Psych 111 - Exam 2, Chapter 8 Practice Questions - Flashcards

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Arguing from an evolutionary perspective, Gigerenzer suggests that humans' reasoning largely depends on

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fast and frugal heuristics

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After the first word is spoken,

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vocabulary growth is slow for several months and then speeds up dramatically.

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Bilingualism is associated with all of the following EXCEPT

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enhanced processing speed.

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Which of the following statements concerning the ability of animals to acquire language is FALSE?

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Animals have never shown behavior that suggests an understanding of grammatical rules.

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Imagine that anthropologists found a culture that had over 80 different words for rice. If researchers also found that the people in this culture thought about rice in different and more elaborate ways than people who have only one word for rice, it would

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support the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

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The fact that variations in cognitive style sometimes reflect the ecological demands of one's environment helps to illustrate which of your text's unifying themes?

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Our behavior is shaped by our cultural heritage.

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Which of the following statements concerning functional fixedness is MOST accurate?

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Compared to older children and adults, young children are less likely to show evidence of functional fixedness.

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Solving problems like the hobbit and orc problem in your textbook, which requires you to make changes and carry out several steps in order to reach a specific goal, are examples of a problem of

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transformation.

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When the word "jar" is changed to the word "jars," the number of

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phonemes and morphemes are both increased.

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The set of possible pathways to a solution considered by a problem solver is known as

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the problem space.

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People generally prefer a choice that provides an 80% chance of success over one that provides a 19% chance of failure. This illustrates the effect of

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framing

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Walter mistakenly estimates that the probability of two separate events occurring at the same time is higher than the probability of either event occurring on its own. Walter's mistake is an example of

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the conjunction fallacy.

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Which type of theory BEST accounts for the apparent rapidity and ease of language acquisition in early childhood?

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nativist theory

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If an alternative is eliminated whenever it fails to satisfy some minimum criterion on an attribute, which decision-making strategy is being used?

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Elimination by aspects

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Kailee has learned the word "kitty," but she uses this word when she is referring to cats, bunnies, squirrels, and other small furry animals. Kailee's use of this word illustrates

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overextension

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Individuals from Eastern Asian cultures tend to focus on context and the relationships among elements in a field. This is referred to as a(n)

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holistic cognitive theory

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Eva just upgraded her software package. However, even though the updated version contains a number of more efficient methods for working with files, Eva continues to work with files the way she did before the upgrade. In this case, Eva is showing evidence of

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mental set

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Skinner suggested that children learn how to construct grammatical sentences as a result of

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imitating the sentences of adults and older children.

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Incorrectly estimating that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone is known as the

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conjunction fallacy

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If Beth is a typical infant, she will first show signs of understanding the meaning of familiar words such as Beth, milk, and Mommy at about ____ months of age.

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8

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Which of the following statements is the BEST example of telegraphic speech?

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give cookie

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The fact that children appear to learn rules, rather than specific word combinations, when acquiring language skills argues most strongly AGAINST which theory of language development?

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behaviorist

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Kareem is working on a practical problem with his 16-year-old son, Josh, and his 8-year-old daughter, Lisa. They don't have the right tools for the job, and they need to come up with a creative solution that uses the items they have available. Based on research findings into the prevalence of functional fixedness, you should predict that

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Lisa is most likely to come up with a solution because, in general, young children are less vulnerable to functional fixedness.

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Mrs. Bondle seldom corrects her four-year-old's grammatical errors, such as, "Her drinked my milk." However, she is careful to correct factual errors, such as, "Tiger ate his milk." Assuming Mrs. Bondle's child develops normal language skills, her pattern of feedback would be inconsistent with

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the behavioral view of language development.

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Semantics is the component of language concerned with

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understanding the meaning of words and word combinations.

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Which of the following statements is MOST accurate?

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Overregularizations reflect the fact that children do not acquire the rules of grammar in a single leap.

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The most impressive attempts to teach language to chimpanzees have involved teaching chimps to use

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geometric symbols on a computer-monitored keyboard.

