Thinking and Language

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• Thinking and Language
• Today we will analyze all aspects of thinking and
  language

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Do Now

• Read about learning development and the different
  types of learning theories
• With your partner (at your table) select three
  take away points to share out.

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Thinking

• Cognition
• mental activities associated with thinking,
  knowing, remembering, and communicating
• Cognitive Psychologists
• study these mental activities
• concept formation
• problem solving
• decision making
• judgment formation

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Thinking

• Concept
• mental grouping of similar objects, events,
  ideas, or people
• Prototype
• mental image or best example of a category
• matching new items to the prototype provides a
  quick and easy method for including items in a
  category (as when comparing feathered creatures
  to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)

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Thinking

• Algorithm
• methodical, logical rule or procedure that
  guarantees solving a particular problem
• contrasts with the usually speedierbut also more
  error-prone--use of heuristics

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Thinking

• Heuristic
• simple thinking strategy that often allows us to
  make judgments and solve problems efficiently
• usually speedier than algorithms
• more error-prone than algorithms

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Thinking

• Unscramble
• S P L O Y O C H Y G
• Algorithm
• all 907,208 combinations
• Heuristic
• throw out all YY combinations
• other heuristics?

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Thinking

• Insight
• sudden and often novel realization of the
  solution to a problem
• contrasts with strategy-based solutions
• Confirmation Bias
• tendency to search for information that confirms
  ones preconceptions
• Fixation
• inability to see a problem from a new perspective
• impediment to problem solving

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The Matchstick Problem

• How would you arrange six matches to form four
  equilateral triangles?

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The Three-Jugs Problem

• Using jugs A, B, and C, with the capacities
  shown, how would you measure out the volumes
  indicated?

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The Candle-Mounting Problem

• Using these materials, how would you mount the
  candle on a bulletin board?

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Thinking

• Mental Set
• tendency to approach a problem in a particular
  way
• especially a way that has been successful in the
  past but may or may not be helpful in solving a
  new problem

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Thinking

• Functional Fixedness
• tendency to think of things only in terms of
  their usual functions
• impediment to problem solving

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The Matchstick Problem

• Solution to the matchstick problem

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The Three-Jugs Problem

• Solution a) All seven problems can be
  solved by the equation shown in (a) B - A - 2C
  desired volume.
• b) But simpler solutions exist for problems 6 and
  7, such as A - C for problem 6.

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The Candle-Mounting Problem

• Solving this problem requires recognizing that a
  box need not always serve as a container

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Heuristics

• 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

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Heuristics

• Availability Heuristic
• estimating 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
• Example airplane crash

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Thinking

• Overconfidence
• tendency to be more confident than correct
• tendency to overestimate the accuracy of ones
  beliefs and judgments

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Thinking

• Framing
• the way an issue is posed
• how an issue is framed can significantly affect
  decisions and judgments
• Example What is the best way to market ground
  beef--as 25 fat or 75 lean?

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Thinking

• Belief Bias
• the tendency for ones preexisting beliefs to
  distort logical reasoning
• sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem
  valid or valid conclusions seem invalid
• Belief Perseverance
• clinging to ones initial conceptions after the
  basis on which they were formed has been
  discredited

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Language

• Language
• our spoken, written, or gestured words and the
  way we combine them to communicate meaning
• Phoneme
• in a spoken language, the smallest distinctive
  sound unit

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Language

• Morpheme
• in a language, the smallest unit that carries
  meaning
• may be a word or a part of a word (such as a
  prefix)
• Grammar
• a system of rules in a language that enables us
  to communicate with and understand others

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YouTube The McGurk Effect (323)
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Language is constructed from phonemes, morphemes,
phrases, sentences. By following explicit or
implicit rules for the encoding and understanding
of information contained in language, humans
manipulate communicate ideas. Even unspoken
languages, such as American Sign Language, allow
complex conceptual thinking.
cat
Cow
play
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Language

• Semantics
• the set of rules by which we derive meaning from
  morphemes, words, and sentences in a given
  language
• also, the study of meaning
• Syntax
• the rules for combining words into grammatically
  sensible sentences in a given language

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Language

• We are all born to recognize speech sounds from
  all the worlds languages

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Language

• Babbling Stage
• beginning at 3 to 4 months
• the stage of speech development in which the
  infant spontaneously utters various sounds at
  first unrelated to the household language
• One-Word Stage
• from about age 1 to 2
• the stage in speech development during which a
  child speaks mostly in single words

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Language

• Two-Word Stage
• beginning about age 2
• the stage in speech development during which a
  child speaks in mostly two-word statements
• Telegraphic Speech
• early speech stage in which the child speaks like
  a telegram-go car--using mostly nouns and
  verbs and omitting auxiliary words

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Language
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Language

• Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and
  experience activates them as it modifies the brain

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Language

• New language learning gets harder with age

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Language Acquisition

• is the process by which humans acquire the
  capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as
  well as to produce and use words and sentences to
  communicate.

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Genies Story

• What does the story of Genie tell us about the
  nature of language acquisition? Is it simply a
  matter of learning language, or does it appear to
  be more complicated than that?

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Language

• Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued that language
  determines the way we think
• Linguistic Determinism hypothesis, different,
  languages impose different conceptions of reality.

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Language

• The interplay of thought and language
• The traffic runs both ways between thinking and
  language. Thinking affects our thought.

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Animal Thinking and Language

• Animals, especially apes display remarkable
  capacities for thinking.
• Animals demonstrate insight, and problem solving
  skills

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Do Animals Exhibit Language Do Animals
Communication Make up Language

• YES! Animals Communicate
• Apes have a large capacity of learning sign words
• Honeybees dance in direction and distance of food
  source

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Animal Thinking and Language

• The straight-line part of the dance points in the
  direction of a nectar source, relative to the sun