Unit 8: Study Questions

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Define cognition. Why was the study of cognition discouraged during the first half of the twentieth century? (p. 349)

Define language. Identify and describe the four critical properties of language. (p. 350)

Define phoneme. How many phonemes can humans recognize? Do all human languages use the same phonemes? How many phonemes are used in the English language? Define morpheme, and be able to recognize examples. Define semantics. Be able to define and distinguish between the connotation and the denotation of a word. (pp. 350-351)

Define syntax. Be able to provide and recognize examples. (p. 351)

Outline the development of human language during the period in which infants make sounds but not words. At what age does babbling begin? At what age are a child's first words typically produced? What is manual babbling? (pp. 352-353)

Outline the development of human language from the time babies begin using words. (pp. 353-356)

What is meant by the following statement: "the receptive vocabulary of toddlers is much larger than their productive vocabulary"? At what ages does a vocabulary spurt typically begin? (pp. 353-355)

Define fast mapping, overextensions, and underextensions. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of these concepts. (pp. 355-356)

Define telegraphic speech and overregularization. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of these concepts. (p. 356)

Define metalinguistic awareness. At what age do children appreciate irony and sarcasm? (p. 356)

What is bilingualism? In what parts of the world is bilingualism common? In what parts of the world is bilingualism uncommon? How does learning two languages at the same time influence the rate of language learning? Explain. (pp. 356-357)

How does bilingualism influence thinking processes and skills? Describe the research evidence. (pp. 357-359)

Specify and describe the three factors that influence the acquisition of a second language. (pp. 359-360)

Describe the research into the question of whether animals can learn language. (pp. 360-361)

Describe the points of view regarding the role of language during human evolution. (pp. 361-362)

Compare the behaviourist and nativist theories on the acquisition of language. Describe the evidence and arguments for and against each of these theories of language acquisition. What do interactionist theories say about language acquisition? (pp. 362-363)

Comment: The behavioural approach to language learning does make use of the concepts of imitation and reinforcement, but only in the simplistic manner described by Weiten and McCann. When learning a language, the unit of behaviour that is reinforced can consist of a behaviour feature, like adding the “ed” ending to a verb to express that the action occurred in the past. According to the behaviourist approach, we learn features of behaviour like this, not simply words through simple imitation. The “ed” ending is cited as something that defies Skinner’s approach to language learning, when it in fact is entirely consistent with his perspective. When children’s use of the “ed” ending is reinforced in one situation and the verb “go” is reinforced in another context, the effects of these two sources of reinforcement can combine to produce a novel expression like “goed.” Much of language learning involves this type of recombination of separately learned utterances.

Other research has shown that, contrary to the assertions in by Weiten and McCann, parents do correct children’s ungrammatical utterances and do so in relatively subtle ways (Bohannon & Stanowicz, 1988).

Not mentioned in this section are major advancements in behavioural work with autistic children. Thirty years ago the diagnosis of autism meant that a child would never learn to speak and would likely spend much of his or her life housed in an institution. That has changed, however, because applied behaviour analysis (ABA) methods have been applied to teaching autistic children verbal behaviour. Today, thousands of autistic children have learned to speak though intensive ABA therapy, which has become the treatment of choice for autism. (Eldevik, Hastings, Hughes, Jahr, Eiteseth, & Cross, 2009). Please see the following video for an ABA training session with an autistic child: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbVG8lYEsNs

Describe Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis. Describe the evidence for and against this hypothesis. (p. 364)

Define problem solving. Specify and describe Greeno’s three classes of problems, and be able to provide and recognize examples of each. (p. 365)

Specify four common obstacles to problem solving. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of each obstacle. Are adults and children equally vulnerable to each of these obstacles? Explain. (pp. 365-368)

Define problem space, trial-and-error problem solving, algorithms, and heuristics. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of these strategies. Do algorithms guarantee success if a solution to a problem exists? Do heuristics guarantee success? Why, or why not? Explain. (pp. 368-369)

Describe the problem-solving strategies of the following strateiges: (a) using subgoals, (b) working backward, (c) searching for analogies, (d) changing the representation of the problem, and (e) using the incubation effect. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of these strategies. (pp. 369-372)

Define field-dependence and field-independence. Be able to provide and recognize examples of field-dependent and field-independent cognitive styles. Under what conditions and in what types of societies would each of these cognitive styles most likely prevail? (p. 372)

What is a holistic cognitive style? What is an analytic cognitive style? Be able to provide and recognize examples of these cognitive styles. (pp. 372-373)

What is decision making? What is the additive strategy used to make choices? What is the elimination-by-aspects strategy? Be able to recognize and provide original examples of these strategies. What determines which strategy people use in making decisions? (pp. 374-375)

Comment: A weighted additive strategy is being used if an additive strategy is modified slightly by treating some attributes as being more important than others, thus assigning more weight to some attributes than others.

Explain how emotions, comparative information, uncertainty, product price, and product familiarity can influence decision-making. (pp. 375-376)

Define risky decision making. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of risky decision making. What is an expected value? What is subjective utility? What is subjective probability? (pp. 376-377)

Define availability heuristics and representativeness heuristics. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of these heuristics. Describe the problem of ignoring base rates when using the representativeness heuristic. (pp. 377-378)

What is the conjunction fallacy? Be able to provide and recognize original examples of this fallacy. (pp. 378-379)

Define the field of behavioural economics. How does it differ from traditional economic theory? Define and describe Simon’s theory of bounded rationality. What is framing? (pp. 379-380)

How have evolutionary psychologists responded to the idea that humans are poor decision makers? (pp. 380-381)

What are fast and frugal heuristics? What is the recognition heuristic? What are dual-process theories of decision-making? (p. 381)

Describe the gambler’s fallacy, belief in the law of small numbers, overestimating the improbable, confirmation bias, belief perseverance, the overconfidence effect, framing, and loss aversion. (pp. 383-386)

What is semantic slanting? What is name calling? What is anticipatory name calling? Be able to recognize and provide original examples of these concepts. (pp. 387-389)