Outline Of Chapter 10 Thinking And Language Outline
Chapter 10 – Thinking and Language Outline
Thinking • Cognition refers to al the mental activities associated with processing, understanding, remembering and communicating • Cognitive psychologists study the mental activities
Concepts • Concepts refers to the mental grouping of similar objects, events and people. • The organization of concepts into categories is known as hierarchies. • Prototypes are the mental image or best example that incorporates all the features we associate with a category • Once we place an item into a category, our memory later recognizes it as its category prototype.
Solving Problems • Algorithms are step-by-step procedures that will guarantee a solution. Usually long. • …show more content…
Heuristics are a speedier, more error prone version of algorithms. By reducing the number of options and then applying trial and error, the result may be found. • Insights are flashes of inspiration. • The right temporal lobe is responsible for such insights. ( Edward Bowden, mark Jung- Beeman and John Kounios) Researched the associated neural activity and it’s electrical signature.
Obstacles to problem solving • Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for information that confirms one’s perceptions • Peter Wason revealed this principle when he gave university students wrong formulas to work with and found that the students tended to research examples to defend these theories. • He revealed that we tend to find examples that credit their statements rather than finding examples that may refute it. • Fixation is the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, it impedes our process to problem solve. Influenced by mental sets and functional fixedness. • A mental set predisposes how we think. It refers to our tendency to approach a problem from a particular way that we have been successful in the past. • Functional fixedness is the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions. Stereotypes also limit our thinking.
Using and Misusing Heuristics • Amos Tversky and Daniel Kaneman revealed two heuristics of representativeness and availability. • Representativeness heuristic demands you to use rapid judgment, while leaving out certain relevant information. By judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or math prototypes. Overrides the usage of logic and statistics. • The availability heuristic states that anything that increases the ease of our retrieving information can increase its perceived availability. If it comes more easily to our mind, we tend to think that it is more common. • It does not take into other factors such as how recently you head about it, the distinctiveness and its concreteness.
Overconfidence • Overconfidence is the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments. • When people feel 100% confident about their answer, they tend to be wrong 15% of the time. • Does not have any adaptive value. • People do however, tend to live more happily, find it easier to make tough decisions and seem more credible. • Not innate but learned through experience.
Framing Decisions • Framing is the way we present an issue. • Just like how something is “framed” as in framing of a picture. If the picture is of fruits and the frame looks like an interwoven wooden thread, then the picture looks very natural. If the picture is placed around a frame that is grey and metallic-like, the effect is very different. Just like if I “frame” the statement: there is a 70% chance of winning as opposed to 30% chance of losing.
Belief Bias • It is the tendency for our beliefs to distort our logic.
The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon • Belief perseverance is our tendency to hold onto beliefs even when we are presented with contradicting evidence. • Considering evidence supporting the opposite position is a remedy for this type of bias.
The Perils and Powers of Intuition • Intuition has an adaptive value. • Allows us to react quickly. • Not innate, grown through experience. • Not as valid as assessing risks.
Language • Our spoken, written or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. Language Structure • Phonemes are the smallest sound units in language. • Consonant phonemes carry more meaning than vowel phonemes • Sign Language is also learned with accents • Morphemes are the smallest units of language that carries meaning. Includes prefixes and suffixes. • Grammar: Rules in a language that allows us to properly understand it. • Semantics: How we get meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences. • Syntax: How to combine words into meaningful sentences.
How do we learn language? • Receptive language is the child’s ability to comprehend speech. Begins to mature before their productive language, which is their ability to produce words. • Babbling Stage: (3-4 months after birth) A stage in speech development where the infant utters sounds unlike the family language. • One-word stage: (1-2 years old) A stage in speech development where the infant speaks single words • Two-word stage: (2 years old) Infants speak in two-word phrases that resemble Telegraphic speech – speech like a “telegram” I.e. Want candy, me play, no eat…etc
Explaining Language Development • Skinner described acquisition of language thru association/ operant conditioning. • Overgeneralizing causes a majority of the mistakes associated with language development in young children. • Noam Chomsky disapproved of Skinner’s description and insisted that universal grammar underlies all human language. • Claimed that this was a natural and inborn process – language acquisition device. • The rules which combine specific phonemes, morphemes, words and sentences are known as surface structure.
• Babies can detect the difference between longer syllables in different sequences suggesting that they do indeed have a built in acquisition. • A child can learn any language and will spontaneously invent meaningful words to convey their wishes. However, after age 7, the ability to master a new language greatly declines.
Language influences thinking • Linguistic Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Linguistic determinism states language determines how we think. This is most evident in polylinguals (speaking 2 or more languages). I.e. someone who speaks English and Chinese will feel differently depending on which language they are using. English has many words describing personal emotions and Chinese has many words describing inter-personal emotions. • However, Thinking could occur without language. This is evident in pianists and artists where mental images nourish the mind. • Therefore, thinking and language affect each other in an enduring cycle. • Bilingual Speakers were able to inhibit their attention to irrelevant information. Known as the bilingual advantage.
Thinking
Images • Thinking in images is very useful especially for mentally practicing upcoming events can actually increase our skills. • Procedural memory is our unconscious memory system for motor and cognitive skills and conditioned associations.
Do Animals Exhibit Language? • Animals also communicate, whether by means of sound or behavior just as bees dictate the location of nectar with an elaborate dance. • Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner, researchers of University of Nevada, successfully taught a chimpanzee to perform sign language as means of communication • Only humans have been found to master the verbal or signed expression of complex rules of syntax • Both humans and apes shared he abilities of reasoning, self-recognition, empathy, imitation as well as understanding another’s mind.
