Chapter 8 Cognition and Language

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Chapter 8Cognition and Language
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Cognition and Language

• Cognition refers to thinking, gaining knowledge,
  and dealing with knowledge.
• Language is intimately related to the activities
  of cognition. It is a system of arbitrary symbols
  that can be combined to create an infinite number
  of meaningful statements.

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Module 8.1

• Thinking and Mental Processes

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Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive psychologists study how people think,
  acquire knowledge, what they know, what they
  imagine and how they solve problems.
• Cognitive psychology uses a variety of methods to
  measure mental processes and test theories about
  what we know and how we know it.

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Categorization

• The formation of categories or concepts is one of
  the primary ways that we organize information
  about our world.
• In general we categorize people, objects or
  events together when they have important
  qualities in common.
• There are a number of ways to categorize.

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Categorization

• Prototypes
• A prototype is a familiar or typical example of a
  category.
• By using prototypes, we decide whether or not an
  object belongs in a category by determining how
  well it resembles the prototypical members of the
  category

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Categorization

• Prototypes
• We use ROSE as the prototypical flower.
• Daisy and tulip resemble it closely enough that
  you would quickly agree that they belong in the
  same category.
• What about the corpse flower which has a
  blossom that is not colorful and a terrible
  fragrance? Although you would also classify it as
  a flower, you would pause because it doesnt
  resemble the prototype in some important ways.

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Categorization

• Prototypes
• The prototype approach suggests that membership
  is a category may be a matter of degrees, not a
  yes-or-no question.
• Prototypes are harder to apply to compound
  categories.
• We can discuss a category without having an
  existing example of its members.
• Try to think of a prototypical rare insect.
• Do we require a prototype to discuss or think
  about extinct amphibians?

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(a)
(b)

• Figure 8.1
• (a) A much-abridged chart of the current
  scientific classification of the animal kingdom.
  (b) An alleged listing from an ancient Chinese
  encyclopediaactually the product of someones
  imagination (Rosch, 1978). The point is that some
  methods of categorizing are better than others.

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Categorization

• Cross-Cultural Studies of Concepts
• We tend to assume that everyone in the world
  forms categories the same way, but this is not
  correct.
• Words for colors vary among world languages.
• People probably see colors the same way, but we
  dont know if red in one language is the same
  red as in English. It could be a variation of
  red (orange-red.)
• The Dani people of New Zealand have no words for
  colors at all just light and dark.

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• Figure 8.2
• Elizabeth Rosch Heider asked people to look at a
  color sample, such as one of these, remember it
  for 30 seconds, and then pick it out from an
  array of 160 choices. Her hypothesis was that
  people would remember more accurately the focal
  colors than the boundary or internominal colors.

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Categorization

• Conceptual networks
• Thinking about something usually means relating
  it to a network of related concepts.
• Its difficult to think about something by
  itself.
• We have a hierarchy in mind of categories and
  subcategories.
• The upper levels of the hierarchy are the more
  common, broadly shared characteristics.
• The lower levels are the more distinctive or
  special characteristics.
• This simplifies the process of classifying.

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CONCEPT CHECK

• Which question takes longer to answer
• Do astronauts travel in spaceships?
• Do astronauts sometimes get traffic tickets?

The first one is a more distinct feature and
should be easier to answer (although both are
true.)
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Categorization

• Conceptual networks
• When you hear about one concept, the other
  concepts that you associate with it are also
  primed or activated.
• This process is called spreading activation.
• If you hear the word car you think of drive
  or road. What do you think of when you hear the
  word school?

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• Figure 8.4
• According to one explanation, the word Armstrong
  and the ideas astronaut, first person on the
  moon, and famous sayings all activate the linked
  saying One small step for a man . . . Even the
  word Louis contributes because both Louis
  Armstrong and Neil Armstrong were famous people.

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Attention

• Preattentive and attentive processes
• It is generally true that a feature or object
  that is unusual or different will get your
  attention quickly, while one that is surrounded
  by similar objects will require a long and
  patient search.
• Finding an unusual feature or figure relies on a
  preattentive process, a procedure for extracting
  information automatically or simultaneously
  across a large portion of the visual field.
• Finding a typical feature or figure requires an
  attentive process, a procedure that considers
  only one part of the visual field at a time.

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• Figure 8.5
• Demonstration of preattentive processes Find the
  vertical line in each part. Most people find it
  about equally fast in both parts.

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• Figure 8.6
• Demonstration of attentive processes Find the
  pentagon pointing down in each part. Most people
  take longer to find it in part b.

