Language and Thought

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Language and Thought

• Module 21

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Language
Happy holidays

• The most tangible indication of our thinking
  power
  
• Unique to humans
• Enables us to communicate complex ideas
• Enables us to retain and transmit the collective
  knowledge of civilization

appreciation
hello
Hebrew
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You are Amazing

• You probably know about 80,000 words.
• From 1 year old to the time you graduated from
  high school, you learned about 5000 words each
  year.
  

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Features of Language by Steven Pinker

• Semanticity sounds in human language convey
  meaning (unlike coughing or clearing our throats)
  
  
• Arbitrariness no inherent connection between
  symbols in a language and their meaning. The
  word dog has no connection to an animal.
  
• Flexibility of symbols language changes and
  grows. Cars used to be called automobiles.

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Features of Language by Steven Pinker

• Naming we assign names to objects and feelings.
  I am word processing on my personal computer.
  
• Displacement language allows us to talk about
  the past or the future as well as the present.
  
• Productivity (also called generativity) we
  generate sentences rather than repeat them. This
  is how Chomsky critiqued Skinners work.
  

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Acquisition of Language

• Babbling stage
• Babies practice pronouncing sounds.
• By around 10 months, it sounds like the native
  language.
  

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Acquisition of Language

• One Word Stage
• At about 1 year, the child uses one syllable
  words to express something ma da ga
  

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Acquisition of Language

• Two Word Stage
• Around their second birthday, children begin to
  form two word sentences
  
• Telegraphic Speech mainly nouns and verbs in a
  sensible order nice doggy big boy pretty
  baby need juice no nap

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Explanation of Language Development

• Skinner association, imitation, reinforcement
• Chomsky inborn universal grammar, brains
  prewired, hardware and operating system
  
• Cognitive Scientists we are able to quickly
  statistically analyze aspects of human speech
  
• The younger we learn a new language the better.

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Thinking and Language

• Language Influences thinking Lee Whorf
• linguistic relativity hypothesis- different
  languages impose different conceptions of reality
  on us and shape our sense of self.
  

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Thinking and Language Gender Differences

• Gender and Language true or false???
• Men talk more than women.
• Men are more likely to interrupt women than to
  interrupt other men.
  
• There are approximately ten times as many sexual
  terms for males as for females in the English
  language.
  
• During conversations, women spend more time
  gazing at their partner than men do.
  
• Nonverbal messages carry more weight than verbal
  messages.
  

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Thinking and Language Gender Differences

• Female managers communicate with more emotional
  openness and drama than male managers
  
• Men not only control the content of
  conversations, they also work harder in keeping
  conversations going.
  
• When people hear generic words such as mankind
  and he, they respond inclusively, indicating
  that the terms apply to both sexes.
  
• Women are more likely to touch others than men
  are.
  
• In a classroom, male students receive more
  reprimands and criticism than female students.
  
• Women are more likely than men to disclose
  intimate, personal, information.
  

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Thinking and Language Gender Differences

• 12. Female speakers are more animated in their
  style than males.
  
• 13. Women use less personal space than men.
• 14. When a male speaks, he is listened to more
  carefully than a female speaker, even when she
  makes the identical presentation.
  
• 15. In general, women speak in a more tentative
  style than men do.
  
• 16. Women are more likely to answer questions not
  addressed to them than men.

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Thinking and Language Gender Differences

• Answers
• T 2. T 3. F 4. T
• 5. T 6. F 7. F 8. F
• 9. F 10. T 11. T 12. T
• 13. T 14. T 15. T 16. F

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Doublespeak Can you figure these out?

• Revenue enhancement
• Inoperative statements
• Social expression products
• Poorly buffered precipitation
• Media courier
• Oral hygiene appliance
• Negative patient care outcome
• Vertical transportation corps
• Period of accelerated negative growth

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Bilingual Education

• Is it beneficial?
• What does it do for the brain?
• Should it be mandatory for children?

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Thinking Without Language

• Mental rehearsal can boost your performance in
  athletics, academics, and social situations.

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Student Project

• Draw two cognitive maps.
• 1. Draw a map from your house to the library,
  Starbucks, or a place you often go. Draw it from
  memory only.
  
• 2. Draw a map from your house to Oakton. Put in
  as much detail as you can recall.
  
• 3. How accurate were your maps? How much detail
  did you include? Did you expect to be more
  accurate than you were?
  
• 4. Now read an article about cognitive maps, and
  report on the contents. You might look for Image
  of the City, by Kevin Lynch and report on his
  book, or you may find an article on the internet
  or at the library that talks about cognitive
  maps.

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Animal Thinking and Language

• Do animals think?
• They can solve problems, count, improvise the use
  of implements to get to food, recognize
  themselves in a mirror.
  
• Can apes talk?

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So, can apes really talk?

• Language comes to them with difficulty
• Can they transmit it to each other?
• What about perceptual set?
• What about their cognitive powers?