Exam 8: Thinking, Reasoning, and Language

A major debate that goes on with respect to how infants learn their first language deals with

How do honeybees communicate the location of food sources?

Dr. Wigand studies the use of alarm calls in a population of vervet monkeys. She presents the monkeys with different types of predators (e.g., leopard, snake, hawk) and records their vocalizations. What should Dr. Wigand expect to find when she analyzes the alarm calls?

Which two animal species demonstrate language learning that resembles human learning the most?

After an event happens, people often think that they 'knew all along' that it would happen the way it did. This is known as the __________ bias.

When a child tries to 'sound out' a word, they are using a strategy called __________ decomposition.

If I am given 10 math problems, and I can and do solve the first nine in the same way, I may struggle with the tenth problem if it requires a different method to solve it. This best illustrates the concept of

What is linguistic determinism? Describe and explain the two sources of evidence have led theorists to reject linguistic determinism.

The language acquisition device is to __________ as the social environment is to __________.

When Jerome was in the middle of his midterm exam, he was very uncertain about his answers. After seeing his score-an A-he subsequently told his friends that he never doubted that he would get a good mark. This demonstrates the influence of __________ on our judgments.

Early attempts to teach chimpanzees to talk were complete failures, primarily because

Jack is a 10-month-old and smiles when his mother says words such as Mommy, puppy, bottle, and teddy. He also has learned to point at the object when his mother asks where they are; however, he does not yet say the words himself. What does this example tell us about language acquisition?

Our language uses __________ symbols, which means that the symbols don't necessarily relate to or predict the ideas or items that they represent.

Sentences such as "Include children when baking cookies" may strike us as funny. From the perspective of language, this is because the phrase or headline

Days following the championship football game, many "armchair quarterbacks" explain how they knew all along what the final result would be. This example illustrates

The area of the brain primarily involved in speech production is

Basic units of sound are called __________; basic units of meaning are called __________.

is a system of communication that combines symbols according to rules and in a way that conveys meaning.

When people try to teach language to chimpanzees or bonobos, the apes tend to have the most problem with the __________ , or rules, of language.

Because our snap judgments are accurate enough to be useful, the tendency to use heuristics and intuition might be considered ____________ from an evolutionary perspective.