Download Chapter 10 Thinking and Language

Myers’ PSYCHOLOGY
(7th Ed)
Chapter 10
Thinking and Language
James A. McCubbin, PhD
Clemson University
Worth Publishers
Thinking
 Cognition
 mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering, and communicating
 Cognitive Psychologists
 study these mental activities
 concept formation
 problem solving
 decision making
 judgment formation
Thinking
 Concept
 mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas,
or people
 (further organized into hierarchies)
 Defined by definition and prototypes
 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
(comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird,
such as a robin). Violations confuse: whale = mammal,
tomato = fruit, heart attack symptoms
Thinking
 Algorithm
 methodical, logical rule or procedure
that guarantees solving a particular
problem
 Step-by-step procedure that guarantees
a solution
 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
 The a-ha! moment: burst of temporal lobe activity
accompanies insight solutions to word problems (the
rush from playing word games on the plane or the joy
of a joke may similarly lie in our capacity for insight).
My roommate said to me, 'I'm gonna go shave and use the shower;
does anyone need to use the bathroom?' It's like some weird ass quiz
where he reveals the answer first.
Insight and humor
I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too
long.
When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and
wondered where my brother was.
One time, this guy handed me a picture of him. He said,"Here's a
picture of me when I was younger." Every picture is of you when
you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older." "You
son-of-a-bitch! How'd you pull that off? Lemme see that camera...
what's it look like? "
Mitch Hedburg cont.
I had a parrot. The parrot talked, but it did not say "I'm
hungry," so it died.
I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. I was like, "Dude, you
have to wait."
I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hardto-find records. Nothing was alphabetized.
If I had a dollar for every time I said that, I'd be making
money in a very weird way.
I don't have any children, but if I had a baby, I would have to name
it so I'd buy a baby naming book. Or I would invite somebody over
who had a cast on.
Thinking
 Creativity
 The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
 IQ tests demand single correct answers: requiring
convergent thinking (housed in the left parietal lobe).
 Creativity tests (how many uses can you think of for a brick)
require divergent thinking (certain areas of frontal lobe).
Five components of
Creativity (Sternberg)
 Expertise
 Well developed base of knowledge, furnishes the ideas, images, and
phrases we use as mental building blocks.
 Imaginative thinking skills
 Provide the ability to see things in novel ways, recognize patterns,
and make connections.
 A venturesome personality
 Seeks new experiences, tolerates ambiguity, and risk, preservers in
overcoming obstacles.
 Intrinsic Motivation
 Driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external
pressures.
 A Creative environment
 Sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas.
Thinking
Confirmation Bias
 tendency to search for information that confirms
one’s preconceptions
 “Ordinary people evade facts, become inconsistent,
or systematically defend themselves against the
threat of new information relevant to the issue.”
 Fixation
 inability to see a problem from a new perspective
 impediment to problem solving
 “outside-the-box” thinking (though, I hate that
cliché)
The Matchstick
Problem
 How would you
arrange six
matches to form
four equilateral
triangles?
The Matchstick
Problem
 Solution to the
matchstick
problem
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
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
 predisposes how we think
Thinking
 Functional Fixedness
 tendency to think of things
only in terms of their usual
functions
 impediment to problem solving
Functional Fixedness
“The subject is in a room with two strings tied to the
ceiling. Both strings are of equal length. The objective
is to tie the ends of the two strings together. The
problem is that while the strings are long enough to be
tied together they are short enough that one is unable to
just take hold of one string, walk over to the other
string, and tie them together. Scattered around the room
there are a number of objects. These objects include a
plate, some books, a pair of pliers, an extension cord,
and a book of matches.”
(Maier, 1931)
• How can we overcome functional fixedness?
Functional fixedness
You are visiting a strange country in which there
are just two kinds of people - truthtellers and
liars. Truthtellers always tell the truth and liars
always lie. You hail the first two people you
meet and say “Are you truthtellers or liars?” The
first person mumbles something you can’t hear.
The second says, “He says he is a truthteller. He
is a truthteller and so am I.” Can you trust the
directions that these two may give you?
(Hayes, 1981)
• The way you set up your solution to a
problem can drastically affect your ability
to solve it
• Hypothesis testing
Problem space
Hypothesis 1:
He must have
Person 2 would
Person 1 is a liar said he is a truth have been telling
teller
the truth about
him - can’t be
Hypothesis 2:
Person 1 is a
truthteller
He must have
Person 2 would
said he is a truth have been telling
teller
the truth about
him - it works!
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.
Algorithms vs. Heuristics
• Algorithms
– What types of problems are best solved by Alogrithms?
• Heuristics
– What types of problems are best solved by Heuristics?
• Problems with Heuristics:
– Representativeness heuristic
– Availability heuristic
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
Sarah loves to listen to New Age music and faithfully reads her
horoscope each day. In her spare time, she enjoys aromatherapy
and attending a local spirituality group.
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
Estimations

Which of the following are the more frequent causes
of death in the US?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Accidents or strokes?
Electrocution or asthma?
Homicide or diabetes?
Car accident or cancer of the digestive system?
Lightning or appendicitis?
Drowning or leukemia?
Which country has the larger population?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Morocco or Saudi Arabia?
Australia or Myanmar?
South Africa or Vietnam?
Libya or Sri Lanka?
Iraq or Tanzania?
Estimation Answers
Which
US?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Which
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
of the following are the more frequent causes of death in the
Accidents (55,000) or strokes (102,000)?
Electrocution (500) or asthma (920)?
Homicide (9200) or diabetes (19,000)?
Car accident (27,000) or cancer of the digestive system
(46,400)?
Lightning (52) or appendicitis (440)?
Drowning(3600) or leukemia (7100)?
country has the larger population?
Morocco (29 mill) or Saudi Arabia (20 mill)?
Australia (19 mill) or Myanmar (47 mill)?
South Africa (43mill) or Vietnam (76 mill)?
Libya (6 mill) or Sri Lanka (19mill)?
Iraq (22 mill) or Tanzania (31 mill)?
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?
 Frame price discount as “cash discount”
rather than “surcharge”
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
 Language
 our spoken, written, or gestured (signed)
words and the way we combine them to
communicate meaning
 Phoneme
 in a spoken language, the smallest
distinctive sound unit
 An example is the English phoneme /k/,
which occurs in words such as cat, kit,
school, skill.
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)
 A word can be analyzed as consisting of one
morpheme (sad) or two or more morphemes
(unluckily; compare luck, lucky, unlucky), each
morpheme usually expressing a distinct meaning.
 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 t’s
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Hindispeaking
adults
6-8
months
8-10
months
10-12
months
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 household’s
language.
12
One-word stage.
24
Two-world, telegraphic speech.
24+
Language develops rapidly into
complete sentences.
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
 the idea that language and its structures limit
and determine human knowledge or thought,
as well as thought processes such as
categorization, memory, and perception. The
term implies that people of different
languages have different thought processes.
Language Acquisition
o The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a
hypothetical module of the brain posited to
account for children's innate predisposition for
language acquisition.
o First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s,
the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity
which enables an infant to acquire and produce
language. It is component of the nativist theory of
language. This theory asserts that humans are
born with the instinct or "innate facility" for
acquiring language.
Language
 The interplay
of thought
and 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
Animal Thinking and
Language
 Is this
really
language?