Unit 7B:Cognition: Thinking, Problem

Solving, Creativity, and Language

Unit Overview• Thinking• Language• Thinking and Language

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Introduction

• Cognition (thinking)• Cognitive psychologists

Thinking

Concepts

• Concepts–Category hierarchies–Some concepts form by definition–prototype

Solving ProblemsStrategies

• Algorithms–Step-by-step

• Heuristic• How can an heuristic

lead to racial profiling?

• Insight• pine, crab, sauce

Solving ProblemsCreativity

• Creativity• Sternberg’s five components

–Expertise–Imaginative thinking skills–A venturesome

personality–Intrinsic motivation–A creative environment

Solving ProblemsObstacles to Problem Solving

• Confirmation bias• Fixation

–Mental set–Functional fixedness

Solving ProblemsObstacles to Problem Solving

• Confirmation bias• Fixation

–Mental set–Functional fixedness

True or False1. Barak Obama is the President of the United States.2. Tom Corbett is the governor of Pennsylvania.3. Luke Ravenstahl is the mayor of Pittsburgh.4. Mr. Finch is the principal of Hampton High School.5. Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Psychologists interviewed 30 engineers and 100 lawyers. One of them,Jack, is a 45 year old married man with 4 children. He is generallyconservative, cautious, and ambitious. He shows no interest inpolitics or social issues and spends most of his free time onhome carpentry, sailing, and solving mathematical puzzles. Whatis the probability that Jack is one of the 30 engineers?

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments Using and Misusing Heuristics

• The Representative Heuristic– Base rate fallacy: tendency to judge the

probability of an event based entirely upon irrelevant information, instead of the base rate probability of that event.

• Which of the following are the more frequent causes of death in the United States?

1. All accidents or strokes? ____% certain2. Suicide or blood poisoning? _____% certain3. Homicide or diabetes? ____% certain4. Motor vehicle accident or colorectal cancer? ____% certain5. Drowning or leukemia? ____% certain

• Which city has the higher crime rate?1. Chicago, IL or Kansas City, MO? ____% certain2. Las Vegas, NV or Stockton, CA? ____% certain3. Miami, FL or Phoenix, AZ? ____% certain4. Honolulu, HI or Raleigh, NC ____% certain5. New York, NY or Aurora, IL? ____% certain

Making Decisions and Forming Judgments Using and Misusing Heuristics

• The Availability Heuristic

• The anchoring heuristic * people make decisions based on certain ideas or standards they hold, ideas or standards that serve as an anchor for them * beliefs about politics, religion . . .

Making Decisions and Forming JudgmentsOverconfidence

• Overconfidence

Making Decisions and Forming JudgmentsThe Belief Perseverance Phenomenon

• Belief perseverance–Consider the

opposite

Making Decisions and Forming JudgmentsThe Perils and Powers of Intuition

• Intuition–Unconscious intuition

Making Decisions and Forming JudgmentsThe Effects of Framing

• Framing–Framing experiments

Language

LanguageIntroduction

• Language• 6800 estimated

languages• 250 spoken by more

than 1 million people• 66% of world’s

children are bilingual

Language StructurePhonemes

• Phoneme– English about 40 phonemes– “d”, “ch”, “sh”, . . .– How many phonemes in “this”?– consonant phonemes carry more information than vowel

phonemes• The treth ef thes stetemant shad be evedent fram

thes brif demenstretien.

Language StructureMorphemes

• Morpheme–Includes prefixes and suffixes– “cat”, “pre-”, “-ed”

Language StructureGrammar

• Grammar–Semantics

• surface structure• deep structure• “They were hunting

dogs.”–Syntax

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

• Receptive language• Productive language

– Babbling stage– One-word stage– Two-word stage– Telegraphic speech– 60,000 words between

age 1 and graduation

Language DevelopmentWhen Do We Learn Language?

Language DevelopmentExplaining Language Development• Skinner: Operant Learning

–Learning principles• Association• Imitation• Reinforcement

Language DevelopmentExplaining Language Development

• Chomsky: Inborn Universal Grammar–Language acquisition device

Language DevelopmentExplaining Language Development• Statistical Learning and Critical

Periods–Statistical learning–Critical (sensitive) period

Thinking and Language

Language Influences Thinking

• Whorf’s linguistic determinism• Bilingual advantage

Thinking in Images

• Implicit memory

The End

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• Please feel free to contact me at kkorek@germantown.k12.wi.us with any questions, concerns, suggestions, etc. regarding these presentations. Kent KorekGermantown High SchoolGermantown, WI 53022262-253-3400kkorek@germantown.k12.wi.us

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Definition Slide

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Definition Slides

Cognition

= the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Concept

= a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

= a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).

Algorithm

= a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier – but also more error-prone – use of heuristics.

Heuristic

= a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

Insight

= a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Creativity

= the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Confirmation Bias

= a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Fixation

= the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set.

Mental Set

= a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Functional Fixedness

= the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Representativeness Heuristic

= judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Availability Heuristic

= estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Overconfidence

= the tendency to be more confident that correct – to over-estimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Belief Perseverance

= clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they are formed has been discredited.

Intuition

= an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Framing

= the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Language

= our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phoneme

= in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Morpheme

= in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

Grammar

= in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Semantics

= the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning.

Syntax

= the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language.

Babbling Stage

= beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

One-word Stage

= the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Two-word Stage

= beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements.

Telegraphic Speech

= early speech state in which a child speaks like a telegram – “go car” – using mostly nouns and verbs.

Linguistic Determinism

= Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.