Thought and Language Flashcards
hierarchical order of language
phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, sentence
phoneme
single unit of sound that changes meaning (eg dog vs log)
not all languages have the same phoenemes
morphemes
the smallest language units that carry meaning (words, suffixes, prefixes)
one morphene (dog) two morphenes (dogs)
content words
words that have meaning
semantic processing relies on processing content words
- nouns (dog, book, student)
- verbs (walk, swim, sleep, teach)
- adjectives - modifty nouns (warm, beautiful, good, kind)
- adverbs - modify verbs (well, poorly)
function words
Conjunctions and most pronouns
syntactic processing relies on processing function words
pronouns(she, he it, we, they)
prepositions (in, of, on, out, at, by)
conjunctives (and, but, or)
words such as that, this, a, the, if, to
brocas aphasia
language relevant brain areas: right handed people: left hemisphere, mostly lower edge of frontal lobe and upper edge of temporal lobe
brocas area: located near areas that control speech muscles
syntax
- refers to structure of language
- rules for ordering words
syntax is cued by word order
- subject - object - verb: jane the apple ate
- subject - verb - object: jane ate the apple
- verb - subject - object: ate jane the apple
wernickes aphasia
aphasia: the inability to produce or understand language
wernickes area: left temporal lobe- next to primary auditory cortex - translates sounds into meaning
english syntactic word order
- subject, verb, object
infants set of sounds
cooing
- 2 months
- relying on social cues (eye contact) which develops their language
reduplicated babbling
- 6-7 months - some syllable over and over
- babbling where they are starting to form words
varlegated babbling
- 11-12 months syllables with different consonants and vowels
- 10 months children can categorise sounds into meaningful and not
- babys sounds have adpated to language it hears, adults can tell what language baby is learning
infants limited set of sounds
- Anatamony of a young baby compared to a adult
- Lips and gums – little room in a babys mouth – produced much more foward
- As the primary use of mouths for babies is sucking
- This is why sounds like mm, pp, dd are produced first because that’s where the tongue and lips are devloping or being used the most
- Vocal cords are much closer in a baby that adult so they use a lot more of those voiced sounds than the unvoiced sounds
At the age of 3 start to produce those harder sounds
vocabulary burst
major increase in productive vocabulary acquistion rate after first 50 words are learned
why?
- symbolic nature of language
- control over articulation
- easier retrieval
overextension and underextension of meaning
underextension
- dog only for family dog but not other dogs
overextension
- dog refers to dog and cats
- milk for white blanket, puddle
early infant speech perception
- when babies are born they can hear sounds from across a range of languages
- newborns are able to percieve many basic phoneme contrasts (hearing the differences between sounds)
- nativist view of language
- children are biologically predisposed to learn language
- children aquire language rapidly
- children acquire language effortlessly
- children acquire language without being taught
sensitive period:
- ideal time for acquiring certain parts of language - harder afterwards
- sensitive period ends by puberty once lateralisation occurs
- the case of genie
pidgins and creoles
pidgin languages:
- invented language drawing on words and grammer from a group of languages
creoles:
- when the pidgin is acquired as a native language
- gramatically more complex
- general learning capacities
- alternative views to nativist accounts
- children have highly developed pattern recognition systems
- allow children to form language categories through picking up on regularities without resorting to innate language categories
statistical learning
- children look longer at novel words, shapes and sounds
- children can internalise patterns within 2 minutes
- social learning
- social responding to infants language attempts
- children’s vocabularies are strongly associated with the amount of language parents use with their children
- response to innate explanations to language learning
independent and interdependent cultures
independent cultures
- internal attributes most salient
- self concept seperate from group
- personal goals will take priority over group goals
interdependent cultures
- social role most salient
- self concept is part of the group
- group goals take priority
- relationships crucial
child vs situation talk
child centered talk
- adapt talk to childs level
situation centered talk
- child learns to adapt to situation
representation
- engaging in thinking
- knowledge of the world which forms the content of our thoughts
- internal monologue we have in our minds to be able to think about the world and form concepts
unit of thought: take the knowledge out there and content in our minds and form representations
two ways in which we represent thought
- propositional thought - internal statements made up of concepts
- we can also think using mental imagery
concepts and categories
prepositions are made up of concepts: concepts are mental representations of categories
categorisation is useful: allows us to know what to expect each time you encounter a member of the category
propositions
statements that express ideas
- express the relationships between concepts
propositions are made up of a subject, and whats being asserted about that subject (predicate)
deductive vs inductive reasoning
deductive reasoning - move from general principles or rules to specific instances
syllogisms (if then problems)
inductive reasoning - start with specifics and infer general principles
confirmation bias
the beliefs we hold influence how we process information
prefer to seek confirmation than to falsify hypothesis
heuristics
making judgements: drawing conclusions from expereince
shortcuts that are correct much of the time (fast thinking)
helps conserve cognitive resources
availability heuristic
- probability estimates are influences by how easy it is to retrieve information
- used to judge frequency of something happening
methods for problem solving
heuristics: shortcut methods to solving problems and making decisions
means end analysis and hill climbing
means end analysis:
work step by step to get closer to your goal as you solve the problem. monitor each step to see how much closer you are to the goal.
