PSYC TEST 3 - Thinking and Language (M.26~27)

mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information

metacognition (beyond cognition) - cognition about cognition, or thinking about our thinking ex) students who use metacognition monitor and evaluate their learning and perform better academically concepts - mental groupings of similiar objects, events, ideas, or people --> simplifying our thinking we often form our concepts by developing a prototype - a mental image or best example of a category

algorithms - step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution heuristics - simpler thinking strategies insight - an abrupt, true-seeming, and often satisfying solution

It's our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts that we follow

It's what we use to judge the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes. We think of something that better fits. Some prototypes have social consequences.

It's something that operates when we estimate the commonality of an event based on its mental avaliability. Anything that makes info pop into mind - its vividness, recency, or distinctiveness - can make it seem commonplace. It distorts our judgments of risks.

We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear We fear what we cannot control We fear what is immediate Thanks to the avaliability heuristic, we fear what is most readily avaliable in memory (vivid images)

Rare tragic events are noteworthy and unusual, unlike much more common bad events. Knowing this, we can worry less about unlikely events and think more about improving the safety of our everyday activities. (like wearing a seat belt in a vehicle)

It's our tendency to overstimate the accurary of our knowledge and judgments. It affects life-or-death decisions

Consider the opposite

the way we present an issue that can be a powerful tool of persuasion

Saving for retirement Making moral decisions Becoming an organ donor Reducing alcohol assumption

yes

Intuition is recognition born of experience - it's implicit (unconscious) knowledge - what we've recorded in our brains but can't fully explain Intuition is usually adaptive - our fast and frugal heuristics let us intuitively assume that fuzzy-looking objects are far away, which they usually are, except on foggy mornings Intuition is huge - unconscious, automatic influences constantly affect our judgments - in making complex decisions, we sometimes benefit by letting our brain work on a problem without consciously thinking about it

the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable It's supported by a certain level of aptitude (natural ability to learn)

the ability to consider many different options and to think in novel ways

Expertise - well-developed knowledge - furnishes the ideas, images, and phrases we use as mental building blocks Imaginative thinking skills - it provide the ability to see things in novel ways, to recognize patterns, and to make connections A venturesome, determined personality - it seeks new experiences, tolerates ambiguity and risk, and perseveres in overcoming obstacles Intrinsic motivation - the equality of being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external pressures - creative people focus less on extrinsic motivators - meeting deadlines, impressing people, or making money - than on the pleasure and stimulation of the work itself A creative environment - it sparks, supprts, and refines creative ideas

Develop your expertise - follow you passion by broadening your knowledge base and becoming an expert at something Allow time for incubation - think hard on a problem, but then set it aside and come back to it later (sleep on it) Set aside time for the mind to roam freely - creativity springs from "defocused attention" Experience other cultures and ways of thinking - viewing life from a different perspective sometimes sets the creative juices flowing

Algorithm - methodical rule or procedure it guarantees a solution but requires time and effort

Heuristic - simple thinking shortcut, such as the avaliability heuristic (which estimates likelihood based on how easily events come to mind) It lets us act quickly and efficiently BUT it puts us at risk for errors

Insight - sudden Aha! reaction It provides instant realization of solution BUT it may not happen

Confirmation bias - tendency ro search for support for our own views and ignore contradictory evidence It lets us quickly recognize supporting evidence BUT it hinders recognition of contradictory evidence

Fixation - inability to view problems from a new angle It focuses thinking BUT it hinders creative problem solving

Intuition - fast, automatic feelings and thoughts It is based on our experience; huge and adaptive BUT it can lead us to overfeel and underthink

Overconfidence - overestimating the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments It allows us to be happy and to make decisions easily BUT it puts us at risk for errors

Belief perseverance - tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence, ignoring evidence that contradicts our beliefs It supports our enduring beliefs BUT it closes our mind to new ideas

Framing - wording a question or statement so that it evokes a desired response It can influence others' decisions BUT it can produce a misleading result

Creativity - ability to innovate valuable ideas It produces new insights and products BUT it may distract from structed, routine work

concept

algorithm

He will need to guard against confirmation bias (searching for support for his own views and ignoring contradictory evidence) as he seeks out opposing viewpoints. Even if he encounters new info that disproves his beliefs, belief perseverance may lead him to cling to these views anyway. It will take more compelling evidence to change his political beliefs than it took to create them.

inability to view a problem from a new perspective

avaliability

framing

Extrinsic motivation

neural networks

Cognition - all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating Metacognition - cognition about out congition, or keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes We use concepts, mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people, to simplify and order the world around us. We form most concepts around prototypes, or best examples of a category.

cognitive strategies are: algorithm - a methodical, logical rule or procedure such as a step-by-step description for evacuating a building during a fire that guarantees a solution to a problem heuristic - a simpler strategy such as running for an exit if you smell smoke that is usually speedier than an algorithm but is also more error prone insight - not a strategy-based solution, but rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem obstacles to problem solving are: confirmation bias - predisposes us to verify rather than challenge our hypotheses fixation, such as mental set - may prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution

Heuristics enable snap judgments. Using the representativeness heuristic, we judge the likelihood of events based on how well they seem to represent particular prototypes. Using the avaliability heuristic, we judge the likelihood of things based on how readily they come to mind.

