COGSCI 200 Midterm Exam 1
Questions and Answers 100% Pass
Marr's Three levels of Explanation - ✔✔Functional--Problem the capacity is supposed
to solve
Ex:
Language-- mapping sounds to meaning
Face recognition-- mapping face to names
Perception-- inverse optics
Algorithmic--Procedures that enable the problem to be solved
Ex:
Language-- phrase structure grammars
Face recognition-- features on face
Perception-- Baye's Rule
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,Physical-- The neural/chemical substrates in which the procedures are implemented
Ex:
Language-- different brain regions
Face recognition-- different brain regions
Perception-- eye/sight pathway
Associanistic views
What's in the head that explains language?
How did that stuff get in there? - ✔✔If you regularly experience A's followed by B's,
then form an association between A's and B's
"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything" -Skinner
What is "in the head" that explains language?:
A bunch of associations between specific verbal actions and specific situations
How did that stuff in the head get there?:
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2
,Associanistic learning, in particular instrumental conditioning
Problems with the Associanistic Account - ✔✔1. Stimulus Independence
People routinely utter sentences in contexts that are independent of the contexts in
which the sentences were learned; for associanistic, the context must be identical
2. Novelty
Many of the sentences that a person knows have never been encountered before (male
octopus sentence)
3. Productivity
A language is productive if there is no upper bound on the # of sentences it can express
4. Systematicity
A language is systematic when the following is the case: A person who knows the
language reliably knows "groups" of expressions at a time (If paul knows "Cat is on the
mat" he also knows "Mat is on the cat")
Cognitive Views - ✔✔Language each person acquires is a rich and complex
construction undetermined -Chomsky
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3
, Chomsky focused on syntactic processing, and proposed it could be understood in
terms of phrase structure grammar
Phrase Structure Grammars
Hierarchical
Combinatoric
Recusrive
What's "in the head" that explains language?
How did that stuff in the head get there? - ✔✔Particular kind of grammar that have
been highly influential in linguistics
Hierarchical-- A sentence is broken down into abstract constituents, which are in turn
broken down into further constituents
Combinatoric--The rules are defined over elements that can be recombined in open-
ended ways
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4
Questions and Answers 100% Pass
Marr's Three levels of Explanation - ✔✔Functional--Problem the capacity is supposed
to solve
Ex:
Language-- mapping sounds to meaning
Face recognition-- mapping face to names
Perception-- inverse optics
Algorithmic--Procedures that enable the problem to be solved
Ex:
Language-- phrase structure grammars
Face recognition-- features on face
Perception-- Baye's Rule
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1
,Physical-- The neural/chemical substrates in which the procedures are implemented
Ex:
Language-- different brain regions
Face recognition-- different brain regions
Perception-- eye/sight pathway
Associanistic views
What's in the head that explains language?
How did that stuff get in there? - ✔✔If you regularly experience A's followed by B's,
then form an association between A's and B's
"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything" -Skinner
What is "in the head" that explains language?:
A bunch of associations between specific verbal actions and specific situations
How did that stuff in the head get there?:
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2
,Associanistic learning, in particular instrumental conditioning
Problems with the Associanistic Account - ✔✔1. Stimulus Independence
People routinely utter sentences in contexts that are independent of the contexts in
which the sentences were learned; for associanistic, the context must be identical
2. Novelty
Many of the sentences that a person knows have never been encountered before (male
octopus sentence)
3. Productivity
A language is productive if there is no upper bound on the # of sentences it can express
4. Systematicity
A language is systematic when the following is the case: A person who knows the
language reliably knows "groups" of expressions at a time (If paul knows "Cat is on the
mat" he also knows "Mat is on the cat")
Cognitive Views - ✔✔Language each person acquires is a rich and complex
construction undetermined -Chomsky
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3
, Chomsky focused on syntactic processing, and proposed it could be understood in
terms of phrase structure grammar
Phrase Structure Grammars
Hierarchical
Combinatoric
Recusrive
What's "in the head" that explains language?
How did that stuff in the head get there? - ✔✔Particular kind of grammar that have
been highly influential in linguistics
Hierarchical-- A sentence is broken down into abstract constituents, which are in turn
broken down into further constituents
Combinatoric--The rules are defined over elements that can be recombined in open-
ended ways
EMILY CHARLENE © 2025, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4
