Word Associations

1. Word Associations • From yesterday’s activity write down as many words that you wrote down as you can remember • What does this show about memories?

2. Limits of Human Intuition • A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? • 50 percent of Princeton students gave the wrong answer of 10 cents • Answer: $1.05 for the bat and $0.05 for the ball

3. Limits of Human Intuition • A man bought a horse for $60 and sold it for $70. Then he bought the same horse back for $80 and again sold it, for $90. How much money did the make in the horse business? • Most common answer: $10.00 • Answer: Compare the total amount paid ($140) with the total amount taken ($160) • $20.00

4. Limits of Human Intuition • Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? Is the answer yes, no, or it cannot be determined? • Answer: yes, a married person is looking at an unmarried person • If Anne is unmarried, Jack who is married is looking at her. If Anne is married, she is looking at George who is unmarried.

5. The Need for Cognition Scale • Handout 7B-2 • Reverse: 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 16, and 17 • 1 to 5 • 2 to 4 • 4 to 2 • 5 to 1 • Add the numbers for a total score • Higher the score, the greater the need for cognition • Successfully discriminated between university faculty (people who engage in and enjoy thinking for a living) and factory workers on assembly lines (repetitive work) • Positively correlated: general intelligence, seek out issue-relevant information in forming their attitudes, open to experience, more effective problem solvers, self-esteem, masculine sex-role attitudes, curiosity, effective problem solving • Unrelated: sociability, shyness, and years of formal education

6. Measuring cognitive complexity: Concepts • Think of a class you like and a class you dislike: take time to write descriptions of those classes comparing the two • Scores ranged from 5 to 43 – mean of 16 • Cognitive complexity – how simple or elaborate a person’s system of personal constructs is • Some use very limited number of constructs to make sense of their social world while others use a large number of constructs • Young children: limited number of constructs – another child is either a “friend” or “not a friend” a game is either “fun” or “not fun”

7. Respond to the categories with the very first example that comes to mind • A bird • A color • A triangle (drawing a picture is just fine) • A motor vehicle • A sentence • A hero • A heroic action • A game • A philosopher • A writer

8. Psychic? Can I predict many of your answers: • A robin, sparrow, or eagle • Red or blue • A picture of an equilateral triangle • A car • A short declarative statement, e.g. “The boy ran home.” • Superman, Batman, or possibly a fireman • A single act by a male, e.g., a rescue by a fireman • Monopoly or some other board game • Socrates or Aristotle • Stephen King Why did I think I could guess some correctly?

9. Prototypes We tend to think in terms of the “best example” of a category or “prototype “

10. Solving Problems • Task: move the tower from the left peg to the middle peg, moving only one disk at a time and never putting a larger disk on a smaller one

11. How did you solve the problem?

12. The “Aha” Experience • Look at the pictures on the board – what do you see? • Do you see a soldier and a dog passing an archway? • Do you see a custodian cleaning mud off the floor?

13. Insight • The maker doesn’t want it, the buyer doesn’t use it, and the user doesn’t see it. What is it? • What number is next in this series: 10, 4, 3, 11, 15… ? a. 14 b. 1 c. 17 D. 12 3. What is unusual about the sentence below? “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz” 4. How can you physically stand behind your father while he is standing behind you?

14. Insight 5. Something extraordinarily unusual happened on the 6th of May, 1978, at 12:34 p.m. What was it? 6. Can you translate the following into a sentence? 100204180 7. What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years? 8. A man left home one morning he turned right and ran straight ahead. Then he turned left. After a while, he turned left again, running faster then ever. Then he turned left once more and decided to go home. In the distance he could see two masked men waiting for him. Who were they? 9. Can you translate the following? Y Y U R Y Y U B I C U R Y Y 4 M E

15. Insight • The maker doesn’t want it, the buyer doesn’t use it, and the user doesn’t see it. What is it? • Coffin • What number is next in this series: 10, 4, 3, 11, 15… ? a. 14 b. 1 c. 17 D. 12 a. 14: when spelled out, each number in the series is longer than the previous number by one letter 3. What is unusual about the sentence below? “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz” Shortest sentence in the English language that includes every letter of the alphabet 4. How can you physically stand behind your father while he is standing behind you? Stand back to back

