2. What is communication? - the process of getting a message from one place to another - sending, interpreting and receiving messaged - verbal and nonverbal relations with others What is speech? - formal way of getting thoughts and ideas out into public What is language? - system of words and sounds through which subjects can communicate with each other

3.  Read 299 – 309 (Language) by Friday. Quiz on Friday.  This chapter covers 299 – 332 (Language and Thought)

4.  19th Century focus on the mind  Introspection = unreliable  Behaviorist focus on overt responses  incomplete picture  Empirical study of cognition – 1956 conference  Simon and Newell – problem solving  Chomsky – new model of language  Miller – memory

5.  Properties of Language  Symbolic -- spoken sounds and written words to represent objects, actions, events, and ideas.  Semantic -- meaningful  Generative -- a limited number of symbols can be combined in an infinite number of ways  Structured – there are rules

6.  Phonemes = smallest speech units  100 possible, English – about 40 used  Morphemes = smallest unit of meaning  50,000 in English, root words, prefixes, suffixes

7. Semantics = meaning of words and word combinations Objects and actions to which words refer Syntax = a system of rules for arranging words into sentences Different rules for different languages

8.  Initial vocalizations similar across languages  Crying, cooing, babbling  6 months – babbling sounds begin to resemble surrounding language  1 year – first word  similar cross-culturally – words for parents  receptive vs. expressive language

9. Table 8.2 Overview of Typical Language Development

10.  18-24 months – vocabulary spurt  fast mapping -- process by which children map a word onto an underlying concept after only one exposure. over extensions -- 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 -- when a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of objects or actions than it is meant to…using the word doll only to refer to a favorite doll.

11.  End of second year – combine words, meaningful sentences  Telegraphic speech (“give doll”)  Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)  End of third year – complex ideas, plural, past tense  Overregularization (applying grammatical words incorrectly – he “goed” home)

12.  Research findings:  Smaller vocabularies in one language, combined vocabularies average  Higher scores for middle-class bilingual subjects on cognitive flexibility, analytical reasoning, selective attention, and metalinguistic awareness  Slight disadvantage in terms of language processing speed  2nd languages more easily acquired early in life  Greater acculturation facilitates acquisition

13.  Slight disadvantage in terms of language processing speed  2nd languages more easily acquired early in life  Acculturation assists in language acquisition.

14. Figure 8.4 Age and second language learning

15.  Dolphins, sea lions, parrots, chimpanzees  Vocal apparatus issue  American Sign Language  Allen and Beatrice Gardner (1969)  Chimpanzee - Washoe  160 word vocabulary  Sue Savage-Rumbaugh  Bonobo chimpanzee - Kanzi  Symbols  Receptive language – 72% of 660 requests

16.  Behaviorist  Skinner learning of specific verbal responses  Nativist  Chomsky learning the rules of language Language Acquisition Device (LAD)  Interactionist  Cognitive, social communication, and emergentist theories

17. Figure 8.5 Interactionist theories of language acquisition

18. 12.20.10

19. 1. What is the difference between morphemes and phonemes? 2. Give an example of “fast mapping” 3. What is the difference between over and under-extension? 4. Give an example of overregulation. 5. What is the difference between nativist and behaviorist theories of language acquisition?

20. 1. What is the difference between morphemes and phonemes? – p = smallest speech unit, m = smallest unit of meaning 2. Give an example of “fast mapping” – know that a juice bottle is a juice bottle after only 1 exposure 3. What is the difference between over and under-extension? – over = all circular objects = ball, under = all circular objects = your special ball 4. Give an example of overregulation. Saying you “goed” somewhere 5. What is the difference between nativist and behaviorist theories of language acquisition? – innate versus environmental acquisition

21.  Homework – Problem solving (310 – 326); pay special attention to heuristics (what they are and the different types)

22.  Greeno (1978) – three basic classes  Problems of inducing structure -- required to discover relations among numbers, words, symbols, or ideas.  Series completion and analogy problems  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.  String problem and Anagrams Often solved through insight  Problems of transformation -- involve carrying out a sequence of transformations in order to reach a specific goal.  Hobbits and orcs problem  Water jar problem

24. 12.21.10

25. 1. Give an example of a problem that could be solved using an algorithm 2. What is a heuristic? 3. How does functional fixedness limit a person’s problem-solving ability? 4. How do people’s mental sets limit their problem-solving strategies? 5. Give an example of a heuristic that might help one solve a problem.

26.  Well defined vs. ill defined problems  Barriers to effective problem solving:  Irrelevant Information  Functional Fixedness -- tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use  Mental Set -- people persist in using problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past  Unnecessary Constraints

27. Figure 8.12 The tower of Hanoi problem

28.  Algorithms  Systematic trial-and-error  Guaranteed solution  Heuristics – do not guarantee success!  Shortcuts  No guaranteed solution Forming subgoals Working backward Searching for analogies -- involves using a solution to a previous problem to solve a current one. Changing the representation of a problem

29. Figure 8.16 Representing the bird and train problem

30.  Field dependence – relying on external frames of reference  Field independence – relying on internal frames of reference  Western cultures inspire field independence  Cultural influence based in ecological demands  Holistic vs. analytic cognitive styles -- focusing on context and relationships among elements in a field (wholes). People from Western cultures, alternatively, show an analytic cognitive style – focusing on objects and their properties rather than context (parts).

31.  Simon (1957) – theory of bounded rationality  Making Choices  Additive strategies  Elimination by aspects  Risky decision making Expected value Subjective utility Subjective probability

32. Table 8.3 Application of the additive model to choosing an apartment

33.  The availability heuristic -- estimate divorce rate by recalling number of divorces among your friends’ parents.  The representativeness heuristic -- basing the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event  The tendency to ignore base rates -- guessing that Steve is a librarian because he looks like a librarian, even though you know that salespeople greatly outnumber librarians in the population  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…

34. Figure 8.18 The conjunction fallacy

35.  The gambler’s fallacy  Overestimating the improbable  Confirmation bias and belief perseverance  The overconfidence effect  Framing

36.  Cosmides and Tooby (1996)  Unrealistic standard of rationality  Decision making evolved to handle real-world adaptive problems  Problem solving research based on contrived, artificial problems  Gigerenzer (2000)  Quick and dirty heuristics  Less than perfect but adaptive