PSYCHOLOGY Unit 7B Thinking and Language

Thinking  Cognition  mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating  i.e. concept formation, problem solving, decision making, judgment formation

Thinking  Concept  mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people  Prototype  best example of a category  match new items to the prototype easiest way to include items in a category Concept (Dog) --> Prototype (Golden Retriever)

Problem Solving  Algorithm  Methodical and logical procedure that guarantees solving a problem

Problem Solving  Heuristic  simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently

Problem Solving  Heuristic -> faster  Algorithms -> more often correct

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

Decisions and Judgments  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  Using stereotypes  A person who is short, slim, and likes to read poetry…. Is he more likely a college professor or a truck driver?

Decisions and Judgments  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  Examples:  Airplane crash  Where does “K” appear more often.. The first or third letter in a word?

Problem Solving  Insight  sudden realization of the solution to a problem  the ‘aha’ moment

Problem Solving  Insight  Monkey – Banana Research  After an extended period of failing to succeed by jumping, the monkeys would stop and then suddenly figure out how to reach the banana

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is an academic field of study which studies the goal of creating intelligence.

Problem Solving  Fixation  inability to see a problem from a new perspective  Rigidity  Lack of flexibility and creativity  Following strict rules

Problem Solving  Functional Fixedness Functional Fixedness  tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions

Decisions and Judgments  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?

Decisions and Judgments  Overconfidence  tendency to be more confident than correct  tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments

Problem Solving  Hindsight Bias  The inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.  Also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism  Hindsight bias may cause memory distortion, where the recollection and reconstruction of content can lead to false theoretical outcomes.

Problem Solving  Confirmation Bias  tend to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

Decisions and Judgments  Belief Bias  the tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning  Belief Perseverance  clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Problem Solving  Mental Set  tendency to approach a problem in a particular way (especially a way that has been successful in the past)

Problem Solving  Convergent Thinking  Following a particular set of steps to arrive at a correct answer  Divergent Thinking  Generating innovative ideas to create multiple solutions to a problem

Problem Solving  Creativity  Ability to produce something new through imaginative skill

Language  Language  our spoken, written, or gestured works and the way we combine them to communicate meaning

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

Language  Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis  Whorf’s hypothesis that language affects the way we think, perceive and remember  Think of semantic encoding involving language  Nativist Theory of Language Acquisition  the biological belief that language is an innate feature of humans  We are born with a language acquisition device (LAD)  Noam Chomsky

Language  We are all born to recognize speech sounds from all the world’s languages Percentage able to discriminate Hindi t’s Hindi- speaking adults 6-8 months 8-10 months months English- speaking adults Infants from English-speaking homes

Language  Phoneme  in a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit  Morpheme  in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning  may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

DOGS 2 morphemes -- DOG and S 4 phonemes – D-v-G-Z

Language  Babbling Stage  beginning at 3 to 4 months  infants spontaneously utter various sounds at first unrelated to the household language  One-Word Stage  from about age 1 to 2  the stage in which a child speaks mostly in single words  Two-Word Stage  beginning about age 2  the stage in which a child speaks in mostly two-word statements or telegraphic speech  Telegraphic Speech  a child speaks like a telegram-–“go car”--using mostly nouns and verbs usually during the Two-word stage

Language  Two-Word Stage  beginning about age 2  the stage in which a child speaks in mostly two- word statements  Telegraphic Speech  a child speaks like a telegram-–“go car”--using mostly nouns and verbs

Language Summary of Language Development Month (approximate) Stage Babbles many speech sounds. Babbling reveals households language. One-word stage. Two-world, telegraphic speech. Language develops rapidly into complete sentences.

Language  Grammar  a system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand others  Semantics  the set of rules by which we derive meaning (add –s to a word to mean multiple)  Syntax  the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language  Examples:  Tone, types of sentences and phrasing  the big red balloon, not the red big balloon,

Language  New language learning gets harder with age Native Percentage correct on grammar test Age at school

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

Animal Thinking and Language  Animal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language.

Animal Thinking and Language  The straight-line part of the dance points in the direction of a nectar source, relative to the sun Direction of nectar source

Animal Thinking and Language  Gestured Communication

Animal Thinking and Language  Is this really language?  Koko Koko