Psych 40 - Final Exam

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morphology: - e.g. added "ed" to word
semantics: - inferring meaning (denotation, connotation, generally context-free)
pragmatics: - meaning in social context
theories of pragmatics: - speech acts
- maxims of conversation
speech acts: - nominal meaning
- intended meaning
- effective meaning
maxims of conversation: - quantity: too much/little
- quality: truth
- relation: appropriatness
- manner: clearness
phenomena of language: - production (pauses, repeated phrases, slips of the toungue)
- comprehension (phenomic restoration)
lateralization of language: - usually to the left side
- bilateral if learned late
Chomskyan perspective on language: - mentalistically characterized - okay
- regular (rule-based)
... questioned by connectionist models
... questioned by constructive view of language acquisition
- available to introspection
... questioned by lack of inter-rater reliability for linguistic judgements
competence/performance distinction
... difficult to validate behaviorally
- innate (rather than learned)
... questioned by statistical approaches to learnability; data shows feedback isn't required for learning
... evolution does not necessarily solf formal problem of learnability
- universal across humanity - somewhat okay
- a module of the brain
... strengthened by clinical data
- asocial (exists within one's mind)
... questioned by data showing necessity of social common groung for communication
- minimalist (optimally designed) - ?
theories of lexical analysis: - modularity
- selectivity
- promiscuity
- interactivity
* current evidence supports mixture of last 3
modularity theory (of lexical analysis): - lexical analysis is cut off from other non-semantic influences
ordered search theory (homonym judgement): - supports selectivity hypothesis of lexical analysis
- more frequent meaning is activated first
- the less frequent meaning activated only when necessary
selectivity theory (of lexical analysis): - lexical info is used to activate just one word meaning at a time
promiscuity theory (of lexical analysis): - lexical info activates all meanings of a word when encountered
interactivity theory (of lexical analysis): - lexical analysis considers input from other (non-semantic) processes during initial interpretation of words
language comprehension and memory: - theories of lexical analysis
- syntactic analysis -> parsing
- danger areas:
... suggestibility
... misleading advertising
- more promiscuity
resonance theory: - retrieval is fast, passive
- sends signals to anything in LTM related to cues in working memory
resonance theory and text processing: - resonance-based retrieval during text processing is insensitive to contextual relevance
- e.g.: reading times for burger/fries sentences longer in inconsistent conditions than consistent
constituents: - phrase units that we have learned to interpret
constituent structure (and parsing): - people process the meaning of a sentence one phrase at a time
- maintain access to the phrase only while processing its meaning
immediacy of interpretation (and parsing): - people try to extract the meaning of each word as it arrives
- do not wait until the end of a sentence or phrase to interpret it
processing syntactic structure (and parsing): - comprehenders use syntactic cues of word order and inflection to help interpret a sentence
semantic considerations (and parsing): - sometimes people rely on the plausible semantic interpredation of words in a sentence
elements of parsing: - constituent structure
- immediacy of interpretation
- processing of syntactic structure
- semantic considerations
- syntactic and semantic integration
linguistic competence vs linguistic performance: - linguistic competence: person's abstact knowledge of the language
- linguistic performance: actual application of that knowledge in speaking and listening
phrase structure: - heirarchical division of a sentence into units called phrases
pause structure: - people tend to pause after each maningful unit of speach
speach errors: - suggest that phrases have a psychological reality
- speakers tend to repeat/correct whole phrases
- types of errors:
... anticipation
... exchange
... word
... sound
transformations: - move elements from their normal positions in the phrase structure of a sentence
special features of the human language: - semanticity and arbitrariness of units
- displacement in time and space
- discretness and productivity
behaviorist theory (for relation between language and thought): - thoughts consist only of covert speech and other implicit motor actions
- thought merely subvocal speech
arguments against behaviorist theory (for relation btwn language and thought): - silent thinking tasks with no detectable vocal activity
- research on memory for meaning
- people with no apparent language but ability to think
wharfian hypothesis (on relation between language and thought): - linguistic determinism:
... language determines or influences a person's thought and perception of the world
arguments against the wharfian hypothesis (for relation between language and thought): - english and Dani speakers see colors in much the same way depsite disparity in linguistic terminology
dependency theory (for relation between language and thought): - theory that language is dependent on thought
- existance of structure seems to be a clear example of this dependency
- visual system has determined how English language divides up the color space
- word order (subject almost always precedes object)
modularity theory + evidence (for relation between language and thought): - idea that thought and language might be independent
- evidence:
... william's syndrome -> mental retardation doesn't affect linguistic fluency
... specific language impairments
- domains of research:
... language acquisition
... language comprehension
theories for relation betwen language and thought: - behaviorist
