THINKING AND

LANGUAGE
Unit 6 - Cognition
PREVIEW QUESTIONS
 What is thinking?
 What are mental images?
 What are the major types of concepts people use, and how are
they applied?
 What can we do to solve problems more efficiently?
 How do cognitive biases influence decision making?
 What cognitive processes underlie creative thinking?
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
 The branch of psychology
that explores how we
acquire knowledge about
the world
 Cognitive psychologists
investigate:
 Thinking
 Information processing
 Language
 Problem solving
Thinking Process: concepts,
mental imagery, & language
 The mental representation and
manipulation of information

 Thought processes include

reasoning, problem solving,
& decision making.
• Good problem solvers either
consciously or unconsciously
follow a series of steps
designed to identify &
evaluate potential solutions
or goal approaches.
MENTAL IMAGES Average bobsled speed = 90
mph
 A mental picture or World record = 201 mph
representation of an
object or event

 Not an actual or
photographic
representation
 Object or event is
reconstructed from
memory
 Ability to hold and
manipulate mental
images aids with
cognitive tasks
TRY THIS….MENTAL
ROTATION
Are the objects in each pair
the same or different?

Objects in pairs a and b are

the same; those in pair c
are different.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN
MENTAL IMAGERY
 Women report more vivid
images of past experiences.
 Greater use of imagery to
remember past experiences
as well
 Women tend to outperform
men in forming still images of
objects.
 Men are more likely to report
using imagery to solve
problems.
CONCEPTS: WHAT MAKES A BIRD A
BIRD?
 Mental categories used to group objects, events, and
ideas according to their common features

 Functions
 Helps bring a sense of order to the world
 Makes us better able to anticipate or predict future
events
 Helps us to respond more quickly to events
TYPES OF CONCEPTS
 Logical Concepts: clearly defined rules for determining membership (e.g., triangle)
 Natural Concepts: membership rules are poorly defined or fuzzy (e.g., game)
 Judgments based on the probability that object is a member of a particular category (Ex.
Quittage)

Prototypes
 A prototype is the BEST example or cognitive representation of something within a
certain category.

 Prototypes are used to enhance memory and recall, since you can keep a prototype of
something and then match new, similar things to the prototype in order to identify,
categorize, or store this new thing.

 EX. Most people think of a robin or cardinal, as opposed to a flamingo, when they hear the
word “bird”.
PROBLEM SOLVING: APPLYING MENTAL
STRATEGIES TO SOLVING PROBLEMS
 Insight believed to
result from
restructuring a
problem
 Insight may occur
when one:
 Sees problem from a
different perspective
 Notices new
information
 Recognizes
previously
overlooked
connections
Do Animals think? Yes!!!!
It has been observed that the manner in which chimpanzees solve problems,
such as that of retrieving bananas positioned out of reach, is not
through trial-and-error.

Instead, they were observed to proceed in a manner that was

unwaveringly purposeful.

Modern research has tended to show that the performances of Wolfgang

Köhler's chimpanzees, who could achieve spontaneous solutions to
problems without training, were by no means unique to that species, and
that apparently similar behavior can be found in animals usually thought of as
much less intelligent, if appropriate training is given.
CREATIVITY: NOT JUST FOR
THE

FEW
Thinking in ways that lead to
original, practical, and meaningful Robert Sternberg’s five
solutions or that generate new components of creativity
ideas or forms of artistic expression – Expertise
 Measuring creativity
– Imaginative thinking skills
– A venturesome personality
 Divergent thinking (type of
– Intrinsic motivation
thinking in which problem solvers
devise a number of possible – A creative environment
alternative approaches to problems
and multiple solutions – involves risk
- Brainstorming)
 Convergent thinking (use logic and
algorithms to solve problems, only 1
answer)
PROBLEM-SOLVING
STRATEGIES

Algorithms: step by step rules – guarantee a solution, but can be time consuming
 Heuristics: rules of thumb
 Backward-working heuristic: start with solution and work backward
 Means-end heuristic: evaluate current situation and compare it to the end result
 Creating sub goals: break a larger problem into smaller problems
Algorithms
HEURISTICS
a procedure that has worked in the past and is
seen as likely to work in the future.

Heuristics are "rules of thumb" or shortcuts based on past

experiences.

If the light in your room goes out, you could check the fuse box,
change the lightbulb, check the wires in the wall or lamp, check
the socket, and so on.
Because experience suggests that the probability of the light bulb
burning out is higher than the other choices, you try that first.
Heuristics take less time than algorithms, but they may
not result in a solution.
MEANS-END ANALYSIS
final goal is in mind when
setting sub-goals
★ In planning your study for finals, you
might start with math but will set a
time limit because you have exams in
three other subjects.
★ Will you need to spend the same
amount of time on each?
★ What exactly do you need to focus on?
★ Ex. Marathon – you don’t just go out
and run 15 miles on 1st day of training.
WORKING BACKWARD
Start with the goal state & work backward until you
reach the present state.

