I. Language

Formal system of communication; spoken,written, and/or gestures

• Language production: ability to speak or otherwise use language to send information
• Semantic: conveys thoughts in meaningful way to someone who knows the language
• Generative: combing language in novel ways
• Symbolic: referring to objects & events not present
• Structured: rules that govern how we combine words into phrases

• Syntax: system of rules that specifies how words can be arranged into sentences.
• Phonemes: basic sounds of a language
• “boy” & “toy” differ by one phoneme
• Can produce 100 phonemes, but languages range from 20 to 80 (English has ~ 45)
• Only certain combinations allowed in each language: for example, Japanese has no “r” in its language
• Research suggests we mentally prepare sounds of an entire phrase/sentence before we begin to talk.
• Morphemes: smallest unit of meaning
• Prefixes and suffixes added to word create additional morpheme: e.g., “walk” vs. “walked”

• Birth - cooing, crying, gurgling
• 4-6 mos - babbling
• 12 mos. - first words
• Use overextension: overly broad use of a word to refer to a new object/situation
• Use “dog” for anything with four legs
• 18-24 mos. - telegraphic speech
• Speech that packs much information into few words (“Daddy stay!”)
• Critical period: language can only be learned during a narrow window of time
• The brain seems to be most able to acquire language development at a particular age: research points to pre-puberty; if language is learned after this period, it is not learned well…
• Genie: her parents locked her up in a back room from the age of 20 months until age 13; was punished if she made any sounds; after rescued, while she was able to learn many words, she never grasped the rules of grammar well.
• Nature or Nurture (Chomsky vs. Skinner)?
• Is language entirely a learned process or does the human race have a genetic component for language acquisition?
• Language Acquisition Device: an innate mechanism that contains the grammatical rules common to all languages and allows language acquistion
• The fact that virtually all normal humans come to speak a language, even without formal instruction, seems to point to something special about the way our brains are constructed to acquire and use language.

Cognitive psychology: studies how the mind organizes perceptions, processes information, and interprets experience

A. Concept Formation

• Concept: category of objects, events, qualities, etc.
• An unambiguous internal representation that may be abstract
• Prototype: most typical representation of a concept (What’s the most typical sport? Soda?)
• Schema: a collection of concepts that specify necessary and optional aspects of a particular situation

• Identify problem: obstacle that must be overcome to reach a goal
• Gather information
• Try a solution
• Evaluate results

• Trial & error
• Insight often occurs here: a new way to look at a problem that implies the solution that can come in a flash
• Trial-and-error strategies manipulate representation of a problem in various ways, of which, one variation of the representation can produce insight
• Insight may also occur through incubation: improved thinking following a period of not consciously working on solving a problem or performing a task (“Aha!”)
• Algorithm: A set of steps that, when methodically followed, produces a guaranteed solution
• Heuristic: Rule of thumb that doesn’t guarantee solution but offers a potential shortcut to the solution that an algorithm doesn’t
• Mental Simulation: Visualizing a mental representation of an object in a corresponding imagined actual situation

• Mental Set: A strategy that has worked in the past, although it may not now
• A fixed way of viewing the one kind of solution you seek
• Be willing to consider alternative solutions!
• Functional Fixedness: Inability to resolve that problem can be solved by using common objects in an unusual way
• When solving a problem, getting stuck on one interpretation of an object or one part of the situation

• Representativeness Heuristic: How similar is object/situation to prototype stored in memory?
• Matches information in the environment against schemas to determine the likelihood that the match is appropriate; relying on stereotypes to categorize; often ignoring relevant statistical information when making inferences
• Availability Heuristic: How easily does object/situation come to mind?