Exam 4 Study Guide Spring 2009 Fasig

EXP 3604 EXAM 4 REVIEW Chapter 10 Modular view- holds that language is made up of a unique set of abilities and capacities that cannot be reduced to or explained solely in terms of other cognitive processes. According to this view, language is special. Phonology- refers to the analysis of basic speech sounds. The systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_language" \o "Human language" human language , or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax" \o "Syntax" syntax and HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary" \o "Vocabulary" vocabulary , it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. Motor theory of speech perception- proposed by Liberman, posits a close link between the mechanisms we use to articulate speech and our perception of speech. Implicit knowledge about how speech sounds are articulate aids in our perception of those same sounds when we hear them. Constraint-based approach to grammar: Language doesn?t have to be innate; it is learnable. Learn it based on incoming data. Neural Network Approach, No specialized module Babies are before birth exposed to language. Babies can hear language at 8 months. Gradual development and fine tuning of neural networks during infancy period. Learn to respond to language quickly is in part explained by the rapid neural development. Language is full of probabilistic constraint. Debate oversimplifies: Language. Acquisition involves both innate abilities and learning. Babies do not come out understanding or comprehending speech but can recognize speech. Stages of language production: Stages in speech production Conceptualization- deciding what to say. Planning- organizing thoughts in terms of language. Natural pause and respond process when we prepare what we are going to say next. Arrange the words in a sequence. Articulation- converts intentions into speech Prosody: the stress pattern we use with words, how we pause for emphasis, stress one words over another, technique of delivery of words. Self-Monitoring- track and change as needed. Bottom-up processing in reading Direct-access view of word recognition Indirect-access view of word recognition Phonological assembly Parsing: mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases to determine essential meaning: Bear left zoo. Syntax- When you break down a sentence for meaning you would do so by phase structure. Semantics- grammar approach- sentences are parsed according to what they tell us. Understanding sentences is breaking a sentence down in its case role. Garden Path Approach- break components down into word order and pick up meaning as you go word by word in the sentence, attempting to gather each word to gain meaning. Top-down/bottom-up processing in language comprehension Dell?s theory of speech errors: We speak the sounds that are most highly activated and sometimes the wrong sound gets activated. Slips of the Tongue: Sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words. Can occur at any linguistic level (phoneme, morpheme, or word) Tend to be at only one linguistic level at a time. Often fail to detect these when they are real words. 8 types: Anticipation, Exchange, Preservation, Blend, Deletion, Shift, Substitution Morphemes- the smallest unit of language that carries meaning; it may refer to a single word (i.e. tree) or to a prefix or suffix that changes the precise meaning of the word (the s in trees) Characteristics of human language A system of communication using sounds and symbols that enable us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences · different from nonhuman communication b/c provides a way of arranging a sequence of signals from simple to hard info · Has a structure that is 1hierarchal and 2governed by rules that allows humans to express whatever they want Ambiguity: Both meanings of an ambiguous word are activated initially, without conscious awareness. Foss: takes longer to respond when processing ambiguous sentences. Miyake et al.: working-memory capacity correlates with activation of both meanings. It suggests that the relationship between the nature of the ambiguous sentence and the nature of the disambiguating context is a complex relationship. Phonetic restoration effect Richard Warren 1970: heard sentence and cough at first s in ?legislatures? and 0% could identify where the cough was in the sentence and 0% noticed that the first /s/ in legislatures was missing, this effect was called the phonemic restoration effect and participants filled in the missing phoneme based on the context produced by the sentence and the portion of the word that was presented; also, phonemic restoration can be affected by the word that follows the missing phoneme and our perception of speech is influenced by top-down processing our knowledge of the meaning of words that we bring to the situation · People do better at restoring word in ?progress? than rogress Factors affecting word and sentence comprehension Comprehension or understanding of words influenced by bottom up factors, how common the word is and other words that surround it in sentence Word frequency: factor that contributes to dif in accessibility of words, the relative usage of a word in a particular language Word frequency effect: we respond more rapidly to highfrequency words like home than low like hike, demo through lexical decision task Lexical decision task: p reads list that consists of words/nonwords and indicates quickly whether each is a word, people read highfreq words faster than lowfreq, shown through measuring people?s eye movements Transformational grammar: p. 410 Chomsky wrote Syntactic Structures that said human language was coded in the genes and are programmed to acquire knowledge, underlying basis of all language is similar, LAD: Language Acquisition Device: conceptual structure for acquiring language Two levels: 1. Deep structure: take basic ideas about an action and express them in various ways, core semantic relationships. 2. surface structure: actual output of the language system what you saw, heard, superficial and how it relates to identifiers. Noam?s critique of behaviorism led to psycholinguistics: field concerned with the psychological study of language, which are concerned with: 1. comprehension: how people understand spoken and written language, 2. speech production: how people produce language, 3. acquisition: how people learn language as children and later on in life learn new languages Interactionist view of sentence comprehension: semantics can influence processing as the person is reading the sentence, all info including syntactic and semantic is taken into account as we read a sentence so any corrections take place as person is reading. Chapters 11 & 12 Components of a problem: A problem has an initial state- what?s the starting point. Goal State- what is the wanted end result. Problem specification (initial state + goal state) Well-defined problems: -definite initial state, goal state -one or more paths to obtaining the goal -set of rules defining legal moves -used to study problem-solving -e.g. non-insight problems. Ill-defined problems: -goals less obvious or absent -starting point unclear Sub-goals not well defined -e.g. insight problems 5 