- whorfian
- dependance
- modularity
steps of language acquisition: 1 - vocalizations consist mostly of "ah"
2 - babbling
3 - child pronounces sounds that its language doesn't use
4 - concrete words in the here and now
5 - two words combined
6 - telegraphic sentences
7 - plurality, word order, better approximations of adult sentences
telegraphic sentences: - unimportant function words (is, the, etc) omitted
rules vs neural network (theories of learning): - irregular past-tenses are produced associatively (through a network)
- debate whether regular past tenses are produced with a network or by rules
importance of feedback in learning language: - children master language at a very young age and with little instruction
critical period for language acquisition: - at age 10 children start to lose the ability to acquire new language to high levels of proficiency
natural languages: - languages that humans can learn
language universals: - limit the possible characteristics of a natual language and a natural grammar
- properties that are true across languages are manifestations of language universals
parameter setting theory: - much of the variability amongst natural languages can be accomodated by setting 100 or so parameters
- major part of learning language is setting these parameters
levels of linguistic analysis: - phonetic features (consonantal, voicing, place of articulation)
- phenomes
- morphenomes (roots, prefixes, suffixes)
- words
- phrases
- sentences
heirarchy of generative grammars: - recursively enumerable
- context-sensative
- context-free
- regular
transformational grammar: - divides sentences into:
... surface structure (sentence)
... deep structure (proposition)
- transitive rules:
... map different sentences into same propositions
- ambiguity:
... surface structure may map into different deep structures
broca's aphasia: - when patients are unable to generate almost any speech or capable of generating meaningful but ungrammatical sentences
wernicke's aphasia: - grammatical but meaningless speech
where is langauge localized?: - left hemisphere in:
... prefrontal regions (broca's area)
... temporal regions (wernicke's area)
... parietal regions
linguistics: - attempts to characterize the nature of language
- focuses on productivity and regularity
productivity in language: - the fact that an infinite number of utterances are possible in any language
regularity in langauge: - the fact that these utterances are systematic in many ways:
... morphology
... syntax
... semantics
... pragmatics
solutions (in problem solving): - outcome of applying operations or porcedures ot a problem
representations (in problem solving): - those both seen and in the mind
relationship between representation, solution, and correctness (in problem solving): - correct solutions obvious from correct representations
Einstellung (and problem solving): - "mechanization of thought"
- when we get rigid in our thinking, or experience makes thinking routine
- leads to no fresh ideas
functional fixedness (and problem solving): - tend ot think of objects as having only one function
transfer (and problem solving): - transfering a technique to solve one problem to another problem
determinants of transfer success (in problem solving): - more transfer when schema more abstract
- more transfer when stories more similar
- more transfer with diagram or principle
moral of transfer (in problem solving): - we think concretely
- for transfer, we need to think more abstractly
things that hinder us from solving problems: - imposition of extraneous constraints
- failure to transfer known solution because:
... don't see relevance or
... representation not abstract enough
incubation effect (in problem solving): - should put down a problem and come back later so that you can attack it with fresh ideas
practical advice for problem solving: - take advantage of incubation effect
- when you study, process deeply
- enjoy getting stuck and unstuck
normative reasoning: - how we should reason
descriptive reasoning: - how we do reason
deductive (analytic) reasoning: - premises to conclusions
- closed system of axioms and theorems derivable from axioms by rules
- evaluate validity of argument
- symbolic logic
inductive (synthetic) reasoning: - statistical/probabalistic reasoning
- basis for drawing conclusions based on evidence
- evaluate truth of argument
- probability theory
psychological work on reasoning compares: - people's behavior vs normative theories
biases in reasoning: - the systematic differences from normative reasoning that people exhibit
confirmation bias (in reasoning): - tendency to produce and use positive but not negative information
- tendency to search for confirming evidence and not disconfirming evidence
implications of confirmation bias on reasoning: - people don't do well with bare-boned logic
... seems to contradict Piagetian notion of formal operations
- people do succeed at certain specific problems
... e.g. finding out what cards obey a certain property
... contradicts notion that we have logical rules in our minds
people's reasoning cannot be characterized as either: - syntactic content-free rules of inference
- memory of specific experiences
* instead are something in between:
Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas
pragmatic reasoning schemas: - generalized set of context-sensitive rules
- defined in relation to classes of goals
- examples
... permissions
... obligations
... broad classes of reasoning schemas
causal reasoning schema: - if there's smoke, there's fire -> no fire implies no smoke
- if you've had vaccine, you're immune -> no immmunity implies no vaccine
- if you study, you pass exam -> no pass implies no study
when testing a hypothesis, we tend to...: - seek confirmation, as opposed to disconfirmation
- "it is easy to obtain confirmation or verifications for nearly every theory--if we look for confirmation"
- example: 2,4,6, -> what's the sequence?
