Psych 240 Exam 3 Review Sheet Winter 2015
March 24th, 26th. Lectures 14/15: Language: Chapter 11
Properties of language:
Arbitrarily symbolic
Generative
Structured at multiple levels
Phonemes: minimal pair test.
Articulation: how do we produce the correct phonemes?
Vowels, consonants, stop consonants, voicing.
Speech Perception: How do we distinguish/identify phonemes?
Speech spectrograms, formants, steady state and transitional formants.
Problems in speech recognition
Segmentation, speaker variability, lack of invariance.
Morphemes
Free and bound morphemes.
Morphological processes: inflection, derivation, compounding,
Syntax: Content words vs. function words.
The neurobiology of language: Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia, conduction aphasia.
The neural pathway for repeating a heard word (auditory cortex to Wernicke’s area to Broca’s area to motor
cortex).
Linguistic relativity: Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis. Studies of color naming. Codability.
The problem of language acquisition (what must be learned): Distinguishing language sounds from other
sounds, parsing into phonemes & words (no clear divisions between phonemes or words in speech), word
meanings (even though same word can refer to different things and different words can refer to same thing),
syntax/grammar rules.
Learn language without negative feedback about grammar/pronunciation; suggests linguistic universals.
Language development: Phonemes (can discriminate all phonemes from all languages during 1st year,
gradually lose non-relevant discriminations), Motherese (Adults help kids with high pitch, slow rate,
exaggerated intonation).
Major Stages: Holophrastic (one-word) stage, Telegraphic (two-word) stage, Learning
syntax/rules/generalization (U-shaped learning of irregular past tense; nonsense words)
Learning word meanings: parts/wholes, bias toward shape.
Critical period effects: social isolation, 2nd language learners, sign language.
Animal language: Alex the parrot, Kanzi the bonobo chimp, other ape language learners.
Lexical decision task (page 304),
Lexical ambiguity (page 305)
March 31, Lecture 16: Problem Solving, Chapter 12
Definition/structure of a problem. Types of problems: Well-structured/defined vs. Ill-structured/defined.
Stages in problem-solving: Representation, planning, execution, checking.
Representation of the problem: Problem space. Importance of representation. Representations fit problems.
example: Monk climbing the hill problem. Paper folding problem.
Isomorphs. Removing constraints: Nine dots. Matches/triangles problem.
Restructuring of problems (Gestalt psychologists).
Use of analogy. Focus on surface similarity. Ignore deep similarity.
Duncker's ray problem: hint vs. no hint. Noticing analogy vs. actually using analogy.
Surface features vs. structural features.
Hindrances in representation: Top-down preconceptions. Functional fixedness: Candle problem, two-rope
problem. Trapped by easy or familiar perspective: Trains meeting problem.
Using analogy: Luchins water jug task (sometimes a hindrance), stuck in a mental set.
Algorithms vs. Heuristics. Think-aloud protocols.
Heuristics:
Trail and Error or Generate and Test.
Difference reduction/Hill Climbing.
Means-end analysis: subgoaling plus difference reduction.
Production system for mean-end analysis.
Hobbits and Orcs problem.
Working backward.
April 2cd, Lecture 17, Problem Solving and JDM, Chapters 12, 13
Insight problems. Incubation. Cheap necklace problem.
Metcalfe and Weibe study of insight vs. non-insight problems.
Mutilated checkerboard problems (pages 346-7).
Expertise: Chess study (domain specific).
Practice: 10 years to reach world-class expertise. Power law of practice. Deliberate practice.
Expert problem solving. Rich organized schemas, sophisticated representations. Spend more time on
representation. Less means-end analysis. Moving forward. More reliance on long term memory, less on
working memory.
Creativity. Divergent thinking. Unusual uses test.
Convergent thinking. Remote associates test.
Why does incubation help sometimes? Smith and Blankenship study of remote associates test.
Two kinds of reasoning tasks: Deterministic/Deductive vs. probabilistic/inductive.
Two kinds of theories: Normative vs. Descriptive.
Wason four-card task, “abstract” vs. familiar versions.
Permission schema (page 394).