problem categories: Transformation problems- solver has to find the solution that transfers the initial state into the goal state. Arrangement problems- arrange given elements to solve the problem. Induction problems- given examples and you have to discover the pattern or rule that applies to that example in order to generalize that rule to solve your problem. Deduction problems- given conditions and you have to determine whether or not a conclusion fits the premise. Divergent problems- generate as many possible solutions as you can for your problem. Mental set: The tendency to rely on habits and procedures used in the past. Can interfere with your ability to solve everyday problems. Functional fixedness: - functions or uses of objects tend to remain fixed. -Overactive ?top-down? processing Solving Duncker?s candle problem: p. 451/452 Basically functional fixedness caused subject?s in the study caused them to solve the problem incorrectly. Algorithms and problem solving: always produces a solution Means-ends analysis: divide overall problems into subproblems with a subgoal for each. -people pause to determine a subgoal and plan moves to reach it. -Reduce the difference between the initial state and subgoal state for each subproblem. Is not always optimal: Most efficient path toward a goal is not always the most direct one. Working backwards Expertise & memory (Chase & Simon chess study) Algorithms generally: A set of rules that can be applied systematically to solve certain types of problems. A mathematical formula is a good example of an algorithm. What is an Expert? Talent, Experience, Practice You are just born with an innate talent for a certain field. (Talent approach) An expert puts more time into practicing and learning their fields than others. (Experience approach) Anyone has at least average ability can become an expert with enough quality practice. (Practice approach) An average of at least 10 years has spent to become an expert. It is hard to identify talent. Major generalization: general abilities like perception speed, dexterity, speed of thought, overall memory performance, ect. Don?t seem to be it Abilities tend to be specific to your domain Support that expert memory abilities can be learned Heuristics: general strategies, or rules of thumb, which can be applied to various problems. They serve as shortcuts through problem space. Confirmation bias: our tendency to seek out or notice evidence that is consistent with a particular hypothesis rather than evidence that would be inconsistent with the hypothesis. Base-rate fallacy: is an error that occurs when the HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_probability" \o "Conditional probability" conditional probability of some hypothesis H given some evidence E is assessed without taking sufficient account of the " HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate" \o "Base rate" base rate " or " HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability" \o "Prior probability" prior probability " of H. Normative approach: an approach to reasoning, judgment, and decision making that describes how we ought to think in a given situation. Descriptive approach: an approach to reasoning, judgment, and decision making that describes how we actually think. Syllogism: a kind of HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument" \o "Logical argument" logical argument in which one HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition" \o "Proposition" proposition (the conclusion) is HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference" \o "Inference" inferred from two others (the HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise" \o "Premise" premises ) of a certain form. A categorical syllogism consists of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise, and the conclusion, each part of which is a categorical proposition, and each categorical proposition containing two categorical terms. Conditional reasoning: p. 493 Form of deductive reasoning and involves evaluating whether a particular conclusion is valid given that certain conditions hold. For example, consider the following premises 1 and 2 and the conclusion (3): If someone likes Winnie-the Pooh, then they?re a sensitive person. Mary likes Winnie-the-Pooh. Therefore, Mary is a sensitive person. The conditional statement (1) provides the rule that is expressed in an if-then format: if P, then Q. 4 possible operations for solving conditionals (propositional calculus) Wason selection task ? factors that affect choice: p. 496 Read about it. Inductive reasoning: is HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning" \o "Reasoning" reasoning which takes us "beyond the confines of our current evidence or knowledge to conclusions about the unknown." The premises of an inductive HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument" \o "Logical argument" argument indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion but do not HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entailment" \o "Entailment" entail it; i.e. they do not ensure its truth. Induction is used to ascribe HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_of_being" \o "Category of being" properties or relations to HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_%28metaphysics%29" \o "Type (metaphysics)" types based on HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_%28philosophy%29" \o "Event (philosophy)" an observation instance (i.e., on a number of observations or experiences); or to formulate HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_%28principle%29" \o "Law (principle)" laws based on limited observations of recurring HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomena" \o "Phenomena" phenomenal patterns. Availability heuristic: is a phenomenon (which can result in a HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias" \o "Cognitive bias" cognitive bias ) in which people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. Conjunction error/fallacy: is a HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy" \o "Logical fallacy" logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. Framing effect: describes the effects on our decisions of how a scenario is presented. If info is presented in terms of a positive ?gain frame? (emphasizing the certainty of what we have right now) we will be more likely to avoid risk. Hindsight bias: is the inclination to see events that have occurred as more HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction" \o "Prediction" predictable than they in fact were before they took place. In psychological experiments of hindsight bias, subjects also tend to remember their predictions of future events as having been stronger than they actually were, in those cases where those predictions turn out correct. Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: Your initial estimate or first impression tends to make you overly biased towards something. Your own experience may exert too much influence, essentially ?anchoring? your judgment. We often make an initial estimate, based on previous knowledge and then make adjustments to that initial anchor to arrive at a final judgment. Reasoning by analogy (Gick & Holyoak, 1980)