person has

inflection

the intonation, stress, and rhythm (prosody) of speech

prosody

the rhythm of speech

phonolgy

the study of phonemes and rules for combination of phonemes

phonemes

individual sounds of language, e.g. /sh/, /a/, /ah/, /p/

places of articulation: bilabial

two lips together; p, b, m

places of articulation: labiodental

bottom lip against top of teeth; f, v

places of articulation: velar

???? Using the area right behind the roof of your mouth but before your uvula; k, g

places of articulation: alveolar

tongue against alveolar ridge of gums just behind front teeth; t, d, s, z, n, l, r

places of articulation: palatal

tongue against hard palate in roof of mouth just behind alveolar ridge; s, z, c, j, y

manner of articulation: stop

complete closure at a point in articulation; p, b, t, d, k, g

manner of articulation: fricatives

sustained turbulence or vibration; f, v, th

manner of articulation: nasals

closure of mouth and opening of nasal passage to let air through; m, n, ng

manner of articulation: laterals

shaping tongue so main opening is at sides of tongue; l

skinner

1. Language is learned like every other behavior: through imitation, and reinforcement
2. Associative chaining accounts for syntax: it is the stringing together of words based on strength of associations of word pairs, as they fit a given context. All of grammar learned through associationist tenets (past tense, etc.).

Associative chaining

accounts for syntax: it is the stringing together of words based on strength of associations of word pairs, as they fit a given context. All of grammar learned through associationist tenets (past tense, etc.).

chomsky

argued against skinner's ideas on language; theories of nativism, generativity, modularity, hierarchical rule-based systems of language, critical period, and the human-specific aspect of language

nativism

learning syntax of a language is a biologically programmed skill allowing children to abstract universal grammatical speech from utterances they hear

generativity

the ability to produce an infinite number of novel, grammatical sentences

language universals

specification of passage of time (past, present tenses), specification of agent/patient roles

modularity

language is a domain-specific skill, mutually independent of other cognitive abilities

critical period

by lenneberg; brain lateralization ends at puberty, thus ending the critical period

poverty of the input

Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES): auxiliary fronting in polar interrogatives represent less than 1% of questions in the corpus

lateralization

????; the idea that each hemisphere is dominant for particular functions, with language largely controlled by the left hemisphere. According to the critical period hypothesis, then a language learned after the critical period might be represented in the brain differently than a language learned earlier in life

genie

had large vocabulary, but telegraphic speech, couldn't ask questions, no distinction of pronouns, couldn't tell active from passive voice, left ear advantage for language, and good at right hand tasks

phrase structure grammar

????; method of being able to break down a complex sentence into its constituent components

phrase structure grammar: constituent components

????; nouns, verbs, noun phrases, verb phrases, etc.

phrase structure grammar: hierarchical structure

????; rule based systems—not dependent on the L to R construction of sentences applied by associative chaining (ex: I goed to the movies)

transformational grammar

Part of the Contemporary Debate; under category of the "Nativist Perspective: Structure-Dependency"

transformational grammar: deep structure

Sentences are composed of a Deep structure, or meaning

transformational grammar: surface structure

Sentences are composed of a surface structure, or actual sentence

transformational grammar: agent

who's doing

transformational grammar: patient/ theme

who/what is being done to

linguistic relativity hypothesis

Complete modularity: Is language 100% independent of other thought processes?; Benjamin Whorf, an amateur anthropologist, claimed that Language directs & constrains perception and thought; Rosch and Boroditsky disprove Whorfian hypothesis;

lexical ambiguity

when a homophone is present, which meaning of the word will be retrieved when deciphering a sentence?

lexical ambiguity: selective access theory

Only context-relevant meaning becomes activated; Dominant meaning is activated first; subordinate meaning only if context demands it

lexical ambiguity: Exhaustive/ Multiple Access Theory

simultaneous activation of all meanings- dominant & subordinate, though may achieve thresholds at different times. Resolution of meaning based on context- second stage.

