chapter 9

Copyright and Overview

• Copyright © 2023 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved

• Title: PSYCHOLOGY Schacter | Gilbert | Nock | Johnsrude Canadian Sixth Edition

• Chapter 9: Language and Thought

Chapter Outline

• Language and Communication: From Rules to Meaning

• Language and the Brain

• Language and Thought: How Are They Related?

• Concepts and Categories: How We Think

• Decision Making: Rational and Otherwise

• Problem Solving: Working It Out

• Reasoning: Truth and Validity

Language and Communication: From Rules to Meaning

• Language: A system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and that convey meaning.

  • Grammar: Set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages.

  • Human Language:

    • More complex than other forms of communication.

    • Involves words representing intangible concepts.

    • Used to think and conceptualize, setting it apart from animal communication.

The Complex Structure of Human Language

• Approximately 7,100 human languages exist, each with a foundational structure of sounds and rules.

• Basic Characteristics of Language:

  • Phoneme: The smallest units of sound that can distinguish meaning.

  • Phonological Rules: Guidelines that dictate how sounds can be combined.

  • Morphemes: The smallest units of meaning in a language (e.g., prefixes, roots, suffixes).

  • Morphological Rules: Rules that govern word formation.

  • Syntactical Rules: Rules that detail how words combine to form sentences.

Language Development

• Three Key Characteristics:

  • Children learn language rapidly.

  • Children make few errors while learning to speak.

  • Comprehension develops faster than production.

Distinguishing Speech Sounds

• Infants can distinguish all human phonemes up until approximately 6 months of age.

• Research using computer-synthesized sounds establishes that all infants undergo the same babbling sequence.

Language Milestones (Part 1)

Language Milestones (Part 2)

• First Words: Occur typically at 10-12 months.

• Toddlers prefer learning nouns over verbs.

• Fast Mapping: Phenomenon where children associate a new word with its corresponding concept after only one exposure.

• Telegraphic Speech: Essentially two-word phrases lacking function morphemes (e.g., “Want cookie”).

• Children may overgeneralize rules (e.g., “goed” instead of “went”).

• Major language aspects are generally learned by ages 4-5 years.

Emergence of Grammatical Rules

• Children’s errors in verb forms (e.g., using irregular verbs incorrectly) provide insights into the ease with which they acquire grammatical structures.

• Overgeneralizations illustrate children's application of learned grammatical rules to novel cases.

Language Development and Cognitive Development

• Language progression may depend on:

  • General cognitive development.

  • Experience with specific languages.

  • Research on English language acquisition in internationally adopted preschool children shows similar progression as infants.

  • Development can be driven by experience.

Theories of Language Development: Behaviourist Explanations

• Behaviourist Theories (e.g., B.F. Skinner)

  • Propose language learning occurs through operant conditioning and imitation.

  • Challenges:

    • Parents often do not spend significant time directly teaching language.

    • Children produce linguistic structures beyond mere imitation.

Theories of Language Development: Nativist Explanations (Part 1)

• Nativist Theories:

  • Suggest language is an inherent capability; evidence supports this theory.

  • Nativist Theory: Proposes that biological capacity primarily explains language development (Noam Chomsky).

  • Universal Grammar: Collection of innate linguistic rules and processes facilitating language acquisition.

Theories of Language Development: Nativist Explanation (Part 2)

• Language ability is distinct from general intelligence.

• Illustrated by the KE family with articulatory problems; relates to working memory components.

• Learning additional languages becomes more challenging after puberty, with optimal acquisition occurring early in life.

• fMRI studies reveal differing brain representations based on the age second languages are acquired.

Theories of Language Development: Interactionist Explanations

• Interactionist Explanations:

  • Emphasize the role of social interactions in language learning.

  • Propose that social experience and innate biological abilities jointly facilitate language development.

Exploring the 30-Million-Word Gap

• By age 3, children from high socioeconomic status (SES) families may hear millions more words than those from lower SES backgrounds, termed the "30-million-word gap."

• Early exposure to language significantly predicts later academic performance in language and cognitive assessments.

• Ongoing debates regarding the existence, causes, and implications of this gap, emphasizing both the quantity and quality of early communication.

Language and the Brain

• Brain maturation involves specialization of neuroanatomical structures supporting language development.

Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area of the Brain

• Broca’s Area: Located in the left frontal cortex; crucial for language production.

• Wernicke’s Area: Found in the left temporal cortex; essential for language comprehension.

• Aphasia: Refers to impairments in processing or producing language, classified as:

  • Broca's Aphasia: Difficulty in language production.

  • Wernicke's Aphasia: Difficulty in language comprehension.

Involvement of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere

• The right hemisphere plays a significant role in language processing, particularly comprehension.