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Attention

• Preattentive and attentive processes
• The Stroop effect is another example of the
  difference between preattentive and attentive
  processes.
• Although it is difficult to explain, it seems
  that reading for most of us is an automatic and
  preattentive process.
• Being asked to refrain from reading and name the
  colors instead makes substantive demands on
  attention.

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• Figure 8.7
• Read (left to right) the color of the ink in each
  part. Try to ignore the words themselves. Your
  difficulty on the lowest part illustrates the
  Stroop effect.

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Attention

• Shifting attention
• Many routine tasks that we perform require little
  attention.
• When we intentionally shift our attention to a
  particular stimulus, we often lose attention to
  everything else.
• Negative priming occurs when we attend to one
  thing and deliberately ignore another. We may
  briefly find it hard to identify the previously
  ignored stimulus.

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Attention

• Shifting attention
• A related effect is the attentional blink.
• During a brief time after perceiving one
  stimulus, it is difficult to attend to something
  else.
• Effects such as these are of crucial importance
  in both the trivial activity of playing a video
  game, and potentially life-and-death situations
  such as flying an airplane or operating other
  complex machinery.

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• FIGURE 8.9
• Each gauge represents a measurement of a
  different variable in a machine, such as an
  airplane. The top row shows one way of presenting
  the information. The operator must check each
  gauge one at a time to find out whether the
  reading is within the safe range for that
  variable. The bottom row shows the information
  represented in a way that is easier to read. The
  safe range for each variable is rotated to the
  same visual position. At a glance the operator
  can detect any reading outside the safe zone.

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Mental Imagery

• Sometimes people will report that they have no
  trouble creating a mental picture of an object or
  location, but still they cannot answer questions
  about it correctly when those questions are based
  on the mental image.
• Our mental images are frequently wrong in many of
  their details.

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Mental Imagery

• Which city is farther north, Seattle, WA or
  Montreal, in the province of Quebec, Canada?

Seattle is farther north, but our cognitive maps
are biased by this heuristic - Canada is north
of the US, therefore all its cities are north of
all of ours.
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• Figure 8.12
• Logical versus actual location of Reno and Los
  Angeles. Most people imagine that Los Angeles is
  farther west because California is west of Nevada.

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Mental Imagery

• Cognitive Maps
• A mental image of a spatial arrangement is called
  a cognitive map.
• Cognitive maps (at least versions that are drawn
  by research subjects) tend to exhibit interesting
  patterns of error.
• Cognitive maps highlight some details, distort
  some, and omit some details altogether.

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Mental Processes

• Many of these findings we have described are
  based on research involving self-report of
  subjects concerning their mental processes.
• Remember that conclusions based on such findings
  are tentative.
• We strengthen them by performing many studies,
  using different methods, and looking for
  consistent results.

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Module 8.2

• Problem-solving, Expertise, and Error

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Expertise

• People vary in their performance on
  problem-solving and decision-making tasks.
• Those whose abilities are particularly advanced
  we refer to as experts. Expert performance goes
  a step beyond what is typically expected in
  completion of a task.

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Expertise

• Practice effects
• Our first inclination is to attribute expert
  abilities to special, inborn talents.
• Studies show that expert abilities are most often
  the result of practice.
• Those who show advanced abilities in an activity
  usually begin learning it at a younger age and
  spend more time in concentrated practice.
• The rule-of-thumb is that developing expertise
  takes about 10 years of concentrated practice.

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Expertise

• Expert Pattern Recognition
• Experts are especially good at looking at
  patterns and recognizing important features
  quickly.
• This talent is most evident when we consider a
  demanding visuospatial game such as chess.
• It is true however that in many other activities,
  from bird watching to reading PET scans, that
  pattern recognition is a key skill possessed by
  experts.

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Problem-Solving

• The 4 phases of problem-solving
• Understanding the problem
• Generating one or more hypotheses
• Testing the hypotheses
• Checking the result

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• Figure 8.15
• The four steps to solving a problem.

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Problem-Solving

• Algorithms
• When a problem is well defined, we can apply an
  algorithm to solve it.
• An algorithm is a mechanical, repetitive,
  step-by-step procedure for arriving at the
  solution to a problem.
• Mathematics is a field of knowledge made up
  primarily of algorithmic problem solving.
• The steps for programming your VCR also comprise
  an algorithm. Do you know it?