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Basing the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the prototype of that event is termed the

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representativeness heuristic.

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The word "slow" would be an example of a

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morpheme

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The process that involves evaluating alternatives and making choices among them is known as

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decision-making

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According to Simon's theory of bounded rationality, people tend to use

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simple strategies in decision-making that focus on only a few facets of available options and often result in irrational decisions that are less than optimal.

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Reorganizing the letters "OSHUE" to form an English word is an example of an anagram, which constitutes a problem of

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arrangement

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An eight-year-old shows irony and sarcasm in his speech by saying "That's just great, I'm a regular Michael Jordan!" after he misses a free throw in a basketball game; this suggests that his ____ has improved.

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mentalinguistic awareness

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Ashley is just starting to show signs of understanding the meanings of familiar words. Based on research that has investigated milestones in language development, you should expect that Ashley is approximately

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8 months old

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The theories of language acquisition that emphasize both the importance of children's learning experiences and their information-processing skills are

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emergentist theories

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You are having a conversation with your psychology professor, and she proposes that language evolved as a device to build and maintain social coalitions in increasingly larger groups. Which theorist would agree with her assertions?

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Dunbar

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According to the interactionist theories of language acquisition,

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neural circuits supporting language emerge gradually in response to language-learning experiences.

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Dr. Grath believes that both an innate predisposition and a supportive environment contribute to language development. Dr. Grath's views are MOST consistent with those of

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interactionist theories

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Evolutionary theorists argue all of the following EXCEPT that

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human brains are wired to think in terms of base rates and probabilities.

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When using elimination by aspects, it is best to evaluate the ____ aspect first.

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most important

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According to Skinner, children learn a language

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through imitation, reinforcement, and shaping.

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You flip a coin at the fair 10 times. Each time it comes up heads, you get 10 cents. Each time it comes up tails, you lose 5 cents. What is your expected value for each flip of the coin?

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+5 cents

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The process by which a child learns a new word after only one exposure to the word is

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fast mapping

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Christine wants to buy a new television. She will not purchase a television with a screen smaller than 25 inches or that costs more than $500. Her decision-making strategy is referred to as

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elimination by aspects

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Series-completion problems are examples of which of Greeno's (1978) categories?

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inducing structure

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Joe is a bilingual elementary school student. Relative to his monolingual peers, Joe is likely to excel on tasks requiring

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working memory

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The representativeness heuristic causes people to think that families with four children are more likely to have

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two boys and two girls

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The component of language that would be evident if an individual recognizes that "give" and "take" have opposite meanings is

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semantics

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Evolutionary psychologists suggest that when people have to make quick decisions, they tend to

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use relatively simple heuristics

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At dinner, three-year-old Bobby overhears his father tell the waitress that his tasty hamburger was delicious. The next day, Bobby tells his mother that the grilled-cheese sandwich she made him for lunch was delicious. Apparently, Bobby learned the word delicious through the process of

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fast mapping

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The fact that choices that are objectively identical can seem very different when reframed in different terms helps to illustrate which of your text's unifying themes?

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Our experience of the world is highly subjective.

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According to Pinker and Bloom (1992), if the acquisition of language produced a 1% difference in mortality rates among overlapping Neanderthal and human populations, Neanderthals would have become extinct in

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4,000 generations

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Seventeen-year-old Ashley is driving her brother's car when she has her first-ever flat tire. She realizes that she needs to find where the spare tire, the jack, and other tools are stored in the car, remove the flat tire, and install the spare tire. Ashley is approaching the problem by

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forming subgoals

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The gambler's fallacy reflects the influence of the

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representativeness heuristic

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Wilson is watching two different roulette-type games at a local charity bazaar. Each game costs $1 to play. In one game, there are 10 different numbers, and if the number he selects comes up, he will win $12. In the other game, there are 100 different numbers, but if the number he selects comes up, he will win $50. Based on expected value theory, Wilson should

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play the first game because it has a higher expected value.

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Which of the following statements is LEAST accurate?

