1. Cognition/Thinking

2. Agenda 1. Lecture: Thinking and Language (20 minutes)
2. Problem Solving, Riddle me this? (15 minutes)
3. Tower of Hanoi (10 minutes)
4. Thinking without language (10 minutes) (10-11)
5. Thinking and language (5 minutes) 25.
6. Doublespeak (15 minutes) (10-6)

3. Metacognition – Thinking about thinking
Tools We Use To Think
1. Conceptual Thinking
a. Concepts: mental groupings of similar objects* EXAMPLE: the warm-up activity you did
b. Concepts can be grouped into hierarchies * Why did you group the words they way you did?
Way of mentally organizing things
Hierarchies
Produce
Apple
Granny Smith Apples
Prototypes – best example – ex. Bird – robin; sparrow
2. Algorithms – step by step process that will yield a solution; process – recipes, locker combos
3. Short cut – what do you do when power goes out? What are options? Will each option bring up a solution?
4. Insight – AHA Moment – time when a person just gets it; light bulb

4. Concepts and Animals Animals are capable of concept information too.
Pigeons have demonstrated this by being shown a picture of a never-before-seen chair and being able to identify it by pushing a button that signified chairs.

5. We form concepts by developing Prototypes
Prototypes: the best example of a category
Ex. A robin and goose both meet our needs for the concept of bird.
If something does not fit the prototype we have difficulty classifying it.
Ex. Sometimes its hard to tell an allergy from a cold.

6. Problem Solving
We generate problem solving strategies by using strategies such as:
Algorithms: slow step by step procedure (solution guaranteed)
Heuristics: mental short-cuts (can result in incorrect solutions)
Insight: sudden realization of a solution to a problem.
Trial and Error Approach: try and see what works and what doesn’t

7. Example
Directions: Watch the following clip and pull out all of the examples of insight, heuristics, trial and error and algorithms you see.
Intro-
Commercial-
Mythbusters?-

8. Obstacles to Problem Solving
Sometimes we cannot reach the answer to a problem. We are faced with obstacles such as: 1. Confirmation Bias: ignore information that refutes our ideas. 2. Fixation: inability to look at a problem from a fresh perspective. 3. Mental set: tendency to solve problems in the same way that has previously been successful. 4. Functional Fixedness: failure to use an object in an unusual way.
Looking for info to support preconceptions
Getting stuck; unable to see problem from new perspective:
Try to solve problem same way we did last time; may not work for new problem
Object only used for specific purpose (MacGyver – opposite of functionalism fixedness); give each group a different object & have them come up with as many possibilities as they can. ex. At picnic it starts to rain and you get wet instead of covering yourself up with the picnic blanket.

9. Critical Thinking
When we solve problems we reflect and reach conclusions.
Inductive reasoning: reasoning from specific to general. (not all birds fly, but all birds have wings)
Deductive reasoning: reasoning from general to specific (all birds have wings, but not all birds fly)

10. Making Decisions and Forming Judgments
1. Representative Heuristic – judging the chances of things in terms of how well they seem to match a particular prototype
Ex. Who likes math more students or the math teacher?
2. Availability Heuristic – judging the chances of things based on their availability in our memory
Ex. Being scared of flying but not riding in a car.
3. Overconfidence bias : tendency to underestimate the extent to which our judgments are wrong.
Ex. – Coin flips – which is more likely? 1. T T T T T T 2. H T T H T H; coin toss is equal chance H or T so chance of either sequence is same, but most people would assume 2nd choice more likely
Do more words start with R or have R as the 3rd letter? (R as 3rd letter, but people can think of more words that start with R than words that have it as the third letter
Tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge & judgments
1. Fear what ancestors have prepared us for; 2. Things we cannot control ; 3. Things is immediate; 4. what is most readily available in memory
How a question is asked frames our decisions
Pre-existing beliefs may distort logic
Cling to beliefs in face of contrary evidence

11. Making decisions and forming judgments (continued)
Decisions are influenced by how question is asked (called framing)
Example: Which product would you buy? The one labeled 90% fat free or
10% fat?

12. Making decisions and forming judgments (continued)
Belief Bias: tendency for our personal beliefs to block logical thinking.
Belief Perseverance: holding onto a belief even if it has been proven wrong.
Hindsight Bias: falsely saying that you knew it all along when in fact you didn’t.

13. Creativity: thinking in a new unconventional way
Convergent Thinking – focusing on one correct solution. (ex. Answering multiple choice questions)
Divergent Thinking – coming up with multiple possibilities – more creative.

14. Language

15. Agenda
Language Notes
How does the outside world affect you? Quick Discussion.
Genie Analysis

16. Language
Is a flexible system of spoken, written, or signed symbols that enables us to communicate our thoughts and feelings.
What would we do without language!?

17. Basic Building Blocks of Language
Language is made up of basic sound units called phonemes .
They have no meaning on their own. They simply make a sound.
Morphemes are the smallest and meaningful units of speech: prefixes and suffixes
They are a combo of phonemes

18. Example Farm is made up of three phonemes – f –ar-m
Farmer is made of two morphemes. By adding “-er” to farm you have changed the meaning of farm.
How many phonemes in hat?
How many in hate?

19. Stages of Language
Babbling using phonemes = baby talk (twin video clip)
Holophrase – one word used over again (starts around 10 months) Ex. Da-da
Telegraphic speech – (around 2 years old) two word sentences. “Eat cookie!” (verb and noun)
Between 2-3 years of age children’s vocabulary grows exponentially
Overgeneralization: children apply grammar rules without making appropriate exceptions.
Ex: “I goed to the store”

20. Theories of Language Acquisition
Are we born with a biological predisposition to language?
GENIE VIDEO CLIP
Noam Chomsky says are brains are pre-wired for language.
Believed in the critical period for language acquisition

21. Universal grammar Brains prewired for grammar
Grammar switch is turned on as we exposed to language “language acquisition device (LAD)”
Overgeneralization is an example of this
B. F. Skinner believed children learn language by imitating why they see and hear.
Children learn language by associations, reinforcement, and imitation.
Babies imitate sounds and are reinforced

22. Cognitive Neuroscience
Emphasize that building neuronal connections during the first few years of life is critical for grammar
Both Chomsky and Skinner are right. Language acquisition is combination of nature v. nurture.

23. Do Animals Exhibit Language?
There is no doubt that animals communicate.
Vervet monkeys, whales and even honey bees communicate with members of their species and other species.
Animals do have ability to think (clip)
OBJECTIVE 17| Outline the arguments for and against the idea that animals and humans share the capacity for language.
Rico has a
200-word vocabulary

24. Tower of Hanoi

25. Deprivation Studies
Frederick II- attempted to raise children completely isolated from interaction to see the “natural” language of god.