1. Chapter 8 Language & Thinking

2. Language Communication: the sending and receiving of information
Language: the primary mode of communication among humans
A systematic way of communicating information using symbols and rules for combining them
Speech: oral expression of language
Approximately 5,000 spoken languages exist today.

3. Broca’s & Wernicke’s Areas

4. Do Animals Use Language?
Since 1930s, numerous attempts have been made to teach language to a few select species.
The most appropriate conclusion to draw:
Nonhuman species show no capacity to produce language on their own, but
Certain species can be taught to produce languagelike communication.

5. Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language
Language acquisition – learning vs. inborn capacities
Behaviorism’s language theory
People speak as they do because they have been reinforced for doing so.
Behaviorists assumed children were relatively passive.
The problem with this theory is that it does not fit the evidence.
Operant conditioning principles do not play the primary role in language development.

6. Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language
The nativist perspective:
Language development proceeds according to an inborn program.
Language Acquisition Device (Noam Chomsky): humans are born with specialized brain structures (Language Acquisition Device) that facilitates the learning of language.
Interactionist perspectives:
Propose environmental and biological factors interact together to affect the course of language development.
Social interactionist perspective strongly influenced by Lev Vygotsky’s writings

7. Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language
Assessing the three perspectives on language acquisition:
General consensus:
Behaviorists place too much emphasis on conditioning principles.
Nativists don’t give enough credit to environmental influences.
Interactionist approaches may offer best possible solution.

8. The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Does language determine thought?
Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis
Proposed that the structure of language determines the structure of thought (without a word to describe an experience, you cannot think about it).
However, research indicates that just because a language lacks terms for stimuli does not mean that language users cannot perceive features of the stimuli.
The answer is no. Most psychologists believe in a weaker version of Whorf’s hypothesis—that language can influence thinking.

9. Thinking Thinking—cognition The mental activity of knowing
The processes through which knowledge is acquired
The processes through which problems are solved

10. Concept Formation
Concept: a mental grouping of objects, ideas, or events that share common properties
Concepts enable people to store memories in an organized fashion.
Categorization is the process of forming concepts.
We form some concepts by identifying defining features.
Problem with forming concepts by definition is that many familiar concepts have uncertain or fuzzy boundaries.

11. Concept Formation
Thus, categorizing has less to do with features that define all members of a concept and has more to do with features that characterize the typical member of a concept.
The most representative members of a concept are known as prototypes.

12. When Is It a “Cup,” and When Is It a “Bowl”?

13. Fuzzy Boundaries
Determine whether something belongs to a group by comparing it with the prototype.
Objects accepted and rejected define the boundaries of the group or concept.
This is different for different people.

14. Problem-Solving Strategies
Common problem-solving strategies:
Trial and error: trying one possible solution after another until one works
Algorithm: following a specific rule or step-by-step procedure that inevitably produces the correct solution
Heuristic: following a general rule of thumb to reduce the number of possible solutions
Insight: sudden realization of how a problem can be solved

15. “Internal” Obstacles Can Impede Problem Solving
Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek information that supports our beliefs, while ignoring disconfirming information
Mental set: the tendency to continue using solutions that have worked in the past, even though a better alternative may exist
Functional fixedness: the tendency to think of objects as functioning in fixed and unchanging ways and ignoring other less obvious ways in which they might be used

16. The Candle Problem

17. Decision-Making Heuristics
Representativeness heuristic:
the tendency to make decisions based on how closely an alternative matches (or represents) a particular prototype
Availability heuristic:
the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event

18. Decision-Making Heuristics
Five conditions most likely to lead to heuristic use:
People don’t have time to engage in systematic analysis.
People are overloaded with information.
People consider issues to be not very important.
People have little information to use in making a decision.
Something about the situation primes a given heuristic.