 When a company wants to know how its competitor's

product works, it will "reverse engineer" that product.
 This means beginning with the product and analyzing its
construction to see what each part does.
 The company can then begin with its own parts and
reconstruct a similar product.
MENTAL ROADBLOCKS TO PROBLEM SOLVING
 Mental Set: tendency to rely on strategies that worked in the past – blocks innovative ideas.

 Irrelevant Information: distract attention

 Functional Fixedness: tendency to perceive objects as limited to the customary functions

they serve

 People are often very limited in the ways they think about objects, concepts, and people.
 When something is thought of only in terms of its functionality, then the person is
demonstrating functional fixedness.
 This type of thinking is narrow and limited, often inhibiting the problem solving process.

Henna has a problem. She's noticed that a screw in her desk is loose and she needs to tighten it. But she doesn't have a
screwdriver. What can she do? If you're like Henna and many other people, you're probably stumped by this. How do you tighten a
screw without a screwdriver?
But wait! Henna has something in her pocket that can solve her problem. In fact, you probably have the same thing. All it takes is
a coin inserted into the groove in the head of the screw, and Henna can tighten the screw.
THE BOX-CANDLE PROBLEM AND SOLUTION TO
THE BOX CANDLE PROBLEM

Mount the candle on the wall so that it doesn’t drip wax on the floor.
 DECISION MAKING
 The selection of a course
of action from among
available alternatives

 Mental roadblocks in decision

making:
 Confirmation bias
 Representativeness
heuristic
 Availability heuristic
Bias – having preexisting positions or beliefs about events,
people, etc.

Confirmation Bias
Do you know anyone who identifies things that support some position or
opinion they have but ignore information that contradicts it?

If so, you know someone who is exhibiting the confirmation bias, which is a
tendency for a person to search for information that confirms one's
preconceptions.

For example, imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are
more creative than right-handed people.

Whenever this person encounters a person that is both left-handed and

creative, they place greater importance on this "evidence" supporting their
already existing belief.
 THE FRAMING EFFECT
The framing effect is an example of cognitive bias in which
people react to a particular choice in different ways
depending on how it is presented.

People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented

but seek risks when a negative frame is presented.
Let’s say you work for the Centers for Disease Control and there is an
outbreak of a deadly disease called “The Mojave Flu” in a town of 600
people. All 600 people in the town are expected to die if you do nothing.
Let’s say you have come up with two different programs designed to fight
to the disease:

With Program 1: 200 people in the town will be saved

With Program 2: There is a 1/3rd probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3rds
probability that no people will be saved.
 In the study, 72 percent of the subjects picked Program 1. Now consider the same
scenario worded differently:

With Program 3: 400 people in the town will die

With Program 4: There is a 1/3rd probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3rds
probability that 600 people will die.
 Now which do you pick? In the study, 78 percent of the subjects picked Program 4, even
though the net result of the second set of choices is exactly the same as the first set
(Programs 1 and 3 mean the same thing, and Programs 2 and 4 mean the same thing).
Representative Heuristic is a cognitive bias in
which an individual categorizes a situation based on a
pattern of previous experiences or beliefs about the
scenario (kind of like a stereotype).

It can be useful when trying to make a quick decision but it

can also be limiting because it leads to close-mindedness
such as in stereotypes.

"The representativeness heuristics affects many real-life judgments and decisions. For
example, jury decisions depend partly on the degree to which a defendant's actions
are representative of a particular crime category. So someone who abducts a child and
asks for ransom is more likely to be convicted of kidnapping than someone who
abducts and adult and demands no ransom. Both crimes constitute kidnapping, but
the first is a more representative example."
(Douglas A. Bernstein, Essentials of Psychology, 2011)
BELIEF PERSEVERANCE
 Holding onto a
belief even after
it’s been
discredited.
 Ex. Believing
that fad diets
work
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
Under conditions of certainty, we often use the
availability heuristic: estimating the probability of
certain events in terms of how readily they come to
mind/perceived control.

 Term first coined in 1973 by Amos Tversky & Daniel

Kahneman. They suggested that the availability heuristic
occurs unconsciously & operates under the
principle that "if you can think of it, it must be
important."
 Things that come to mind more easily are believed to be
far more common and more accurate reflections of the
People who think nothing of taking a ride in a car are
real world.
afraid to ride in an airplane because they think it is so
dangerous.

In fact, riding in an airplane is statistically much safer; we

are far less likely to be injured or die as a result of riding in
★ After seeing several television programs on shark
attacks, you start to think that such incidences are EXAMPLES
relatively common. When you go on vacation, you
refuse to swim in the ocean... WHY?

