9 - Language and Thought Flashcards
Christopher, the English boy
learns languages really well, knows sixteen, can speak French as good as a native speaker, learned Greek in three months, can decipher the rules to fictional languages that advanced linguistics scholars can’t. But scores below normal in intelligence tests, fails simple four-year-old level cognitive tests, can’t learn rules for games like tic-tac-toe, lives in halfway house because does not have the cognitive capacity to make decision, reason, or solve problems in a way that would allow him to live independently
language
system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to rules of grammar and convey meaning
grammar
a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages
what are the three things that distinguish human language from veret monkey yelps?
- Complex structure vs simpler signaling systems, ie humans can express infinite novel sentences and express range of ideas and concepts
- Humans use words to refer to intengible things like “unicorn” or “democracy”
- Humans use language to name, categorize, and describe thing to ourselves when we think, which influences how knowledge is organized in our brains, ex: bee doesn’t think “I’m going to fly north to find more honey to impress the queen bee!”
phonemes
the smallest units of sound that are recognizable as speech rather than as random noises
phonological rules
inidicate how phonemes can be combined to produce speech sounds
morphemes
smallest meaningful units of language
morphological rules
indicate how morphemes can be combined to form rules
content morphemes
things like cat, dog, and take
function morphemes
grammatical, like “and”, “or”, “when”
syntactical rules
indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences
deep structure
the meaning of a sentence
surface structure
how a sentence is worded
how do we comprehend deep and surface structure?
process surface, extract deep, forget surface
“la-la-la” vs “ra-ra-ra”
japanese babies with pacifiers that play “lalala”. when they lost interest the sound changed to “rarara” which renwed the babies interest, which shows that they could hear the difference.
babies and babbling
all babies babble different constants in a different order (d and t sounds are babbled before the m and n sounds are heard) shows that they aren’t just imitating sounds they hear and that babbling is a natural part of language development process
deaf babies and babbling
deaf babies babble less and relatively later than hearing babies, but they still babble the constanants in the same order. And they babble with their hands at the same time that hearing babies babble with their voices.
fast mapping
children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure
telgraphic speech
devoid of function morphemes and consist mostly of content words
in which way do two year olds show a basic understanding of language rules?
their two word sentences are grammatical, for example: “throw ball” instead of “ball throw” and “more milk” rather than “milk more”
What shows that language acquisition is not simply a matter of imitation?
children overgeneralize grammatical rules they implictly learn through speech around them and use the ules to create verbal forms they’ve never heard, lik e”runned” instead of “ran”
at what age are many of the language acquisition pocesses complete?
4 to 5 years old
chinese adoptees and english development
chinese preschoolers who are adopted by English speaking parents progress through the same sequence of linguistic milestones as do infants born into English speaking families, suggesting that these milestones reflect experience with English rather than general cognitive development.
nativist theory
language devleopment is best explained as an innate, biological capacity
LAD
language acquisition device; a collection of processes that facilitate language learning
genetic dysphasia
a sundrome characterized by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence
why is the nativist theory of language acquisition critizies?
they do not explain how language develops, only why
aphasia
difficultly in producing or comprehending language
Broca’s aphasia
understand language relatively well, but have increasing comprehsion difficulty as grammatical structures get more complex
Wernike’s aphasia
can produce grammatical speech, but tends to meaningless, have considerable difficulty comprehending language
Japanese people with Wernike’s aphasia
can comprehend kanji (pictograms) but not hiragana (symbols that represent sounds)
The right cerebral hemisphere and language
Words presented to right hemisphere healthy participants using divided visual field techniques
damage to the right hemisphere can have subtle problems with language comprehension
children who have their entire left hemisphere removed during adolescence to treat epilepsy can recover many language abilities
can other animals learn human language?
yeah, basically the answer is yes. asl and chimps
linguistic relativity hypothesis
language shapes the nature of thought
Benjamin Whorf
believed that because Inuit have so many terms for snow, the Inuit perceive and think about snow differently than do English speakers
why is Whorf criticized?
an isolated tribe in new guinea only have two terms for colour that refer to light and dark, but they have still learned shades of colour just as well as people who have more colour terms in their first language
concept
a mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli
necessary condition
something must be true of the object in order to belong in a category
family resemblance
features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member
prototype
the “best” or “most typical” member of a category
prototype theory
if your prototypical bird is a robin, then a canary would be considered a better example of a bird than a penguin
exemplar theory
we make category judgements by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category
category-specific deficit
an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category, although the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed
Adam and category specific deficits
made errors identifying living things like cherries and mice, but significantly fewer when identifying non living things like brooms and cigars. shows that even though 16 year old Adam had a stroke at 1 day old, his brain is “prewired” to organize perceptual and sensory inputs into broad-based categories.
when do category specific deficits usually happen?
when a stroke or trauma happens to areas in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex
difficulty in identifying animals
damage to the lower left temporal lobe
impairs ability to retrieve names of tools
damage to the region where the temporal lobe meets the occipital and parietal lobes
rational category theory
we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two
frequencies and probabilities… which one are humans better at?
frequencies
availability bias
items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
heuristics
fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached
algorithm
well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem
conjunction fallacy
people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event
representativeness heuristic
making a probability judgement by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object of event
framing effects
people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased/framed (ex: 70% success rate vs 30% failure rate)
sunk cost fallacy
people making decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation (ex: instead of putting their most productive players on the court longer, NBA coaches put their more expensive players on)
optimism bias
people believe that they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future compared to other people
expected utility
people should make decisions that maximize value
prospect theory
people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains
frequent format hypothesis
our minds evolved to notice how frequently things occur, not how likely they are to occur
ill defined problem
one that does not have a clear goal or well defined solution paths
well defined problem
one with clearly specified goals and clearly defined solution paths
means-ends analysis
a process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal
analogical problem solving
solve a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem
functional fixedness
the tendency to perceive the functions of objects as fixed
the “aha!” moment in the brain
accompanied by specific types of electrical patterns centred over the front part of the right temporal lobe, slightly above the right ear
reasoning
mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions
practical reasoning
figuring out what to do, or reasoning directed toward action
theoretical reasoning
reasoning directed toward arriving at a belief
belief bias
people’s judgements about whether the arguments are logically valid
syllogistic reasoning
whether a conclusion follows from two statements that are assumed to be true
illusion of explanatory depth
extreme political views are enabled, on part, by an illusion of explanatory depth: once people realize they don’t understand the relevant policy issues in as much depth as they had thought, their views moderate; one thinks they understand zippers really well until they are asked to explain it, and when they re-rate their understanding on how zippers work, they rate themselves lower
brain activity in belief-neutral
upper parietal lobe is active in belief-neutral reasoning
brain activity in belief-laden reasoning
front left temporal lobe is active in belief-neutral reasoning
