Chapter 7 - Cognition and Language

The manipulation of mental representations of information.

Representations in the mind of an object or event.

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, or people.

Typical, highly representative examples of a concept.

Formal reasoning in which people draw a conclusion from a set of assumptions.

A rule that, if applied appropriately, guarantees a solution to a problem.

A thinking strategy that may lead us to a solution to a problem or decision, but - unlike algorithms - may sometimes lead to errors.

Involves repeated tests for differences between the desired outcome and what currently exists.

A sudden awareness of the relationships among various elements that had previously appeared to be independent of one another.

The tendency to think of an object only in terms of its typical use.

The tendency for old patterns of problem solving to persist.

The tendency to seek out and weight more heavily information that supports one's initial hypotheses and to ignore contradictory information that supports alternative hypotheses or solutions.

The ability to generate original ideas or solve problems in novel ways.

The ability to generate unusual, yet nonetheless appropriate, responses to problems or questions.

The ability to produce responses that are based primarily on knowledge and logic.

The communication of information through symbols arranged according to systematic rules.

The system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed.

The study of the smallest units of speech, called phonemes.

The smallest units of speech.

Ways in which words and phrases can be combined to form sentences.

The rules governing the meaning of words and sentences.

Meaningless speechlike sounds made by children from around the age of 3 months and through 1 year.

Sentences in which words not critical to the message are left out.

The phenomenon by which children apply language rules even when the application results in an error.

The theory that language acquisition follows the principles of reinforcement and conditioning.

The theory that a genetically determined, innate mechanism directs language development.

Noam Chomsky's theory that all the world's languages share a common underlying structure.

A neural system of the brain hypothesized by Noam Chomsky to permit understanding of language.

The view that language development is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language.

The notion that language shapes and may determine the way people in a particular culture perceive and understand the world.