★ After seeing news reports about people losing their

jobs, you might start to believe that you are in
danger of being let go. You start lying awake in bed
each night worrying that you are about to be fired.

★ After read about lottery winners, you overestimate

your own likelihood of winning the jackpot. You
spending more money than you should each week
on lottery tickets.

★ Your mother, next door neighbor and best friend

have all been in a car accident this year. According
to the availability heuristic, you will feel that your
chances of being in an accident yourself are much
 INTUITION
 An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as
contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

 We have a 2 track mind – parallel processing – we work

consciously on 1 task while thinking unconsciously about another.
This results in creative thinking and insight.

 Intuition is adaptive – intuitive reactions enable us to react quickly.

 Intuition comes from experience. We’ve learned but we can’t fully

explain.
CHICKEN SEXERS!!!!!
LANGUAGE - PREVIEW
QUESTIONS
 What are the major components of language?
 How does language develop?
 What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis?
 Can species other than humans use language?
LANGUAGE complex communication system that involves the use of
abstract symbols to convey unlimited messages.
Human language can convey meaning about things that...
1. haven't happened yet,
2. happened in the past,
3. may never happen.
.
LANGUAGE IS AN AMAZING
GIFT
★ distinguishes humans from other species
★ essential to human cooperation
★ it is mysterious - how did it start, evolve, &
change?
★ it is central to human life
★ we take it for granted
Language has been found in EVERY society ever found.
6,000 different languages.
“Man has an instinctive tendency to speak
as we see in the babble of our young
children while no child has an instinctive
tendency to bake, brew, or
write.”
- Charles Darwin
What can studying language help us understand about
human behavior and the human mind?
Writing is not the same as spoken
language. We do not have an
instinctive tendency to write, we
learn it in school.

Descriptive Grammar - is a set of rules about

language based on how it is actually used/describes
how it is used (dictionaries, principles and patterns)
Ex. – I am older than her.

Prescriptive Grammar - A set of norms or rules

governing how a language should or should not be
used rather than describing the ways in which a
language is actually used.
Ex. – English teachers “prescribe” students a
way to speak and write/Doctors prescribe how one
should take meds.
Language is not thought.
Do we have to have language to think? No.
Can we have sophisticated cognition, cause and effect, objects, & intentions of
others w/o speech

Babies - before they have learned to speak

Animals - chimps using sign language helped to show us that they were thinking

At times, we ‘think’ without language.

Spatial relations is a great example – how is something related in space to
another object.

We use tacit (understood or implied) knowledge to understand language.

Cognitive psych has shown us that long term memory remembers the ‘gist’
rather than the exact form of words.
We don’t reproduce entire sentences we have heard. What sticks is abstract -
meaning, content, semantics
So our study of language pertains to the
human behavior & the mind.
However it will not delve deeply into:
1. Written Language
2. Proper Grammar
3. Thought

Language can definitely impact thought

though.
It can impact the perception of a person who
fumbles common grammar rules & syntax.

Language is really 3 things:

1. Words (our personal dictionary)
2. Rules
syntax- rules to assemble sentences;
morphology- rules to create words from
smaller portions
phonology- rules to combine vowels &
consonants into the smallest words
3. Interfaces (methods of communication)
Syntax: rules that refers to the way
we order words to create meaning.

"Your new please away shoes

put"
…makes us confused, whereas
“Please put away your new
shoes"
…is quite clear.

How Do We Learn Language?

Behaviorists exposed to
environment, reinforcement, &
repetition
Nativists Argue that we are
"hardwired" to learn language &
that humans are unique in that
respect.
How is this deceptive?
Research studies have shown that
the typical high school graduate
has a vocabulary of around 60,000
words.
 A rate of 1 new word every 2 hours,
starting from the age of 1. Wow.
 We have an amazing memory
(think back to our study of memory]
 STEVEN PINKER
Harvard psychology professor.
Focused on cognitive science,
linguistics (especially verbs),
conducts research & writes
‘popular science.’

In his book, "The Stuff of Thought"

cognitive scientist Steven Pinker
explores how language can help us
understand human nature.
.
COMPONENTS OF
LANGUAGE
 Phonemes: basic units
of sound
 Morphemes: smallest
units of meaning
 Syntax: rules of
grammar that determine
word ordering
 Semantics: rules about
meaning from sounds
Phoneme In a spoken language, the
s smallest distinctive sound
unit. Example: Chug has
three phonemes: ch u
g

Morpheme
s
In a language, the
smallest unit that
carries meaning. Can be
a word or part of a word
(prefix or suffix).
example: cat, walk,
un-,
Structure of
Language: process.
Multi-layered
Phonemes: smallest unit of
sound in a language. All the
letters of the alphabet are
phonemes.
In English we produce all the
unique sounds that we are able
to make by combining about
40-50 unique phonemes.
Other languages make due with
less.
Morphemes: smallest unit of meaning
in a language. Small words: cat or walk

Also: prefixes & suffixes

If we add the letter s to cat, we now have two morphemes (cat(s)),
and if we add-ing to walk, we have two morphemes (walk(ing)).