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All languages use all of the phonemes of which humans are capable.

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According to Nisbett and colleagues, an analytic cognitive style is one that focuses on

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objects and their properties, rather than overall context.

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The hypothesis that one's language determines the nature of one's thought is the

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linguistic relativity hypothesis.

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Pinker and Bloom (1992) suggest that human language may be a result of evolutionary processes because language allows humans to

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acquire information about the world secondhand.

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Fred needs major heart surgery, and he has consulted with two doctors about the operation. Dr. Marx tells Fred he has a 90% chance of surviving the surgery; Dr. Scalli tells Fred there is a 10% chance that he won't survive the surgery. Based on Kahneman and Tversky's research,

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Fred is most likely to let Dr. Marx perform the operation.

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You are having a conversation with your psychology professor, and he proposes that people have an inborn predisposition to develop language. Which theorist would agree with his assertions?

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Noam Chomsky

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The fact that overregularizations occur in many different languages as children master language skills provides evidence against

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the behavioral theory of language development.

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Metalinguistic awareness refers to

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the ability to reflect on the use of language.

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The incubation effect is thought to occur because

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people work on problems at an unconscious level.

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When your initial attempts to solve a problem are unsuccessful, it is a good strategy to

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represent the problem in a different way.

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The availability heuristic implies that people will ____ the frequency of events that are easy to remember and ____ the frequency of events that are hard to remember.

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overestimate; underestimate

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Marie received a puzzle as a present for her birthday. The puzzle has three pegs, and to solve the puzzle, a person is required to move nine disks from the center peg to one of the outside pegs. However, only one disk can be moved at a time, and a larger disk can never be placed on top of a smaller disk. Marie's puzzle is an example of

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a problem of transformation

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In the Featured Study on intuitive decisions versus careful deliberation, the researchers found that when people are faced with complex choices, they tend to make better decisions

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if they make intuitive decisions.

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Darla was struggling to solve a difficult problem so she took a break to have lunch. As she ate, the solution to the problem suddenly occurred to her when she was not even consciously thinking about it. Darla experienced the ___________ effect.

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incubation

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Which strategy for decision-making might involve the weighting of individual attributes differently, based on the importance of the attributes?

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additive strategy

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If your psychology professor gives students two separate grades on their essay questions on exams, one for content or meaning and the other for grammar, the first grade can be said to refer to the ____ and the second grade to the ____ of the essays.

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semantics; syntax

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Symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages are known as

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language

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Simon's theory of bounded rationality asserts that people frequently make

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irrational decisions that are less than optimal.

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When people must choose between two alternatives, and they recognize one alternative but not the other, they often infer that the alternative they recognize has the higher value. This decision-making heuristic is called the

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recognition heuristic.

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You are having a conversation with your psychology professor, and he proposes that your language determines the nature of your thought. Which theorist would agree with his assertions?

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Benjamin Whorf

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Analogy problems such as "Mickey Mouse is to Minnie Mouse as Donald Duck is to " are problems of

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inducing structure

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You are at a daycare center and hear three 12-month-old babies babbling, each from a different ethnic/linguistic background (Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian). The babbling of each of these infants

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will sound very different, with each child's babbles sounding quite similar to the parents' native language.

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In which case would working backward to solve a problem be an effective strategy?

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When a problem has a well-defined endpoint

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Which of the following heuristics would you probably employ if assigned the task of carrying out a school election?

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form subgoals

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Basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which instances come to mind is called the

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availability heuristic

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The English language contains approximately

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40 phonemes

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Many people mistakenly believe their chances of dying in an airplane crash are greater than their chances of dying in an automobile crash. This belief reflects the operation of

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the availability heuristic

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Even though he knows only a small percentage of high school athletes go on to professional careers, Charlie believes that he will receive a scholarship to play football in college and then will have a career in the NFL. Charlie is

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not applying base rates to himself.

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The primary disadvantage that bilingual learners have relative to monolingual learners is in the domain of

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processing speed.

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Which of the following statements is MOST accurate?

