Exam 9: Language and Thought

Imagine that anthropologists found a culture that had over 80 different words for rice.If researchers also found that the people in this culture thought about and perceived rice in different and more elaborate ways than people who have only one word for rice, it would:

Outline the development of language skills from birth through 24 months, focusing on the emergence of major language milestones.

Individuals were asked to estimate the number of African countries that belonged to the United Nations, using either 10 or 65 as a starting base.The final estimates depended on the starting point that was provided.A starting point of 10 produced an average estimate of 25 countries, and a starting point of 65 produced an average estimate of 45 countries.The results of this study support the view that people often:

The activities that underlie all forms of thought are technically known as:

Wilma believed that her local senator was an honest, law-biding citizen.When he was indicted on charges of insider trading, she told all her friends there had been a mistake and he would soon be cleared.Finally, the senator confessed to the crimes and served time in prison.Through all of this, Wilma kept insisting he had been framed and was taking the blame to protect someone else.In this example, Wilma shows strong evidence of:

You are showing evidence of ____________________if you tend to persist in using the same problem-solving strategy time after time.

One is exhibiting a(n) ____________________ when one seeks out information that supports a preexisting belief.

Outline the key aspects that differentiate well-defined problems and ill-defined problems.Provide an appropriate example of each type of problem.

Because the news report of a plane crash was fresh in her mind, Lara decided flying was just too risky.Her risk estimate appears to have been influenced by:

Bob has just said something to Crystal that sounds really mean.However, Crystal knows that Bob is just joking because of his facial expression, body language, and the nature of the situation.This shows the importance of which aspect of language?

Noam Chomsky is noted for:

Four-year-old Keifer says, "We wented to school." This most likely indicates that:

In early childhood, children form very short sentences that leave out all the nonessentials.Linguists refer to these condensed sentences as:

What is the representativeness heuristic? What are two different errors in reasoning that can occur when this heuristic is used?

With respect to language, phonemes:

When people estimate the probability of an event based on the ease with which examples can be brought to mind, they are using the:

The rules of language that enable the communicator to combine symbols to convey meaning are called grammar.

Maurice was having trouble with his algebra homework.No matter what he did, he seemed to keep coming up with the same wrong answers to the questions that had been assigned.Finally, he gave up and went to bed.The next day, he was able to accurately solve the questions without any difficulties.In this situation, it appears that Maurice benefited from:

The psychologists use the term ____________________ to refer to "rules of thumb" that are usually quick but which do not guarantee a problem solution will be found.

The term ____________________ structure refers to the underlying representation or meaning in a sentence.