Thinking and Language

1. Thinking and Language • Cognition – the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

2. Thinking • Prototype – the best example we use for a category. Ex. The more closely something matches our prototype of a concept, the more readily we recognize it as an example of the concept (Ex. – birds – our prototype may be a robin)

3. Solving Problems Solving Problems Heuristic – a general rule of thumb - a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; faster but more error-prone • Algorithm – a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem; slower, but ensures a correct answer

4. Making Decisions/Forming Judgments • Representativeness heuristic – judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information ex. a good athlete is over six feet tall

5. Making Decisions/Forming Judgments • Availability heuristic – estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (vivid stories), we presume such events are common • Ex. shark bites

6. Making Decisions/Forming Judgments • Availability Heuristic (continued) – because of readily available images of extreme events, we come to fear events that are rare • Flying – events of 9/11 • Swimming in ocean – Jaws • Children walking alone – images of abducted or brutalized children

7. Obstacles to Problem Solving • Confirmation Bias – a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence • We seek evidence verifying our own ideas more eagerly than we seek evidence that might refute our ideas.

8. Obstacles to Problem Solving Obstacles to Problem Solving Functional fixedness – the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; a barrier to problem solving • Mental set – a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past • Ex. restarting a computer when it is not working

9. Framing • Framing – the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments • EX – a surgeon tells patients that 90% survive a particular surgery • EX – same surgeon tells patients that 10% die during a particular surgery; risks seem greater in this statement!

10. Framing Framing “Aid to the Needy” = FOR “Welfare” = AGAINST $150 coat marked down to $100 seems better than a similar coat simply costing $100 75% lean ground beef sounds better than 25% fat • We scare people when we frame risks as numbers, not percentages: • 10 deaths in 10 million seems more dramatic than a rate of .000001 (we can actually better imagine 10 people dying in the first set of numbers)

11. Language Language Structure Phonemes – in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit English language uses about 40 phonemes or sounds ex. “c” in cat • Language – our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning • Noam Chomsky (linguist) calls language the “human essence”

12. Language Structure • Morphemes – in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word • Few phonemes are also morphemes (I, a) • Morphemes include prefixes and suffixes

13. Language Structure • Syntax – the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language

14. Language Development When Do We Learn Language? By 4 months old babies can discriminate speech sounds Babies prefer to look at a face that matches a sound • Average HS graduate knows 60,000 words • We use only 150 words for about half of what we say • Seldom do we form sentences in our mind before speaking them.

15. When Do We Learn Language? When Do We Learn Language? One-Word Stage – the stage from about age 1 to 2 during which a child speaks mostly in single words Two-Word Stage (Telegraphic speech) – beginning about age 2, a child speaks mostly two-word statements ex. “go car” using mostly nouns and verbs • Babbling Stage – beg. at 4 mos. when infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language • Babbling is NOT an imitation of adult speech

16. Summary of Language Development 4 mos. = Babbles many speech sounds. 10 mos. = Babbling resembles household language. 12 mos. = One-word stage. 24 mos. = Two-word stage. 24+ = Language develops rapidly into complete sentences.

17. Explaining Language Development Explaining Language Development Noam Chomsky’s Inborn Universal Grammar: given adequate nurture, language will naturally occur; we come prewired with a language acquisition device Says “universal grammar” underlies all human language All languages have nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, etc. We start speaking in nouns in any language • B.F. Skinner’s Operant Learning: babies learn to talk in many of the same ways that animals learn to peck keys and press bars (operant conditioning) • Association (sights/sounds) • Imitation (words/syntax) • Reinforcement (smiles/hugs)

18. Explaining Language Development • Childhood seems to represent a critical period for mastering certain aspects of language • Children who have not been exposed to either a spoken or signed language by about age 7 gradually lose their ability to master any language.

19. Languages Influence Thinking • Linguistic determinism – Whorf’s (1956) hypothesis that language determines the way we think

20. Languages Influence Thinking • We use our language to classify and remember colors and numbers • One tribal language only has the numbers 1, 2, and many. • If our language has many different words for various shades of colors we will more easily be able to remember and describe those colors

21. Languages Influence Thinking Languages Influence Thinking • When we use “he/she” in a statement we tend to gender bias the statement; “they/their” are more neutral

22. Thinking in Images Thinking in Images When we imagine doing an activity, the parts of our brain become active that are active while actually doing the activity. As a result, mental practice has become part of the training of many athletes, musicians, performers, etc. • Using nondeclarative (procedural) memory we create a mental picture of how we do something in our mind • Chinese pianist who was imprisoned for 7 years rehearsed each of his pieces of music in his mind.