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Although telegraphic speech is not unique to the English language, it is not a cross-culturally universal aspect of language development.

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An algorithm is

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a methodical procedure for trying all possible solutions to a problem.

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The theories of language acquisition that focus on the development of neural circuits within the brain in response to language experience are known as

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emergentist theories

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A mental "rule of thumb" for problem-solving is referred to as

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a heuristic

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Nisbett and colleagues suggest that a holistic style of thinking is one that focuses on

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context and relationships among the elements in a field.

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Which of the following statements is LEAST accurate?

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All languages use all of the phonemes of which humans are capable.

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Research by John Payne found that people adapt their decision-making approach to the demands of the task. Specifically, as choices become more complex, people tend to shift toward

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simpler decision strategies.

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Underextension would be evident if a three-year-old child

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used a word too narrowly

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Autumn has been figure skating since she was five years old. She has never placed higher than third in any of the competitions she has been in, but she is still convinced that she will be able to become a professional figure skater in a few years. Her coach and her parents have tried to tell her that not many people make it as professional skaters, but Autumn is convinced that she can beat the odds. In this case, Autumn is

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apparently ignoring base rates.

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Evolutionary theorists maintain that many human errors in reasoning would vanish if problems are presented in terms of

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raw frequencies, rather than base rates and probabilities.

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Which of the following heuristics has been shown by evolutionary psychologists to be both simple and surprisingly effective?

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Recognition heuristic

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You are having a conversation with your psychology professor, and he proposes that neural circuits supporting language emerge gradually in response to language-learning experiences. Which type of theorist would likely agree with his assertions?

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An emergentist theorist

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Which of the following statements is LEAST accurate?

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Algorithms exist for all clearly defined problems.

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The requirement that a declarative sentence have both a noun phrase and a verb phrase is an example of a

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rule of syntax

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Evolutionary theorists argue that if decision problems were stated in terms of raw frequencies, then

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base rate neglect and the conjunction fallacy would both disappear.

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Which of the following is NOT an item of evidence Chomsky would use to support the idea of an inborn language-learning mechanism?

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Language learning in young children is different across cultures.

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The vocabulary spurt typically begins at around

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18-24 months

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During a recent election campaign, the incumbent stated, "Only uninformed individuals who have no understanding of basic economics would disagree with my state budget proposal." This incumbent is apparently trying to shape public opinion through the use of

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anticipatory name calling.

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Lance is trying to solve a complex anagram puzzle. He systematically tries every potential solution by testing each possible combination of the letters provided. In this case, Lance is

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using an algorithm to solve the anagram.

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According to dual-process theories of decision-making, when complicated or important decisions need to be made, people use

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rule-governed strategies.

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Car A has good mileage, a low price, and low maintenance, or three pluses. Car B has only a low price and low maintenance, or two pluses. So, I'll choose Car A. This is an example of

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a purely additive strategy.

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Dean ate ice cream for the first time yesterday. All day today, he has been asking for ice cream. This would be an example of

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fast mapping

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Fast mapping in children's language skills has been suggested to be related to all of the following EXCEPT children's

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development of a mental representation of one's environment.

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Which child is exhibiting underextension?

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Brenda, who uses the word "car" only when referring to her mother's car

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Two-year-old Owen rushes into the kitchen and tells his sister, "Baby throw. Baby bad." He wants her to know that his baby brother is bad because he just threw his toys on the floor. Owen's communication illustrates the use of

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telegraphic speech.

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Based on past experience, Sue decides not to take her two five-year-old grandsons to the movies at the same time. Sue is using which decision-making strategy?

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Availability heuristic

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Michiko lives in Japan, and Krystal, Michiko's pen pal, lives in the United States. Based on the research by Nisbett and colleagues into cultural differences in cognitive styles, you should predict that when these two friends are solving problems, Michiko will tend to use ____ cognitive style, while Krystal will tend to use ____ cognitive style.