- participants perform a series of several moves, followed by a long pause, then another series of moves
hill climbing: change the present state of the problem so that you are one step closer to solving the problem
creativity in problem solving
thinking in a divergent way
- process of creating mutiple, unique ideas or solutions to a problem that you are trying to solve
framing a problem
- option is presented as a loss (negative) or a gain (positive). People are generally biased toward picking an option they view as a gain over one they view as a loss, even if both options lead to the same result.
identify barriers to solving problems
mental set and functional fixedness
- A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now. Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for.
is there evidence that the language that we speak influences thought?
- not enough evidence to support the strong verison of this that language determines thought
- increasing evidence that language can influence many aspects of our thought in subtle ways by making it easier to process certain cognitive operations
colour perception
language reinforces categories
- there are a group of universal focal colours that are privileged for memory
languge boundaries - russia has two names to describe the colour blue but we only have one but the colour boundary is almost indentical
Found – Russians were faster to discriminate 2 colors if they fell into two categories of “blue” than if they were in the one category
Evidence – could determine boundary for light blue and dark blue and do it faster. English showed no difference as we don’t have separate distinction as we would call all of them blue
Russians have categorical advantage
time
spatial metaphors reinforce habitual ways of thinking about time
Wednesdays lecture has been moved two days foward
- we can change this depending on the context we place people in
- friday from ego moving perspective, monday from time moving perspective
thinking style
the language one speaks can generate a specific style of thinking
western style
analytic
- focus on objects and properties
- prefernce for avoiding contradictions, determining which position is correct
eastern style
holistic
- emphasising contexts and relations between elements
- preference for dialectical (compromise) approaches and tolerance for contradictions
priming a language can activate a general cognitive style of thinking
chinese-english bilinguals
- chine version scored hgiher on dialectical thinking than english version
- language encodes different styles of thinking
early ideas of intelligence
social biases
intelligence - the ability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason effectively and to deal adaptively with the environment
samuel morton 1820s-1850s believed head size was related to intelligence. ranked races off head size.
paul broca 1824-1880 - weighed brains and compared groups. he believed the heavier brain you had the more intelligence you had
-gender biases
francis galton 1822-1911
- intelligence was hereditary
- coined the term eugenics (the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,”)
- did not find any relation to social class
alfred binet 1857-1911
- pionered intelligence testing
- stanford binet iq test
- intelligence was a psychological construct that was a general ability
implications of social biases on intelligence
social biases on our understanding of the construct of intelligence
Alpha test – given to people wanting to go into military to see who was fit for each role
Reflected cultural norms of American people so people who didn’t grow up in America or spoke English had a huge disadvantage
Used to sort out immigrants because of mental makeup become a burden to the state or produce offspring that will be troubled
Anyone who showed signs of mental disease or trouble were not allowed in
modern intelligence tests
mental age now replaced with standardised score
solution: abandon mental age - calculate iq relative to other adults scores - normal curve (IQ, weight, height, etc)
- IQ of 100 is the average of an age group
- 2/3 of people in the age group will fall between 85-115
development of sub-scales
- verbal comprehension
- working memory
- perceptual reasoning
- processing speed
flynn effect
the substantial and consistent rise in average IQ scores observed over the past century in numerous countries,
why might our scores on abstract reasoning tasks be increasing?
- High component around vocab in these tests, we are getting better with vocab ideas that the world is getting more complex so we have to engage in a higher level or reasoning and problem solving which is having an effect on the results of these scales
difference between spearman’s g and s
g - (general) intelligence charcterised by a single underlying factor. underlies performance on all intelligence subtests
s - (specific) factors specific to type of task. group of skills that correlate better together
sternbergs triarchic theory
sternberg: three components of intelligence that are better at predicting success in life
- 1. analytic, 2. creative, 3. practical
- thinks you need all of these aspects of intelligence to be knowledgeable in the real world
- analytic - assess the value of the idea
- creative - generate ideas
- practical - carry out idea
gardeners theory of mutiple intelliegences
- no such thing as a single itelligence
- many types of intelligences
- modular view of the mind/ some skills before others, can be good at some things but not others
linguistic - poetry, writing
musical - composition
logical-mathematical - logical reasoning and maths
spatial - maniuplating images, reading a map
bodily-kinesthetic - motor control
interpersonal
- being happy and getting along with others
intrapersonal
- being happy within your self
fluid vs crystalised intelligence
F - ability to learn percieve relationships, deal with new problems. stops increasing and begins to decline after adolescence
C- acquired knowledge from culture continues to increase with age
within group and between group differences
race, ethnicity and intelligence
- group means have no direct implications for individuals
- within group and between group differences might not have similar causes
evidence of an enviromental explanation for the relation between iq and ethnicity
- gap between african and european based americans is decreasing rapidly
- mean iq scores of immigrant groups increase over generations, as enviroment influences development of particular cognitive abilites
- african american children adopted into high SES families show higher iq scores than those who remain in lower SES home
sterotype threat as a partial explanation for group differences
- spencer, steele and quinn 1999
- difference in performance could be eliminated when we lowered sterotype threat by describing the test as not producing gender differences. when described as producing gender differences and stereotype threat was high women preformed worse than men did
is intelligence inherited and what is the role of the enviroment?
- need variation in a population to measure adequately
- pre and post natal enviroment (nutrition, teratogens, stimulatoin, truama, schooling) has a direct influence on intelligence
twin studies are used to estimate heritability
- resemblance between iq scores of identical twins in different enviroments
- resemlance between iq scores of identical twins vs fraternal twins
limitations of heritability studies
- challenge the idea that environment’s are as similar for MZ twins and DZ twins
- heritability estimates vary as a function of SES
