CHAPTER 9 – LANGUAGE AND THINKING 1. Algorithms: formulas or ...

CHAPTER 9 – LANGUAGE AND THINKING 1. Algorithms: formulas or precise sequences of procedures that automatically generate solutions e.g. mathematical formulas. 2. Aphasia: an impairment in speech comprehension and/or production that can be permanent or temporary. − Broca’s area: located in the left hemisphere’s frontal lobe, is mostly centrally involved in word production (lower-right brain scan). − Wernicke’s area: rear portion of the temporal lobe, is more centrally involved in speech comprehension (upper-left scan). − People with damage in one or both areas typically suffer from aphasia. 3. Availability heuristic: people base judgements and decisions on how easily information is available in memory. − We tend to remember events that are most important and significant to us. − Recent memorable events can increase people’s belief that they may suffer a similar fate. 4. Belief bias: the tendency to abandon logical rules in favour of our own personal beliefs. 5. Bilingualism: the regular use of two languages. − Associated with greater thinking flexibility, higher performance on non-verbal intelligence tests and better performance on perceptual tasks that require people to inhibit attention to irrelevant information and pay attention to relevant information. − In learning a second language, they gain continuous experience in using selective attention to focus on relevant information and ignore information that interferes with a task. For example, while speaking in their second language, bilinguals must ignore the more familiar words of their first language. − Bilingual children also gain experience in frequently switching languages, which may contribute to their greater cognitive flexibility than monolingual children. − Limitation: they develop a somewhat smaller vocabulary in each language than do their monolingual age peers, and this vocabulary size difference also is found among bilingual adults. Bilinguals tend to perform more poorly on several linguistic tasks but display superior performance on other types of cognitive tasks. − To attain nativelike second-language proficiency, acquisition must start in childhood. 6. Bottom-up processing: individual elements of a stimulus are analysed and then combined to form a unified perception. 7. Top-down processing: sensory information is interpreted in light of existing knowledge, concepts, ideas and expectations. 8. Concept: basic units of semantic memory – mental categories into which we place objects, activities, abstractions (such as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’) and events that have essential features in common. − Can be acquired through explicit instruction or through our own observations of similarities and differences among various objects and events. 9. Confirmation bias: tending to look for evidence that will confirm what they currently believe rather than looking for evidence that could disconfirm their beliefs. 10. Creativity: the ability to produce something that is both new and valuable. 11. Deductive reasoning: we reason from the top down, that is, from general principles to a conclusion about a specific case. − When people reason deductively, they begin with a set of premises (propositions assumed to be true) and determine what the premises imply about a specific situation. − The basis of formal mathematics and logic.