Chapter 9 Language and Thought Language and Communication From Rules to Meaning a system for communicating with others using signals that are Language combined according to rules of grammar to convey meaning to produce meaningful messages a set of rules that specify how units of language can be combined Grammar Distinguishing features of human language 1 Complex Structure 2 Can refer to intangible things 3 Name categorize and describe things Phonemes smallest units of sound recognizable as speech rather than a Phonological rules indicate how phonemes can be combined to produce random noise speech sounds words Morphemes Morphological rules smallest meaningful units of language indicate how morphemes can be combined to form o Content morphemes o Function morphemes refer to things and events serve grammatical functions indicate how words can be combined to form phrases and Syntactical rules sentences Surface structure Deep structure 10 12 months babble 1st words 18th months about 50 words meaning of a sentence how a sentence is worded children map a word onto an underlying concept after only a devoid of function morphemes and sists mostly of Telegraphic speech Fast mapping single exposure content words Nativist theory capacity Language acquisitions device LAD language learning Genetic dysphasia grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence a syndrome characterized by an inability to learn the language developmen is best explained as innate biological a collection of processes that facilitate Language Development and the Brain Aphasia Broca s area left frontal cortex difficulty in producing or comprehending language o Understand language difficulty as grammar gets complex o Main difficulty speech production o Function morphemes and but missing grammar impaired Wernicke s area left temporal cortex o Language comprehension o Meaningless gramattical speech Limits to ape learning 1 100s of words vs 10 000 2 Concrete objects and simple actions 3 Complexity of grammar Language and Thought How are they related Linguistic relativity hypothesis language shapes the nature of thought Concepts and Categories How we think Concept Necessary condition something that must be true of the object in order for it mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of something that if its true of the object proves ist related objects events or other stimuli to belong to the category Sufficient condition belongs to the category Family resemblance members but may not be possessed by every member with stored memories or other instances of the category particular category although the ability to recognize objects outside of the category is undisturbed features that appear to be characteristic of category best or most typical member off a category inability to recognize objects that belong to a we make category judgments by comparing a new instance Prototype Exemplar theory Category specific deficit Decision Making Rational and Otherwise Rational choice theory Availability bias items that are more readily available in memory are judged Heuristics fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision making Algorithm well defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen judging the value of the outcome and then multiplying the two as having occurred more frequently but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached solution to a problem than either individual event an object or event to a prototype of the object or even Framing effects depending on how the problem is phrased or framed Sunk cost fallacy what they have previously invested in the situation people give different answers to the same problem people make decisions about a current situation based on Representativeness heuristic making a probability judgment by comparing Conjunction fallacy people think 2 events are more likely to occur together people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential Prospect theory losses and avoid risks when evaluating gains Frequency format hypothesis things occur not how likely they are to occur Certainty effect people give great weight to outcomes that are a sure thing our minds evolved to notice how frequently Problem Solving Working It Out 2 major types of problems ill defined problem solution paths 2 well defined problem defined solution paths 1 one that doesn t have a clear goal or well defined one with clearly specified goals and clearly means end analysis the differences between the current situation and the desired goal process of searching for the means or steps to reduce 1 Analyze goal state 2 Analyze current state 3 List differences between the 2 4 Reduce differences by Direct means intermediate steps problem procedure that solves problems without Generating a subgoal intermediate steps on the way to solving the Finding a similar situation that has a known solution Analogical problem solving with a known solution and applying that to the current problem Functional fixtures the tendency to perceive the functions of objects as fixed solve a problem by finding a similar problem Transforming Information How We Reach Conclusions Reasoning Practical reasoning Theoretical reasoning discursive reasoning figuring out what to do or reasoning directed towards a mental activity that consists of organizing information or beliefs into a series of steps in order to reach conclusions and action arriving at a belief people s judgments about whether to accept conclusions depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the arguments are logically valid Syllogistic reasoning are assumed to be true whether a conclusion follows from 2 statements that reasoning directed toward Belief bias
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