Exam 9: Section 4: Language and Thought

A language acquisition device (LAD) is something that is acquired through experience.

The more characteristics an object shares with a prototype, the more likely it will be excluded from a category that already contains a prototype.

Given that Michael is 6 feet 4 inches tall and can dunk a basketball, it is more likely that Michael is an NBA basketball player than a Wal-Mart employee.

Apes who have acquired the use of human language can process the meaning of grammatically complex sentences.

Apes who have acquired the use of American Sign Language speak at the level of a 4-year-old child.

Theoretical reasoning is reasoning directed toward arriving at a belief.

The left brain hemisphere is primarily involved in forming prototypes, and the right brain hemisphere is mainly active in recognizing exemplars.

The behaviorist explanation of language acquisition has received substantial empirical and theoretical support.

People with Broca's aphasia primarily have difficulty understanding language.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis states that language shapes the nature of thought.

Noam Chomsky is an advocate of the nativist theory of language development.

Bilingual children tend to have a smaller vocabulary in each language than their monolingual peers.

Practical reasoning involves an action-oriented goal.

Between the ages of 1 and 5, children learn, on average, 15-20 words every day.

Functional fixedness occurs when the wrong past analogy is applied to a new goal state problem.

The likelihood of two events occurring simultaneously is always less than the likelihood of either event occurring alone.

Behaviorist explanations of language development emphasize how language is acquired through shaping and reinforcement.

Algorithms are mental shortcuts that sometimes lead to incorrect decisions.

Human language may have evolved from signaling systems similar to those observed in other species.

English speakers shown a timeline on a horizontal display make faster time judgments than those shown a timeline on a vertical display.