"Unbreakable" 3 morphemes:
un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"),
-break- (the root, a free morpheme), and
-able (a bound morpheme signifying "do-able").
 Grammar: system of rules used in a
language.
Semantics: the way we
understand meaning from
words by their morphemes and
from their context.

★ Adding an -s to the end of a word - referring

to more than one
★ Words can have different meanings
depending on the placement in a sentence
or on the context.

"I'm dying!"
Very different meanings
★ when said by a person who is bleeding
on the ground
★ versus an adolescent preparing for her
first middle school dance.
LANGUAGE STRUCTURE
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Milestones in Language
AGE --> MILESTONEAcquisition
To 2 months --> Cooing
2 months to 12 months --> Babbling – universal noises – household language shows up
around 10 months
Approx. 12 months --> First word ( matching a simple sound: "DA") – Holophrase – 1 word phrases
Approx. 16 months --> 2-word utterances (telegraphic speech)
2-6 years --> Add 6-10 new words a day; learn grammar. Over-extension. (same word for
many things)
Age 5 --> Overregularization: "I go-ed to the store.“
From Age 5 on --> Add words to vocabulary; learn subtleties of language.
**Other languages show the same pattern of acquisition (not just English).
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Critical period: if children are not exposed to language before a certain age,
they will be unable to acquire language. (Noam Chomsky)

 Universal grammar: all human languages have the same grammatical building
blocks, such as nouns, verbs, subjects, and objects. (Noam Chomsky)

 Language Acquisition Device: innate speech-enabling structures in the brain
that allow us to learn language. We acquire language too quickly for it to
be learned. (Noam Chomsky)

 Surface structure: learning ABCs, just the letters and layout of the words (like
shallow processing).

 Statistical learning: Babies have an ability to learn statistical aspects of

speech/discern word breaks, and analyze syllables. “hap-py-ba-by”
ACQUISITION of Language

Noam Chomsky, MIT

(Father of Modern Linguistics)

Believed language is learned by exposure to language...

but ability to speak is hardwired (nature)
He believed there is a critical period of language acquisition
if we do not learn language during that time, we will not learn
language well.

There is overwhelming evidence to support this

theory.
Eric Lenneberg - critical period hypothesis (1967) if language is not
learned before an early age – estimated at 4 to 6 years – a child’s ability to
learn any language becomes greatly compromised, or disappears altogether.

This research has been advocated for and debated against by linguistic giants
such as Noam Chomsky & Steven Pinker.
The evidence from Lenneberg & others draws extensively from widely
divergent examples of feral children, and is largely theoretical.
According to learning theory, children's vocabularies increase & their
pronunciation improves... IF PARENTS INSIST ON CLOSER & CLOSER
APPROXIMATIONS OF THE CORRECT WORD BEFORE THEY PROVIDE REINFORCEMENT
Language
Development
How many words do
you think you know
now?
Probably close
to 80,000

After age 1 you

average 13 words a
day.
 What made these Super Bowl commercials
funny?
The joke was “language acquisition” – funny/odd to see a baby talk like
a trader.
 THE BRAIN AND LANGUAGE
Receptive language: the
ability to understand
language. ***Wernicke’s
area in the brain allows you
to understand language.

Productive language: the

ability to produce language.
***Broca’s area in the brain
allows you to speak.
 CULTURE AND LANGUAGE:
DOES THE LANGUAGE WE USE DETERMINE HOW
WE THINK?

Do our words shape the way we think, or do we

have ideas first and then look for ways to articulate
them?

Linguist Benjamin Whorf believed in…linguistic determinism:

our words shape & restrict our thinking and perception.

 Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: language determines how we think and perceive reality
 Also called the Whorfian hypothesis

 Research findings:
 Language does not determine thought
 Culture and the language we use are important influences on how we think and perceive the world
IS LANGUAGE UNIQUE TO
HUMANS?
Attempts to teach apes to communicate
with humans (e.g. Koko the gorilla)
 Hanabiko "Koko" (born July 4, 1971) is a
female western lowland gorilla who is
known for having learned a large number
of hand signs from a modified version of
American Sign Language (ASL).
 Her trainer, Francine "Penny" Patterson,
reports that Koko is able to understand
more than 1,000 signs of what Patterson
calls "Gorilla Sign Language" (GSL).

 Is this language or reinforced gestures?

 Depends on how one defines
 Do people that speak more than one language
think differently depending on their language at
that time?
The bilingual person is
primed, in a way that
monolinguals are not, to
seek out and, at times
separate, the meaning
that a person is trying
to convey from the
words they are using
to do so.

The message becomes

an abstraction
embedded within the
words -- their setting.