Download Thinking and Language

Name:
Thinking and Language
A.P. Psychology
Hour:
Explaining Language Development
B.F. Skinner – Operant Learning
 Association (word with
image)
 Imitation (words, syntax)
 Reinforcement (success,
smiles, hugs)
Noam Chomsky – Inborn Universal Grammar
Considers Skinner naïve
 Kids acquire untaught words fast
 Come up w sentences never heard
 Begin using morphemes in predictable order
(adding ing, using in and on)
 Overgeneralize grammatical rules (-ed)
Argued that babies learn language
the same ways bird and rats learn
to peck buttons.
Language will occur naturally Universal Grammar
 Nouns & verbs, subjects & objects, negations
& questions in all languages
 6000 languages are dialects of this universal
grammar for which we are prewired.
 Come with a language acquisition device
already in place
Cognitive Scientists – Statistical Learning and Critical Periods
 Brain works from very early to break words into syllables and understand them
o Uneye Tednay Shuns or nonsense syllable strung together (babies can find
repetition in them)
 Childhood considered a Critical Period for mastering certain parts of language
o 2nd language spoken with the accent of the 1st
o Grammar becomes difficult to change (10 year old vs. 10 year American
from Korea – the Korean will make more grammar errors)
 As age at arrival increases, % on grammar test decreases
 Window to learn open until approx. age 7
Whorf’s Linguistic Determinism (Relativity) Hypothesis
 Language determines the way we think
 Hopi have no past tense, so it is basically impossible to think of the past
 Bilingual individuals report having different sense of self
o Sometimes considered different personalities (score different) or have
different cultures (esp. values)
 Language does not necessarily determine the way we think, but it influences it
o Isolated Brazilian people (Piraha) have no numbers above 2 (only “many”)
 Language and perception – on spectrum, those that carry different name seem
more different
o New Guinea tribe with 2 words for 2 shades of yellow
Thinking without Language
Are there times when thinking occurs without language?
 Procedural memories – which way do you turn the faucet for cold water?
 Musicians, artists, mathematicians, poets, athletes, and scientists.
 Playing piano engages thinking w/o language, you can sustain your skill w/o
piano through mental practice
Mental practice
 Pianist Liu Chi Kung – imprisoned 7 years in during the Chinese Cultural Rev.
 Mark McGuire – pictured himself hitting every ball thrown at him.
 Imagining triggers the same neural networks as when you are actually performing
the action
o New prosthetics
Outcome simulation vs. Process simulation
 Outcome: 5 minutes a day scanning posted grade list, seeing an A, beaming with
joy, and feeling proud. Grades went up 2 points.
 Process: 5 minutes a day effectively studying, reading chapters, going over notes,
eliminating distractions, declining an offer to go out. Grade went up 8 points.
Animal Thinking and Language
Thinking
 Apes, pigeons can form concepts
 Insight – Wolfgang Kohler with the bananas and crates experiment
o Ape has short stick, can’t reach the fruit. Long stick outside cage can be
reached with the short stick. “Sultan” could do this in study.
 Use tools – use different tools for different tasks
 Cultural innovations – depends on your locale
 Deception – shows us understanding of others’ perceptions
o Have to think about what the other is thinking
 Self-recognition – use mirrors to wipe spots off faces
 Estimated that apes think like 2 year olds.
Language (Module 28 - 8 min)
 All creatures “communicate”
o Hunger, danger, drive to reproduce
 Explain the difference between humans and chimps in communication.
o Main difference – grammar. These rules (inborn according to Chomsky)
can’t be learned by the smartest of the apes.
 What does Jane Goodall say is the fundamental difference between humans and
animals?
o Spoken language – future plans, talk about the past, pass information to
children, explains evolution
LANGUAGE
First Building Block of Language - phonemes
Phoneme: the smallest distinctive sound unit
**to say bat, we utter the phonemes b, a, and t
**to say that, we utter the phonemes th, a, and t
-about 40 phonemes in the English language
-we have trouble pronouncing phonemes of other languages
Second Building Block of Language - morphemes
Morpheme: the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a
word (such as a prefix)
** post – means “after”
** less – means “without”
How many morphemes are in “bats”? 
How many morphemes are in “biped”? 
How many morphemes are in “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”?

Third Building Block of Language – grammar
Grammar: a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and
understand others
Broken down into two parts: semantics and syntax
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
Example: adding “-ed” to the end of a
word means that it happened in the past
Example: all adjectives come before
words, so we say white house, not
house white
40 phonemes can combine to form more than 100,000 morphemes
100,000 morphemes can combine to produce 616,500 words
616,500 words can create a relatively infinite amount of sentences
Language is complexity built out of simplicity
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Average high school graduate knows 60,000 words  3500 per year / 10 each
day
Where do we learn language? Infants under 4 years first start learning by
reading lips and discriminating speech sounds (ah from wide open lips, ee from a
mouth with corners pulled back). Their ability to comprehend speech matures
before their ability to produce words.
Babbling Stage: 4 months; the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at
first unrelated to the household language
**NOT an imitation of adult speech, contains words from all over the world never
heard before
**deaf infants will babble audibly, but also babble more with their hands
**babbling begins to resemble household language at about 10 months
(phoneme sounds outside the infant’s native tongue begin to disappear)
One-Word Stage: 12 months; the child speaks mostly in single words
**”Doggy” may mean “Look at the dog out there!”
Two-Word Stage: 24 months; the child speaks mostly two-word statements
**characterized by telegraphic speech: a child speaks like a telegram—“go
car”—using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words
Biology of Language
Name: _____________________________
Date: _______________
Hour: ________
Aphasia: impairment of language, usually caused by left
hemisphere damage to Broca’s area (impaired speaking) or
to Wernicke’s area (impaired understanding)
Broca’s area: controls
language expression; involved in
speech **BROKEN SPEECH
(often telegraphic speech)
Wernicke’s area: controls language
reception; involved in language
comprehension and expression
**MEANINGLESS WORDS
Is this caused by damage to Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area?:
”Mother is away her working her work to get her better, but when she’s looking the
two boys looking the other part. She’s working another time.” - ________________
Angular Gyrus: receives visual information and recodes it into auditory
form