Thinking and LanguageMs. Reem Al Owaybil

Means of Thinking:

• What is thinking?

• Words?

• Images?

• Concepts?

• Something else?

What are the components of thought?

• Thinking or Cognition refers to all the mental activity associated with: thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating.

• Cognitive psychologists study these activities including the logical and sometimes illogical ways in which we create concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and form judgments.

What are the functions of Concepts?

• To think about countless events, objects, and people in our world, we simplify things.

• We form Concepts – mental groupings of similar objects, events, and people.

• Imagine life without concepts: we would need a different name for every object and idea.

• We form concepts by definitions: a triangle has three sides, so we there classify all three-sided geometric forms as triangles.

• However we form our concepts by developing prototypes: A mental image, or the most representative examples of a conceptual category.

• •

• Move away from our prototypes and categories may blur:

Is tomato a fruit?

Is a 17 year old female a girl or a woman?

Is a whale a fish or a mammal?

• Because this marine animal fails to match our prototypes, we are slower at recognize it as a mammal.

• Similarity we, we are slow to perceive an illness when our symptoms don’t fit one of our disease prototypes: people whose heart attack symptoms (shortness of breath, exhaustion, a dull weight in the chest) don’t match their prototype of a heart attack (sharp chest pain) may not seek help.

• Problem Solving

• Problem Solving:• Successful problem solvers are skilled at:

• Identifying the problem• Selecting a strategy

Selecting a Strategy

1. Algorithms

• Set of steps guaranteed to reach a solution

2. Heuristics

• Cognitive strategies used as shortcuts to solve complex mental tasks

• Do not guarantee a correct solution

Algorithms and logicAlgorithm

A problem-solving strategy guaranteed to produce a result

1. Deductive reasoning

A tool of formal logic in which a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises

2.Inductive reasoning

A tool of formal logic in which a conclusion probably follows from a set of premises

Apply what you knowAll swans we have seen have been white; therefore all swans are white. All swans we have seen have been white; therefore the next swan we see will be white. This is an example of which type of reasoning?

A. Inductive

B. Deductive

Apply what you know

• All dogs are mammals. All mammals have kidneys. Therefore all dogs have kidneys. . This is an example of which type of reasoning?

A. Inductive

B. Deductive

Example of working backward

Searching for analogies

• Shark is to ocean as...A. Dog is to jungleB. Cheese is to sandwichC. Camel is to desertD. Pen is to ink

Language• Our spoken, written or singed words and the ways we

combined them.

• Words and grammars differ from culture to culture. But in every society, language allows people to transmit their accumulated knowledge from generation to the next.

Aspects of Language: Phonology

The structure of the sounds of the words in a language

• Phonemes

– In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

– Difference languages use difference phonemes

• French soft r’s do not exist in English

• Japanese has no r’s at all

Aspects of Language: Semantics

The meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence.

• Morphemes

– Smallest units of meaning in a language

• Semantics versus syntax

– “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

– “Fastly dinner eat, ballgame soon start.”

Aspects of Language: Grammar

• Grammar:

A system of rules, enable us to communicate with and understand others.

Language Development

• Make a quick guess:

How many words did you learn during the years between your birth and your high school graduation? The answer about 60,000 words.

How do children acquire language?

• Babies can cry from birth.

• By 1 month of age they use crying to gain attention. Parents can tell if an infant is hungry, angry or in a pain from the tone of the crying.

• Around 6-8 weeks babies begin cooing (the repletion of vowel sound such as "oo" and "ah".

• By 7 monthsof age, nervous system will mature enough to allow her to grasp objects, smile, laugh, sit up and babble. But soon, the language by parents begins to have an influence.

• At about 1 year of age, children respond to real words such as "no" or "hi".

• Soon afterward, the first connection between words and objects forms, and children may address their parents "mama" or "dada" by age 18 months to 2 years.

*Telegraphic stage:

• Beginning at the age of 2.

• A child speaks mostly two-word statements.

• Early speech stage in which a child speaks like telegram “go car”. Using mostly verbs and nouns.

• Children who have not been exposed to either a spoken or a signed language during their early years (by about the age of 7) gradually lose their ability to master any language.

• After the window for learning language closes, even learning a second language seems more difficult.

• People who learn a second language as adults usually speaks it with the accent of their first.

• What is the relationship between language and thinking?

Thoughts and Words

• Linguistic relativity hypothesis:

– Thoughts are shaped by language.

– The language you speak limits your thoughts.

– Mixed evidence, BUT there is a relationship between language, memory, and perception.

Language influence thinking

• To expand language is to expand the ability to think, and it is very difficult to think about certain abstract ideas (Commitment or Freedom) without language!

• And that’s why most text books use new words to teach new ideas and new way of thinking.

Thinking in images

• To turn on the cold water in your bathroom, in which direction the handle? You probably thought in words, but with procedural memory (a mental picture of how you do it).

• We often think in images.

• The Power of Imagination:

Imagining a physical activity triggers action in the same brain areas that are triggered when actually performing the activity.

The End