george formanes (and animal cognition): - found anectodal evidence for memory, emotion, and general intelligence in animals
wilhelm von osten (and animal cognition): - russian aristocrat proud of his abilities as a teacher
- argued that animals perform less well than humans because they are not educated
stumpf and pfungst (and animal cognition): - tested von osten's horse
- varied whether or not the horse could see
- varied whether or not the questinoer knew the answer
- found that the horse couldn't perform when he
... couldn't see the questioner or
... the questioner didn't know the answer
occam's redux: morgan's canon (and animal cognition): - "in no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher mental facuulty, if it can be interpreted as the exercie of one which stands lower in the psychological scale"
short route to thinking about animal cognition: - explain animal minds by reference to the mind we understand the best, the human's
- hypothesize that animal mental processes are analogous to human mental processes
- invoke cognitive processes in decreasing order of similarity to humans
- assume animals are like humans until proven otherwise
- hallmarks: anthropomorphism, reliance on anecdote
long route to thinking about animal cognition: - start from the study of observable behavior alone
- always explain behavior by the simplest possible mechanism
- invoke cognitive processes only in increasing order of complexity
- assume animals are like simple machines until prove otherwise
- hallmarks: conservatism, skepticism, reliance on experiment
aspects of animal cognition that can be studied experimentally: - attention
- memory
- problem solving and tool use
- language
evidence for long-term memory in animals: - evidence for a stable long-term store:
... rat mazes
... water maze
... caching behavior in squirrels and birds -> hippocampus sizes
... social relations and hierarchies in various species
animal short-term memory: - animals perform well in the delayed symbolic matching-to-sample task
- neurological evidence: hippocampus central to human memory, also in animals
- short-term memory in humans is easily disrupted, also in animals
- human short-term memory characterized by serial position curve, also found in animals
* --> human and animal memory systems appear extremely similar
judgement: - intuitive estimation and prediction of statistically varying quantities (especially probabilities)
bayes's theorem: - P(H|E) = [P(E|H)*P(H)]/P(E)
conditional probability: - P(A|B) = P(A&B)/P(B)
intuitive judgements: - based on a set of heuristics which are based on a small set of natual assessments
heuristics: - availability
- representativeness
- anchoring and adjustment
natural assessments: - ease of remembering/imagining
- similarity
- quantitative comparison
availability (in judgements): - the ease with which instances are brought to mind
- e.g. people judge that murders are more common than suicides because we hear about them more
... in fact suicides are much more common
extensionality (in judgements): - e.g. --i-- pattern fits more words than --ing
- but most people will guess that the opposite is true
representativeness: - the degree to which an instance is characteristic of a category
- does not obey extensionality
- does not entail counting instances
- not bounded by frequency or class inclusion
probability and representativeness: - under right circumstances, people distinguish them
- under other circumstances, people use representativeness to judge probability
... called "attribute substitution"
example of violation of extensionality and conjunction rule: a > a + b > b
causality and the conjunction rule: - causal stories make events easier to imagine (an instance of availability)
- e.g.:
... % of men who have had heart-attack usually thought
... % of men over 55 and who have had heart-attack
- most people guess the second is more likely
anchoring and adjustment heuristic (in judgement): - people anchor on a presented quantity in making estimates
- even when it is clearly irrelevant to the task
representativeness "hot hand" example (in judgement): - there is no such thing as the "hot hand" in basketball
- belief that short sequences will be representative of long-run averages
decision making: - the psychology of choice
assumptions of neoclassical economics: - selfishness: an individual chooses on the basis of his/her own interest
- stable, exogenous preferences: what the individual wants is
... well-defined
... available to introspection
... stable over time
- formal rationality: an individual's preferences, tastes, etc. are consistent with each other
rational choice theories for individuals: - utility theory
- game theory
utility theory: - one agent, choice depends only on states of nature
- e.g. planning picnic, outdoors vs indoors --> choice depends on likelihood of rain
game theory: - more than one agent, choice depends on what other agents may choose
expected utility theory + contradictions: - utility ("degree of liking") defined by revealed preferences
... e.g. U(A) > U(B) iff A preffered to B
... contradicted by preference reversal
- preferences are well ordered (transitive)
... contradicted by three-option intransitives (and preference reversals)
