Exam 9: Language and Thinking

In 1970, Spencer Silver was trying to formulate a strong adhesive for the 3M Company, and one of his failed attempts resulted in an extremely weak adhesive. Four years later, frustrated by how often his markers fell out of his church hymnal, Arthur Fry coated them with the adhesive. The markers stayed in place but could be peeled out of the book without damaging the pages. Post-it Notes are now one of the top five-selling office products. If Silver and Fry had just thrown the adhesive out because it hadn't done what it was supposed to, they would have been demonstrating

While trying to learn what a "doggie" is, little Johnny looks at every animal he sees and compares it to his new puppy. If the animal is similar enough to his own puppy, then he decides it also is a puppy. Johnny's puppy serves as a _______________ for dogs.

Means-ends analysis is a commonly used type of algorithm. It involves making changes to reduce the differences between the present situation and a desired goal state.

Mitch has been asked to develop a new product to serve an unmet need in American culture. He has several ideas, but none of them are quite right. Mitch's friend finally suggests that Mitch "sleep on it." Mitch agrees, and spends the remainder of the weekend thinking about other things. On Monday morning, Mitch looks over his notes and realizes the solution to his problem. The period of time in which Mitch let his subconscious work on the problem is referred to as

Many concepts are difficult to describe in words, but we often can define them using typical and familiar members of a particular class called

Despite their original intentions, researchers working with the chimp __________ eventually concluded that chimpanzees are NOT capable of exhibiting true language.

Theide and Anderson (2003) asked groups of students to read six test passages. One group did not summarize the passages, one group summarized each passage immediately after they read it, and one group summarized all six passages after a delay. Their results showed that the delayed summary group ________.

Knowing how to politely interrupt someone who is speaking would be an example of pragmatics.

Let's say that I ask you to tell me what you did last summer. You say that you took a trip to Europe. What property of language does your description of your trip illustrate?

If you supported a strong genetic basis for language acquisition, you would most likely believe that humans have a

Mental blueprints or step-by-step scripts for selecting information and solving specialized classes of problems are called

A friend is trying to solve a problem and you have an idea about how to solve it. Using language, you translate your idea into words, thus effectively transferring your idea from your mind to your friend's mind. In this example, your idea is best considered as an example of a(n) ________.

Men who have had left-hemisphere strokes are more likely to show severe aphasic symptoms than women who have had left-hemisphere strokes. This evidence suggests that ________.

While on vacation you remember passing a restaurant earlier in the day about halfway between your current location and your hotel. You visualize a map of the area and imagine 'scanning' from your current location back to your hotel (as is done in mental scanning experiments), and then imagine 'scanning' from your current location to the restaurant. What is one kind of neuron that we could predict would become active during this process?

Our ability to communicate about past events and about objects in our environment is a concept of language displacement?

The ways that symbols are combined within that language refers to the ____________ of a language, whereas the underlying meaning of these symbols refers to ___________.

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 ___________.

Shelley is attempting to solve a problem and at this point in time, she is trying to generate as many solutions as possible and to incorporate new and unusual ideas into her potential solutions. Which of the following best describes Shelley's thinking processes at this time?

You have a bag of walnuts, but unfortunately, no nutcracker. Suddenly, you realize that the brick on the floor could be used to open the walnuts so you use it. You have just avoided the problem of

Proposition is to concept as ________.