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Problem-Solving

• Heuristics
• Many problems that we face are too ill defined
  for the use of any algorithm.
• An example of such a problem would be What
  career would be best for me?
• For less well defined problems we apply
  heuristics. Heuristics are strategies for
  simplifying a problem or guiding an
  investigation.

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Problem-Solving

• Insight
• Using insight to solve a problem differs from
  using algorithms.
• Most people can look at a mathematical problem
  and accurately gauge whether or not they would be
  able to solve it.
• Insight strategies are used in cases where we
  have no idea whether or not we would be able to
  solve the problem.
• Insight solutions often seem to be arrived at
  suddenly.

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Problem-Solving

• Insight
• It is probably the case that we work on insight
  problems without realizing that we are doing so.
• We are making use of the information that we have
  already stored related to the problem.
• Even when subjects in insight problem-solving
  studies claim to have no confidence in their
  abilities to arrive at the solution, they do so a
  majority of the time.

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• Figure 8.19
• (a) Draw the trajectory of water as it flows out
  of a coiled garden hose. (b) Draw the trajectory
  of a bullet as it leaves a coiled gun barrel.

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• Figure 8.18
• What is wrong with this perpetual motion machine?

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Problem-Solving

• The Characteristics of Creativity
• Creativity is not the same as expertise.
• Creative individuals tend to be less consistent
  in the quality of their output that are experts.
• You are probably aware of this variation in the
  collected work of your favorite musician, for
  example.

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Problem-Solving

• The Characteristics of Creativity
• Here are some of the characteristics held in
  common by creative individuals
• Nonconformity
• Risk-taking
• Willingness to tolerate rejection
• Openness to new experience
• At least a moderate level of intelligence
• It is important to keep in mind though that this
  creativity is usually restricted to one area or a
  related set of areas that the creative person
  knows well.

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Problem-Solving

• The Characteristics of Creativity
• Some other similarities among creative people,
  based on the work of Howard Gardner
• An atmosphere of moderate tension, and a sense
  that change was necessary.
• Sufficient background to feel confident in
  knowledge of the area and its problems.
• At least one mentor or friend who provided advice
  or encouragement.
• A high level of commitment to the work,
  sacrificing any possibility of a well-rounded
  life.

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• Critical thinking involves using our considerable
  ability to evaluate our own thinking (called
  metacognition) to carefully evaluate for and
  against any conclusion.
• All thinkers make these errors, and monitoring
  our cognition can be a demanding activity, but
  the clarity and knowledge that we can achieve by
  doing so makes the effort well worth it.

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• Overconfidence is our belief that our answers are
  more accurate than they actually are.
• We tend to be overconfident about our answers to
  difficult questions.
• We are underconfident about our answers to easy
  questions, because statistically it is hard to be
  overconfident about answers that are entirely
  correct.

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• Figure 8.22
• At the beginning of a semester, undergraduates in
  an advanced psychology course estimated their
  probable semester grade. Students with low,
  medium, or high grade- point averages generally
  predicted that they would get an A or a B. The
  best students were slightly overpredicting their
  success the worst students were greatly
  overpredicting. (Based on data of Prohaska, 1994)

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• People are also overconfident about their
  accomplishments.
• Ahead of the fact, we will overestimate the
  quality of our predicted performance.
• After the fact, we will overestimate the quality
  of our past performance.
• Research studies of ordinary people and experts
  are consistent in supporting these tendencies.

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• Figure 8.24
• You are provided with a candle, a box of matches,
  some thumbtacks, and a tiny piece of string. What
  is the best way, using no other equipment, to
  attach the candle to a wall?

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• Sometimes we commit to an explanation or
  hypothesis before we have all the available
  information on the problem.
• Premature commitment to a hypothesis can lead us
  to fail to consider other plausible possibilities
  and fail to arrive at the correct answer.
• Functional fixedness is one special case of
  premature commitment.
• It is the tendency to adhere to a single approach
  to a problem or a single way to use an item.

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• The representativeness heuristic is the tendency
  to assume that if an item is similar to members
  of a particular category, it is also a member of
  the category.
• If it looks like a duck.
• It is better to make these judgments in light of
  the available base-rate information, that is, the
  data about the frequency or probability of a
  given item or event.
• People tend to use only the representativeness
  heuristic and fail to consider the frequency data.

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• The availability heuristic is the strategy of
  assuming that how easily one can remember
  examples of an event is an indicator of how
  common that event actually is.
• For example, it is easier to think of examples of
  people dying from car crashes than from stomach
  cancer, so you assume that you are more likely to
  die in a car crash.
• You are somewhat more likely to die from stomach
  cancer. The actual base rate of digestive cancer
  is the higher one.

