Psych Chapter 9: Thinking and Language

1. Thinking

   1. Concepts

      1. Cognition

         1. All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

      2. Metacognition

         1. Cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

      3. Concepts

         1. A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

      4. Prototype

         1. A mental image or best example of a category; Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow)

   2. Problem Solving: Strategies and Obstacles

      1. Algorithms

         1. A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier (but also more error-prone) use of heuristics

      2. Heuristic

         1. A similar thinking strategy (a mental shortcut) that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm

         2. Example: grouping letters in a long word

      3. Insight

         1. A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions

         2. Aha moment

      4. Confirmation bias

         1. A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

         2. Wason states: “ordinary people evade facts, become inconsistent, or systematically defend themselves against the threat of new information relevant to the issue”

      5. Fixation

         1. In cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving

      6. Mental Set

         1. A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

         2. Predisposes how we think

   3. Forming Good (and Bad) Decisions and Judgements

      1. Intuition

         1. An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

      2. Two Quick But Risky Shortcuts

         1. The representativeness heuristic

            1. Judging the likelihood of events in terms or how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

         2. The availability heuristic

            1. Judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

      3. Overconfidence

         1. The tendency to to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

         2. Planning fallacy

            1. Overestimating our future leisure time and income

      4. Belief Perseverance

         1. Clinging to one’s initial conception after the basis on which were formed has been discredited

         2. Motivated reasoning

            1. Using their conclusions to assess evidence rather than using evidence to draw conclusions

      5. The Effects of Framing

         1. Framing

            1. The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

         2. Nudge

            1. Framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions

         3. Example:

            1. Saving for retirement

            2. Making moral decisions

            3. Becoming an organ donor

            4. Reducing alcohol consumption

         4. Point to remember

            1. Framing can nudge our attitudes and decisions

      6. The Perils and Powers of Intuition

         1. Intuition is recognition born of experience

            1. It is implicit knowledge - what we recorded in our brains but can’t fully explain

         2. Intuition is usually adaptive

            1. Our learned associations surface as gut feelings, right or wrong

         3. Intuition is huge

            1. Unconscious, automatic influences constantly affect our judgements

         4. The bottom line

            1. Our two-track mind makes sweet harmony as smart, critical thinking listens to the creative whispers of our vast unseen mind and then evaluates evidence, tests conclusions, and plans for the future

   4. Thinking Creatively

      1. Creativity

         1. The ability to produce new and valuable ideas

      2. Convergent thinking

         1. Narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

         2. Example: SAt

      3. Divergent thinking

         1. Expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

      4. Robert Sternberg and his colleagues believe creativity has five components

         1. Expertise

            1. Well-developed knowledge

         2. Imaginative thinking skills

         3. A venturesome, determined personality

         4. Intrinsic motivation

         5. A creative environment

      5. Boost creative process

         1. Develop your expertise

         2. Allow time for incubation

         3. Set aside time for the mind to roam freely

         4. Experience other cultures and ways of thinking

   5. Do other species share our cognitive skills?

      1. Using concepts and Numbers

         1. The great apes also form concepts like cat and dog

      2. Displaying Insight

         1. Wolfgang Kohler placed a piece of fruit outside the cage of a chimpanzee, after failed attempts, the chimpanzee had an aha moment

      3. Transmitting Culture

         1. Other species invent behaviors and transmit cultural patterns to their observing peers and offspring

      4. Other Cognitive skills

         1. Great apes, dolphins, magpies, and elephants recognize themselves in a mirror, demonstrating self-awareness

         2. Elephants display their abilities to learn, remember, discriminate smells, empathize, cooperate, teach, and spontaneously use tools

         3. Chimpanzees show altruism, cooperation, and group aggression.

            1. They may purposefully kill their neighbor to gain land and they grieve over dead relatives

2. Language and Thought

   1. Language

      1. Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

   2. Language Structure

      1. Phonemes

         1. Smallest distinctive sound units in a language

         2. As a general rule, consonant phonemes carry more information than do vowel phonemes

      2. Morphemes

         1. Smallest language units that carry meaning; may be a word or a part of a word

         2. “Reader” broken down into “read” and “er” suggesting one who reads

      3. Grammar

         1. Language’s set of rules that enable people to communicate

         2. In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

   3. Language Acquisition and Development

      1. Language Acquisition: How do we learn language?

         1. Biology and experience work together

         2. Noam Chomsky has argued that language is an unlearned human trait, separate from other parts of human cognition

      2. Language Development: When do we learn language?

         1. Receptive Language

            1. Children’s language development moves from simplicity to complexity

            2. Ability to understand what is said to and about them

         2. Productive Language

            1. Ability to produce words

            2. Babbling stage

The stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language

• One-word stage

The stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

• Two-word stage

The stage in speech development, beginning about age 2, during which a child speaks mostly in two-word sentences

• Telegraphic speech

The early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram (“go car”) using mostly nouns and verbs

• Critical Periods

  1. By age 7, those who have not been exposed to either spoken or signed language lose their ability to master any language

  2. Language learning ability is universal

  • Deafness and language development

    1. Natively deaf children who learn sign language after age 9 never learn it as well as those who learned it early in life

    2. More than 90% of all deaf children are born to hearing parents

    3. People who lose one channel of sensation compensate with a slight enhancement of their other sensory abilities

  • Living in a Silent World

    1. Challenges of life without hearing may be greatest for children

Unable to communicate in customary ways

May struggle to coordinate their play with speaking playmates

School achievement may suffer

May feel socially excluded

Low self-confidence

• The Brain and Language

  1. Aphasia

     1. Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage with to broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to wenicke’s area (impairing understanding)

