Thinking and Language

• Name a:• Bird• Sport• Board game• Movie Star• University• Super hero• Color• Philosopher

Cognition

• The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

• Concepts: mental groupings of similar objects, events, or people• Prototypes: best example of a category• Name a:• Bird• Sport• Board game• Movie Star• University• Super hero• Color• Philosopher

Solving Problems

• Algorithm: step by step procedure that guarantees a solution• Heuristic: Thinking strategy that allows quick problem solving.

Faster and more error-prone than an algorithm

• Which city has more inhabitants: San Diego or San Antonio?

• 1. Move 2 Orcs, R to L.• 2. Move 1 Orc, L to R.• 3. Move 2 Orcs, R to L.• 4. Move 1 Orc, L to R.• 5. Move 2 Hobbits, R to L.• 6. Move 1 Orc, 1 Hobbit, L to R.• 7. Move 2 Hobbits, R to L.• 8. Move 1 Orc, L to R.• 9. Move 2 Orcs, R to L.• 10. Move 1 Orc, L to R.• 11. Move 2 Orcs, R to L.

Aha! moment

• Insight: Sudden and often novel realization of the solution to problem. Not strategy based.

Obstacles to problem solving

The Three-Jugs Problem

Using jugs A, B, and C, with the capacities shown, how would you measure out the volumes indicated?

Nine dots problem

• Without lifting your pencil or re-tracing any line, draw four straight lines that connect all nine dots

Nine dots mental set

• Most people will not draw lines that extend from the square formed by the nine dots

• To solve the problem, you have to break your mental set

Confirmation bias

• People tend to search for information that confirms their preconceptions

• Someone you don’t like?• WMDs?

Imagine that you serve on the jury of an only-child solecustody case following a relatively messy divorce. Thefacts of the case are complicated by ambiguous economic,social, and emotional considerations, and you decideto base your decision entirely on the following fewobservations. To which parent would you award sole custodyof the child? Parent A, who has an average income,average health, average working hours, a reasonable rapportwith the child, and a relatively stable social life, orParent B, who has an above-average income, minorhealth problems, lots of work-related travel, a very closerelationship with the child, and an extremely active sociallife.

Which card(s) must be turned over to test the statement “if a card shows an even number on one

face, then its opposite face is red?”

Fixation

• Inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective–Mental Set–Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness

• Tendency to think of objects only in terms of their usual functions, which may be an impediment to problem solving

Sunk investment fallacy

• You and a friend just spent $10 to see a movie. About a half hour into the movie, you both realize that it’s “two thumbs down”—a really bad movie. What do you do? (and you want to obey the rules of the movie theater)

• Being put on hold…

Representativeness Heuristic• Linda is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. Shemajored in philosophy in college. As a student, she wasdeeply concerned with discrimination and other socialissues, and she participated in antinuclear demonstrations.Which statement is more likely?

a. Linda is a bank teller.b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feministmovement.

Representativeness Heuristic

• Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent particular prototypes

• A die with four green sides and two redones will be rolled several times. You can be paid 25dollars if:

RGRRR or GRGRRR

occurs. Which sequence do you think is more likely to pay off?

Availability Heuristic

• Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

• Handout

• The FBI classifies crime in the United States into twocategories—violent crimes, such as murder, rape, robbery, and

assault, and property crimes, such as burglary, larceny, or car theft. What percentage of crimes would you estimate are violent rather than property crimes? What percentage of accused felons plead insanity? What percentage are acquitted? What percentage of convictions for felony crimes are obtained through trial instead of plea bargaining?

• In 2006, there were 417,745 violent crimes and9,983,568 property crimes. Violent crimes were 12.4percent of the total of all crimes. Less than 1 percent ofall accused felons plead insanity and only a quarter ofthose are ultimately acquitted. Less than 10 percent ofconvictions for felony crimes are obtained through atrial; more than 90 percent result from plea bargaining.However, aided by the news media’s reporting, we tendto overestimate the number of violent crimes, pleas ofinsanity, and trials, because they are more available tomemory.

Anchoring Heuristic

• In an early study, researchers asked some respondents whether the percentage of African nations that are members of the United Nations was more or less than 45 percent? Others were asked whether the number was more or less than 65 percent. When all respondents were asked to estimate the actual percentage, those who had been asked the former question gave lower estimates than those asked the latter.

Overconfidence

• Tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our judgments and knowledge

• Handout

Exaggerated Fear

The opposite of having overconfidence is

having an exaggerated fear about what may

happen. Such fears may be unfounded.

The 9/11 attacks led to a decline in air travel due

to fear.

AP

/ Wide

Wo

rld P

hoto

s

Framing

• The way an issue is posed

–What is the best way to market ground beef--as 25% fat or 75% lean?

• a. You’ve decided to see a Broadway play and havebought a $75 ticket. As you enter the theater, you realize you’ve lost your ticket.

You can’t remember the seat number so you can’t prove to the management that you bought a ticket. Would you spend $75 for a new ticket?

• b. You’ve reserved a seat for a Broadway play for which the ticket price is $75. As you enter the theater to buy your ticket, you discover you’ve lost $75 from your pocket. Would you still buy the ticket, assuming you have enough cash left to do so?

Framing and business

• TVs?• Restaurants?• Internet only subscription - $59• Print only subscription - $125• Internet and print subscription - $125

– %16; 68%

Belief perseverance

• Our tendency to cling to beliefs in the face of contrary evidence– Consider the opposite

Intuition

• A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

• A man bought a horse for $60 and sold it for $70. Thenhe bought the same horse back for $80 and again sold it,for $90. How much money did he make in the horsebusiness?

• Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George.Jack is married but George is not. Is a married personlooking at an unmarried person? Is the answer yes, no, orit cannot be determined?

• Our intuition can be both helpful and harmful

Language

• Linguists estimate that 6800 languages exist in theworld today (about one dies out every two weeks).• 250 languages are spoken by more than 1 millionpeople. Eighty-three languages are spoken by 80 percent of the

world’s people. About 3500 languages are spoken by 0.2 percent of the world’s population.

•Only 600 languages have speaking populationsrobust enough to support their survival past the endof the century. Languages need at least 100,000speakers to survive the ages, reports the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific, and CulturalOrganization.• 66 percent of the world’s children are raised asbilingual speakers.• Only 6.3 percent of U.S. residents are bilingual.

Language

Language is our spoken, written, or gestured words and the way we combine them to communicate meaning.

Grammar is a system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand each other

Language Structure

Phonemes: The smallest distinct sound unit in a spoken language. For example:

bat, has three phonemes b · a · t

chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t

Language Structure

Morpheme: The smallest unit that carries a meaning. It may be a word or part of a word. For example:

Milk = milk

Pumpkin = pump . kin

Unforgettable = un · for · get · table

Semantics is the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language. also, the study of meaning

Syntax is the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.

Do you want to go to the store? vs. Store to go want to do you? White house (adjectives before nouns) vs. Casa blanca (nouns before

adjectives)

There are four phases of early speech acquisition: 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, but noises that represent every sound heard in every language

One-Word Stage From about age 1 to 2 The stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in single words

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

New language learning gets harder with age

100

90

80

70

60

50Native 3-7 8-10 11-15 17-39

Percentage correct ongrammar test

Age at school

Language

Advantages of bilingualism

• Bilinguals are better able to focus on specific, subtle aspects of a language task and ignore irrelevant information: “the cat barks”

• They more easily recognize that the names for things are arbitrary. A “cow” could have been called a “deer.”

• They are better able to follow complicated instructions• They perform better on tests of creativity and non-verbal

intelligence

A farm can produce produce. The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. The present is a good time to present the present. At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass

drum. The dove dove into the bushes. I did not object to the object. The insurance for the invalid was invalid. The bandage was wound around the wound. They were too close to the door to close it.

• There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England.

• Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

• If you have a bunch of odds & ends and get rid of all but one, what do you call it?• If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a

humanitarian eat?• Why do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have

noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

• You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

• If Dad is Pop, how come mom isn't Mop?

• Language, Coke, and Pepsi• Triangle test

Explanations of Language Development

• Operant Conditioning – Skinner• Inborn Universal Grammar – Noam Chomsky• Critical Periods – cognitive scientists

Can language influence how you think?

• English – Korean, nouns-verbs, tool use and object categorization

• English and math

• A giant inverted steel pyramid is perfectly balanced onits point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it totopple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. Howwould you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid?

• Research participants who were asked to pay attention to, and write down, their strategy and thought process did 30% worse than those who did not. Sometimes, verbalization can get in the way of insight learning.

Thinking in Images

To a large extent thinking is language-based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However,

we also think in images.

2. When we are riding our bicycle.

1. When we open the hot water tap.

We don’t think in words, when:

• D• m• K

• What’s bigger?

Do animals think?

• They can form concepts and classify objects• Insight• Tools

Wolfgang Kohler and Sultan

• Kohler believed that chimps could solve complex problems by combining simpler behaviors they had previously learned separately.

• Kohler taught Sultan the chimp how to stack boxes to obtain bananas that were over his head and how to use a stick to obtain something that was out of his reach. He taught Sultan these skills in separate situations.

Sultan’s Situation

• When Sultan was put in a situation where the bananas were still out of his reach after stacking the boxes, Sultan became frustrated. He threw the stick and kicked the wall before sitting down.

• Suddenly, he jumped up and dragged the boxes and stick under the bananas. He then climbed up the boxes and whacked the fruit down with the stick.

• This suggested to Kohler that the animals were not mindlessly using conditioned behavior, but were learning by reorganizing their perceptions of problems.

• Insight Learning

Sultan the Chimp

Do animals use language?

Allen and Beatrix Gardner: Washoe Hypothesis

• Hypothesized that Washoe could learn American Sign Language

Gardner and Gardner: Methodology

• Began to train Washoe at the age of 11 months

• Training continued for 51 months

• Washoe was treated like a deaf human child: lots of toys, routines, plenty of attention

• Washoe learned 151 signs during this period

Gardner and Gardner: Results

• Washoe learned by:• Having her hands placed into the correct

sign• Observation and imitation

• Washoe was able to use her language skills to express emotions

• Could combine words creatively: “water bird” = swan

Washoe learned to sign “toothbrush”: move the index finger horizontally back and forth across the mouth to simulate brushing

Gardner and Gardner: Results

• Washoe eventually learned nearly 250 signs

• Gardners’ hypothesis supported

Subsequent Studies on Apes

• Koko the gorilla learned 1000 signs and 2000 spoken English words

• Chimpanzees can communicate with each other in sign language

• Chimpanzees can teach signs to each other

So do apes develop language?

• Depends how you define it• They can communicate simple ideas using symbols, but come

nowhere near human beings’ use of complex grammar