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• Table 8.1
• The Representativeness Heuristic and the
  Availability Heuristic

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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• The way a question is framed or presented can
  also influence the way in which we answer it.
• The tendency to answer a question differently
  when it is phrased differently is called the
  framing effect.
• This effect is important to keep in mind for
  those who need to persuade.

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• Figure 8.25
• When Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1981)
  offered these choices to more than 150 people,
  72 chose A over B, and 78 chose D over C.
  However, plan A is exactly the same as plan C
  (200 live, 400 die), and plan B is exactly the
  same as plan D. Why then did so many people
  choose both A and D? The reason, according to
  Tversky and Kahneman, is that most people avoid
  taking a risk when a question is phrased in terms
  of gain, but they are willing to accept a risk
  when the question is phrased in terms of loss.

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CONCEPT CHECK

• 50 of all military personnel prefer to watch TV
  talk shows, but only 10 of all middle-aged
  people do. So more watchers of TV talk shows are
  military personnel.
• What information would you need to assess the
  accuracy of this statement?

The base rates How many military personnel are
there? How many middle-aged people?
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• My friend gives me a crystal and says if I wear
  it everyday I will remain healthy. I wear it and
  remain healthy. So I conclude that the crystal is
  causing me to remain healthy.
• What do you think?

Premature commitment to the hypothesis There are
many other reasons that I might remain healthy.
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Problem-Solving

• Common Errors of Human Cognition
• If you spend 70.00 on tickets to an event, but
  you feel sick and miserable on the evening of
  that event would you go anyway?
• If you were given tickets to the same event, but
  you felt sick and miserable on the evening of the
  event, would you go anyway?
• People are more likely to go if they have spent
  their own money. This is the sunk cost effect.
• The sunk cost effect is our tendency to do
  something that wed otherwise choose not to do,
  just because we spent the money to do it.

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Problem-Solving

• The Psychology of Gambling
• Gambling has been a common behavior in all world
  cultures throughout history.
• There are identifiable patterns of thought that
  promote this behavior.

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Problem-Solving

• The Psychology of Gambling
• We tend to overestimate our control over chance
  outcomes.
• Giving people the illusion of control increases
  their willingness to gamble.
• We feel more likely to win the lottery when we
  choose our own ticket and numbers than when
  someone just gives us a ticket.

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Problem-Solving

• The Psychology of Gambling
• We appear to have an affinity for picking a slim
  chance of a big gain over a sure but small
  profit.
• The low probability of winning may be part of the
  appeal.
• People report more pleasure from a surprising
  gain than from one that was expected.

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• Table 8.2
• Expected Winnings on a 1 Decco Ticket (a
  California Lottery Game)

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Problem-Solving

• The Psychology of Gambling
• As we learned earlier, schedules of reinforcement
  are used to keep a desired behavior going after
  its been learned.
• Gambling is very similar to variable-ratio
  reinforcement an unpredictable number of
  responses eventually lead to reinforcement.
• State lottery commissions and casino owners make
  sure that spectacular wins are well publicized so
  that vicarious reinforcement (social learning)
  will occur with thousands of other potential
  gamblers.

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Problem-Solving

• The Psychology of Gambling
• The availability heuristic also plays a role in
  perpetuating gambling. Combined with vicarious
  reinforcement, its a powerful motivator to start
  and continue.
• The need to boost up self-esteem by beating an
  opponent, by winning motivates continuation
  when the gambler has been losing, even to the
  point of making wild and foolish bets in some
  cases.

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Successful and Unsuccessful Problem-Solving

• We have examined some of our strengths
  (creativity and expertise) and weaknesses (poorly
  constructed heuristics and gambling) in
  problem-solving.
• Learning about the strengths and weaknesses of
  our decision-making is a big step towards
  improving the quality of our problem-solving
  processes.

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Module 8.3

• Language

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Language

• As far as we can tell, although many species can
  communicate by exchanging signals, only human
  languages can truly be called productive.
• Humans can express new ideas through language.

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Language

• Animal languages are comprised of prepackaged
  messages.
• Human languages communicate a deep structure, the
  intended meaning of the words.
• Almost any human language provides enough
  vocabulary and grammatical variation that the
  deep structures can be converted into many
  differently arranged statements that still
  represent the same idea.
• Linguist Noam Chomsky called this quality of
  language transformational grammar.

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• Figure 8.28
• According to transformational grammar, we can
  transform a sentence with a given surface
  structure into any of several other sentences
  with different surface structures. All of them
  represent the same deep structure, which is the
  underlying logic of the sentence.

