Transcript Thinking and Language Chapter 10

Thinking and Language
Chapter 10
By: Rachelle Stoker
Thinking
• Cognition refers to all the mental activities
associated with processing,
understanding, remembering, and
communicating.
• What are the psychologists called that
study cognition?
• Cognitive psychologists study these mental
activities and both the logical and the
illogical way we form concepts, solve
problems, make decisions, and form
judgments.
• Concepts- mental groupings similar objects
events and people.
• Example: What do you picture when I say
the word chair?
Another Example?
• Prototypes- a mental image or best
example that incorporates all the features
we associate with a category.
• Example: Attractive man- tall, dark,
handsome etc.
Another example?
Solving Problems
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Algorithm
A step by step procedure that
guarantees a solution.
Example: When unscrambling
letters to form words try each
possibility
Pro: guarantees a solution.
Cons: time consuming,
exasperating, complex
Other examples?
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Heuristic
A simple thinking strategy that
often allows us to make
judgments and solve problems
efficiently.
Example: When unscrambling
letters to form words
eliminating the option of
putting two y’s together.
Pros: speedy, more convenient
Con: more error prone
Other examples?
Insight: a sudden and often novel realization
of the solution to a problem; it contrasts
with strategy-based solutions. Provides a
sense of satisfaction.
Everyone has an example, someone share.
Obstacles to Problem Solving
Confirmation Bias: a tendency to search for
information that confirms one’s preconceptions.
Example: Most people who adopt end up having
children later on, search for examples to confirm.
Another example?
Fixation: the inability to see a problem from a new
perspective.
Functional fixedness: the tendency to think of
things only in terms of their usual functions
What can you use a fork for other than eating?
Mental set: the tendency to repeat solutions
that have worked in the past.
Example: Girl crying to get out of ticket = Girl
crying to get out of a bad predicament with
her boyfriend.
Making Decisions and Forming
Judgments
Representativeness heuristic: judging the
likelihood of things in terms of how well
they seem to represent, or match,
particular prototypes; may lead one to
ignore other relevant information.
Availability heuristic: estimating the
likelihood of events based on their
availability in our memory.
Examples?
Overconfidence: the tendency to be more
confident than correct- to overestimate the
accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments.
Framing: the way an issue is posed; how an
issue is framed can significantly affect
decisions and judgments.
Example: More likely to think birth control is
successful if it has a 95% rate, than a 5%
failure rate.
Belief Bias
Belief Bias: the tendency for one’s preexisting
beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by
making invalid conclusions seem valid or valid
conclusions seem invalid.
Example: Mrs. Cale’s belief that Hawaii is off the
coast of Florida. Other examples?
Belief Perseverance: clinging to one’s initial
conceptions after the basis on which they were
formed has been discredited.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI: the science of designing and
programming computer systems to do
intelligent things and to simulate human
thought processes, such as intuitive
reasoning, learning, and understanding
language.
Two Facets
Practical: industrial robots
that can “sense” their
environment; “expert
systems” that can carry
out chemical analyses,
offer tax planning advice
etc.
Theoretical: pioneered by
psychologist Herbert
Simon; the goal is a
unified theory of cognition
embodied in a computer
system that can process
information, solve
problems, learn from
experience, and
remember
Humans Vs. Computers
Brains: Does many
things at once; has
emotions and
feelings; reflect on its
own existence
Computers: faster than
neural impulses;
process things serially
(one at a time);
precise logic
Computer Neural Networks: Someone tell
me what they are!!!!! Page 399. 5 pieces of
candy!
Language
Our spoken, written, or signed words and ways we
combine them as we think and communicate.
Three Building Blocks:
Phonemes: sounds
Morpheme: smallest unit that has meaning –ed,
ing, the, a, I
Grammar: Semantics and Syntax,
Semantics- rules by which we derive meaning from
morphemes
Syntax: rules for combining words into sentences
that make sense.
Language Development
Three Stages:
Babbling Stage: 3-4 months basically just sounds. Example
of a babble?
One-Word Stage: 12 – 24 months, single words. Example.
Two-Word Stage/ Telegraphic speech: nouns and verbs
spoken like a telegram. Example?
Fun Facts: before 10 months cannot decipher the origin of
the language the baby is speaking (babble stage).
Without exposure to other languages, we become deaf
to speech sounds outside our native language.
Theories of Language
Development
Skinner: Operant Learning: Believed that we can
explain language development with learning
principles, such as association, imitation, and
reinforcement.
Chomsky: Inborn Universal Grammar: Language is
almost entirely inborn. Skinner’s cannot be
because we do not teach our children to say
certain things such as “I hate you Daddy”. Our
6000 languages are therefore dialects of the
Universal grammar for which our brains are
prewired.
Cognitive Neuroscientists: Statistical
Learning:
Language can somewhat be inborn and
somewhat learned. There are facts and
experiments done that support some to
some point.
It is important to learn language before the
age of _____? Tell me the age.
Thinking and Language
Linguistic Determinism: Whorf’s hypothesis
that language determines the way we
think.
- To say that language determines the way
we think is much too strong. But our words
INFLUENCE what we think. To expand
language is expanding the ability to think.
- Knowing more than one language
improves self esteem.
Thinking Without Language
Some thought does not need words to accomplish.
When you think about how to turn on your faucet
you do it through mental images.
Mentally practicing things improves performance.
Implicit memories and activities are thought about
in pictures.
Thinking affects our language which then affects
our thought.
Animal Thinking and Language
Summary: Animals think, but not as complex
as humans do. They all have there own
ways of communicating not at all like our
Language.
Animals can learn things like counting such
as apes.
Honeybees communicate through dancing.
The End