Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Language, Thought, and Intelligence

Slides prepared by: Melissa S. Terlecki, Cabrini College

PSYCHOLOGYSchacterGilbertWegner


7.1

Language And Communication:

Nothing’s More Personal

How many languages are there?

A. 75

B. 475

C. 1,075

D. 6,075

How many languages are there?

A. 75

B. 475

C. 1,075

D. 6,075

90% of these languages are spoken by less than 100,000 people.

Between 200 and 150 languages are spoken by more than a million people.

There are 357 languages which have less than 50 speakers.

A total of 46 languages have just a single speaker.

How about in the U.S?

How about in the U.S?

There are over 300 languages!

Which country has the most languages?

A. India

B. Papa New Guinea

C. Nigeria

D. Indonesia

Which country has the most languages?

1. Papa New Guinea – 820 (12%)

2. Indonesia – 742 (11 %)

3. Nigeria – 516 (8%)

4. India – 427 (6 %)

How do languages form?

If two groups of people speaking the same language are separated, in time their languages will change along different paths.

First they develop different accents; Next, some of the vocabulary will change.

When this happens a different dialect is created.

If the dialects continue to diverge there will come a time when they are mutually unintelligible.

When this happens people are speaking different languages.

Example: The Roman Empire

Roman Empire collapses in 4th c. A.D.Latin was the language of that empire.Speakers in different parts of Europe

became isolated from each other. Their languages evolved along

independent paths to give us the modern languages of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.

More Examples:

The Sanskrit spoken in North India changed into the modern languages of of the region: Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali and others.

Ancient Persian has evolved into Farsi, Kurdish and Pashto.

In time, with enough migrations, a single language can evolve into an entire family of languages.

Language Families

Languages are grouped together by common ancestry

There are over 100 language families

95% of languages are in 10 dominate language families.

Language Families

Language Families Map

Languages in the same branch are sister languages that diverged within the last 1000 to 2000 years (Latin, for example, gave rise to the Latin Branch languages in the Indo-European Family).

Indo-European Family

Languages in the same family, share many common grammatical features and many of the key words, especially older words, show their common origin

English- month Dutch- maand German- Monat Swedish- månad Welsh- mis Gaelic- mí French- mois Spanish- mes Portuguese- mês Italian- mese Polish- miesiac Russian- myesyats Lithuanian- menuo Albanian- muaj Greek- minas Farsi- mâh Hindi -mahina

Edward Sapir, linguist:

"No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The words in which different cultures live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached".

Language

Language: a system for communicating with others using signals that convey meaning and are combined according to rules of grammar.

3 Differences in Human Language

1. The complex structure of human language distinguishes it from simpler signaling systems

2. Humans use words to refer to intangible things

3. Use language to name, categorize, and describe things to ourselves when we think

Questions

What do all languages have in common?

Basic Characteristics

Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound that is recognizable as speech rather than as random noise.

Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit of language.

Grammar: a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages. rules of morphology. rules of syntax.

Context is Important

Sign outside a stadium:

“Football coaches not admitted unless booked in advance”

Groucho Marx: ‘I once shot an elephant in my pajamas’

Case of Derek Bentley

Figure 7.1: Units of Language (p. 199)

Deep Structure Versus Surface Structure

Deep structure: the meaning of a sentence.

Surface structure: how a sentence is worded.

Example:

‘The dog chased the cat’

‘The cat was chased by the dog’

Questions

Is the meaning or wording of a sentence more memorable?

Language Development

1. Children learn language at a rapid rate.

Average 1 year old – 10 words 10,000 words by 4 years old 6 or 7 new words a day


2. Children make few errors while learning to speak (even their errors follow grammatical rules).


3. Children’s passive mastery of language (comprehension) develops faster than their active mastery (production).

Distinguishing Speech Sounds

Infants up to 6 mos. of age can distinguish among all the sounds in all human languages.


Infants can distinguish among speech sounds but cannot reliably produce them.


Babies must hear their own babbling for speech to continue.

Questions

What language ability do babies have that adults do not?

Grammatical Rules

Fast mapping: the fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure.