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Language

• This flexibility and creativity that our language
  provides can also get us in trouble.
• While picnicking in the meadow we saw hawks with
  our binoculars.
• Hawks have excellent eyesight and dont need
  binoculars.
• Seriously though, if we are not careful about our
  use of transformational grammar, our intended
  meaning may be unclear or as in this case,
  ambiguous.

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Animal Language

• One of the first examples of an animal using
  human language was Washoe the chimp, raised by
  psychologists.
• Through conditioning by researchers Washoe
  developed an impressive vocabulary of 100 signs.
• But Washoe used these signs almost exclusively to
  make requests.
• She rarely used them to describe things or make
  new, original statements.

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Animal Language

• Bonobo chimpanzees show more facility with human
  sign language.
• They can refer to objects that they are not
  requesting, they can describe past events and
  respond well to spoken requests.
• It is not entirely clear whether Bonobos are a
  particularly bright species of great ape, or
  whether the training was somewhat better than
  that which Washoe received.
• The Bonobos were exposed to human language very
  early in life, and received a great deal of
  observational exposure to humans using the signs.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language and General Intelligence
• Psychologists are trying to determine whether our
  intelligence has caused our development of
  language.
• Some highly intelligent species of animal do not
  develop a flexible language.
• People with Williams syndrome have general
  cognitive abilities classified in the IQ range
  associated with mental retardation, but have
  excellent facility with language.
• It appears that language ability is not
  synonymous with intelligence.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language Learning as a Specialized Capacity
• Psychologists divide into two broad camps
  regarding human language learning.
• Nativists, such as Chomsky and Steven Pinker,
  believe that humans are born with a built-in,
  brain based mechanism for learning language.
• They refer to this as a language acquisition
  device or a language instinct.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language Learning as a Specialized Capacity
• The basis for the nativist view of language
  learning is the poverty of stimulus argument.
• This argument states that children do not
  encounter enough information in the environment
  to learn or infer grammar, so they must be born
  with the knowledge.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language Learning as a Specialized Capacity
• The information that children get may not be so
  sparse though in almost all world cultures
  parents make special concessions to infant
  understanding in speech by using parentese, a
  slow and high-pitched method of communication
  that may enhance early language learning.
• But even very young infants do start picking up
  language rules very early, extracting a great
  deal of information from what they hear.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language and the Human Brain
• Studies of the brain using persons with brain
  damage and modern imaging techniques have allowed
  us to identify two areas vital for the processing
  and production of language.

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• Figure 8.31
• Brain damage that produces major deficits in
  language usually includes the left-hemisphere
  areas shown here. However, the deficits are
  severe only if the damage is more extensive,
  including these areas but extending to others as
  well. Many areas of the human brain contribute to
  language comprehension and production.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Language and the Human Brain
• Brocas area is vital for using and understanding
  grammatical devices prepositions, conjunctions,
  prefixes, suffixes, and the like.
• Wernickes area appears to be important for
  naming objects and comprehending language.
• People with damage to these areas develop
  aphasias a term for various inabilities to
  process or use language.
• Language production and processing activates very
  widespread areas of the brain.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Stages of Language Development
• There is impressive evidence of the universality
  of stages of language learning, including
  identical stages of productive and receptive
  language in young children of all world cultures,
  young hearing impaired children, and hearing
  children of deaf parents who are learning both
  sign and spoken language.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Stages of Language Development Productive
• Cooing and random vocalizations 3 months
• Distinct babbling 6 months
• Jargon (babbling with speech inflections) 10
  months
• Holographic speech (one word sentences) 12 to
  15 months

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Stages of Language Development Productive
• Telegraphic speech (two word sentences) 24
  months
• Simple if grammatically uneven sentences 30
  months
• Large (1000 word) vocabulary and better sentences
  3 years
• Close to adult facility with speech 4 years

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• Table 8.3
• Stages of Language Development

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Children Exposed to No Language
• Children who do not receive much early exposure
  to language do not develop a language of their
  own nor do they learn human language well after
  starting regular exposure.
• The early lives of such children are unknown so
  it is hard to know with any certainty if lack of
  exposure is the only culprit.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Children Exposed to No Language
• Some deaf children who do not receive exposure to
  sign language invent their own sign languages,
  which increase in complexity as they mature.
• The unique sign languages of these children have
  some interesting similarities (subject object
  specifications for example.)