• Evidence suggests the right hemisphere is activated during verbal tasks and that damage may result in subtle comprehension issues.

• Neuroimaging supports right hemisphere activation during language-related activities.

• Some children with damage to the left hemisphere can recover many language abilities.

Bilingualism and the Brain

• Bilingualism is common globally, with early studies claiming it hindered cognitive development due to flawed methodologies.

• More current findings show no significant difference in language development between bilingual and monolingual children; both exhibit unique benefits and challenges.

• Learning a second language may enhance the left parietal lobe's efficiency in handling language demands.

• Bilingual individuals often have a later onset of Alzheimer's disease related to enhanced cognitive functions.

Bilingualism Alters Brain Structure

• Bilingualism can induce structural changes in the brain's language processing regions.

Can Other Species Learn Human Language? (Part 1)

• Attempts to teach nonhuman primates, particularly apes, human language face obstacles due to anatomy and cognitive limitations.

• Apes struggle with comprehensive vocabularies, types of useable words, and grammar complexity, though some successes have been achieved using ASL or other methods (e.g., case studies with Washoe, Kanzi).

Can Other Species Learn Human Language? (Part 2)

• Limitations observed in apes include:

  • Restricted vocabulary range.

  • Limited conceptual frameworks.

  • Inadequate comprehension and application of grammatical rules.

A World of Difference: Language Without Sight

• Developmental Specialization Hypothesis: Blindness from birth alters brain specialization, reallocating visual areas for language processes.

• Unmasking Hypothesis: Visual regions might adapt for language processing after periods of visual deprivation, even in those who became blind later in life.

• Research indicates support for the developmental specialization hypothesis; blindness reinforces the adaptation of brain structures towards language use.

Language and Thought: How Are They Related?

• Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: Asserts that the structure of a language influences the way its speakers conceptualize the world. Origin: Benjamin Whorf.

• Recent studies question this hypothesis, focusing on color perception studies comparing speakers of different languages (e.g., children from Namibia vs. English).

Language Affects How We Think About Colour

• Research shows that linguistic categorizations affect perception of color and objects, reflecting on how language can shape cognitive processes.

Was Whorf “Half Right”?

• It's acknowledged that either thought or language abilities can be impaired while the other remains intact, indicating that Whorf's theory lacks total accuracy.

• Simplistic approaches towards language’s influence on thought fail to capture complex relationships; language can direct thought by accentuating specific aspects of concepts and improving problem-solving through verbal processing.

Concepts and Categories: How We Think

• Concept: A mental representation that categorizes shared features of objects, events, or stimuli.

• Categories require rules that stipulate necessary and sufficient conditions for inclusion.

Psychological Theories of Concepts and Categories

• Necessary Condition: An attribute that must be true for an object to belong to a category.

• Sufficient Condition: An attribute that, if true, confirms an object’s category membership.

• Two primary theories explaining categorization:

  • Prototype Theory: New objects are evaluated against the “best” or most typical member of a category (prototype).

  • Exemplar Theory: New instances are compared against stored examples of category members.

Prototype Theory and Exemplar Theory

• In prototype theory, new objects are classified based on similarity to the prototype of the category.

• In exemplar theory, classification involves comparing new items to all existing category examples.

Concepts, Categories, and the Brain (Part 1)

• The left hemisphere and visual cortex are crucial for forming prototypes.

• The right hemisphere, prefrontal cortex, and basal ganglia are primarily involved in recognizing exemplars.

• Neuroimaging suggests both prototype and exemplar-based processes co-occur. Exemplar learning involves analytical decision-making, whereas prototype formation is more holistic with an emphasis on image processing.

Concepts, Categories, and the Brain (Part 2)

• Category-Specific Deficit: Neurological syndromes characterized by difficulty recognizing objects from specific categories while retaining recognition of other objects.

• Raises the question of whether category-specific organization of visual processing is an inherent capability or developed through experience.

Brain Areas Involved in Category-Specific Processing

• Specific areas of the brain correspond to different categories, demonstrating that certain neurological mechanisms govern category processing.

Are Our Brains Prewired?

• Studies on blind adults reveal similar activity patterns in category-preferential regions and temporal lobe regions responding to faces, regardless of visual experience.

• Suggests innate determinants for category-specific organization occur independently from an individual's visual history.

Decision Making: Rational and Otherwise

• Rational Choice Theory: Classic approach positing decisions are based on likelihood assessment, outcome valuation, and their multiplicative interaction.

Decision Making: The Irrational Reality (Part 1)

• Assessing frequency vs. probabilities shows individuals excel at estimating frequency but falter on probability tasks.

• Performance often depends on problem framing.

Decision Making: The Irrational Reality (Part 2)

• Availability Heuristic: Relies on the tendency to assess the frequency of events based on their availability in memory.

