Topics

• Important People – Hermann Ebbinghaus– Elizabeth Loftus– Benjamin Whorf– Noam Chomsky

• Terms/Ideas– Language

• phonemes, morphemes• grammar (syntax, semantics)• Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s

aphasia– Thinking

• linguistic relativity (Whorf)• algorithms vs. heuristics

– heuristics: availability, representativeness, anchor & adjust

• confirmation bias

THOUGHT/LANGUAGE (17 most frequent concepts in 33 textbooks)

• Heuristic 100• Algorithm 91• Prototype 88• Concept 85• Morpheme 82• Phoneme 82• Syntax 79• Insight (learning) 76

• Mental set 73• Availability heuristic 73• Representativeness

heuristic 73• Semantics 67• Language 67• Confirmation bias 61• Telegraphic speech 52• Cognition 52

Chapter 8: Language

and Thought

• The 19th Century focus was on the mind

• But, introspective methods did not yield reliable results

But, theorists argued this didn’t provide a complete picture of human functioning

Behaviorists then focused on overt responses because they were empirically more sound

• Renegade theorists studied cognition

• Cognition = the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge

The Cognitive Revolution

Simon and Newell – first computer program simulating human problem solving

Empirical study of cognition: 1956 conference

Miller – 7 plus or minus two capacity of STMemory

Chomsky: new model of language

Cognitive science has grown into a robust, interdisciplinary field focusing on language, problem solving, decision-making, and reasoning.

Language: Turning Thoughts into Words

• symbols convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages.

• Properties of Language– Symbolic– Semantic– Generative– Structured

The Hierarchical Structure of LanguagePhonemes = smallest speech units

• 100 possible, English uses about 40

Morphemes = smallest unit of meaning• 50,000 in English, including root words, prefixes,

suffixes

Semantics = meaning of words and word combinations

• Objects and actions to which words refer

Syntax = a system of rules for arranging words into sentences• Different rules for different languages

Language Development: Milestones

• Initial vocalizations similar across languages

Crying, cooing, babbling

• 6 months – babbling sounds begin to resemble surrounding language

• 1 year – first word

• similar cross-culturally

• very young children may actually understand (receptive language) more language than they can produce (expressive language)

• 18 - 24 months – sudden vocabulary spurt - Some 2-year-olds learn as many as 20 new words a week.

fast mapping: the process by which children map a word onto an underlying concept after only one exposure

Overextensions: a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a wider set of objects or actions than it is meant to…using the word ball for anything round.

Underextensions: a child incorrectly uses a word to describe a narrower set of objects or actions than it is meant to…using the word doll only to refer to a favorite doll

End of second year: combine words to produce meaningful sentences

Telegraphic speech: less critical words omitted…ex., “Give doll,"

– Scientists use MLU or Mean Length of Utterance to study language of young children (average length of their spoken statements, measured in morphemes)

• End of third year – complex ideas, plural, past tense– Overregularization: generalizing

grammatical rules incorrectly to irregular cases where they do not apply “he goed home,” for example.

• by the first grade the average child has a vocabulary of approx. 10,000 words, by the 5th grade, 40,000

Bilingualism:Learning More Than One Language

• Research findings:– Smaller vocabularies in one

language, combined vocabularies average

– Higher scores for middle-class bilingual subjects on cognitive flexibility, analytical reasoning, selective attention, and metalinguistic awareness

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Bilingualism:Learning More Than One Language

• Research findings:– Slight disadvantage in

terms of language processing speed

– 2nd languages more easily acquired early in life

– Greater acculturation facilitates acquisition

Overview of Typical Language Development

Age and second language learning

Can Animals Develop Language?

• One of the biggest problems is that the vocal apparatus is not the same.

• Researchers, therefore, began to use ASL with chimpanzees.

• Researchers have attempted to teach language to a variety of animals, but the most success has been shown with chimpanzees.

Their frontal lobe is 40% larger than humans. They use echolocation to hunt prey, and certain forms of squeaks and whistles to communicate with one another.

The Bottlenose Dolphin is the most intelligent species of dolphins, with a very large brain and cerebral cortex. They have the ability to think, plan, solve problems, comprehend ideas, and learn from previous experience.

• The African gray parrot can imitate human speech, associate words with meaning and form small sentences.

• Alex could identify more than fifty objects, seven colors, five shapes, numeric values to six, and the difference between large and small, and above and below. He told his handlers "to go away" when he became bored.

• An African Gray Parrot in Japan got lost and wounded, was brought to an animal hospital, and told the vet "I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura." He provided a complete home address, and was returned.

• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have trained Kanzi, a Bonobo pygmy chimpanzee to use geometric symbols that represent words on a computer monitor keyboard. Kanzi has taught his younger sister much that he learned. His receptive language is more developed, and can carry out 72% of 660 requests

• Allen and Beatrice Gardner (1969) were successful at teaching Washoe, a chimpanzee, to use 160 words in ASL, and construct simple sentences.

Theories of Language Acquisition

• Behaviorist: Skinner • children acquire

language through conditioning and imitation.

• learning of specific verbal responses

Theories of Language Acquisition

• Nativist: Chomsky• humans have an innate capacity to learn

the rules of language• Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

facilitates language development.• learning the rules of language

Interactionist Theories

– biology and experience both make important contributions.

– the cognitive and the social communication theories are prominent

• language development is an important aspect of cognitive development

• interpersonal communication has functional value and emphasizes the social context in which language evolves.

Emergentist Theory of Language Acquisition

• neural circuits supporting language are not prewired, but rather emerge gradually in response to learning experiences via incremental changes in connectionist networks.

Interactionist theories of language acquisition

Whorf’s hypothesis:

Linguistic RelativityLinguistic Determinism

• Language determines the way we think

Language ad Thought

– The linguistic relativity hypothesis, or Whorfian hypothesis, argues that differences among languages cause differences in the thoughts of their speakers.• Research does not support Whorf’s

contention that language determines perception and the structure of thought

• Research does support the idea that language can influence perception and thought.

Broca’s aphasia

Wernicke’s aphasia