1. Turning Thoughts Into Words
When psychology first emerged as an independent science, the focus was on the mind, but introspective methods yielded unreliable results.
The behaviorist focus on overt responses was empirically more sound, yet theorists argued that it provided an incomplete picture of human functioning.
Renegade theorists continued to study cognition, the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

2. Dictionary Image
Language is defined as consisting of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages.
Language is symbolic, that is, people use spoken sounds and written words to represent objects, actions, events, and ideas.
It is semantic, or meaningful.
It is generative, that is, a limited number of symbols can be combined in an infinite number of ways to generate novel messages.It is structured; there are rules that govern arrangement of words into phrases and sentences.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

3. Sentence: Phrase: Word: Morpheme: Phoneme:
The strangers talked to the players
Phrase:
The strangers
Word:
strangers
Morpheme:
strange
Basic sounds are combined into units with meaning, which are combined into words, which are combined into phrases, which are combined into sentences.
Phonemes are the smallest units of speech. Research indicates that there are about 100 possible phonemes, but most languages use between 20-80, English uses about 40.
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language, consisting of root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
Semantics refer to the meaning of words and word combinations. Learning semantics involves learning the variety of objects and actions to which words refer.Syntax is a system of rules for arranging words into sentences. Different languages have different rules. (Verb or subject first in a sentence?)
Phoneme:
s t r e y n j
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

4. Infant vocalizations are initially similar across languages, involving all phonemes. Infants cry, coo, and make repetitive babbling vocalizations of all phonemes.
By the age of 6 months, the babbling sounds being to resemble those of the infants’ surrounding language.
By the time an infant is 12 months of age, the first word is typically spoken, usually dada, mama, papa, etc. This is similar across cultures.
While few words are spoken (expressive language) at this stage, research indicates that very young children may actually understand (receptive language) more language than they can produce.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

5. The Vocabulary Spurt Number of Words in Vocabulary 20 40 60 80 100 12020 40 60 80
100
120
160
180
140 14 15 17 16 18 19 21 22 23 24
Age (Months)
Child A
Child B
Child C
At about the age of months, the previously very slow acquisition of new words suddenly spurts. This proceeds at a dizzying pace, by the first grade the average child has a vocabulary of approx. 10,000 words, by the 5th grade, 40,000. Some 2-year-olds learn as many as 20 new words a week.
Fast mapping is the process by which children map a word onto an underlying concept after only one exposure. Toddlers often make errors in using new words. Overextensions occur when a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a wider set of objects or actions than it is meant to…using the word ball for anything round.
Underextensions occur when a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of objects or actions than it is meant to.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

6. Language Development in Children
By the end of the second year, children begin combining words to produce meaningful sentences. These sentences are characterized as telegraphic, because they resemble telegrams, consisting mainly of content words, with articles, prepositions, and other less critical words omitted.
By the end of the third year, children can express complex ideas; however, they continue to make mistakes such as overregularizing - generalizing grammatical rules incorrectly to irregular cases where they do not apply…”he goed home,” for example.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

7. Research findings are summarized on this slide.
Does learning two languages simultaneously cause problems? There is little empirical evidence that learning two languages has a negative effect on language development.
Research findings are summarized on this slide.
Acculturation is the degree to which a person is socially and psychologically integrated into a new culture.
New research suggests that when middle-class bilingual subjects who are fluent in both languages are studied, they tend to score somewhat higher than monolingual subjects on measures of cognitive flexibility, analytical reasoning, selective attention, and metalinguistic awareness.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

8. Researchers have attempted to teach language to a variety of animals, but the most success has been shown with chimpanzees.
One of the biggest problems in teaching human language to non-human animals is that the vocal apparatus is not the same. Researchers, therefore, began to use ASL with chimpanzees.
The Gardners were successful at teaching a chimpanzee, Washoe, to use ASL. In fact, Washoe developed a vocabulary of about 160 words, combining them into simple sentences, but showing little evidence of mastering the rules of language.
Investigators conclude that the neurological substrates underlying language may also be present in chimpanzees.Still, chimps by no means approach the language facility of a human toddler, suggesting an evolutionary basis for human language development.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

