Lecture 8: Language, Thinking, and Reasoning Flashcards
Language
Language: communication system that relies on patterns and rules of symbols
Language is arbitrary - the symbols don’t match the words
- ex. dog tells us nothing about the animals
- we learn words and what they represent
Purpose = convey information, socialize, express emotions, create art
Language Levels
Phonemes
- smallest units of sound (head, mouth & throat produce sound)
- English contain 40 - 45 phonemes
- but there are 100s of them
- don’t have any meaning - let us make different sounds
- related to the sound and pronunciation of a language
Morphemes
-smallest units of meaning
- combination of phonemes
- ex. phonemes of cat = c/a/t
- ex. morphemes of cats = cat/s
- all morphemes convey meaning = re-, -ed, -ing
- ex. play, replay, played, playing
- related to the meaning and structure of language
Syntax
- set of rules to construct sentences/ grammar
- in English: subject-verb-object: “the boy eats the apple”
- differ between languages
Extralinguistic Information
- non-verbal and context cues that add meaning to language
- ex. “I am refusing this date” could have different meanings (romantic, fruit, occupied
- our tone of voice also influences the message we are conveying
- ex. GO CLEAN YOUR ROOM or go clean your room
Dialect
Dialect
- regional differences in language
- language variation used by a group of people who share a geographic proximity or ethnic background
- ex. summerhouse is cottage, camp, chalet, bungalow
- ex. hoodie is called snuggle bunny
Language Development
Language Development
- children/ infants are very capable of learning language; they totally outshine adults
Critical Period: language development is maximized early in life
Two Opposing Views of Language Development
BF Skinner
- behaviourist approach
- children learn through operant conditioning: punishment and reward
Noam Chomsky
- language is biologically determined
- more like latent learning
- proposed language organ in brain
-language is distributed in many areas like the motor cortex, temporal lobe & frontal lobe
Language Development Stages
Prenatal
- preference for mother’s voice
- language develops before birth - babies can hear in mom’s stomach
Babbling Stage
- 6 months
- produce and repeat single syllabi
- strengthening motor control of their voices
Comprehension vs Production
- children comprehend basic language rules before being able to produce them
First Words
- 1 year to 18 months
- produce and repeat single syllabi
- holophrases: single word phrases that convey larger/ more complex meaning
- ex. “cookie” or “up”
Telegraphic Speech
- 2 years old
- simple sentences like “me up”
- over generalization
- “goed” vs “went”
- using morphemes but not correctly
Conversations
- 4 to 6 years old
- clear understanding of rules (grammar and syntax)
Cognitive Economy
Cognitive Economy
- resources (energy) allocated to thinking and decision making
- think about how to spend our brain’s resources (like at the grocery store)
- brain power
Heuristics
Heuristics
- mental shortcuts to simplify decisions
- makes it manageable
- increase thinking efficiency, saving costs to our cognitive economy
- increase survival, making sure we have enough resources to balance everyday decisions and life altering decisions
Oversimplification
- can’t always rely on heuristics - sometimes oversimplify decisions which can have consequences
Tversky & Lahneman’s Systems of Thinking
System 1: Automatic
- intuitive and unconscious, snap actions and judgements
- save cognitive economy - our brains auto-pilot
- fill in the blank for simple sentences, understand if someone is mad at you, simple math
- simple associations like Paris + France / classic conditioning
- sometimes our intuitions are correct (about people or psychologists about relationships lasting)
System 2: Analytical
- slow & systematic
- taking your time to be logical and calculated, weighing all available options
- use knowledge of biases and heuristics to help guide our analytical thinking
Representativeness Heuristic
- judgments about probability based on similarity or prototype
- make decisions based on how representative something is
- ignore base-rates (how common something is) and conditional probabilities
- this is seen in court room - the defendant is often polished so that the jury is not biased by the representativeness heuristic
Availability Heuristic
- estimate likelihood of occurrence/ something happening based on how “available” information is to us
- perceived importance of an issue is related with ease of memory retrieval
- most people say they’re more scared to fly than drive
- driving is actually more dangerous
- cows also kill more people than sharks
- we’re often shown fatal airplane crashes in the news
- because we’re always shown this, it’s more readily available in our minds
Hindsight Bias
- overestimating how well we would have predicted something after it occurred
- “hindsight is 2020” you can see perfectly after an event occurred
- “hindsight bias makes surprises vanish” things that were unexpected appear no longer surprising because you convinced yourself from the beginning
Framing
Framing: how information is present affects decisions
- ex. 1 in 5 vs 80% to lose - it’s the same odds
- most people would choose 1 in 5 but it’s the same chances!
- Advertising ex. “you’ll save $5!”
Obstacles in Problem Solving
Distraction by Irrelevant Information
- failure to focus on the important stuff
Mental Sets
- getting caught-up in a particular problem solving strategy
- stuck thinking “inside the box”
- sometimes the solutions we are used to are not working
Functional Fixedness
- difficulty perceiving an object being used for something other than what is was designed for
- overcoming this means being resourceful
Problem Solving Strategies
Trial and Error
- continue to try different solutions until problem is solved
- commonly used
- ex. restart phone, delete storage, research issue on google when phone just won’t work
Algorithm
- step by step problem solving formula
- systematic and series of steps
Heuristic
- general problem solving formula
- rule of thumb or use of schemas to solve problems
- ex. knowing coffee shops usually have wifi and you don’t have service - this generalization may be helpful
Divide and Conquer
- break down large complex problems into smaller, more manageable problems
- ex. slicing bread into 8 equal slices - you might wanna start from the middle first
- ex. breaking up math equation
Insight
- the sudden recognition of a solution to a problem
- the “A-ha!” moment
- sitting for a while then solution just comes to mind
Means-End Analysis
- choose and modifying actions in a series of smaller steps to meet a larger goal
- trying to find methods that get you to specific goal
- sometimes that include sub-goals/ by using smaller goals
- similar to divide & conquer
**Tower of Hanoi Example** - you know end goal - and have to move things around in order to meet it
