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Building Blocks of Thought

Building Blocks of Thought. Images Nonverbal mental representations of sensory experiences Language A flexible system of symbols that enables us to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings Nonhumans communicate primarily through signs. Thinking in Images.

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Building Blocks of Thought

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  1. Building Blocks of Thought Images Nonverbal mental representations of sensory experiences Language A flexible system of symbols that enables us to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings Nonhumans communicate primarily through signs

  2. Thinking in Images Cognition is largely language-based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However, we also think in images.

  3. Images and Brain Watching a physical activity activates the same brain regions as when actually performing the activity.

  4. Phonemes The smallest distinct sound unit. Ex: bat, has three phonemes b · a · t chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t How many meanings can you make by varying the vowel phoneme between B and T? Bait, bat, beat/beet, bet bit, bite, boat, boot, bought, bout, and but.

  5. Phonemes Consonant phonemes carry more meaning. Ex. The trethefthesstetement shed be evedentfremthesbrefdemenstretien.

  6. Morphemes The smallest unit that carries a meaning. It may be a word or part of a word. Milk = milk Pumpkin = pump . kin Unforgettable = un · for · get · table

  7. Grammar System of rules that enable us to communicate with and understand others. Grammar Semantics Syntax

  8. Semantics The meaning of morphemes, words, and sentences. Ex: adding –ed to the word laugh means that it happened in the past.

  9. Syntax Rules for making sentences. In English, adjectives come before nouns; white house. In Spanish, it is reversed; casa blanca.

  10. Structure of Language Surface structure: How we order the sentence English “She ate an apple” Japanese “She an apple ate” Deep structure: Underlying meaning of a sentence

  11. Language Development Children learn language before learning to add 2+2. After 1, we learn about 3,500 words a year, amassing 60,000 words by the time we graduate from high school. Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images

  12. Imitation? “Don’t they just listen to what is said around them and then repeat it?” But, sentences produced by children are very different from adult sentences Cat stand up table A my pencil What the boy hit? Other one pants And children who can’t speak for physiological reasons learn the language spoken to them and when they overcome their speech impairment they immediately use the language for speaking.

  13. Operant Learning (Rewards-Punishment) Association of the sight of things with sounds of words Reinforcement by the caregiver But, this assumes that children are being constantly reinforced for using good grammar and corrected when they use bad grammar. (Seldom occurs) Cute mistakes?

  14. Inborn Universal Grammar Noam Chomsky argues we are hard-wired to learn language. Language is almost entirely inborn and will naturally occur. Children acquire untaught words and grammar at a rate too high to be explained through learning Universal Grammar

  15. Universal Grammar

  16. Critical Period Language Machines - A one year old’s brain is statistically analyzing which syllables most often go together to discern word breaks Can we keep it up? No, childhood seems to represent a critical period for mastering certain aspects of language. (proven through deaf children getting cochlear implants at 2 and at 4). Language learning capacity never fully develops when a young brain does not learn ANY language.

  17. Linguistic Determinism Benjamin Lee Whorf argues language determines how we think. This is most evident in polylinguals (speaking 2 or more languages). i.e. someone who speaks English and Chinese will feel differently depending on which language they are using. English has many words describing personal emotions and Chinese has many words describing inter-personal emotions. Bilingual Speakers are able to inhibit their attention to irrelevant information. Known as the bilingual advantage.

  18. Linguistic Determinism Hopi Tribe? Whorf argued that Hopi has "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time'", and concluded that the Hopi had "no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at equal rate, out of a future, through the present, into a past". Whorf used the Hopi concept of time as a primary example of his concept of linguistic relativity, which posits that the way in which individual languages encode information about the world, influences and correlates with the cultural world view of the speakers. In 1983 linguist EkkehartMalotki published a 600-page study of the grammar of time in the Hopi language, concluding that he had finally refuted Whorf's claims about the language. Malotki's treatise gave hundreds of examples of Hopi words and grammatical forms referring to temporal relations. Malotki's central claim was that the Hopi do indeed conceptualize time as structured in terms of an ego-centered spatial progression from past, through present into the future. He also demonstrated that the Hopi language grammaticalizes tense using a distinction between future and non-future tenses, as opposed to the English tense system, which is usually analyzed as being based on a past/non-past distinction. Psychologist Steven Pinker, a well-known critic of Whorf and the concept of linguistic relativity, accepted Malotki's claims as having demonstrated Whorf's complete ineptitude as a linguist.

  19. How about language and color? Jules Davidoff, a psychologist from Goldsmiths University of London, who worked with the Himba tribe from Namibia. In their language, there is no word for blue and no real distinction between green and blue.

  20. Himba struggle to complete this task – takes a while to pick out the blue square

  21. Not determinism but influence! Another study by MIT scientists in 2007 showed that native Russian speakers, who don't have one single word for blue, but instead have a word for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy), can discriminate between light and dark shades of blue much faster than English speakers.

  22. THINKING AND LANGUAGE Studies of the effects of the generic pronoun “he” show that subtle prejudices can be conveyed by the words we choose to express our everyday thoughts Some evidence indicates that vocabulary enrichment, particularly immersion in bilingual education, can enhance thinking Children of signing deaf parents become fluent in sign language and outperform other students on measures of academic and intelligence achievement

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