9. Behaviorist Nativist Interactionist
According to Skinner and the behaviorists, children acquire language through conditioning and imitation.
Nativist theorists, led by Noam Chomsky, assert that humans have an innate capacity to learn the rules of language, an LAD, which facilitates language development.
Interactionist theories hold that biology and experience both make important contributions. Two prominent interactionist theories are the cognitive and social communication theories.
Cognitive theory asserts that language development is an important aspect of more general cognitive development, depending, like all development, on both maturation and experience.Social communication theory holds that interpersonal communication has functional value and emphasizes the social context in which language evolves.
Emergentist theories hold that neural circuits supporting language are not prewired, but rather emerge gradually in response to learning experiences via incremental changes in connectionist networks.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

10. Linguistic relativity is the hypothesis that language determines the nature of thought.
Researcher Benjamin Lee Whorf maintained that Eskimos have many words for snow compared with English, and that because of this difference Eskimos actually perceive snow differently. Although there are issues raised with the testing methods, the subject is a matter of debate.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

11. In 1978, Jim Greeno proposed that there are 3 basic types of problems:
Problems of inducing structure – where people are required to discover relations among numbers, words, symbols, or ideas.
Problems of arrangement – where people arrange the parts of a problem in a way that satisfies some criterion. These types of problems are often solved by insight, a sudden discovery of the correct solution following incorrect attempts based primarily on trial and error.
Lastly, problems of transformation – involve carrying out a sequence of transformations in order to reach a specific goal.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

12. [Click to see the solution.]
Two strings hang from the ceiling but are too far apart to allow a person to hold one and walk to the other. On the table are a book of matches, a screwdriver, and a few pieces of cotton. How could the strings be tied together?
[Click to see the solution.]
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

13. 100 Cups
127 Cups
21 Cups
3 Cups
Suppose that you have a 21-cup jar, a 127-cup jar, and a 3-cup jar. Drawing and discarding as much water as you like, you need to measure out exactly 100 cups of water. How can this be done?
[Click to see the solution.]
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

14. Common barriers to problem solving include getting bogged down in irrelevant information; functional fixedness, which is the tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use; mental set, which exists when people persist in using problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past; and assuming unnecessary constraints on the problem, as in the matchstick problem depicted on the following slides.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

15. Algorithms and heuristics can be used as problem-solving strategies.
An algorithm is a methodical, step-by-step procedure for trying all possible alternatives in searching for a solution to a problem, which guarantees a solution.
Heuristics are guiding principles or “rules of thumb” used in solving problems - they don’t guarantee success.
The matchstick problem shown here is an example of how heuristics can be used to solve a problem. You must move two matches to form four equal squares.
Algorithms in this case are inefficient, as there are too many possible rearrangements of the matchsticks to test each one. Instead, unlikely alternatives can be discarded in order to find a more likely solution.
[Click to see solution]
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

16. Sub Goal 1 Sub Goal 2 Sub Goal 3 A B C 1 2 3
Formulating subgoals allows one to solve part of the problem, therefore moving toward success.
In this problem, you must move the rings from peg A to peg C. You can move only the top ring on a peg and can’t place a larger ring above a smaller one.
Formulating subgoals is a useful strategy for completing this problem. Think of it this way - your first goal is to move ring 3, the biggest ring, onto peg C. Your second goal is to move ring two to peg B, and so on.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

17. Hill-climbing Heuristic Working Backward Searching for Analogies
Hill-climbing heuristic entails selecting the alternative at each choice point that appears to lead most directly to one’s goal. The name for this heuristic derives from the notion that if you need to climb a hill with many choice points along the pathway (and limited ability to see ahead), one simple strategy would be to always choose the path with the steepest upward slope. The hill-climbing heuristic is a logical strategy that works much of the time, but it can also backfire. Sometimes the optimal solution to a problem involves an indirect pathway or even moving backward, away from one’s goal.
Working backward works well for a problem that has a specified end point.
Searching for analogies involves using a solution to a previous problem to solve a current one.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

18. Decision making involves evaluating alternatives and making choices among them.
Simon’s theory of bounded rationality holds that human decision making strategies are simplistic and often yield irrational results.
Additive decision models are used to make choices by rating the attributes of each alternative and selecting the alternative with most desirable attributes.
Elimination by aspects involves making choices by gradually eliminating unattractive alternatives.
Research shows that people tend to use additive strategies when decisions involve relatively few options that need to be evaluated on only a few attributes, but shift to elimination by aspects when more options and factors are added to a decision making task.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

