March 4 2013 Human Language an open and symbolic communication system that has rules of grammar and allows its users to express abstract and distant ideas Words are organized by the rules of syntax and grammar Protolanguage evidence suggests complex language arose only in our species 150 250 000 years ago Complexity of the human brain and the ability to use language may have co evolved Language Development ability to understand words develops before ability to produce them babies can point their nose Language areas in left hemisphere Broca s area speech formation Wernicke s area speech understanding Stages of language development first sounds humans make other than crying First 6 months sounds made as a result of the infant s experimentation with a complex range 3 One word utterances 1 Cooing 2 Babbling of phonemes 5 6 months Children tend to acquire words from the ends of sentences first around 2 to 3 years old 4 Two word utterances 5 Sentence Phase phrases children put together start around 18 months stage when children begin speaking in fully grammatical sentences single words such as mama dada no around 12 months Sensitivity period time when a child needs to be exposed to human language to fully develop 1 12 years old Associated with period of increased neural pruning and wiring Evidence comes from case studies of those who suffered severe neglect Genie never learned to speak during sensitivity period Theories of language acquisition 1 Sociocultural theories 2 Conditioning and learning theory language is learned from the people around us many different types of environmental influences heavily reliance on imitation of family members Social Learning Theory Child directed speech exists because it is reinforced and shaped B F Skinner Limitations Little reinforcement occurs consistently for syntax and grammar rules Chomsky 1972 1986 the idea that we discover language rather than learn it Idea that language is like any other behavior and an innate biologically based capacity to acquire language 3 Nativist view of language 4 Language acquisition device Chomsky a single universal grammar underlies all human languages Translate to any language Any child can learn any language with equal ease Specific languages have different limits Nature Nurture and language learning Acquiring language involves natural abilities modified by the language learner s environment called innately guided learning Grammar is more innate and genetically influenced than vocabulary Anatomy of human language Compared to chimps humans have reduced mouth and arched tongue enlarged throat lower voice box Chimps can learn sign language and spoken requests Language Culture and Thought Whorf Sapir hypothesis Linguistic determinism hypothesis perceptions of the world paraha tribe Linguistic relativism language affects color perception Winawer 2007 language creates thought as much as thought creates language language determines our way of thinking and our language influences our thinking but does not determine it How Thinking Reasoning and Decision Making Mental representation Cognition an idea or image that stands for something visual and verbal mental processes involved in acquiring processing and storing knowledge a structure in our minds that stands for something else often Visual representation Visual imagery outcomes and creativity sec Gender differences related to testosterone Mental rotation Verbal representation visual reps created by the stimulus is no longer present successful process of imagining an object turning in 3D space usually takes 2 5 Concept a mental grouping of objects events or people Dogs 1 Concept hierarchy 2 Parallel distributed processing many networks at the same time trees leaves bark roots arrangement of related concepts in a particular way associations between different concepts activate a concept that organizes other concepts around what they all share in Category common Prototype Reasoning evidence the best fitting example of a category places to live home the process of drawing inferences or conclusions from principles and 1 Deductive reasoning specific conclusion all dogs have four legs Premise A Toto is a dog Premise B Conclusion Toto has four legs reasoning from general statements of what is known to 2 Inductive reasoning reasoning to general conclusions from specific evidence my dog is brown therefore all dogs are brown Conclusion some dogs are brown I give you a set of numbers triplet and ask you to figure out what the judgments about causations of one thing by another the tendency to selectively attend to information that supports one s Causal inferences Confirmation bias general beliefs while ignoring information or evidence that contradicts one s beliefs Wason 1960 rule is 2 4 6 You come up with another triplet as well as a rule Critical thinking reflect on one s own thinking Mental Shortcuts methods for making complex and uncertain decisions and judgments process by which one analyzes evaluates and forms ideas process that includes the ability first to think and then to Metacognitive thinking Heuristics Two Common types Availability heuristic Representativeness heuristic estimate the probability of one event based on how typical it is of another event Joe not overweight wears glasses reads poetry we assume he is an English teacher not a truck driver a device used to make decisions based on the ease with which estimates come to mind May occur due to vividness of imagery associated with an event Conjunction fallacy two events is more likely than either event alone Feminist Bank Teller error in logic that occurs when people say the combination of Motivation the urge to move toward one s goals to accomplish tasks Chapter 11 Motivation Emotion 1 Needs Food 2 Drives Hunger 3 Incentive Certain GPA humans want those things that help them survive and reproduce Evolutionary model Evolution has shaped our behaviors to help us reach these goals In most cases we are unaware that our behavior is related to our biological drives we are driven to reduce the depleted state Sweating so take clothes off when our physiological systems are out of balance or depleted Drive reduction model we preform best when arousal is neither too low nor too high the principle that moderate levels of arousal lead to optimal the process by which all organisms work to maintain physiological Homeostasis the ideal fixed setting of a particular physiological system Optimal arousal model equilibrium or balance