- choices under uncertainty are determined by expected utility: probability-weighted combination of the utilities of all possible outcomes
... contradicted by "certainty effect" where certain gains have extra psychological value
characteristics of utilities: - not directly observable, but instead internal to an individual
- not comparable across individuals
- constrained by revealed preferences (i.e. choices between gambles)
neoclassical assumptions about preferencess: - the chosen option in a decision problem should remain the same even if the surface description of the problem changes (descriptive invariance)
... contradicted by pseudo-certainty and framing effects
- the chosen option should depend only on the outcomes that will obtain after the decition is made, not the differences between those outcomes and
... the status quo (contradicted by endowmend effect)
... what one expects (contradicted by mental accounts)
... the overall magnitude of the decision (contradicted by ratio effect)
- preferences over future options should not depend on the transient emotional state of the decision maker at the time of the choice
... contradicted by projection bias
- preferences between future outcomes should not vary systematically as a function of the time until the outcomes
... contradicted by hyperbolic discounting/imuplsiveness
- experienced utility should not differ systematically from
... decision utility (contradicted by harvard/yale junior faculty problem)
... predicted utility (contradicted by failure to predict adaptation)
... retrospective utility (contradicted by duration neglect and failure to integrate moment utilities)
reflection effect: - risk aversion in the domain of gains, risk seeking in the domain of losses
- violates descriptive invariance
pseudo-certainty effect: - when stage a problem is presented as involving certian gain, it carries extra weight
- even if getting tothat stage is itself uncertain
* violates descriptive invariance
status quo bias (on decision making): - sellers value things higher
- buyers value things lower
- choosers prefer something in middle or lower
* shows endowmend effect and loss aversion
endowment effect (on decision making): - we value what we have
loss aversion (on decision making): - we don't want to lose what we have
mental accounts and expectations (on decision making): e.g.
- if you were planning on paying $20 to see a game, would you still pay for the ticket if
... you lose the ticket on the way over
... you lose a $20 dollar bill on the way over
- more people say yes for the second scenario
ratio effect (on decision making): - people will prefer something if the ratio of savings, e.g., is greater than another option
- even if the actual $ in savings is equal
projection bias (on decision making): - e.g. people more likely to project that they will be hungy later if they are hungry now
failures of hedonic prediction: - people neglect effects of adaptation to surroundings in predicting future activity
... misprediction, after initial (unpleasant) exposure, of (non)enjoyment of plain yogurt after 8 daily episodes of consumption
... change in social comparison group
... weariness with travel - planning overly long vacations, too much time at the beach
- assistant professors overestimate effects of tenure decision on happiness one year later
duration neglect: - people remember and overweight the end of an experience
- e.g. gradual decline of pain
prospect theory: - prospects are evaluated according to a value function that exhibits
... reference dependence (subjectively oriented around a zero point)
... diminishing sensitivity to differences as one moves away from the reference point
... loss aversion: steeper for losses than for gains
- probabilities are transformed by a weighing function that exhibits diminished sensitivity to probability differences as one moves from either certainty or impossibility to the middle of the probability scale
... refinement of reflection effect: risk aversion for medium to high probability gains and low probability losses; risk seeking for medium to high probability losses and low probability gains
consequences of the prospect theory: - loss aversion makes individuals/societies unwilling to switch to healthier living
- risk seeking for likely losses can cause prolonged pursuit of doomed policies (e.g. wars not likely to be won)
- risk seeking for unlikely gains can lead ot excessibe gambling in individuals
self-interest assumption in game theory: - choices in games should always reflect what is best for the decision maker
- i.e. what will maximize the decision maker's payoff
prisoner's dilemma: - shows presence of defection and cooperation
- can be evoked by social signals
ultimatum game: - there is no such thing as a "homo economicus"
- cooperation behavior is highly variable
- heavily determined by cultural norms
effects of a norm of self-interest: - people think involvement in a social cause is more self-insterest motivated than it is
- voting behavior in US becomes more self-interest driven
... may reflect shift toward greater norm of self-interest in politics
- economic theories and language "can become self-fulfilling"

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