Syllogisms: categorical and conditional
Syllogisms: Affirming the antecedent, affirming the consequent, denying the antecedent, denying the
consequent.
Normative inductive reasoning: Base rate and current evidence.
Mammogram example: Doctors confuse p(H/E) and p(E/H).
Bayes theorem--understand the 3 pieces of information you need to determine p(H/E): Base rate or p(H),
p(E/H), p(E/not H).
Using frequencies vs. probabilities.
Descriptive theory. Insufficient weight to current data: 50/50 base rate poker chip examples.
Insufficient weight to base rate: representativeness heuristic. Emphasis on similarity. Birth order example.
Coin flips example.
Lawyers and engineers: no description vs. engineer description vs. neutral description. Similarity of instance
to category experiment (similarity to Computer Science grad student).
April 7th Reasoning, JDM Chapter 13 (and Tversky & Kahneman Reading).
Availability heuristic: Evaluate the probability of an event by judging the ease with which relevant instances
come to mind. Accuracy of estimate (novelists/flowers experiment).
Famous names experiment (more male or female names?)
Frequency of lethal events experiment: availability affected by media coverage and sensationalism of deaths.
Household chores experiment – or give your roommate a break!
Biases due to retrieval (r---- words vs. --r-- words; ----ing words vs. ------n- words).
Anchoring: The tendency to use the initial value as a reference point in making a numerical estimate.
U.N. study: How many countries in the U.N. from Africa?
Doctor study: How many physicians in the phone book?
Simulation heuristic. Ease of constructing a scenario: Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees's emotional reaction.
Conjunction fallacy: Multiple possible causes: Caused by availability, by causal reasoning (simulation), or
by representativeness: Linda the feminist bank teller example.
Confirmation bias (376)
Illusory correlations: An illusory correlation is a perceived relationship that does not, in fact, exist
Rorshach study.
Theory driven vs. data driven correlations.
Framing effect: How a problem is framed: Disease experiment. Positive frame/risk avoidance/conservatism
vs. Negative frame/risk seeking.
Car buying example: effect of context.
Overconfidence: People tend to have unrealistic optimism about their abilities, judgments and skills
Hindsight bias: The after the fact judgment that some event was very likely to happen or was very
predictable, even though it wasn’t predicted to happen beforehand.
Carli (1999) study on hindsight bias.
Heuristics Reconstruction after feedback theory (RAFT)
FFH: Fast and Frugal Heuristics
Recognition heuristic
“Take the best”
1/N equality.”
Satisficing: Take the fist choice that exceeds your expectation level.
Imitate the majority: See what most people in your reference group do and just do it.
Imitate the successful: Look for the most successful person and imitate him/her.
Why use non-normative heuristics: simplify the mental task involved in reasoning.
Utility theory.
Risk aversion.
Tversky and Shafir study (Hawaii vacation study)
Opt–in vs opt-out procedures.
April 9th Lecture 19: Intelligence (Guenther Reading)
Intelligence
History of Intelligence Testing
Galton, Binet, Mental age, IQ.
Types of Intelligence Tests
Stanford-Binet
Wechsler’s intelligence tests
Raven’s Matrices
Tests of specific abilities: Paper folding, mental rotation.
Reliability and Validity of IQ tests
Test-retest reliability
Predictive validity: what does IQ predict?
Inspection Time
Reaction time
Theories of Intelligence: General Intelligence vs. Multiple Intelligences
Definition of intelligence.
Factor analysis of IQ test scores.
“g” or general intelligence
what explains “g”? Is it executive control skills?
Multi factor theories
Thurstone
Gardner’s multiple intelligences:
Linguistic intelligence: Poets, writers.
Logical - mathematical intelligence: Scientists, mathematician.
Spatial intelligence: Architects, sculptors.
Musical intelligence: Musicians, composers.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: athletes, dancers.
Interpersonal intelligence: Psychiatrists, politicians.
Intrapersonal intelligence: self-insight., etc.
Special Populations and Multiple Intelligences
Autistic savants: Jessie
Williams syndrome: Heidi
What skills or intelligences are preserved or impaired in each group?
Practical Intelligence (page 620-621 Guenther article)