Myers’ PSYCHOLOGY
(7th Ed)
Chapter 10
Thinking and Language
Walnut
Psychology
Fact or Falsehood?
1.) We notice evidence that contradicts our beliefs more readily
than evidence that is consistent with them.
2.) In general, people underestimate how much they really know.
3.) It takes less compelling evidence to change our beliefs than it
did to create them in the first place.
4.) Some computers are able to learn from experience.
5.) Only human beings seem capable of insight (the sudden
realization of a problem’s solution).
The Three-Jugs
Problem
 Using jugs A,
B, and C,
with the
capacities
shown, how
would you
measure out
the volumes
indicated?
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.
Thinking
 Cognition
 mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering, and communicating
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)
Thinking
 Algorithm
 methodical, logical rule or procedure
that guarantees solving a particular
problem
 contrasts with the usually speedier–but
also more error-prone--use of heuristics
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
Thinking
Unscramble
SPLOYOCHYG
 Algorithm
 all 907,208 combinations
 Heuristic
 throw out all YY combinations
 other heuristics?
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
one’s preconceptions
 Fixation
 inability to see a problem from a new perspective
 impediment to problem solving
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
The Matchstick
Problem
 How would you
arrange six
matches to form
four equilateral
triangles?
The Matchstick
Problem
 Solution to the
matchstick
problem
Thinking
 Functional Fixedness
 tendency to think of things
only in terms of their usual
functions
 impediment to problem solving
The Candle-Mounting
Problem
 Using these
materials, how
would you
mount the
candle on a
bulletin board?
The Candle-Mounting
Problem
 Solving this
problem
requires
recognizing that
a box need not
always serve as
a container
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
Logic Puzzles
 A ladder hangs over the side of a ship anchored in a
port. The bottom rung touches the water. The distance
between rungs is 20 cm and the length of the ladder is
180 cm. The tide is rising at the rate of 15 cm each hour.
When will the water reach the seventh rung from the top?
 I am looking at somebody's photo. Who is it I am
looking at, if I don't have any brothers or sisters and the
father of the man in the photo is the son of my father?
 If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do
you have?
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
Thinking
 Overconfidence
 tendency to be more confident than
correct
 tendency to overestimate the
accuracy of one’s beliefs and
judgments
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?
Hotel Enigma
 Three people check into a hotel. They pay $30 to
the manager and go to their room. The manager finds
out that the room rate is $25 and gives the bellboy
$5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room
the bellboy reasons that $5 would be difficult to
split among three people so he pockets $2 and gives
$1 to each person. Now each person paid $10 and got
back $1. So they paid $9 each, totaling $27. The
bellboy has another $2, adding up to $29.
Where is the remaining dollar?
Thinking
 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
 Belief Perseverance
 clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the
basis on which they were formed has been
discredited
Artificial Intelligence
 Artificial Intelligence
 designing and programming
computer systems
 to do intelligent things
 to simulate human thought processes
 intuitive reasoning
 learning
 understanding language
Artificial Intelligence
 Computer Neural Networks
 computer circuits that mimic the
brain’s interconnected neural cells
 performing tasks
 learning to recognize visual patterns
 learning to recognize smells
Language
“The limits of your language mean the
limits of your world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language
 Language
 our spoken, written, or gestured
works and the way we combine them
to communicate meaning
 Phoneme
 in a spoken language, the smallest
distinctive sound unit
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
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
Language
 We are all born to recognize speech sounds from all the
world’s languages
Percentage able 100
to discriminate
90
Hindi
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Hindispeaking
adults
6-8
months
8-10
months
10-12
months
Infants from English-speaking homes
Englishspeaking
adults
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
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
Language
Summary of Language Development
Month
(approximate)
Stage
4
Babbles many speech sounds.
10
Babbling reveals households
language.
12
One-word stage.
24
Two-world, telegraphic speech.
24+
Language develops rapidly into
complete sentences.
Nature Vs Nurture
Noam Chomsky
B.F. Skinner
« Universal Grammar » Chomsky
 He found, through his studies, that humans have a « language
acquisition device » that other animals do not have. When exposed to
language, a child will acquire that language where an animal will not.
Thus, a language acquisition device (LAD), as Chomsky calls it, is the
function of our brain that allows us to transform exposure to a
language into acquisition of grammar.
 Chomsky argues that the types of grammar that the child needs must
be narrowly constrained by human biology. These innate constraints on
grammar are what Chomsky refers to as universal grammar, or more
commonly known as “language instinct.”
Structure-Dependency
Knowledge of language requires dependance on the
structural relationships within a sentence.
By examining changes in a particular sentence, one can
see structural relationships within the sentence, and not
the linear order of words. Therefore, structure
dependancy is a universal principle of language
Structure-Dependency
A tree diagram representing
phrase structure analysis:
 By examining sentence diagrams, one can see how the elements of a
sentence depend on its structure.
First Language Acquisition
Chomsky developed a theory in opposition to
B.F. Skinner, who argued very generally that
language comes about as a result of external
stimuli.
example: a child responds to an object which is acting as a
stimulus, for example a doll, calling it « doll. »
Chomsky challenges this with the notion of creativity: if a
child can regularly produce sentences they have never
heard before, how could they be acting through stimuli? 
Language is not controlled by stimuli.
Poverty of the stimulus
 The source of language must be within the mind itself
 In other words, a child could not have acquired language
from the relatively few samples of language available to
the child.
 This explains the complexity of our knowledge of
language, as compared to the poverty of data at a
learner’s disposal.
Second Language Acquisition
 Grammatical explanation: one does not learn the grammatical structure of a
second language through explicit explanation and instruction
 Is it possible to become fluent in a second language?
According to Chomsky, yes. But motivation plays a big factor. He once
gave an example of his two children. He went to Italy once for a few
months, and his young boy picked up the language without even trying.
However, his older daughter, who was highly motivated to learn Italian,
had to work hard at it.
 Poverty of the stimulus does exist in a second language, according to
Chomsky.
 One cannot truly teach language but can only present conditions for the
learner to develop it in his or her own mind.
Language
 Genes
design the
mechanisms
for a
language,
and
experience
activates
them as it
modifies the
brain
Language
Percentage
correct on
grammar
test
 New language
learning gets
harder with
age
100
90
80
70
60
50
Native 3-7
8-10 11-15 17-39
Age at school
Language
 Linguistic Determinism
 Whorf’s hypothesis that
language determines the way
we think
Language
 The interplay
of thought
and language
Animal Thinking and
Language
 Is this
really
language?
Animal Thinking and
Language
Direction of
nectar source
 The straight-line
part of the dance
points in the
direction of a
nectar source,
relative to the
sun
Animal Thinking and
Language
 Gestured Communication