Chapter 8 Notes Concepts are mental categories that are used to group objects events and characteristics Humans have a special ability for creating categories to help us make sense of information in our world Hemmer Steyvers 2009 Shea Krug Tobler 2008 We know that apples and oranges are both fruits Th e prototype model emphasizes that when people evaluate whether a given item refl ects a certain concept they compare the item with the most typical item s in that category and look for a family resemblance with that item s properties Birds generally fl y sing and build nests so we know that robins and sparrows are both birds Problem solving means fi nding an appropriate way to attain a goal when the goal is not readily available Problem solving entails following several steps and overcoming mental obstacles Algorithms are strategies that guarantee a solution to a problem Algorithms come in diff erent forms such as formulas instructions and the testing of all possible solutions Bocker Briesemeister Klau 2009 Voyvodic Petrella Friedman 2009 We use algorithms in cooking by following a recipe and driving by following directions to an address Heuristics are such shortcut strategies or guidelines that suggest a solution to a problem but do not guarantee an answer Cranley others 2009 Redondo others 2009 In your Scrabble game you know that if you have a Q you are going to need a U If you have an X and a T the T is probably not going to come right before the X In this situation heuristics allow you to be more effi cient than algorithms would Reasoning is the mental activity of transforming information to reach conclusions Reasoning is involved in problem solving and decision making It is also a skill closely tied to critical thinking Inductive reasoning involves reasoning from specifi c observations to make generalizations Tenenbaum Griffi ths Kemp 2006 Inductive reasoning is an important way that we form beliefs about the world For instance having turned on your cell phone many times without having it explode you have every reason to believe that it will not explode the next time you turn it on In contrast deductive reasoning is reasoning from a general case that we know to be true to a specifi c instance Demeure Bonnefon Raufaste 2009 Reverberi others 2009 Using deductive reasoning we draw conclusions based on facts For example we might start with the general premise that all Texans love the Dallas Cowboys Th us if John is a Texan we logically might surmise that John loves the Dallas Cowboys Notice however that the logic of this deductive reasoning requires that the fi rst statement be true if all Texans do not love the Cowboys John just might be a Philadelphia Eagles fan Functional fixedness is a type of cognitive bias that involves a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way For example you might view a thumbtack as something that can only be used to hold paper to a corkboard One way of defining a mental set is the tendency to approach situations in a certain way because that method worked in the past However you can also think of a mental set as a part you play on a normal basis A child opens the door to a store by pulling on it He later insists on pulling the door handle of any similar looking door to open it and is puzzled that some of them must be pushed instead Th e availability heuristic refers to a prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events McDermott 2009 Have you ever experienced a sudden fear of fl ying right after hearing about an airplane crash Shocking events such as plane crashes stick in our minds making it seem as if such disasters are common Th e chance of dying in a plane crash in a given year however is tiny 1 in 400 000 compared to the chance of dying in a car accident 1 in 6 500 Because car accidents are less newsworthy they are less likely to catch our attention and remain in our awareness Phonology a language s sound system Language is made up of basic sounds or phonemes Phonological rules ensure that certain sound sequences occur for example sp ba or ar and others do not for example zx or qp Marom Berent 2010 Menn Stoel Gammon 2009 A good example of a phoneme in the English language is k the sound represented by the letter k in the word ski and the letter c in the word cat Although the k sound is slightly diff erent in these two words the k sound is described as a single phoneme in English Morphology a language s rules for word formation Every word in the English language is made up of one or more morphemes A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning Some words consist of a single morpheme for example help Others are made up of more than one for example helper has two morphemes help er Th e morpheme er means one who in this case one who helps As you can see not all morphemes are words for example pre tion and ing are morphemes Just as the rules that govern phonemes ensure that certain sound sequences occur the rules that govern morphemes ensure that certain strings of sounds occur in particular sequences Liu McBride Chang 2010 Syntax a language s rules for combining words to form acceptable phrases and sentences Lai Bird 2010 Tager Flusberg Zukowski 2009 If someone says John kissed Emily or Emily was kissed by John you know who did the kissing and who was kissed in each case because you share that person s understanding of sentence structure Semantics the meaning of words and sentences in a particular language Every word has a unique set of semantic features Kemmerer Gonzalez Castillo 2010 Pan Uccelli 2009 Girl and woman for example share many semantic features for instance both signify female human beings but they diff er semantically in regard to age Words have semantic restrictions on how they can be used in sentences Th e sentence Th e bicycle talked the boy into buying a candy bar is syntactically correct but semantically incorrect Th e sentence violates our semantic knowledge that bicycles do not talk Language researchers are fascinated by babies speech even before the little ones say their fi rst words Pan Uccelli 2009 Babbling endlessly repeating sounds and syllables such as bababa or dadada begins at the age of about 4 to 6 months and is determined by biological readiness not by the amount of reinforcement or the ability to hear Menn Stoel Gammon 2009 Even deaf babies babble for a time Lenneberg Rebelsky Nichols 1965 Babbling probably allows babies to