Thinking • Cognition refers to al the mental activities associated with processing, understanding, remembering and communicating • Cognitive psychologists study the mental activities
Concepts • Concepts refers to the mental grouping of similar objects, events and people. • The organization of concepts into categories is known as hierarchies. • Prototypes are the mental image or best example that incorporates all the features we associate with a category • Once we place an item into a category, our memory later recognizes it as its category prototype.
Solving Problems • Algorithms are step-by-step procedures that will guarantee a solution. Usually long. • …show more content…
Heuristics are a speedier, more error prone version of algorithms. By reducing the number of options and then applying trial and error, the result may be found. • Insights are flashes of inspiration. • The right temporal lobe is responsible for such insights. ( Edward Bowden, mark Jung- Beeman and John Kounios) Researched the associated neural activity and it’s electrical signature.
Obstacles to problem solving • Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for information that confirms one’s perceptions • Peter Wason revealed this principle when he gave university students wrong formulas to work with and found that the students tended to research examples to defend these theories. • He revealed that we tend to find examples that credit their statements rather than finding examples that may refute it. • Fixation is the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, it impedes our process to problem solve. Influenced by mental sets and functional fixedness. • A mental set predisposes how we think. It refers to our tendency to approach a problem from a particular way that we have been successful in the past. • Functional fixedness is the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions. Stereotypes also limit our thinking.
Using and Misusing Heuristics • Amos Tversky and Daniel Kaneman revealed two heuristics of representativeness and availability. • Representativeness heuristic demands you to use rapid judgment, while leaving out certain relevant information. By judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or math prototypes. Overrides the usage of logic and statistics. • The availability heuristic states that anything that increases the ease of our retrieving information can increase its perceived availability. If it comes more easily to our mind, we tend to think that it is more common. • It does not take into other factors such as how recently you head about it, the distinctiveness and its concreteness.
Overconfidence • Overconfidence is the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments. • When people feel 100% confident about their answer, they tend to be wrong 15% of the time. • Does not have any adaptive value. • People do however, tend to live more happily, find it easier to make tough decisions and seem more credible. • Not innate but learned through experience.
Framing Decisions • Framing is the way we present an issue. • Just like how something is “framed” as in framing of a picture. If the picture is of fruits and the frame looks like an interwoven wooden thread, then the picture looks very natural. If the picture is placed around a frame that is grey and metallic-like, the effect is very different. Just like if I “frame” the statement: there is a 70% chance of winning as opposed to 30% chance of losing.
Belief Bias • It is the tendency for our beliefs to distort our logic.
The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon • Belief perseverance is our tendency to hold onto beliefs even when we are presented with contradicting evidence. • Considering evidence supporting the opposite position is a remedy for this type of bias.
The Perils and Powers of Intuition • Intuition has an adaptive value. • Allows us to react quickly. • Not innate, grown through experience. • Not as valid as assessing risks.
Language • Our spoken, written or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. Language Structure • Phonemes are the smallest sound units in language. • Consonant phonemes carry more meaning than vowel phonemes • Sign Language is also learned with accents • Morphemes are the smallest units of language that carries meaning. Includes prefixes and suffixes. • Grammar: Rules in a language that allows us to properly understand it. • Semantics: How we get meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences. • Syntax: How to combine words into meaningful sentences.
How do we learn language? • Receptive language is the child’s ability to comprehend speech. Begins to mature before their productive language, which is their ability to produce words. • Babbling Stage: (3-4 months after birth) A stage in speech development where the infant utters sounds unlike the family language. • One-word stage: (1-2 years old) A stage in speech development where the infant speaks single words • Two-word stage: (2 years old) Infants speak in two-word phrases that resemble Telegraphic speech – speech like a “telegram” I.e. Want candy, me play, no eat…etc
Explaining Language Development • Skinner described acquisition of language thru association/ operant conditioning. • Overgeneralizing causes a majority of the mistakes associated with language development in young children. • Noam Chomsky disapproved of Skinner’s description and insisted that universal grammar underlies all human language. • Claimed that this was a natural and inborn process – language acquisition device. • The rules which combine specific phonemes, morphemes, words and sentences are known as surface structure.
• Babies can detect the difference between longer syllables in different sequences suggesting that they do indeed have a built in acquisition. • A child can learn any language and will spontaneously invent meaningful words to convey their wishes. However, after age 7, the ability to master a new language greatly declines.
Language influences thinking • Linguistic Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Linguistic determinism states language determines how we think. This is most evident in polylinguals (speaking 2 or more languages). I.e. someone who speaks English and Chinese will feel differently depending on which language they are using. English has many words describing personal emotions and Chinese has many words describing inter-personal emotions. • However, Thinking could occur without language. This is evident in pianists and artists where mental images nourish the mind. • Therefore, thinking and language affect each other in an enduring cycle. • Bilingual Speakers were able to inhibit their attention to irrelevant information. Known as the bilingual advantage.
Thinking
Images • Thinking in images is very useful especially for mentally practicing upcoming events can actually increase our skills. • Procedural memory is our unconscious memory system for motor and cognitive skills and conditioned associations.
Do Animals Exhibit Language? • Animals also communicate, whether by means of sound or behavior just as bees dictate the location of nectar with an elaborate dance. • Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner, researchers of University of Nevada, successfully taught a chimpanzee to perform sign language as means of communication • Only humans have been found to master the verbal or signed expression of complex rules of syntax • Both humans and apes shared he abilities of reasoning, self-recognition, empathy, imitation as well as understanding another’s mind.