Telegraphic speech: two-word sentences that emerge around 2 years of age.

As children acquire grammatical rule, they tend to overgeneralize.

Table 7.1: Language Milestones (p. 201)

Questions

Why is it unlikely that children are using imitation to pick up language?

Theories of Language Development Behaviorist explanations: children acquire

language through operant conditioning. Nativist explanations: language is an innate,

biological capacity. language acquisition device (LAD): a collection

of processes that facilitate language learning. genetic dysphasia: a syndrome characterized

by an inability to learn the grammatical structure of language despite having otherwise normal intelligence.

Theories of Language Development

Interactionist explanations: social interactions play a crucial role in language.deaf children in Nicaragua developed their

own sign language.

Deaf Children in Nicaragua (p. 204)

Questions

How does the interactionist theory of language acquisition differ from behaviorist and nativist theories?

The Neurological Specialization That Allows Language to Develop

Broca’s area: responsible for production of sequential patterns in vocal and sign languages (left frontal lobe).

Wernicke’s area: responsible for comprehension of vocal and sign languages (left temporal lobe).

Aphasia: disorder involving the difficulty in producing or comprehending language.

Figure 7.2: Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas (p. 204)

Do Animals Use Language?

Questions

How does language processing change in the brain as the child matures?

Culture and Community: Does Bilingual Education Slow Cognitive Development?

In comparison to America, most of the world is bilingual.

Monolingual and bilingual students show similar rates of language development.bilingual students show some advantages in

cognitive testing, however.


7.2

Concepts And Categories: How We Think

What is Cognition?

Cognition = thinking

So, cognitive psychologists study how people think.

Thinking Involves:

1. forming concepts2. reasoning3. solving problems4. making decisions

Concepts

Concept: a mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli.

Questions

Why are concepts useful to us?

Which One Does Not Belong?

Saturn

Earth

Dodge

Mercury


Cardinal

Red

Turkey

Oriole


Hazel

Brown

Temple

Auburn


Christmas

Easter

Thanksgiving

Java


Apple

Cotton

Peach

Orange


Titus

John

James

Dwight

Concepts

Category-specific deficit: a neurological syndrome that is characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category while leaving the ability to recognize objects outside the category undisturbed. depends on where the brain is damaged.

Figure 7.3: Brain Areas Involved In Category-specific Processing (p. 204)

Dog-on-it!

Write down a definition of a ‘dog’.

Now, can you come with a rule of ‘dogness’ or ‘dogship’ (what it means to be a dog) that includes all dogs and excludes all non-dogs?

Questions

How does the brain organize our concepts of the world?

Psychological Theories of Concepts and Categories

Family resemblance theory: members of a category have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member.

Figure 7.4: Family Resemblance Theory (p. 207)

Prototype theory: we make categorical judgments by comparing new instances to a category’s prototype. prototype: the “best” or “most typical” member of a

category.

Example: “Think of a horse.”

You Didn’t Think of Midget Wrestling

You probably thought of this:

Exemplar theory: we make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category.

Figure 7.5: Critical Features of a Category (p. 208)

Questions

How do prototypes and exemplars relate to each other?


7.3

Judging, Valuing, and Deciding: Sometimes We’re

Logical, Sometimes Not

Decision Making

Rational choice theory: we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two.

We are worse using probability versus frequency information in decision making.

Conjunction fallacy: when people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event.

Figure 7.6: The Conjunction Fallacy (p. 211)

Decision Making

Framing effects: when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased (or framed). sunk-cost fallacy: when people make decisions

about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation.

Prospect theory: people choose to take on risk when evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential gains. simplify available information. choose prospect with greatest value.

Questions

How do we fail as rational decision makers?

Why does a 70% success rate sound better than a 30% failure rate?

Why will most people take more risks to avoid losses than to make gains?


7.4

Intelligence

Intelligence

Intelligence: a mental ability that enables people to direct their thinking, adapt to their circumstances, and learn from their experiences.

Intelligence testing of immigrants. Difference between aptitude and achievement. Ratio IQ: a statistic obtained by dividing a person’s

mental age by their physical age, and then multiplying by 100.