  2. Broca’s area

     1. A frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech

  3. Wernicke’s area

     1. A brain area, usually in left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression

  4. Point to remember

     1. In processing language, as in other forms or information processing, the brain operates by dividing its mental functions (speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering) into subfunctions

  • Thinking and Language

    1. Linguistic determination

       1. Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

       2. Today’s psychologists believe that this is too extreme

    2. Linguistic relativism

       1. The idea that language influences the way we think

1. In Class notes

   1. Language is arbitrary

      1. Made up of learned symbols

         1. Generally words, written and spoken, in no way reflect what they refer to

         2. Example:

            1. “Apple” vs. “pomme” vs. “manzana”

      2. Levels of language

         1. Phonology

            1. Sounds

            2. Example:

Word: CAT

Phoneme: /k/ /a/ /t/

• Smallest unit of speech

  • Language sounds and how to combine them

English has 40-45 phonemes

About 100 different phonemes world-wide

Other languages have a different number

All languages have a sub-set

Certain combinations are “allowed” in each language:

Snart …… okay?

Tnart ……. Not okay

Sbarro …. Okay in italian, sounds funny in english

Know lots of “rules” we are not conscious of

Plural of cabbage?

Plural of lip?

• Visemes

Each sound we make is associated with the shape of our mouths

Mouth shapes that are associated with phonemes

Many phoneme-to-one viseme mapping

Several phonemes will correspond to 1 viseme

• Orthography

  1. Conventions

  2. Spelling, capitalization, etc.

  • Morphology

    1. Meaningful parts of words

    2. The smallest units of meaning in a language

    3. Convey information about semantics: meaning derived from words and sentences

    4. Can be full words (example: dog)

    5. Modifiers (example: “dog+s” → dogs)

Also -ed to make past tense

• Help us form new words

  1. Semantics

     1. Meaning

  2. Syntax

     1. Structure

     2. Clauses and sentences

     3. Ways that words can (and can’t) be put together

This sentence no verb

This sentence has contains two verbs

This is not a complete

This either

This sentence are not okay

• Weird syntax can cause problems

  1. Discourse

     1. Exchange of ideas

     2. Connected unit of speech/writing

     3. Longer than 1 sentence

  2. Pragmatics

     1. Socially appropriate use of language

  3. Extralinguistic information

     1. Elements of communication not part of contact but are critical to interpreting meaning

     2. Elements of communication that aren’t part of the content of language but are critical to interpreting its meaning

Facial expressions, tone of voice, previous statements by others

Why emailing/texting can be problematic

Used to help interpret ambiguous information

Playful “shut up”

Serious “shut up”

• Prosody

Elements of communication that aren’t part of the content of language but are critical to interpreting its meaning

Patterns of rhythm and sound

Inflection/stress/intonation that implies a change of meaning

• Language diversity

  1. How many languages can you think of?

  2. Which languages do you think are the most common?

  3. Roughly 7000 spoken languages in the world

  4. Dialects

     1. Variations of the same language used by groups of people from specific geographic areas, social groups, or ethnic backgrounds

Use consistent syntax rules, although they may differ from “mainstream” speech

Different dialects can generally understand each other

• Language acquisition

  1. Language requires a long learning period and hefty brain power

  2. So… it must be worth it

     1. Communication of complex ideas

     2. Coordinates social interactors

  3. Begins in the womb

     1. Learn mom’s voice

     2. Native language

     3. A story

  4. 0-1 years old

     1. Babbling stage

Phonemes of their native language

Learn to control noises they make

• 1-2 years old

  1. Start to pronounce words

  2. One word stage

Single words to convey an entire thought

• over/underextension

  • Comprehension precedes production

  1. 2-3 years old

     1. Two-word stage

Phrases with syntax

Vocabulary explosion

• 3+ years old

  • Critical period of language

    1. A period in the lifespan during which a particular skill must be acquired if it is to be acquired at all

    2. No evidence for strict critical period in language - instead, “sensitive period”

  1. Special Language learning

     1. Sign language

        1. Uses visual instead auditory communication

Involves hands, face, body, and “sign space”

• Bilingualism

  1. Proficiency and fluency in two languages

  2. Most important factor in learning age

  3. Cons

Slows some aspects of the acquisition process in each (syntax)

• Pros

  1. Language acquisition: Theories

     1. Imitation

        1. Babies hear language used in systematic ways and learn by imitating it

Behaviorists: “they imitate what they are reinforced for”

• Nativism

  1. Noam Chomsky

  2. Suggests children are born with some basic knowledge of how language works

Kids are born with expectation and about (some kind of) syntax

• Social Pragmatics

  1. View that children infer what words and sentences mean from context and social interaction

  2. Assumes kinds know and are able to infer a lot

  • General cognitive processing

    1. View that children’s ability to learn language results from general cognitive skills

    2. Doesn’t explain

Why children are better at language learning than adults

Language specific brain areas

• What counts as language

  1. Animal communication

     1. Animals communicate in the variety of ways

        1. Scent

        2. Body language

     2. Is any of this actual “language”?

     3. Different from human communication in important ways

        1. Not as complex or structured

        2. Fixed

Specific messages

Tend to be about threats/mating

• Not generative

No way to communicate new idea

• Language and thought

  1. Is thinking just internal speech?

  2. Linguistic determinism

     1. View that all thought is represented verbally and that language defines our thinking

     2. Cannot think without language

     3. Little to no evidence for this

Imaging studies say otherwise

• Linguistic relativity

  1. The Brain and Language

     1. Damage to any one of several areas of the brain cortex can impair language

     2. Today’s neuroscience has confirmed brain activity in Broca’s and Wernicke’s area

     3. Aphasia

        1. Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage

     4. Broca’s area

        1. Impaired speech production

     5. Wernicke’s area

        1. Impaired speech perception