Overconfidence can lead us to overstimate the accuracy of our beliefs. When a belief we have formed and explained has beed discredited, belief perseverance may cause us to cling to that belief. A remedy for belief perseverance is to consider how we might have explained an opposite result. Framing is the way an issue is posed. Subtle differences in presentation can dramatically alter our responses and nudge us toward beneficial decisions.

Smart thinkers welcome their intuitions which are usually adaptive, but also know when to override them. When making complex decisions we may benefit from gathering as mush information as possible and then taking time to let our two-track mind process it.

Creativity is the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas, correlating somewhat with aptitude, but is more than school smarts. Aptitude tests require convergent thinking, but creativity requires divergent thinking. Robert Sternberg has proposed that creativity involves expertise; imaginative thinking skills; a venturesome personality; intrinsic motivation; and a creative environment that sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas.

Researchers make inferences about other species' consciousness and intelligence based on behavior and neural activity. Evidence from studies of various species shows that many other animals use concepts, numbers, and tools and that they transmit learning from one generation to the next (cultural transmission). And, like humans, some other species show insight, self-awareness, altruism, cooperation, and grief.

Language is more than vibrating air - it is our spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phonemes - the smallest distinctive sound units in a language (alphabet) Morphemes - the smallest language units that carry meaning + few morphemes are also phonemes - the article a Grammar - a language's set of rules that enable people to communicate, it guide us in deriving meaningg from sounds (semantics) and in ordering words into sentences (syntax)

2 morphemes - cat and s 4 phonemes - c, a, t, and s

Chomsky maintained that humans are biologically predisposed to learn the grammar rules of language.

Receptive language - ability to understand what is said to and about them. Children's language development moves from simplicity to complexity. Infants start without language (in fantis means "not speaking". Yet by 4 months of age, babies can recognize differences in speech sounds and read lips. At 6 month, long before speaking, many infants recognize object names. At 7 month and beyond, they grow in their power to do what adults find difficult when listening to an unfamiliar language: to segment spoken sounds into individual words. By about 10 months old, infants' babbling has changed so that a trained ear can identify the household language. Around their 1st birthday, most children enter the one-word stage. At about 18 months, their word learning explodes from about a word per week to word per day. By 2nd birthday, most have entered the two-word stage by starting to utter two-word sentences in telegraphic speech. children not exposed to either a spoken or a signed language until age 7 will never master any language The importance of early language experiences is often evident in deaf children born to hearing-nonsigning parents recognizing such differences marks the beginning of the development of babies' receptive languge

Productive language - the ability to produce words. Long after the beginnings of receptive language, babies' productive language matures. Before nurture molds babies' speech, nature enables a wide range of possible sounds in the babbling stage, beginning around 4 months. Many of these spontaneously uttered sounds are consonant-vowel pairs formed by simply bunching the tongue in the front of mouth (da-da, na-na, ta-ta) or by opening and closing the lips (ma-ma), both of which babies do naturally for feeding.

4 - babbles many speech sounds (ah-goo) 10 - babbling resembles household language (ma-ma) 12 - one-word speech (kitty) 24 - two-word speech (get ball) 24+ - rapid development into complete sentences

Receptive language skills - ability to understand what is said to and about them - Infants normally start developing receptive language skills around 4 months of age. Productive language skills - ability to produce sounds and eventually words - Infants then, start with babbling at 4 months and beyond, they normally start building productive language skills

Some children - such as those who receive a cochler implant to enabling hearing, or those who are adopted by a family in another country - get a late start on learning a language. BUT there is a limit on how long language learning can be delayed Childhood seems to represent a critical (or "sensitive") period for mastering certain aspects of language before the language-learning window gradually closes

Our brain's critical period for language learning is in childhood, when we can absorb language structure almost effortlessly. As we move past that stage in our brain's development, our ability to learn a new language diminishes dramatically.

It's impairement of language that can be produced by damage to any of several cortical areas

Speaking words - Broca's area and the motor cortex - left frontal lobe damage --> struggle to speak words, yet could sing familiar songs and comprehend speech Hearing words - Wernicke's area and the auditory cortex - specific area of the left temporal lobe --> unable to understand others' sentences and could speck only meaningless sentences

Broca's area & Wernicke's area

These are definitely communications. But if language consists of words and the grammatical rules we use to combine them to communicate meaning, few scientists would label a dog's barking and yipping as language.

It's a strong form of Whorf's idea that is considered too extreme. It states that we cannot think about things unless we have words for those concepts or ideas (unsymbolized/wordless/imageless)

It's a weaker version of linguistic determinism that recognizes that our words influence our thinking

linguistic determinism

Mental practice uses visual imagery to mentally rehearse future behaviors, activating some of the same brain areas used during the actual behaviors. Visualizing the details of the process is more effective than visualizing only your end goal.

1 year

phonemes & morphemes & grammar

telegraphic speech

universal grammar

communicate through symbols

Phonemes - language's basic units of sound Morphemes - elementary units of meaning Grammar - the system of rules that enables us to communicate - includes semantics (rules for deriving meaning) and syntax (rules for ordering words into sentences)