PSYC231 Cognitive Psychology Content for Test
2025/2026
Hierarchies of concepts limitations - ANS-Familiarity - most people use
basic level eg
plants, but botanists would use
subordinate/specific names
Netwrod of concepts - ANS-Different theory of organising concepts than
hierarchal
Word association task - ANS-A procedure in which the participant is asked
to produce a
word in response to a prompt. Tests semantic
relatedness
Spreading of activation - ANS-Occurs when one item brought into
working memory
triggers an activation of related
memory
What is sound? - ANS-Waves and vibrations AND a cognitive process
Pragmatics - ANS-the appropriate use of language in different
contexts eg
conversations between two
people
Semantics - ANS-Literal meaning of words and sentences
Syntax - ANS-Sentence structure, phrases, grammar
Morphology - ANS-Units of meaning involved in word formation
,Root morpheme - ANS-A morpheme that can stand on its own as a word eg
jump
Bound morpheme - ANS-A morpheme that must be "bound" with another
morpheme to
form a word. eg ing, ed, (prefixes and
suffixes)
Phonology - ANS-The sound system of a language. English has 46
phonemes
Phonetics - ANS-Speech sounds
Semanticity - ANS-The association of linguistic signals with aspects of
the social,
cultural, and physical world of a speech
community
Arbitrariness - ANS-A property of language describing the fact that there
is no natural
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning eg "cat" has no
relation to a
physical
cat
Displacement - ANS-Can refer to events and objects not present. Eg. able
to talk about
things that happened yesterday or in other
room.
Productivity - ANS-An infinite number of sentences can be generated and
understood
with finite knowledge and
resources.
,Segmentation - ANS-The pauses in our speech don't appear between
words they
appear in the middle of
words
Co-articulation - ANS-The production of one phoneme is influenced by
the preceding
and proceeding
phonemes
Individual differences in voices - ANS-Gender, age, emotion and accent
can effect the
sound waves of our
speech
Categorical perception - ANS-The ability to perceive sounds as belonging
to different
phoneme categories (e.g. that ability to differentiate between
/p/ and /b/)
Statistical regularities - ANS-Regularities in language that occur frequently
Phonemic restoration - ANS-A kind of perceptual completion in which
listeners seem to
perceive obscured or missing speech sounds eg "the (x)eel was on the
shoe" (heel")
"the (x)eel was on the table"
(meal)
The McGurk Effect - ANS-A perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates
an interaction
between hearing and vision in speech
perception
Broca's area - ANS-Controls syntax of language - the set of rules
that govern how
, language combines words into
sentences
Wernicke's area - ANS-Controls semantics of language - the way that
words combine to
create
meaning
Broca's Aphasia - ANS-Damage to Broca's area, left frontal temporal
areas, dysfluent
(halting) speech, mostly verbs and nouns, loss of function words, poor
syntax good
semantics
Function words - ANS-In-between words used to frame major content
words in a
sentence, eg was, do,
for
Wernicke's Aphasia - ANS-Damage to Wernicke's area, left posterior
temporal areas, fluent but nonsensical speech, normal sentence structure,
new words nonsense words inappropriate words, poor comprehension and
repetition
Chomsky's Approach - ANS-Understanding language means understanding
syntax
Transformational rules - ANS-Rules that convert a deep structure into one
of several
possible surface structures of
language
Deep structure of language - ANS-Thought - underlying meaning of words
Surface structure of language - ANS-What you actually say - the
superficial way in
which words are arranged in a text or in
speech
2025/2026
Hierarchies of concepts limitations - ANS-Familiarity - most people use
basic level eg
plants, but botanists would use
subordinate/specific names
Netwrod of concepts - ANS-Different theory of organising concepts than
hierarchal
Word association task - ANS-A procedure in which the participant is asked
to produce a
word in response to a prompt. Tests semantic
relatedness
Spreading of activation - ANS-Occurs when one item brought into
working memory
triggers an activation of related
memory
What is sound? - ANS-Waves and vibrations AND a cognitive process
Pragmatics - ANS-the appropriate use of language in different
contexts eg
conversations between two
people
Semantics - ANS-Literal meaning of words and sentences
Syntax - ANS-Sentence structure, phrases, grammar
Morphology - ANS-Units of meaning involved in word formation
,Root morpheme - ANS-A morpheme that can stand on its own as a word eg
jump
Bound morpheme - ANS-A morpheme that must be "bound" with another
morpheme to
form a word. eg ing, ed, (prefixes and
suffixes)
Phonology - ANS-The sound system of a language. English has 46
phonemes
Phonetics - ANS-Speech sounds
Semanticity - ANS-The association of linguistic signals with aspects of
the social,
cultural, and physical world of a speech
community
Arbitrariness - ANS-A property of language describing the fact that there
is no natural
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning eg "cat" has no
relation to a
physical
cat
Displacement - ANS-Can refer to events and objects not present. Eg. able
to talk about
things that happened yesterday or in other
room.
Productivity - ANS-An infinite number of sentences can be generated and
understood
with finite knowledge and
resources.
,Segmentation - ANS-The pauses in our speech don't appear between
words they
appear in the middle of
words
Co-articulation - ANS-The production of one phoneme is influenced by
the preceding
and proceeding
phonemes
Individual differences in voices - ANS-Gender, age, emotion and accent
can effect the
sound waves of our
speech
Categorical perception - ANS-The ability to perceive sounds as belonging
to different
phoneme categories (e.g. that ability to differentiate between
/p/ and /b/)
Statistical regularities - ANS-Regularities in language that occur frequently
Phonemic restoration - ANS-A kind of perceptual completion in which
listeners seem to
perceive obscured or missing speech sounds eg "the (x)eel was on the
shoe" (heel")
"the (x)eel was on the table"
(meal)
The McGurk Effect - ANS-A perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates
an interaction
between hearing and vision in speech
perception
Broca's area - ANS-Controls syntax of language - the set of rules
that govern how
, language combines words into
sentences
Wernicke's area - ANS-Controls semantics of language - the way that
words combine to
create
meaning
Broca's Aphasia - ANS-Damage to Broca's area, left frontal temporal
areas, dysfluent
(halting) speech, mostly verbs and nouns, loss of function words, poor
syntax good
semantics
Function words - ANS-In-between words used to frame major content
words in a
sentence, eg was, do,
for
Wernicke's Aphasia - ANS-Damage to Wernicke's area, left posterior
temporal areas, fluent but nonsensical speech, normal sentence structure,
new words nonsense words inappropriate words, poor comprehension and
repetition
Chomsky's Approach - ANS-Understanding language means understanding
syntax
Transformational rules - ANS-Rules that convert a deep structure into one
of several
possible surface structures of
language
Deep structure of language - ANS-Thought - underlying meaning of words
Surface structure of language - ANS-What you actually say - the
superficial way in
which words are arranged in a text or in
speech
