LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

I Language and Communication: From Rules to Meaning

A. The Complex Structure of Human Language

1. Basic Characteristics

a. Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech

b. Phonological rules - how phonemes can be combined to produce speech

c. Morpheme - the smallest meaningful unit of language

d. Grammar - a set of rules for language

i. Morphological Rules - how morphemes can be combined to form words

ii. Syntactical Rules - how words can be combined to form phrases and sentences

2. Meaning: Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure

a. Deep Structure - the meaning of a sentence

b. Surface Structure - how a sentence is worded

B. Language Development

1. Distinguishing Speech Sounds

a. At birth, infants can distinguish all contrasting sounds in all human languages

i. This ability is lost within the first 6 months of life

b. Vocal production takes longer to develop, starting with babbling and progressing to speech sounds

2. Language Milestones

a. Between 0 and 60 months, children enjoy an explosion of abilities related to understanding and producing language

3. The Emergence of Grammatical Rules

a. Children aged 2-3 years use correct forms of speech, but children aged 4-5 years makegrammatical errors

i. These mistakes are actually the over-generalization of grammatical rules

C. Theories of Language Development

1. Behaviorist Explanations

a. Language is learned through reinforcement, shaping, extinction, and other operant conditioning principles

i. Compelling evidence suggests this is not possible

2. Nativist Explanations

a. Language is an innate, biological capacity

i. A language acquisition device (LAD) facilitates language learning

ii. Evidence from genetic dysphasia is consistent with this account

iii. Evidence from social isolation (e.g., Genie) supports this view as well

3. Interactionist Explanations

a. The interaction of innate capacities and social environment best explains language development

D. Language Development and the Brain

1. Broca's area - involved in speech production

2. Wernicke's area - involved in speech perception

3. Aphasia - difficulty in producing or comprehending language

E. Can Other Species Learn Human Language?

1. Maybe, but not with high degrees of sophistication

F. Language and Thought: How Are They Related?

1. Linguistic relativity hypothesis - language shapes the nature of thought

II. Concepts and Categories: How We Think

A. The Organization of Concepts and Category-Specific Deficits

1. Concept - a mental representation that categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli

B. Psychological Theories of Concepts and Categories

1. Family Resemblance Theory - members of a category share features in common, although not all features may be present in all members

2. Prototype Theory - categories are organized around a best or "most typical" member of a category

3. Exemplar Theory - holds that we make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category

C. Category-Specific Deficit - an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category though the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed

III. Decision Making: Rational and Otherwise

A. The Rational Ideal

1. rational choice theory - We make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

B. The Irrational Reality

1. Judging Frequencies and Probabilities

a. Humans are good at judging frequencies, poor at judging probabilities

2. Availability Bias - items that are readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently

3. Heuristics and Algorithms (rules of thumb versus steps to a solution)

C. Conjunction Fallacy - believing multiple events are more likely to occur together than any one event alone

1. representativeness heuristic - a mental shortcut that involves making a probability judgment by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event

2. framing effects - when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed)

a. Sunk-Cost Fallacy - making decisions about a current situation based on previous investments in that situation

D. Why Do We Make Decision-Making Errors?

1. Prospect Theory - people take on risk when evaluating potential losses, but avoid risk when evaluating potential gains

2. frequency format hypothesis - our minds evolved to notice how frequently things occur, how likely they are to occur

a. Humans are good at judging frequencies, poor at judging probabilities

E. Decision Making and the Brain

1. Patient "Elliot" - after having brain surgery for a tumor, unable to differentiate between important and unimportant activities

2. Research confirms that damage to prefrontal lobe impairs ability to make this distinction

a. Substance dependence may impair prefrontal cortical functions comparable with other forms of brain damage

b. Participants unable to take into account the future consequences of their behavior

c. Making a rational, reasonable choice, and how we feel about it, are two separate cognitive events

IV. Problem Solving: Working It Out

A. Means-Ends Analysis - steps to reduce the difference between the current state and a desired end-state

B. Analogical Problem Solving - solving a current problem by recourse to an analogy to a previously-solved problem

C. Creativity and Insight

1. Genius and Insight

a. Insight seems spontaneous, but is actually the steady accrual of information directed toward a solution

2. Functional Fixedness

a. Humans tend to perceive the function of objects as fixed, thereby inhibiting insight into novel uses for those objects

V. Transforming Information: How We Reach Conclusions

A. Practical, Theoretical, and Syllogistic Reasoning

1. Reasoning - mental activity that organizes information to reach conclusions

2. Practical Reasoning - reasoning directed toward action

3. Theoretical Reasoning - reasoning directed toward forming a belief

4. Belief Bias - people accept conclusions based on believability, rather than facts

5. Syllogistic Reasoning - people are fairly poor at syllogisms

B. Reasoning and the Brain

1. Research reveals that different parts of the brain are activated during different types of reasoning