19. Emotional fluctuations
Uncertainty effect
Intuitive Decisions Versus Careful Deliberation
Emotion influences decision making.
If they can avoid it, people prefer to not have to grapple with uncertainty.
Researchers have argued that unconscious, intuitive thought processes sometimes lead to better decisions. Why? Primarily because of the limited capacity of conscious thought.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

20. Risky decision making involves making choices under conditions of uncertainty.
Expected value involves what you stand to gain - subjective utility and subjective probability help explain why people engage in activities that violate expected value.
Subjective utility represents what an outcome is personally worth to an individual, such as insurance and sense of security.
Subjective probability involves personal estimates of probabilities, which are often quite inaccurate.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

21. Words beginning with the letter K
Which is more frequent?
Words beginning with the letter K
Words with K in the third position
Heuristics are mental shortcuts that people use when dealing with probabilities.
The availability heuristic involves basing the estimated probability of an event on how easily relevant instances come to mind - for example, estimating divorce rate by recalling number of divorces among your friends’ parents.
Research by Tversky and Kahneman supports the hypothesis that examples that come to mind more readily, such as words beginning with the letter K, are perceived to be more frequent than examples that may be forgotten, such as words with K in the third position.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

22. Which is more likely? They are equally likely
Which of the two scenarios on the screen seems more likely?
[Click to see answer]
The representativeness heuristic involves basing the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event.
You may have guessed the answer is the bottom row, as it seems to be more random than the top row. However, the probability is exactly the same.
They are equally likely
½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ = 1/64
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

23. How would subjects respond?
Most people say he is a lawyer
Most people say he is an engineer
A man has been randomly selected from a sample of 100 people, made up of 70 lawyers and 30 engineers. He is shy, cautious, and precise. He shows little interest in politics or sports, and he spends most of his free time on his favorite hobbies: astronomy, building computers, and solving mathematical puzzles. Do you think he is a lawyer or an engineer?
Influenced by the representativeness heuristic, most subjects guess that Mort is an engineer because he resembles their prototype of an engineer. In reality, this is not a very wise guess, because it ignores the fact that lawyers outnumber engineers in the sample by a wide margin of 70 to 30.
In estimating probabilities, people often ignore information on base rates—that is, they don’t consider the initial probability of an event.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

24. How would subjects respond?
Most people say she is a social worker
Most people say she is a social worker who’s active in the feminist movement
If you’re told that someone is young, bright, outspoken, and deeply concerned about social justice, participating in antinuclear demonstrations. Do you think it’s more likely that she’s a social worker, or a social worker that’s active in the feminist movement?
[Click to see answer]
The conjunction fallacy occurs when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone.
Most people respond that she is a social worker who’s active in the feminist movement, even though the probability of being in that subcategory is less likely than that of being in the broader category.
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

25. The gambler’s fallacy is the belief that the odds of a chance event increase if the event hasn’t occurred recently. For example, if a slot machine has not made a payout in some time, playing on it will yield better results (more money).
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

26. Which has a higher mortality rate?
Asthma
Tornados
Which do you think has a higher mortality rate, asthma or tornados?
[Click to see answer]
Overestimating the improbable is related to the availability heuristic - most people think that dramatic, vivid acts are more likely to occur than more commonplace ones. Due to media coverage and other factors, people tend to overestimate the likelihood of rare events.
Asthma = 2,000
Tornados = 25
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making

27. Leda Cosmides John Tooby
While research shows that human decision making is replete with bias and error, evolutionary psychologists argue that this is due to the laboratory tasks used to measure it. They argue that traditional decision research has imposed an unrealistic standard in that questions are asked in ways that have nothing to do with the adaptive problems that humans have evolved to solve.
Cosmides and Tooby argue that human decision making emerged to solve adaptive problems such as finding food, shelter, and mates and dealing with allies and enemies.
Consistent with this theory, many reasoning errors disappear when problems are presented in ways that resemble the type of input humans would have processed in ancient times.
Leda Cosmides
John Tooby
Turning Thoughts Into Words
Problem Solving
Decision Making