Cognition and Language

Mr. Krohn, a carpenter, is frustrated because he misplaced his hammer and needs to pound in the last nail in the bookcase he is building. He overlooks the fact that he could use the tennis trophy sitting above the workbench to pound in the nail. Which concept best explains why Mr. Krohn overlooked the trophy?

• representativeness heuristic

• retrieval

• functional fixedness

• belief bias

• divergent thinking

Phonemes and morphemes refer to

• elements of telegraphic speech toddlers use.

• elements of language.

• building blocks of concepts

• basic elements of memories stored in long-term memory

• two types of influences language has on thought according to the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

Contrary to what Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis originally predicted, what effect does recent research indicate language has on the way we think?

• Since we think in language, the language we understand limits what we have the ability to think about.

• Language is a tool of thought but does not limit our cognition

• The labels we apply affect our thoughts.

• The words in each language affect our ability to think because we are restricted to the words each language uses.

• The linguistic relativity hypothesis predicts that how quickly we acquire language correlates with our cognitive ability.

Which of the following is an example of the use of the representativeness heuristic?

• Judging that a young person is more likely to be the instigator of an argument than an older person, because you believe younger people are more likely to start fights.

• Breaking a math story problem down into smaller, representative parts, in order to solve it.

• Judging a situation by a rule that is usually, but not always, true.

• Solving a problem with a rule that guarantees the right, more representative, answer

• Making a judgment according to past experiences that are most easily recalled, therefore representative of experience.

Which of the following is an effective method for testing whether a memory is actually true or whether it is a constructed memory?

• checking to see whether it was deeply processed or shallowly processed

• testing to see if the memory was encoded from sensory memory into working memory

• using a PET scan to see if the memory is stored in the hippocampus

• using other evidence, such as written records, to substantiate the memory

• there is no way to tell the difference between a true memory and a constructed one

According to the nativist theory, language is acquired

• by parents reinforcing correct language use.

• using an inborn ability to learn language at a certain developmental stage.

• best in the language and culture native to the child and parents

• only if formal language instruction is provided in the child’s native language.

• best through the phonics instructional method, because children retain how to pronounce all the phonemes required for the language.

Recall is a more difficult process than recognition because

• memories retrieved by recognition are held in working memory, and recalled memories are in long-term memory.

• memories retrieved by recognition are more deeply processed.

• the process of recall involves cues to the memory that causes interference.

• memories retrieved by recognition are more recent than memories retrieved by recall.

• the process of recognition involves matching

Which of the following would be the best piece of evidence for the nativist theory of language acquisition?

• a child who acquires language at an extremely early age through intense instruction by her or his parent

• statistical evidence that children in one culture learn language faster than children in another culture

• a child of normal mental ability not being able to learn language due to language deprivation at an early age

• a child skipping the babbling and telegraphic speech stages of language acquisition

• a child deprived of language at an early age successfully learning language later