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a holistic; an analytic

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Owners of automobile junkyards prefer to use the term "automobile recycling centers." This is an example of the use of

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semantic slanting

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Since one of the main goals of playing Scrabble is to use your letters to form long words (the longer the word, the more points you score), Scrabble can BEST be described as a game that involves a problem of

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arrangement

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Brett is trying to decide which graduate schools he will apply to. He is making up a list of all the positive and negative aspects he feels are associated with 100 different schools, and he plans to send applications to the 10 schools that score the highest when he adds up all the positive points and subtracts all the negative points. The decision strategy that Brett is using is referred to as

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a purely additive strategy.

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Loss aversion occurs when

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losses loom larger than gains of an equal size.

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Elisa is entering survey data from adult males in a research study. One respondent has listed his height as 6 feet 5 inches, but the occupation is hard to decipher. Elisa thinks it might be basketball player or bank president. She decides to enter basketball player as the occupation. In this case, Elisa

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probably relied on the representativeness heuristic to make her decision.

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Which of the following statements is MOST accurate?

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Which of the following statements is MOST accurate?

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Which of the following is a criticism of Skinner's model of language acquisition?

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It is unreasonable to expect children to learn an infinite number of sentences by imitation.

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Which class of problems involves discovering the relations among the parts of the problem?

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Inducing structure

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Christine has been following the state lottery for over a year, and she has a record of the number of times every number has been selected. She is ready to invest $1,000 in lottery tickets with the same six-number combination on each ticket. She is going to choose the six numbers that have occurred the least frequently in the last year because she is sure they will be picked eventually. In this case, Christine is showing evidence of

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gambler's fallacy

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Research shows that Democrats tend to predict that Democratic candidates will win elections, while Republicans tend to predict that Republicans will win. This is likely the result of

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myside bias

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Greeno referred to problems where individuals need to carry out a sequence of changes in order to reach a specific goal as an example of a problem of

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transformation

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In order to decide which car to buy, Jim makes a list of desired qualities and rates each of the cars he is considering on a scale of one to ten. After totaling the points each car receives on all the desired qualities, he is going to purchase the car with the most points. Jim is using the ____ strategy of decision-making.

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additive

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Valerie is 18 months old. Her productive vocabulary probably consists of

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3 to 50 words

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Fast mapping is

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mapping words to underlying concepts after only one exposure.

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Claudia wants to send a fragile vase to her parents for their anniversary, but she can't find any appropriate packing material in her house. She decides to pop some popcorn and use that to pack around the vase. In this case, Claudia has

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overcome functional fixedness in solving her problem.

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Diagrams sometimes facilitate problem-solving because they

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change the representation of the problem.

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The confirmation bias

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is the tendency to only seek information that is likely to support one's decisions and beliefs.

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Our ability to reason constitutes primarily

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a cognitive activity

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Recent research suggests that bilingual people learn another language ___________ monolingual people.

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more quickly than

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When solving problems containing numerical information,

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you should start by figuring out which information is relevant to the problem.

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When Graham is printing copies from the computer in the computer classroom, the paper keeps jamming in the machine. He takes the paper out of the paper tray, fans it, and then flips it over, so the other side of the paper feeds first. This is the way he solves similar problems on the photocopy machine at the office where he works. In this case, Graham's method of solving the problem is consistent with the problem-solving heuristic known as

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searching for analogies.

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The word "psychology" consists of

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two morphemes: "psych" and "ology."

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Salvador hates to work through the problems on his calculus assignments step by step, and he often tries shortcuts that might save him some time. It appears that Salvador prefers to use

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Salvador hates to work through the problems on his calculus assignments step by step, and he often tries shortcuts that might save him some time. It appears that Salvador prefers to use

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The uncertainty effect refers to the fact that people

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prefer to be sure of something when making decisions.

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The active efforts to discover what must be done to achieve a goal that is not readily attainable is the cognitive structure known as

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problem-solving

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Observing the similarities between a new problem to be solved and one you've successfully solved in the past is called

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searching for analogies

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A methodical, step-by-step procedure for trying all possible alternatives in search of a solution to a problem is

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an algorithm

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If you tend to persist in using the same problem-solving strategy time after time, you are evidencing

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a mental set

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Which of the following has NOT been described as a language-related behavior exhibited by Savage-Rumbauugh's star pupil, the chimpanzee Kanzi?

