Exam 8: Thinking, Reasoning and Language

Your family dog is named "Happy". Any time your young child sees a dog, she calls out "Happy". This is an example of ________.

When psychologists say language is generative, they mean that

Henry hears German spoken in his home, but he is exposed only to English in school. It is likely that Henry will

According to ________ theory, children can deduce the meaning of words they do not understand by inferring meaning from the context.

The meanings derived from words or sentences are collectively known as the ________ of language.

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 ________.

The term dialect is used to indicate

Why do people speak in different dialects?

A famous lecturer argues that because the Hopi Indians have only two nouns for things that fly, one for birds and another for non-birds, the Hopi MUST interpret all flying things in terms of these two nouns. This argument is based on ________.

The average college student reads at a rate of about ________ words per minute.

By the time they are roughly one-year old, babies tend to use the ________ of their native language when babbling.

Compare and contrast functional fixedness and mental set.

Which of the following is true of sign language?

Your friend's six-month-old baby has begun to vocalise long strings of repeated syllables in a continuous stream. For example, the baby vocalises "Malamalamalamalamala". This baby is in the ________ stage.

Many people drew faulty conclusions about the relative safety of air travel compared to automobile travel in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Such poor reasoning was the result of ________.

To say that using and interpreting language typically requires little attention is to say that it is ________.

The closest vocalisations observed among animals that mirror human language are the different ________ of the vervet monkey.

Sally is enrolled in a high school geometry course, which she describes as "drawing figures and figuring drawings". In a typical class, students draw geometric figures and use a formula to calculate an aspect of the figure such as its area. Each time Sally uses a formula, she is making use of what psychologists call ________.

Jay, a popular TV show host, made a joke regarding Hyundai Getz's and the dangers of owning them because of their "perceived" tendency to blow up. Many Getz owners took issue with Jay's view as presented, in part due to a fear that they could never re-sell their car. Jay's very public joke and its potential to affect peoples' perceptions is an example of a(n)________.

According to famed linguist Noam Chomsky, humans have an innate ability to understand and produce language through a device he called