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Chapter Overview
 Concepts
 Language and Thought
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Thinking
Cognition involves the
mental activities
associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering,
and communicating.
Concepts help to
simplify thinking through
mental grouping of
similar objects, events,
ideas, and people.
After placing an item in a
category, memory
gradually shifts it toward
a category prototype.
Categories boundaries
begin to blur as
movement from
prototypes occur.
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Problem Solving: Strategies
 An algorithm is a methodical, logical rule or
procedure that guarantees a solution to a
problem.
 A heuristic is a simpler strategy that is usually
speedier than an algorithm but is also more error
prone.
 Insight is not a strategy-based solution, but
rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a
problem.
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Problem Solving: Obstacles
 Confirmation bias predisposes us to verify
rather than challenge our hypotheses.
 Fixation, such as mental set, may prevent us
from taking the fresh perspective that would lead
to a solution.
A burst of right temporal lobe
EEG activity (yellow area)
accompanied insight
solutions word problems
(Jung-Beeman et al., 2004).
The red dots show placement
of the EEG electrodes. The
light gray lines show patterns
of brain activity during insight.
From Mark Jung-Beeman, Northwestern University and John Kounios, Drexel Univesity
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THE Aha! MOMENT
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Forming Good and Bad Decisions and
Judgments
 Intuition is an effortless, immediate, automatic
feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit,
conscious reasoning
 Availability heuristics can distort judgment by
estimating event likelihood based on memory
availability
 Overconfidence can impact decisions when
confidence outweighs correctness.
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Forming Good and Bad Decisions and
Judgments
 Belief perseverance occurs when we cling to
beliefs and ignore evidence that proves these
are wrong.
 Framing sways decisions and judgments by
influencing the way an issue is posed. It can
also influence beneficial decisions.
Can you think of any such decisions?
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THE FEAR FACTOR—
WHY WE FEAR THE
WRONG THINGS
1.
We fear what our ancestral
history has prepared us to
fear.
2.
We fear what we cannot
control.
3.
We fear what is immediate.
4.
We fear what is most
readily available in
memory.
SCARING US ONTO DEADLY
HIGHWAYS In the three months
after 9/11, those faulty
perceptions led more Americans
to travel, and some to die, by car.
(Adapted from Gigerenzer, 2004.)
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The Perils and Powers of Intuition
 Intuition is analysis “frozen into habit”.
 Intuition is implicit knowledge.
 Intuition is usually adaptive, enabling
quick reactions.
 Learned associations surface as “gut”
feelings.
 Intuition is huge.
 Critical thinkers are often guided by intuition.
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And so…
Smart, critical thinking listens to the unseen mind,
and then evaluates evidence, tests conclusions,
and plans for the future.
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Thinking Creativity
 Creativity is the ability to produce new and
valuable ideas.
 It is supported by
 Aptitude or the ability to learn
 Intelligence
 Working memory
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Thinking Creatively
Divergent thinking
• Expands the number of
possible problem solutions
(creative thinking that diverges
in different directions).
Convergent thinking
• Narrows the available problem
solutions to determine the
single best solution.
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Thinking Creatively
 Robert Sternberg and his colleagues
propose five ingredients of creativity.
 Expertise
 Imaginative thinking skills
 Venturesome personality
 Intrinsic motivation
 Creative environment
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Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive
Skills?
 Researchers make inferences about other
species’ consciousness and intelligence
based on behavior.
 Other animals use concepts, numbers, and tools and
that they transmit learning from one generation to the
next.
 Other species also show insight, self-awareness,
altruism, cooperation, and grief.
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Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive
Skills?
 Using concepts and numbers
 Several species demonstrate ability to sort (e.g.,
Pigeons and other birds; great apes; humans).
 Displaying insight
 Humans are not the only species to display insight
(e.g., Chimpanzees)
 Using tools and transmitting culture
 Various species have displayed creative tool use
(e.g., forest-dwelling chimpanzees; elephants;
humans).
Life on white/Alamy
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Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive
Skills?
 Other species display many cognitive skills
 Voice-recognition is baboon troops
 Mirror self-recognition in great apes and dolphins
 Displays of learning, remembering, cooperation in
elephants
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Language and Thought
 Language
 Involves our spoken, written, or signed words and the
ways we combine them to communicate meaning
 Is used to transmit civilization’s knowledge from one
generation to the next
 Connect humans
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Language Structure
 Three building blocks of spoken language
 Phonemes are smallest distinctive sound units in
language
 Morphemes are smallest language unit than carry
meaning.
 Grammar is the system of rules that enables humans
to communicate with one another.