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Kanzi developed comprehension of simple English sentences shown on a computer monitor

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Cognition refers to

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the mental processes involved in acquiring and using knowledge.

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The deliberate choice of words to create specific emotional responses is referred to as

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semantic slanting.

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Phonemes are the smallest units of ____ in a spoken language; morphemes are the smallest units of ____ in a language.

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sound; meaning

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In the Featured Study on intuitive decisions versus careful deliberation, the researchers found that when decision complexity was low, conscious deliberation was associated with

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greater satisfaction

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According to learning theory, children's vocabularies increase and their pronunciation improves as

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parents insist on closer and closer approximations of the correct word before they provide reinforcement.

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In the Featured Study on intuitive decisions versus careful deliberation, the researchers found that when decision complexity was high, conscious deliberation was associated with

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less satisfaction.

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The trial-and-error approach to problem-solving is most effective when

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there is a relatively small number of possible solutions.

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The "a ha!" feeling when you suddenly discover the correct solution to a problem is called

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insight

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You have a pair of pliers and a bag of nuts in the shell. You are lamenting the fact that you can't shell the nuts because you do not have a nutcracker. Your inability to perceive the pliers as a makeshift nutcracker demonstrates ____ on your part.

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functional fixedness

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You apply to a graduate school that decides on who is accepted by demanding that three successive criteria be met: major GPA over 3.50; overall GPA over 3.00; GRE over 1,000. Failure to meet any one eliminates an applicant. This is an example of

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elimination by aspects

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A child who says, "I sawed a cat in the yard," is making which of the following errors?

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Overregularization

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The entrance exam that Jaclyn is taking for graduate school has a number of questions, such as glove is to hand as sock is to . Questions of this type are considered to be

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problems of inducing structure

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Syntax refers to rules for

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arranging words into phrases and sentences.

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To solve the "string problem" described in the text, you have to catch the screwdriver while holding the second string. This ____ problem is often solved in a burst of ____ when a person overcomes ____.

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arrangement; insight; functional fixedness

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Dr. Sciorro believes that because the majority of children acquire language without any effort, there must be a biological mechanism that facilitates language learning. Dr. Sciorro's views of language development most closely mirror those of

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Noam Chomsky

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The two sentences, "The boy hit the ball," and, "The ball was hit by the boy," are the same in regard to

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semantics

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Babies start babbling at about what age?

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6 months

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You can't think of a single instance when Cathy helped you out, so you decide that Cathy must be an ungenerous person. Your judgment is based on

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the availability heuristic

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Research suggests that when making a decision involving relatively few options, people tend to use

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additive strategies.

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The smallest unit of meaning in a language is

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the morpheme

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Which of the following is NOT one of the difficulties that may emerge when solving problems requiring insight?

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The inability to find an appropriate analogy for the problem in long-term memory

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People often assume that it is necessary to use all the numerical information provided in a problem in order to solve the problem. In reality, numerical information sometimes makes it more difficult to solve a problem because the information

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may be irrelevant.

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The representativeness heuristic refers to our tendency to

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estimate the probability of an event based on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event.

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Three-year-old Johnny used to say "mikk" when he wanted a drink of milk. Now he is able to say "milk" quite clearly. In this instance, Johnny has made a gain in his use of

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phonemes

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The linguistic relativity hypothesis is MOST consistent with the unifying theme in psychology that

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behavior is shaped by cultural heritage.

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Barriers to effective problem-solving, such as functional fixedness and mental sets, BEST reflect the unifying theme in psychology that

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people's experience of the world is highly subjective.

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Evidence from research studies investigating bilingualism suggests that

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bilinguals score higher than monolinguals in analytical reasoning and metalinguistic awareness.