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Children Exposed to Two Languages
• Some children grow up in a bilingual environment,
  receiving roughly equal exposure to two different
  languages.
• These children learn both languages equally well.
• If exposure to the second language begins early
  in life, the representation and storage of the
  languages in the brain is identical.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Children Exposed to Two Languages
• Although exposure to two or more languages can
  slow down the overall process of acquisition, it
  bestows some long-term cognitive benefits as
  well.
• Adults who were raised in bilingual environments
  show an enhanced degree of cognitive flexibility
  in understanding that there are many ways to say
  the same thing.
• There are many practical advantages in being able
  to communicate with speakers of other languages.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Understanding Language
• Language production and comprehension can be a
  very complex task.
• A good reader reads simple sentences quickly and
  complex or ambiguous sentences slowly.
• Even a simple word is broken down into a sequence
  of sounds that change depending on the
  arrangement of those sounds.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Understanding Language
• Readers and speakers of all languages must be
  aware of the assumptions that underlie the use of
  language. The same word may have more than one
  meaning, for example, and context must be
  considered in order to correctly use and
  comprehend that word.
• The use of negatives in a language adds further
  complexity and possibility of erroneous
  production by the speaker/writer or erroneous
  reception by the listener/reader.

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• Figure 8.34
• Most students preferred Kool-Aid made with sugar
  labeled sugar instead of sugar labeled not
  cyanide, even though they had placed the labels
  themselves. Evidently, people do not fully
  believe the word not. (Based on results of
  Rozin, Markwith, Ross, 1990)

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• Figure 8.35
• A student watches either a word or a single
  letter flashed on a screen. An interfering
  pattern is then flashed on the screen and the
  student is asked, Which was presented C or J?
  More students were able to identify the letter
  correctly when it was part of a word.

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Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Reading
• Context is almost always important in
  interpreting the parts of language
• The word-superiority effect refers to the fact
  that people are generally better at recognizing
  individual letters when they are a part of a word
  rather than when they are standing alone or with
  a nonsense cluster.

92

• Figure 8.36
• Students performed better at identifying an
  indicated letter when they focused on an entire
  word (a) than on a single letter in a designated
  spot among random letters (b).

93

• Figure 8.37
• According to one version of the connectionist
  model, a visual stimulus activates certain letter
  units, some more strongly than others. Those
  letter units then activate a word unit, which in
  turn strengthens the letter units that compose
  it. For this reason we recognize a whole word
  more easily than we recognize a single letter.

94
Human Specializations for Learning Language

• How we move our eyes across a page or surface
  while the parts of the words in part influence
  reading
• Phonemes are units of sound single letters or
  combinations of letters.
• Morphemes are units of meaning usually
  syllables or words.

95

• Figure 8.39
• The word shamelessness has nine phonemes (units
  of sound) and three morphemes (units of meaning).

96
CONCEPT CHECK

• How many phonemes comprise the word doggedly?
  How many morphemes?

It has five phonemes do-g-g-ed-ly. It has
three morphemes.
97
Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Reading
• Human eyes move steadily when we are following a
  moving object, but our eyes alternate between
  brief stationary periods and periods of quick
  movement when we are reading, which makes the eye
  movements of reading rather jerky
• Fixations are the periods when your eyes are
  stationary.
• Saccades are the quick eye movements that take
  your gaze from one fixation point to another. You
  are virtually blind during the saccades.

98
Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Reading
• Why?
• The parietal cortex may signal the primary visual
  cortex to shut down activity briefly during the
  saccades.
• Your brain may automatically direct you to attend
  to the distinct stimulus at the end of each
  saccade and ignore the blur that you sense during
  each saccade.

99
Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Reading
• We are seeing during the fixations and not during
  the saccades.
• This is all happening very, very quickly. Most
  readers have four fixations per second, in
  between which saccades occur lasting 25-50
  milliseconds.

100
Human Specializations for Learning Language

• Speedreaders
• Speedreaders have briefer fixations and backtrack
  less frequently than do average adult readers.
• With practice some people can double or triple
  their reading speed with normal comprehension.
• Some of the more extraordinary claims of
  speedreaders remain untestable for example, the
  claim that some can read between 5000 and 10,000
  words per minute.
• It is likely that these readers are fixating on
  some words and guessing at the rest.
• Speedreaders who know that they are going to be
  tested on the details of what they have read are
  observed to slow down substantially.

101
Language

• It is still unclear why other species have not
  evolved this incredibly useful skill of flexible
  and productive language.
• It is a large-scale adaptation of humankind that
  has given us tremendous power in the natural
  world.