Thinking and Language

Cognition Refers to all the mental activities associated with processing, understanding, remembering and communicating. Cognitive psychologists study mental activities, including the logical and sometimes illogical ways in which we create concepts, solve problems make decisions and form judgments.

Prototypes A mental image or best example that incorporates all the features we associate with a category. Example-a robin and a goose Bird: a two-footed animal that has wings and feathers and hatches from an egg. People agree more quickly that “a robin is a bird” than that a goose is a bird.

Algorithm A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Such as recipe for cookies or a step-by-step description for evacuating a building during a fire that guarantees a solution to a problem. Both humans and the great apes form concepts, display insight, use and create tools, transit cultural innovations and have a theory of mind.

Heuristic A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error- prone than algorithms. Representatives 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.

Is estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory. Anything that increases the ease of our retrieving information can increase its perceived availability.

Confirmation Bias A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions. Peter Wason demonstrated this tendency by giving British university students the three-number sequence and asking them to guess the rule he had used to devise the series.

Fixation The ability to see a problem from a fresh perspective- is a true impediment to solving. Two examples of fixation are mental set and functional fixedness. Business managers, for example are more likely to follow the successful careers of those they hired than to track achievements of those they rejected, leading them to confirm their own perceived hiring ability.

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

A tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments.

The tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid.

Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Animal Thinking and Language Do animals think.? Monkeys learn how to classify cats and dogs, certain frontal lobe neurons in their brain fire in response to new “catlike” images. Psychologist Wolfgang Kohler observed apparent insight while studying chimpanzees placed on an island off of Africa. Researchers have found least 39 local customs related to chimp tool use grooming and courtship.

One group may slurp ants directly from the stick, while another group picks them off individually.

Chimps are not Human Daniel Povinelli and Jesse Bering remind us. Young baboons feigns having been attacked as a seeming tactic for getting its mother to drive a competing baboon away from its food.

Do Animals Exhibit Language Without any doubt, animals do communicate. Vervet monkeys have different alarm cries for different predators: for example a barking call for a leopard, a cough for an eagle and a chuttering sound for a snake.

The Case of the Apes The greatest challenge to humanity’s claim to be the only language-using species has come from reports of apes that “talk” with people. Allen Gardner and Beatrix Gardner tried to teach sign language to a chimpanzee named Washoe as though she were a death human child.

Human language may have evolved from gestures communications. It is no wonder that prohibiting gestures disrupt speech that has spatial context. For example describing an apartment layout.

But Can Apes Really Talk? Apes gain their limited vocabularies only with great difficulty. Chimpanzees can make signs or push buttons in sequence to get a reward, just as Moscow circus bears can learn to ride unicycles. Chimps do not develop language concludes Steven Pinker.