speech errors: word substitution

must be in same grammatical class:
1. semantic, "mother" for "wife"
2. phonological, "mushroom" for "mustache"

speech errors: word blend

"meef" for "meat" + "beef"

speech errors: substitutions

wabbits for rabbits

speech errors: perseveration

blue blonnets for blue bonnets

speech errors: anticipation

leading lists for reading lists

speech errors: exchange/transposition

flow snurries for snow flurries

speech errors: spoonerisms

for example: "Three cheers for our queer old Dean!"

tip of the tongue state

aspect of lexical retrieval;

tip of the tongue: Transmission Deficit

weak connections between lexical and phonological nodes. This should occur mainly with low frequency words.

tip of the tongue: partial activation

people in a tip of the tongue state often know the first letter (50-70% of time) and number of syllables (47-83%) in the target word. Ends of words also maintained (Bathtub effect of Atichison, 1987);
1. primacy of first phoneme activation; or
2. root morpheme; e.g., plausible for implausible

blocking hypothesis

????; states that TOTs occur because the "rememberer"s recognize blocking words as incorrect but cannot retrieve the correct but inhibited target

agrammatism/Broca's aphasia

1. First named by Paul Broca (1861) after autopsy of a patient nicknamed Tan; 2. Damage to Left, frontal area of cortex leads to trouble with expressive speech: a. telegraphic speech, poor syntax b. mostly nouns, adjectives, phrases c. few verbs, aux. verbs d. except for gerunds: "reading" e. *paucity of grammatical morphemes e.g., plurals, possessives, prepositions, pronouns 3. Cookie Theft Picture & Speech Sample 4. Often parallel deficits in written speech 5. Comprehension APPEARS normal in everyday life, however may show the same insensitivity to grammatical morphemes as in production 6. Broca's aphasics are heavily dependent upon: a. Word Order- Syntactic cue; and b. Plausibility- Semantic cue 7. von Stockert & Bader (1976) used written sentence elements to have aphasics construct sentences to fit pictures 8. Intact Grammaticality Judgments

von Stockert & Bader

(1976) used written sentence elements to have aphasics construct sentences to fit pictures

telegraphic speech

????; poor syntax- mostly nouns, adjectives, phrases, few verbs, gerunds, paucity of grammatical morphemes

Wernicke's aphasia

1. First named by Karl Wernicke in 1874
2. Damage to Left Temporal region of brain, resulting in fluent, but nonsensical speech
3. Major comprehension deficits—chance performance in picking out a correct picture to match to a sentence
4. Major problem appears to be coding phonemes into words, in comprehension, or specifying the phonological code of intended words

neologisms

in wernicke's aphasiacs; nonsense words

semantic/phonological paraphasias

1. "mother" for "wife"
2. "ephelant" for "elephant"

anomia

word retrieval difficulties; damage to angular gyrus

conduction aphasia

???? An acquired language disorder, characterized by intact auditory comprehension, fluent- yet paraphasic- speech production, but poor speech repetition

conduction aphasia: arcuate fasciculus

???? The classical explanation for conduction aphasia is that of a disconnection between the brain areas responsible for speech comprehension (Wernicke's area) and speech production (Broca's area), due specifically to damage to the arcuate fasciculus, a deep white matter tract

expected value theory

decision is like a gamble; use probabilities to ascertain value of a decision, relative to its costs

prospect theory: Subjective Value

Value of a choice is calculated based on the Subjective Utility/probability RELATIVE to some reference point

prospect theory: Asymmetry of Gains/Losses

Displeasure associated with loss is much greater than the pleasure associated with a commensurate gain, often making people loss averse.

prospect theory: Immediacy of Risks/Gains

Huge risks in the future are ignored e.g., don't change diet & lifestyle early enough to prevent heart attack or stroke. Immediate small benefits often preferred to longer-term, large gains e.g., going to concert rather than saving money for new car or house down the road

prospect theory: Subject to Heuristics and Biases

which are like "cognitive illusions:" even when you know about them, you can't help but avoid them.