Psyc 101: Concepts & Categories Quiz

Course Information

• Course title: Psyc 101: Introduction to Biological & Cognitive Psychology
• Course instructor: Jill Dosso, PhD
• Date: Nov 2024
• Location: UBC (University of British Columbia)
• Specific territory: Traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməəkwəyəm (Musqueam) People.
• Topics covered: Concepts & categories, Language, Executive functions & problem solving, Reasoning, judgment, & decision-making, Attention & autism (guest lecture).

Concepts & Categories

• Learning Objectives:
  • Define a concept and provide an example.
  • Discuss whether concepts depend on language, explain evidence from neuropsychology and developmental psychology.
  • Describe three theories of categorization.
  • Recognize brain regions involved in categorization.
• Concept: A mental representation to group similar things together based on shared features (e.g., "dog" includes all types of dogs).
• Concepts exist regardless of language. Babies recognize concepts (mom, dad) before learning the words. People can understand concepts like "fear" without knowing the word.
• Example 1 (JB with semantic dementia):
  • Difficulty naming colors or linking objects to their color.
  • Still able to categorize colors, showing concept exists independent of language.
• Example 2 (Preverbal infants):
  • Tested using habituation procedure; show repeated stimulus, baby habituates (stops looking).
  • Show new stimulus, baby dishabituates (looks again) meaning they recognize the difference.
  • Evidence infants form concepts without language.
  • Infants can distinguish between two and three, happy and fearful expressions, animals and vehicles.

Categorization Theories

• Rule-based definitions: Defining a category by specific rules (e.g., small, four-legged animal with fur that wags its tail and barks). Necessary and sufficient attributes must be met to be included in the category
• Prototype theory: Categorizing by comparing new examples to a "prototype" (the best or most typical example) within the group.
• Exemplar theory: Categorizing by comparing a new example to stored examples (exemplars) to determine membership in the category.

Categories and the Brain

• Neuroimaging studies:
  • Prototypes formed in the visual cortex (image processing).
  • Exemplars formed in the prefrontal cortex (analysis, decision-making) and basal ganglia (pattern learning).

Language

• Learning Objectives:
  • Define language.
  • Identify four properties of language (discreteness, grammar/syntax, displacement, productivity).
  • Comment on whether non-human animals have language.
  • Describe a study on the role of experience in distinguishing speech sounds.
  • Explain Chomsky's critique of behaviorism.
  • Link language areas of the brain to behavior.
• Language: A system of symbols, signals, and rules used for communication.
• Properties of language:
  • Discreteness: Components (e.g., words, morphemes).
  • Grammar and syntax: Rules (how words combine in sentences).
  • Displacement: Ability to refer to something not in the current situation (past, future).
  • Productivity: Forming new sentences, never seen before).
• Do other species have language? (Examples provided):
  • Rhesus monkeys: Alarm calls (for "snake", "eagle", "leopard").
  • Alex (African Grey Parrot): Large vocabulary, counting to six, asking questions.
  • Chimpanzees (Kanzi): Large vocabulary, concrete words, simple sentences using lexigrams.
• Language milestones (by age): Different language skills develop across age ranges.

Language Milestones Table

• Includes age brackets from 0-60 months.
• Details about speech development for each age braket
• Explains language milestones like babblings, words, grammar, and sentence formation.

Linguistics: Key Terms

• Grammar: Rules of language, including morphology (word rules) and syntax (sentence rules).
• Morphology: How morphemes (smallest meaningful units) combine to form words.
• Syntax: How words combine into sentences.
• Semantics: Meaning.

Rules of Syntax

• How words are combined to form sentences, varies across languages.

Complex Structure of Human Language

• Surface structure: Specific symbols and words (e.g., "Sam ate the cake").
• Deep structure: Meaning (semantics; underlying meaning).
• Example: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously": Surface structure understandable but has no deep meaning, not grammatical

Distinguishing Speech Sounds

• Infants use experience to differentiate speech sounds in their native language.
• Example experiment (turning heads based on sound changes) demonstrates how actively infants learn to use language.
• This highlights that there is early specialization to the heard language, seen in infants’ responses to familiar language.

Chomsky's Critique of Behaviorism

• Language is too complex to be learned solely through reward/punishment.
• Children generate novel sentences, often with grammatical errors.
• Emphasizes inborn language acquisition.

Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

• Innate biological capacity in humans for language acquisition.
• Evidence: Genetic dysphasia (difficulty with grammar, normal IQ, sometimes linked to specific genes).
• Example: "Carol is cry in the church."

The Language Areas

• Key brain areas involved in language processing (Broca's area, Wernicke's area, arcuate fasciculus).
• Dysphasia: Developmental language impairment (brain differences affecting language acquisition).
• Aphasia: Lesion-induced language impairment (brain damage affecting language).

Broca's Aphasia

• Intact comprehension but impaired speech production.
• Problems with articulation and syntactic rules.

Wernicke's Aphasia

• Normal speech rate, syntax, and grammar, but often lacks meaning.
• Comprehension problems; difficulty understanding spoken/written language; patient may produce fluent but nonsensical speech.
• Inability to comprehend the meaning of language, even their own.

Test your understanding of concepts and categories in biological and cognitive psychology. This quiz covers definitions, theories of categorization, and the role of language. Challenge your knowledge on the mental representations that guide our understanding of the world.