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Chapter Overview  Concepts  Language and Thought

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking Cognition involves the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. Concepts help to simplify thinking through mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, and people. After placing an item in a category, memory gradually shifts it toward a category prototype. Categories boundaries begin to blur as movement from prototypes occur.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Problem Solving: Strategies  An algorithm is a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem.  A heuristic is a simpler strategy that is usually speedier than an algorithm but is also more error prone.  Insight is not a strategy-based solution, but rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Problem Solving: Obstacles  Confirmation bias predisposes us to verify rather than challenge our hypotheses.  Fixation, such as mental set, may prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images THE Aha! MOMENT A burst of right temporal lobe EEG activity (yellow area) accompanied insight solutions word problems (Jung-Beeman et al., 2004). The red dots show placement of the EEG electrodes. The light gray lines show patterns of brain activity during insight. From Mark Jung-Beeman, Northwestern University and John Kounios, Drexel Univesity

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Forming Good and Bad Decisions and Judgments  Intuition is an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning  Availability heuristics can distort judgment by estimating event likelihood based on memory availability  Overconfidence can impact decisions when confidence outweighs correctness.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Forming Good and Bad Decisions and Judgments  Belief perseverance occurs when we cling to beliefs and ignore evidence that proves these are wrong.  Framing sways decisions and judgments by influencing the way an issue is posed. It can also influence beneficial decisions. Can you think of any such decisions?

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images THE FEAR FACTOR— WHY WE FEAR THE WRONG THINGS 1. We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear. 2. We fear what we cannot control. 3. We fear what is immediate. 4. We fear what is most readily available in memory. SCARING US ONTO DEADLY HIGHWAYS In the three months after 9/11, those faulty perceptions led more Americans to travel, and some to die, by car. (Adapted from Gigerenzer, 2004.)

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Perils and Powers of Intuition  Intuition is analysis “frozen into habit”.  Intuition is implicit knowledge.  Intuition is usually adaptive, enabling quick reactions.  Learned associations surface as “gut” feelings.  Intuition is huge.  Critical thinkers are often guided by intuition.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images And so… Smart, critical thinking listens to the unseen mind, and then evaluates evidence, tests conclusions, and plans for the future.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking Creativity  Creativity is the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.  It is supported by  Aptitude or the ability to learn  Intelligence  Working memory

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking Creatively Divergent thinking Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions). Convergent thinking Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking Creatively  Robert Sternberg and his colleagues propose five ingredients of creativity.  Expertise  Imaginative thinking skills  Venturesome personality  Intrinsic motivation  Creative environment

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive Skills?  Researchers make inferences about other species’ consciousness and intelligence based on behavior.  Other animals use concepts, numbers, and tools and that they transmit learning from one generation to the next.  Other species also show insight, self-awareness, altruism, cooperation, and grief.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive Skills?  Using concepts and numbers  Several species demonstrate ability to sort (e.g., Pigeons and other birds; great apes; humans).  Displaying insight  Humans are not the only species to display insight (e.g., Chimpanzees)  Using tools and transmitting culture  Various species have displayed creative tool use (e.g., forest-dwelling chimpanzees; elephants; humans). Life on white/Alamy

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Do Other Species Share Our Cognitive Skills?  Other species display many cognitive skills  Voice-recognition is baboon troops  Mirror self-recognition in great apes and dolphins  Displays of learning, remembering, cooperation in elephants

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Language and Thought  Language  Involves our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning  Is used to transmit civilization’s knowledge from one generation to the next  Connect humans

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Language Structure  Three building blocks of spoken language  Phonemes are smallest distinctive sound units in language  Morphemes are smallest language unit than carry meaning.  Grammar is the system of rules that enables humans to communicate with one another.  Semantics: Deriving meaning from sounds  Syntax: Ordering words into sentences

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images When do we learn language?  Receptive language: Infant ability to understand what is said to them around 4 months  Production language: Infant ability to produce words begin around 10 months.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Productive Language Babbling stage Beginning at about 4 months, infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language One-word stage From about age 1 to 2, a child speaks mostly in single words Two-word stage Beginning about age 2, a child speaks mostly in two- word statements Telegraphic speech Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegramusing mostly nouns and verbs.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Explaining Language Development  Language diversity  700+ languages worldwide; structurally very different  Chomsky  Argued all languages share basic elements call a universal grammar.  Theorized humans are born with predisposition to learn grammar rules; not a built-in specific language

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Explaining Language Development  Statistical learning  Human infants display the ability to learn statistical aspects of human speech  Infant brains discern word breaks and analyze which syllables most often go together  Seven-month-olds can learn simple sentence structures (ABA pattern) Human infants come with a remarkable capacity to soak up language. But the particular language they learn will reflect their unique interactions with others. Purestock/Agefotostock

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images How Do We Learn Grammar?  Critical periods suggest childhood represents critical period for mastering certain aspects of language  People who learn a second language as adults usually speak it with the accent of their native language, and they also have difficulty mastering the new grammar.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Critical Periods NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING GETS HARDER WITH AGE Young children have a readiness to learn language. Ten years after coming to the United States, Asian immigrants took a grammar test. Those who arrived before age 8 understood American English grammar as well as native speakers did. Those who arrived later did not. (From Johnson & Newport, 1991.) A.E. Araiza/Arizona Daily Star/AP Photo

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Deafness and Language Development Late learners show less right hemisphere brain activity in areas related to sign language reading. Natively Deaf children who learn sign after age 9 do not learn sign language, master basic words, or become as fluent as native signers. Children born to hearing-nonsigning parents typically do not experience language during early years

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Deafness and Language Development Cochlear implants or not? More than 90 percent of all Deaf children are born to hearing parents who often seek cochlear implants for their children. Deaf culture advocates object to this. National Association of the Deaf argues deafness is not a disability because native signers are not linguistically disabled.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images The Brain and Language  Damage to any one of several areas of the brain’s cortex can impair language.  Today’s neuroscience has confirmed brain activity in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas during language processing.  In processing language, the brain operates by dividing its mental functions into smaller tasks.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images  Broca’s area  Wernicke’s area BRAIN ACTIVITY WHEN HEARING AND SPEAKING WORDS

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Do Other Species Have Language?  Animals display a wide range of comprehension and communication.  Velvet monkeys sound different alarms for different predators.  Chimpanzee (named Washoe) was taught sign language by the Garders.  Critics noted that ape vocabularies and sentences were simple; vocabulary gained with great difficulties.  Most psychologists agree humans alone possess language.

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Language and Thought  Whorf’s linguistic determinism hypothesis: Language determines basic ideas  Evidence from bilingual speakers suggest people think differently in different languages  Bilingual parents often switch language to express emotions  Words influence, but do not determine, thinking

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking About Colors Colors seen in same way but native language used to classify and remember them. Perceived differences expand as different names assigned. Prisma Bildagentur AG/Alamy In Papua New Guinea, Berinmo children have words for different shades of “yellow,” which might enable them to spot and recall yellow variations more quickly. Here and everywhere, “the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives,” notes psychologist Lera Boroditsky (2009).

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Language and Thought Expanding language expands ability to think Bilingual speakers use executive control over language (bilingual advantage) to inhibit attention to irrelevant information Language connects the past and the future

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Thinking in Images After learning a skill, watching the activity activates the brain’s internal stimulation of it (fMRI research of Calvo-Merino and colleagues, 2004) Mental rehearsal can aid in academic goal achievement (process stimulation)