Language and ThoughtChapter 8

Can Animals Develop Language?

Dolphins, sea lions, parrots, chimpanzees Vocal apparatus issue American Sign Language

Allen and Beatrice Gardner (1969) Chimpanzee - Washoe 160 word vocabulary

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh Bonobo chimpanzee - Kanzi Symbols Receptive language – 72% of 660 requests

Theories of Language Acquisition

Behaviorist Skinner ▪ learning of specific verbal responses

Nativist Chomsky▪ learning the rules of language▪ Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Interactionist Cognitive, social communication, and

emergentist theories

Figure 8.5 Interactionist theories of language acquisition

Problem Solving: Types of Problems

Greeno (1978) – three basic classes Problems of inducing structure

Series completion and analogy problems

Problems of arrangement String problem and Anagrams▪ Often solved through insight

Problems of transformation Hobbits and orcs problem Water jar problem

Figure 8.6 Six standard problems used in studies of problem solving

Effective Problem Solving

Well defined vs. ill defined problems

Barriers to effective problem solving: Irrelevant Information Functional Fixedness Mental Set Unnecessary Constraints

Figure 8.12 The tower of Hanoi problem

Approaches to Problem Solving

Algorithms Systematic trial-and-error Guaranteed solution

Heuristics Shortcuts No guaranteed solution▪ Forming subgoals▪ Working backward▪ Searching for analogies▪ Changing the representation of a problem

Figure 8.16 Representing the bird and train problem

Culture, Cognitive Style,and Problem Solving

Field dependence – relying on external frames of reference

Field independence – relying on internal frames of reference Western cultures inspire field

independence Cultural influence based in ecological

demands Holistic vs. analytic cognitive styles

Decision Making:Evaluating Alternatives and Making Choices

Simon (1957) – theory of bounded rationality

Making Choices Additive strategies Elimination by aspects Risky decision making▪ Expected value▪ Subjective utility▪ Subjective probability

Table 8.3 Application of the additive model to choosing an apartment

Heuristics in Judging Probabilities

The availability heuristic The representativeness heuristic The tendency to ignore base rates The conjunction fallacy The alternative outcomes effect

Figure 8.18 The conjunction fallacy

Understanding Pitfalls in ReasoningAbout Decisions

The gambler’s fallacy Overestimating the improbable Confirmation bias and belief

perseverance The overconfidence effect Framing

Evolutionary Analyses: Flaws in Decision Making and Fast and Frugal Heuristics

Cosmides and Tooby (1996) Unrealistic standard of rationality Decision making evolved to handle

real-world adaptive problems Problem solving research based on

contrived, artificial problems Gigerenzer (2000)

Quick and dirty heuristics Less than perfect but adaptive