• Heuristics: Fast, efficient strategies aiding decision-making but lacking guaranteed accuracy (contrasted with algorithms).

• Algorithm: A defined sequence of operations ensuring a solution to a problem.

Decision Making: The Irrational Reality (Part 3)

• Representativeness Heuristic: Probability judgements made through comparisons of an object/event to a prototype.

• Conjunction Fallacy: Misjudging the likelihood of two events occurring together over either event alone.

Decision Making: The Irrational Reality (Part 4)

• Framing Effects: Variations in responses based on rephrased problems.

• Sunk-Cost Fallacy: Decisions influenced by prior investments rather than current situation assessments.

Decision Making: The Irrational Reality (Part 5)

• Optimism Bias: Individuals perceive themselves as more likely to encounter positive outcomes and less likely negative ones when compared to others.

  • Found to be stronger in North American cultures than in Eastern counterparts.

  • Recent studies validate these biases concerning risk of natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

Optimism Bias Across Cultures

• Cross-cultural variations reflect differing optimism biases that may shed light on their origins.

Why Do We Make Decision-Making Errors?

• Prospect Theory: Individual tendencies to accept risks when assessing potential losses while opting for caution with gains.

• Simplification of available information (certainty effect) leads to decision-making that seeks the most beneficial prospect (expected utility).

Decision Making and the Brain

• Individuals with prefrontal lobe damage lack emotional reactions in high-stakes decision-making scenarios.

  • Insensitivity to potential future consequences arises.

  • Healthy individuals exhibit increased prefrontal activity during critical decision-making tasks (applicable in gambling and road safety).

The Neuroscience of Risky Decision Making

• Decisions involving risks correlate with specific brain activity patterns that inform our understanding of how neurological processes influence decision-making.

Aligning Perceived and Actual Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Researchers noted a lack of correlation between perceived and actual risks of COVID-19, alongside a tendency to underestimate risks.

  • Interventions aimed to align perceived risks with reality involved imaginative exercises and receiving numerical feedback about actual risk.

Problem Solving: Means–Ends Analysis

• Means-Ends Analysis: A method for solving problems by identifying the steps required to bridge the gap between an existing state and a desired goal.

  • Steps:

    • Assess the goal state.

    • Assess the current state.

    • Identify the differences between states.

    • Reduce differences by means of direct paths, subgoals, or exploiting known problem solutions.

Problem Solving: Analogical Problem Solving

• Strategies utilizing analogies to draw parallels between problems and generate solutions based on previous experiences and knowledge.

Genius and Insight

• Example of Friedrich Gauss: Developed an innovative method to simplify a tedious addition task into multiplication, showcasing insightful cognitive problem-solving strategies.

  • This solution extends to various numerical sequences.

Creativity and Insight

• Insights often emerge from incremental processes rather than a singular, conscious moment of clarity.

  • Insightful problem-solving can be affected by unconscious processing.

Sudden Insight and the Brain

• Distinct experiences of insight versus analytical approaches draw support from neurologic evidence as demonstrated through specific brain activation patterns observed via neuroimaging during problem resolution.

Functional Fixedness and the Candle Problem

• An example problem involves using various objects (matches, tacks, candle) to devise a way to mount and light the candle effectively. Thoughtful responses to this problem reveal functional fixedness in problem-solving approaches.

Reasoning: Truth and Validity

• Distinction made between the truth of statements and the validity of arguments in reasoning contexts.

• Reasoning: The cognitive effort in organizing beliefs and information to arrive at conclusions.

• Belief Bias: A tendency where the believability of a conclusion influences acceptance over logical validity.

• Syllogistic Reasoning: Analyzing whether conclusions logically follow from provided premises.

Belief Bias in the Real World: Climate Change

• Observations reveal a societal clash where, despite consensus among scientists on climate change, a significant number of people deny its existence, often driven by individually held beliefs, reinforcing the danger of belief bias in addressing climate issues.

The Illusion of Truth

• Illusory Truth Effect: Once a statement has been shown repeatedly, it is perceived as more truthful due to increased familiarity.

Fake News Research

• Recent studies outline how initial exposure to fake news enhances the perceived accuracy of implausible claims, emphasizing the importance of critical engagement with information.

  • Proposals include reminding audiences to focus on accuracy post-exposure to combat misinformation on social media.

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth

• This illusion leads individuals to overestimate their understanding of subjects, which can impair reasoning and truth judgements.

  • Engaging individuals in explicit explanations helps them recognize their own knowledge limitations, contributing to better reasoning skills in identifying true versus false claims.

Using Social Media to Counter Misinformation

• Recognizing social media's impact in spreading misinformation while also harnessing its potential to foster meaningful discussions and provide credible updates, especially during crises like a pandemic.