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Critics of the research with Washoe and other chimps that were taught ASL focused on whether

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the chimps had truly acquired the rules of language.

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The fact that language has rules that govern the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences refers to the

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structured aspect of language

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When three-year-old Garret is coloring a picture, he carefully selects a brown crayon to color a tree trunk, a green crayon for the leaves in the tree, and a red crayon for the bird in the tree. When Garret is asked to name the colors he has been using, he confidently answers "blue" each time. The fact that Garret can distinguish between the colors, even though he can't accurately name them yet, suggests that

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the linguistic relativity hypothesis does not accurately reflect the link between thought and language.

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Which of the following is NOT a common heuristic for problem-solving?

answer

trial and error

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Last year, 5-year-old Alonda would say, "No he coming," when explaining to her younger sister that their older brother would be staying home. Now Alonda will tell her sister, "He's not coming." This example illustrates that Alonda has made gains in her use of

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syntax

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Assume that odds of a new computer requiring any type of service in the first two years are less than 1 in 10,000, and the average cost of any computer service calls is only $120. However, Karen pays $300 for a two-year service contract on her new computer. She explains that her peace of mind is well worth the cost of the contract. In this case, Karen's decision to purchase the service agreement appears to be based primarily on

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subjective utility

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A child's first words are generally spoken at about what age?

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10 to 13 months

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The smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually are

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phonemes

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People tend to inaccurately estimate that more deaths occur as a result of tornadoes than from asthma because of a tendency to

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overestimate the improbable

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Which of the following theorists encouraged the study of cognitive activity that helped lead to the cognitive revolution in the 1950s?

answer

Herbert Simon

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Malcolm has been watching a roulette-type game at a local charity bazaar. The game has only 10 numbers on the wheel, and every number except 8 has come up as a winner during the last 15 minutes. Malcolm decides to bet $10 on number 8, because it has to come up eventually. In this case, Malcolm is showing evidence of

answer

the gambler's fallacy

question

Which of the following situations would lead you to suspect that a child has a language development problem?

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A two-year-old child babbles and uses a few words.

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If you were to compare adult speech with the speech of infants under four months of age, you should expect to find that

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infants distinguish more phonemes than adults do.

question

Zackary's friend asks how well Zackary gets along with his younger brother. Zackary thinks about how irritating his younger brother was yesterday and the big fight they had as a result, and tells his friend that he doesn't get along with his brother at all. In this instance, Zackary's response is consistent with

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the availability heuristic

question

Esmeralda wants to use her roommate's computer to work on her term paper. However, the roommate has password protection on the computer's boot sequence. Rather than starting at "a" and systematically testing every possible word in the English language, Esmeralda makes some educated guesses about the password, based on what she knows about her roommate. In this case, Esmeralda is using

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a heuristic to get past the password protection.

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The two sentences, "Tom hit John," and, "John hit Tom," are the same in regard to

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syntax

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When working on complex problems, a useful strategy is to

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formulate subgoals or intermediate steps toward a solution.

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The ___________ effect occurs when solutions emerge for a problem after a period of not consciously thinking about the problem.

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incubation

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Research suggests that people tend to ____ how much regret they will experience as a result of a poor decision.

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overestimate

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During the first half of the 20th century, the study of cognition was discouraged because

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of the theoretical dominance of behaviorism

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Four-year-old Nina says, "I runned all the way home." This MOST likely indicates that

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Nina is overregularizing a grammatical rule.

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Telegraphic speech normally includes only

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nouns and verbs

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Claude and Marie are excited because they have just bought a restaurant. The two partners know that the last seven restaurants that have been operated at that location have gone bankrupt within a year of their openings, but Claude and Marie are certain their restaurant will be successful because they plan on working hard. In this case, the two new business partners are

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apparently ignoring base rates

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Subjective utility refers to

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what an outcome is personally worth to an individual.

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In light of their views on language acquisition, which theorist would expect apes to progress the furthest in language development?