 Semantics: Deriving meaning from sounds
 Syntax: Ordering words into sentences
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When do we learn language?
 Receptive language: Infant ability to understand
what is said to them around 4 months
 Production language: Infant ability to produce
words begin around 10 months.
Month (approx.) Stage
4
Babbles many speech sounds (“ah-goo”)
10
Babbling resembles household language (“ma-ma”)
12
One - word stage (“Kitty!”)
24
Two - word speech (“Get ball.”)
24+
Rapid development into complete sentences
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Productive Language
Babbling stage
One-word stage
Two-word stage
• Beginning at
about 4
months, infant
spontaneously
utters various
sounds at first
unrelated to
the household
language
• From about
age 1 to 2, a
child speaks
mostly in single
words
• Beginning
about age 2, a
child speaks
mostly in twoword
statements
Telegraphic
speech
• Early speech
stage in which
a child speaks
like a
telegramusing
mostly nouns
and verbs.
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Explaining Language Development
 Language diversity
 700+ languages worldwide; structurally very different
 Chomsky
 Argued all languages share basic elements call a
universal grammar.
 Theorized humans are born with predisposition to
learn grammar rules; not a built-in specific language
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Explaining Language
Development
 Statistical learning
Purestock/Agefotostock
 Human infants display
the ability to learn
statistical aspects of
human speech
Human infants come with a
remarkable capacity to soak up
language. But the particular language
they learn will reflect their unique
interactions with others.
 Infant brains discern
word breaks and
analyze which syllables
most often go together
 Seven-month-olds can
learn simple sentence
structures (ABA
pattern)
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How Do We Learn Grammar?
 Critical periods suggest childhood represents
critical period for mastering certain aspects of
language
 People who learn a second language as adults
usually speak it with the accent of their native
language, and they also have difficulty mastering the
new grammar.
A.E. Araiza/Arizona Daily Star/AP Photo
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Critical Periods
NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING GETS HARDER
WITH AGE Young children have a readiness
to learn language. Ten years after coming
to the United States, Asian immigrants took
a grammar test. Those who arrived before
age 8 understood American English
grammar as well as native speakers
did. Those who arrived later did not. (From
Johnson & Newport, 1991.)
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Deafness and Language Development
Children born to hearing-nonsigning parents typically do not
experience language during early years
Natively Deaf children who learn sign after age 9 do not learn sign
language, master basic words, or become as fluent as native signers.
Late learners show less right hemisphere brain activity in areas related
to sign language reading.
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Deafness and Language Development
• Cochlear implants or not?
• More than 90 percent of all Deaf children are born to
hearing parents who often seek cochlear implants for their
children. Deaf culture advocates object to this.
• National Association of the Deaf argues deafness is not a
disability because native signers are not linguistically
disabled.
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The Brain and Language
 Damage to any one of several areas of the
brain’s cortex can impair language.
 Today’s neuroscience has confirmed brain
activity in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas during
language processing.
 In processing language, the brain operates by
dividing its mental functions into smaller tasks.
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BRAIN ACTIVITY WHEN HEARING AND SPEAKING WORDS
 Broca’s area
 Wernicke’s area
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Do Other Species Have Language?
 Animals display a wide range of
comprehension and communication.
 Velvet monkeys sound different alarms for different
predators.
 Chimpanzee (named Washoe) was taught sign
language by the Garders.
 Critics noted that ape vocabularies and sentences
were simple; vocabulary gained with great difficulties.
 Most psychologists agree humans alone possess
language.
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Language and Thought
 Whorf’s linguistic determinism hypothesis:
Language determines basic ideas
 Evidence from bilingual speakers suggest people
think differently in different languages
 Bilingual parents often switch language to express
emotions
 Words influence, but do not determine, thinking
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Thinking About
Colors
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• Colors seen in same
In Papua New Guinea, Berinmo children
have words for different shades of “yellow,”
which might enable them to spot and recall
yellow variations more quickly. Here and
everywhere, “the languages we speak
profoundly shape the way we think, the way
we see the world, the way we live our lives,”
notes psychologist Lera Boroditsky (2009).
way but native
language used to
classify and remember
them.
• Perceived differences
expand as different
names assigned.
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Language and Thought
• Expanding language expands ability to think
• Bilingual speakers use executive control over
language (bilingual advantage) to inhibit
attention to irrelevant information
• Language connects the past and the future
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Thinking in Images
• After learning a skill, watching the activity
activates the brain’s internal stimulation of it
(fMRI research of Calvo-Merino and colleagues,
2004)
• Mental rehearsal can aid in academic goal
achievement (process stimulation)