Deviation IQ: a statistic obtained by dividing a person’s test score by the average test score of people in the same age group, and then multiplying by 100.

Immigrants at Ellis Island (p. 213)

Figure 7.7: The Normal Curve of Intelligence (p. 215)

Questions

What was the original goal of the IQ test?

The Logic of Intelligence Testing

Intelligence is a hypothetical property that enables people to perform a wide variety of consequential behaviors. intelligence tests are an easily administered

set of tasks that correlate with these behaviors.

Intelligence tests predict success on a wide variety of behaviors.

The Stanford-Binet and the WAIS are examples of today’s intelligence tests.

Figure 7.8: The Logic of Intelligence Testing (p. 215)

Figure 7.9: Life Outcomes and Intelligence (p. 217)

Questions

What do intelligence tests measure?

What do intelligence tests predict?

The Real World: Look Smart

Ordinary people are relatively good judges of others’ intelligence.

Research shows that intelligent people hold the gaze of their conversation partners (both when speaking and listening).Women tend to be better observers and

intelligence in men is more easy to detect.

General and Specific Abilities

Spearman used factor analysis: a statistical technique that explains a large number of correlations in terms of a small number of underlying factors.most measures are positively correlated. two-factor theory of intelligence: every

task requires a combination of a general ability (g) and skills that are specific to the task (s).

General and Specific Abilities

Thurstone described primary mental abilities.

More recently accepted is a three-level hierarchy.general factor (high level ability), specific

factors (low level abilities), and group factors (middle level abilities).

Figure 7.10: A Three-level Hierarchy (p. 219)

Questions

Why is the three-level hierarchy of abilities a useful way to think about intelligence?

Middle-level Abilities

Carroll identified 8 independent middle-level abilities: memory & learning, visual perception, auditory

perception, retrieval ability, cognitive speediness, processing speed, crystallized intelligence, and fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence: the ability to process information.

Crystallized intelligence: the accuracy and amount of information available for processing.

Questions

Is fluid intelligence like a processing system or like data? What about crystallized intelligence?

Middle-level Abilities

Sternberg proposed 3 kinds of intelligence. analytic, creative, and practical intelligence.

Gardner’s studies of people including prodigies (normal intelligence with an extraordinary ability) and savants (low intelligence with an extraordinary ability) led him to propose 8 kinds of intelligence. linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical,

bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic intelligences.

stresses cultural differences.

Five Year-old Savant Drawing (p. 220)

Questions

Why does intelligence seem to vary between cultures?


7.5

The Origins of Intelligence: From SES To

DNA

Intelligence and Genes

Galton concluded that intelligence was inherited.

Studies of identical and fraternal twins reared together and apart. people who share all their genes have extremely

similar intelligence test scores (regardless of environment).

Heritability coefficient: a statistic that describes the proportion of the difference between people’s scores that can be explained by differences in their genetic makeup.

Table 7.2: Intelligence Tests Correlations Between People With Different Relationships (p. 223)

Figure 7.11: How To Ask A Dumb Question (p. 223)

Questions

Why is the heritability coefficient higher among children of the wealthy than among children of the poor?

Intelligence and Groups

Some groups of people do tend to outscore other groups on intelligence tests.not explainable by cultural biases on tests.situational biases may affect group

differences (stereotype threat).SES predicts performance better than

ethnicity.

Questions

How can the testing situation affect people’s scores?

Changing Intelligence

An individual’s relative intelligence is stable over time, yet one’s absolute intelligence typically changes.

Flynn effect: average intelligence test score has been rising .3% every year.

Correlations between level of education and intelligence correlate. educational programs have a small-mild impact.

Cognitive enhancers: drugs that produce improvements in the psychological processes that underlie intelligent behavior.

Questions

Can intelligence be improved?

Where Do You Stand: Making Kids Smart or Making Smart Kids?

If scientists find genes directly related to intelligence, IVF and gene therapy will provide methods of increasing a couple’s chances of having an intelligent child.

Ethics: should parents be allowed to use genetic screening or gene therapy to increase the odds that they will have intelligent children?

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