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BF Skinner

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Kanzi's ability to distinguish between "Pour the Coke in the lemonade" and "Pour the lemonade in the Coke" illustrates an understanding of

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both syntax and semantics

question

Which of the following statements is LEAST accurate?

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All languages use all of the phonemes of which humans are capable.

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If you were to compare adult language ability with the language ability speech of infants under 6 months of age, you should expect to find that

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infants distinguish more phonemes than adults do.

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The sentence, "The nervous the stared thick at exam student" would be virtually impossible for an English speaker to understand because the sentence violates the rules of English

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syntax

question

Young children have a larger receptive vocabulary than productive vocabulary. In other words, they ____ more words than they ____.

answer

understand; speak

question

Which of the following is NOT one of the three basic classes of problems?

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problems of probability

question

The area of psychology that refers broadly to mental processes or thinking is

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cognition

question

Maribel is on a jury, and she is already convinced that the defendant in the case is not guilty. She listens very attentively to everything the defense attorneys have to say, but she tends to pay less attention when the prosecution is presenting evidence. In this instance, Maribel is showing evidence of

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a confirmation of bias

question

Hiram is not really a sports fan, but he signs up for a fantasy baseball tournament that is being sponsored by his company. In selecting his team, he picks the 10 players that he recognizes from 200 that are listed. He is pleasantly surprised when his fantasy team finishes near the top. In this instance, Hiram made his selections using

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the recognition of heuristic

question

Seven-year-old Tracy heard a joke in school and asks you, "How could you find a lost dog in the woods?" When you are stumped, she explains, "You stand near a tree and listen for the bark." Tracy's play on words indicates that she is developing

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mentalinguistic awareness

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Failure to actively seek out contrary evidence may lead to

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the confirmation bias

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Robert knows how to say "red," but when his cousin asks him to name the colors of the cars that drive past their house, he says red for the red cars, the blue cars, the green cars, and the black cars. Robert's use of this word illustrates

answer

overextension

question

Last Halloween, 4-year-old Jillian called the decorations at her house "punkins." This year, she is able to say "pumpkins" when she describes them. In this instance, Jillian has made a gain in her use of

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phonemes

question

Based on the results from the Featured Study on intuitive decisions versus careful deliberation, if an individual is faced with a simple decision, you should encourage the individual to

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use conscious, careful deliberation.

question

Which of the following statements is MOST accurate?

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Overregularizations reflect the fact that children do not acquire the rules of grammar in a single leap.

question

If you enjoy a day at the racetrack and don't really care if you end up with a little more or little less money at the end of the day, your behavior is most influenced by the ____ you put on your day's entertainment.

answer

subjective utility

question

Kim had a busy day at work and made many difficult decisions. Research suggests that she may now experience

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reduced working memory

question

Rylee's algebra teacher is amazed at the creativity Rylee shows in solving homework problems. He seldom uses the same method on two consecutive problems, even when the problems are very similar in content and structure. Although Rylee makes lots of mistakes in algebra, he is unlikely to experience

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mental set in his problem-solving

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In language development, babbling refers to producing

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a wide variety of phonemes and consonant-vowel combinations.

question

During the 1950s and 1960s, creative new ways of measuring mental processes paved the way for the cognitive revolution. The development of new research methods helps to illustrate which of your text's unifying themes?

answer

psychology is empirical

question

Dr. DeGroot believes that children gradually acquire language skills as neural circuits that support language develop within the brain. Dr. DeGroot further believes that these neural circuits will not develop unless children are exposed to appropriate language-learning experiences. Dr. DeGroot's views MOST closely mirror those found in

answer

emergentist theories of language acquisition.

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The fact that overextensions are more common in children's production of words than in their comprehension of words implies that overextensions occur because

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toddlers must rely on a very limited vocabulary to express themselves.

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Results from studies in which researchers have attempted to teach chimpanzees to use nonverbal language (i.e., sign language or communication boards) indicate that

answer

some chimpanzees have appeared to learn many words and have combined words in appropriate ways.

Psych 111 – Exam 2, Chapter 8 Practice Questions – Flashcards

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