Exam 9: Language and Thinking

The prefix "un" in the word "unusual" is an example of a:

In terms of the properties of languages, displacement is to symbolic as infinite is to ________.

Justine's best friend has just told her that Jason, Justine's boyfriend is cheating on her. Justine can't believe this and decides to watch him very closely the next few days for signs of his cheating. Jason brings Justine flowers on Wednesday, ends their Thursday night date early so Justine "can get her beauty sleep," and visits a sick friend in the hospital, missing their date on Friday night. Justine still thought that he was being faithful, "Just look at the wonderful things he does!" Justine was only looking for evidence to prove that Jason was being faithful to her thereby falling sway to the ________.

When Leslie's Dad gets home before 6:00 p.m., it means he has finished a job early and is in a good mood. When Dad is in a good mood, he takes Leslie out for ice cream. While finishing her homework today, Leslie hears her father's car pull into the driveway. It is 5:30 p.m. So Leslie reasoned, "Tonight I get ice cream!" Leslie was using ________ reasoning.

As an English speaker, you recognize that if you want to put a verb into the past tense you can add an 'ed' to it, such as changing 'walk' to 'walked'. The rules governing this type of transformation are known as:

Given the choice, most people would rather receive information about themselves that validates their ideas about who they are, and they would rather avoid information that contradicts their self-beliefs. This tendency demonstrates an example of:

It is assumed that problem-solving schemas facilitate the performance of experts by allowing them to solve problems in working memory.

Roger is a smoker. In talking to him one day, you present all of the logical arguments for not smoking. He suggests that your logic is wrong and plans to continue smoking. Roger's behaviour reflects

Semantics is to syntax as:

Evidence in support of apes' language abilities is strongest in terms of the ________ criterion of language.

Jody's parents were in a car accident and both suffered from a left hemisphere stroke. All things being equal, we would expect Jody's mom to have fewer language problems than her dad. Why?

One of the arguments for the biological basis of language is that despite their differences at the phonemic level, all languages seem to have a common underlying _.

The surface structure consists of the way symbols are combined within a given language.

The fact that a child will generally have great difficulty learning a language if he is first exposed to it after puberty is generally taken as evidence that language has a sensitive period.

Suppose there was a language that had only two words for precipitation, and that one of those words was for rain and the other for snow. If it was found that people who spoke only that language had difficulty discriminating among mist, drizzle, rain, freezing rain, hail, ice pellets, snow, and other forms of precipitation, then that finding would support the:

You are about to buy a lottery ticket and you want to choose your favourite numbers 37, 18, 4, 7, 25, and 42. Your friend says that instead you should choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. This does not seem like a good choice to you so you just choose your favourite numbers. Why might you prefer your favourite numbers?

When an adult simplifies instructions because she is giving them to a young child, the adult is showing sensitivity to what area of language?

After reading chapter 9 in the text, you are really not sure what you know and do not know. To a cognitive psychologist, your difficulty involves

Speech segmentation was given as an example in your textbook of how is involved in understanding language.

When trying to reason logically, the tendency to abandon logical rules in favour of our own personal beliefs is referred to as: