Unit 6 - Thinking Language & Intelligence

5 hours to learn all of this someone send help

What is cognition?

mental activity associated with processing, understanding, and communication information.

how do we think?

1. formation of connections in the brain

2. Thinking as behavior

3. Mental imagery

4. concept formation

formation of connections in the brain

on the cellular level, our ability to think depends on the biological connections that are formed in our brains through experiences with out environment.

prefrontal area

important in problem solving, multitasking, processing emotional experiences, uses emotional experiences to influence decision-making.

thinking as behavior

thoughts are just behaviors (like talking to yourself) that are so small that the movements cannot be observed.

mental imagery

in a less understood manner than that of neuronal connections, we also can create mental pictures which we can manipulate in ways similar to “real life” objects.

concept formating

we can create mental representations of a group or category.

concept

a mental grouping of objects, events, and/or people. They tend to share features.

what does a concept incorporate?

• physical features

• actions

• what you can do with it

schemata

Text uses it for “concept”

what are the three wats to form concepts?

1. artificial or rule governed

2. natural concept or prototypes

3. hierarchical or theory-based

forming an artificial or rule governed concept

object/event/person are required to have a umber of specific features to belong in the concept. All features must be present and you must follow the rules to belong.

“either/or” category

forming natural concepts or prototypes

unlike an “either/or” where there is a distinct line, the line is a little “fuzzy”. We use “family resemblance” to determine wether they belong to the concept or not.

i.e. a prototype - it is the most central member or the most representative member

forming a hierarchical or theory-based concept

as we gain more information about relationships between objects/events/people, we can use our knowledge of the world to form and organize concepts.

Basic level vs. higher-/lower-order concepts

Basic - are learned first

higher higher-/lower- order - are added later

what is language?

communication using symbols:

• sounds

• gestures

• graphics

a language has RUKEs for combining symbols (a grammar) and can generate an infinite amount of novel ideas within the appropriate grammatical combinations of symbols

what attributes must be apparent to be considered a language?

• generativity

• specialization

• arbitrariness

• displacement

• novelty

generativity

unlimited new sentences can be created using words to create new menaings

specialization

purpose is only to communicate information to others

arbitrariness

the combinations the language allows is chosen or determined at random.

displacement

ability to talk about things that are not present or without a stimulus. language can refer to past and future experiences.

novelty

creating new sentences that have never occurred before; language is NOT merely memorized & repetition

terms in discussing language

• phoneme

• morpheme

• grammar

how many distinct language are in the world?

about 3,000 distinct languages but they all share some basic characteristics and terms.

phomeme

speech sounds of a language; smallest units of sound within a language. The sound of each letter.

number of phomemes range: 10 (Pirahã) - 141 (!Xóõ)

English - 35-40 phomemes

morpheme

smallest unit of meaning of a language. can be actual words (dog) as well as prefixes/suffixed (“s” added to “dog” to change it to be rular)

grammar

the rules for combining sounds into meaningful words and words into meaningful sentences

syntax: appropriate word order

semantics: appropriate meanings

development of language

humans are biologically predisposed to acquire language as long as they environment to the environment that models a language and have the opportunity to practice using the language.

emotional expression and body language is also communication.

language acquisition

language is present at birth — we engage in vocal “dialogue” or turn-taking with infant as soon as they are born and actually model spoken communication

• phonation stage

• cooking/gooing stage

• babbling stage

• one-word stage

• telegraphic speech

phonation stage

birth - 2 months: crying. Towards the end of this time period, they begin to make quasivowel sounds

cooing/gooing stage

2 - 4 months: begin to make hard consonant sounds. they requier air to be restricted in some manner.

babbling stage

4 - 14 months: broken into 3 substages

1. expansion stage

2. canonical stage

3. contraction stage

expansion stage

4 - 7 months: maturational; make all types of sounds; learn how to modulate (soft & loud) voice; deaf infants will make the sounds so experience is not required

canonical stage

7 - 10 months - dependant on hearing sounds; deaf babies will not continue to make sounds in this stage (if they know ASL they will with signs). Begin to see reduplicated babbling: repetition of simple constant-vowel combinations (dadada, bababa).

contraction stage

10 - 14 months: narrow use of phonemes to only those in native language. also see the development of prosody (rhyme & pace of language) and the use of gestures (represents symbolic thought)

one-word stage

14 - 20 months: these stages are approximate (some infants begin earlier/later). This is the first true intelligence stage. The child uses sounds to represent objects and concepts. These words are usually nominals (people, place, things) and modifiers (no, more, mine)

telegraphic speech

21 months (as early as 15 and as late as 24): stringing together words using modifiers (usually like “a” or “the” and usually 2 - 4 of them), prepositions, or other connective words to convey meaning.

Timeline of language

by 5 years: a typical child knows over 2,00 words

by 6 years: a typical child knows over 10,000 words

the first 30 words are acquired at about 3 - 5 words/month; next 30,000 at 10 - 20/day (or one new word every waking hour)

“WHY” becomes in important word; increases knowledge, maintains conversation.

Grammar

children quickly acquire rules of grammar; tend to overgeneralize (mouse vs. mice vs. mouses)

hearing it helps but they do not have to be taught it explicitly.

Noam Chomsky

Language Acquisition Device - language is innate; we are biologically prepared to organize language into rule-governed meaningful units

Language and thought": a complex interaction

Language influences thought and vice versa.

Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis

NOT TRUE; if you don’t have a word for something you don’t notice it.

you can still see green-yellow if you don’t have a word for it.

Intelligence

hard to define but it is goal oriented, adaptive behavior.

lumpers

think intelligence is one big ability that helps with all smart behaviors. is often associated with Charles Spearmen who refers to general intelligence as “g”.

splitters

believe that there are many different intelligences and that they are independent from one another

*Cattell & Horn’s fluid & crystallization intelligence

fluid intelligence

the capacity for acquiring new knowledge and solving new problems that is at least partially determined by biological and genetic factors. tends to decrease with age.