Unit 7: Module 35-36 Notes

AP Psychology \n Unit 7 - Cognition: Memory, Thinking and Language (Module 35-36)

Due: 12/5 horizontal line

Visual Summary: Figure 35.1 shows the aha! Moment where the burst of right temporal lobe activity accompanied insight solutions to word problems. Figure 35.2 shows the matchstick problem and how you would arrange to form four equilateral triangles. 35.3 shows the solution to the matchstick problem. Figure 35.4 shows the risk of death from various causes in the U.S 2001 with the most being auto accidents, 1 in 6029. Figure 35.5 shows a graph of those scared onto deadly highways where traffic deaths are more.

Module 35: Solving Problems and Making Decisions

Problem Solving: Strategies and Obstacles

  • Some problems are solved through trial and error while others use algorithms-- step by step procedures that guarantees a solution
  • Nature resorts to heuristics, simpler thinking strategies
  • Insight - a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions
  • Aha! Moment are the problem solvers frontal lobes are active
  • Insight strikes suddenly
  • Confirmation bias - a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignite or distort contradictory evidence
  • Once we incorrectly represent a problem, it’s hard to restructure how we approach it
  • Fixation - an ability to see a problem from a fresh perspective
  • Mental set -our tendency to approach problem with the mindset of what has worked for us previously
  • As perceptual set predisposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes how we think which can sometimes be an obstacle to problem solving

Forming Good and Bad Decisions and Judgments

  • We follow our intuition, our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts.
  • Heuristics enable snap fast judgements

The Representativeness Heuristic

  • To judge the likelihood of the things in terms of how well they represent particular prototypes
  • Representativeness heuristic influences many of our daily decisions
  • To judge the likelihood of something, we intuitively compare it w/ out mental representation of that category

Availability Heuristic

  • Operates when we estimate the likelihood of events based on how mentally available they are
  • Can lead us astray of out judgements of other people too
  • Like 9/11, everyone feared an ethinic group because it was pitted against a sigle vivid cases, the memorable case won, as emotion-ladden images of terror embated our fears

Overconfidence

  • Our judgment and decisions go awry because we are more confidence than correct
  • The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgment is overconfidence

Belief Perseverance

  • Our overconfidence in our judgements is startling, equally startling is our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.
  • Belief perseverance often fuels social conflict
  • Prejudice persists

Effects Of Framing

  • Framing the way we present an issue, sways our decisions and judgements.
  • Can be a powerful persuasion tool

Peris and Powers of Intuition

  • Intuition is huge
  • Intuition is usually adaptive
  • Intuition is recognition born of experience
  • Intuition can be perilous, especially when we overfeel and underthink

Visual Summary: 36.1 shows a graph and how our ability to learn a new language diminishes with age with mastery of a 2nd language. Figure 36.2 shows brain activity when hearing and speaking words. Tab;e 36.1 shows the summary of language development by months since you are born. Figure 36.3 shows language and perception. Figure 36.4 shows the interplay of thought and language

Module 36: Thinking and Language

Language Structure

  • For inventing a language, you would need 3 building blocks
    • Phonemes - the smallest distinctive sound units in a language
    • Ch, a, and t
    • Morphemes
    • The smallest units that carry meaning in a given language
    • Sometimes a few morphemes are also phonemes
    • Grammer
    • System of rules that enables us to communicate w/ one another

Language Development

  • Before we fully spoke, we have our own and grammatically appropriate sentences
  • Receptive language
    • Infants starts w/o language
    • By 4 months, babies can recognize differences in speech sound
    • Receptive language is the ability to understand what is said to and about them
    • At 7 months+, babies grow in their power to do what you and I find difficult when listening to an unfamiliar language
  • Productive Language
    • Their ability to produce words, matures after their receptive language
    • They recognize noun-verb differences
    • Babbling stage- begins around 4 months of age
    • Babbling is not an imitation of speech
    • At around 10 months, babies lose their ability to hear and produce sounds and tnes outside of their native language
    • Around year 1, most children enter one word stage
    • At around age 2, they enter the two-word stage where they utter sentences in telegraphic speech

Explaining Language Development

  • Biology and experience work together
  • Universal grammar
  • We are not born with specific language
  • Human infants display remarkable ability to learn statistical aspects of human speech
  • Babies come with built in readiness to learn grammatical rules
  • Critical period - mastering certain aspects of language before the language - learning window
  • At the age of 7. Those who have not been exposed to either a spoken or a signed language gradually lose their ability to master any language

The Brain and Language

  • Aphasia, an impairment of language can result from damage to any of several cortical areas
  • Damage to the left frontal lobe (Broca's area, controls language expression,) a person would struggle to speak words while being able to sing familiar songs and comprehend speech
  • Damage to Wernicke's area (controls language receptions involved in language comprehensions and expression) in the left temporal lobe, people could speak only meaningless words and also disrupts understanding
  • Different Neural networks are activated by nouns and verbs or objects and actions
  • The brain operates by dividing mental functions--speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering- into sub functions.

Language and Thought

  • Linguistic determinism is a hypothesis that language determines the way we think
  • It's too extreme
  • Many bilinguals report that they have a different senses of self depending on which language they’re using
  • Our words may not determine what we think but they do influence our thinking
  • Thinking in children develops hand in hand with their language
  • Bilingual people are skilled at inhibiting one language while using the other

Thinking In Images

  • Words convey ideas
  • Implicit memory (nondeclarative, procedural) memory is a mental picture
  • Mental rehearsal can help achieve goals esp. Academic goals
  • It’s better to spend your fantasy time planning how to get somewhere than to dwell on the imagined destination