16. Insight 5. Something extraordinarily unusual happened on the 6th of May, 1978, at 12:34 p.m. What was it? 12:34, 5/6/78 6. Can you translate the following into a sentence? 100204180 I ought naught to owe for I ate nothing 7. What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years? The letter M 8. A man left home one morning he turned right and ran straight ahead. Then he turned left. After a while, he turned left again, running faster then ever. Then he turned left once more and decided to go home. In the distance he could see two masked men waiting for him. Who were they? The umpire and the other team’s catcher 9. Can you translate the following? Y Y U R Y Y U B I C U R Y Y 4 M E Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are, too wise for me

17. Assessing Creativity • Unusual uses test: Have one minute to write down as many uses as you can for the following objects: • Toothpick • Brick • Paper cup • Test is given in business organization to determine ‘inherent creative capacity’ • Average score is 4: 8 is unusually high score, 12 is very rare, and 16 makes you better than one in thousand.

18. Assessing Creativity • Another test: Consequences Test Ask questions and see how many answers someone can come up with • Question: Try to think of four to eight things that might happen if we suddenly had three arms:

19. Russell Baker – New York Times – provided creative responses • When asked by their wives to bring home a case of milk, a wheel of cheese, five gallons of paint, etc., men would say, “I’ve only got three hands.” • The millions of people unable to afford new three-armed wardrobes - dresses, shirts, suits, etc. – would have to wear their extra arms under their clothing. Thus, eventually, everybody would become ashamed of having a third arm and women would be arrested for showing them on the beach. • The price of manicures would rise fifty percent

20. Assuming that each card has a triangle on one side and a circle on the other, which card or cards need to be turned over to test this statement: ‘Every card that has a black triangle on one side has a red circle on the other’

21. Confirmation Bias ‘Every card that has a black triangle on one side has a red circle on the other’ Most people answer: “black triangle” or “black triangle and red circle” attempting to confirm the rule Correct answer: black triangle (which would confirm the rule) and black circle (which would disprove the rule)

22. Functional Fixedness

23. Write down your answer – either ‘a’ or ‘b’ • Linda is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in antinuclear demonstrations. Which statement is more likely? A. Linda is a bank teller B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement

24. The Representativeness Heuristic • Most people choose B – since feminism seems more representative of Linda than being a bank teller. • The probability of any two uncertain events occurring together is always less than the odds of either happening alone. • Judge the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent or match a particular prototype – works well much of the time, it leads to error when its conclusions run counter of the laws of chance.

25. Handout 7B-5 • Answers: • All accidents (37.7) vs. strokes (51.1) • Suicide (10.9) vs. blood poisoning (11.2) • Homicide (5.9) vs. diabetes (24.5) • Motor vehicle accidents (15.3) vs. colorectal cancer (17.8) • Drowning (1.3) vs. leukemia (7.1) • Morocco (34 million) vs. Saudi Arabia (28 million) • Myanmar (47 million) vs. Australia (21 million) • Vietnam (86 million) vs. South Africa (48 million) • Sri Lanka (20 million) vs. Libya (6 million) • Tanzania (38 million) vs. Iraq (28 million) • Chicago (15.6) vs. Kansas City (26.1) • Las Vegas (11.3) vs. Stockton, CA (14.6) • Miami (13.9) vs. Phoenix (15) • Honolulu (1.7) vs. Raleigh (6.0) • New York (6.6) vs. Aurora, IL (9.5)

26. How many answered all correctly? • Anyone get every question wrong? • Overconfidence? • How many were more confident than correct? • Availability heuristic and overconfidence • The more quiet cause of death is actually more prevalent: people perceive the more publicized and easily pictured cause to be more common. • Less familiar countries have greater populations but respondents judge those that are familiar to them to be more populous • Larger and/or more familiar cities are judged to have a higher crime rate

27. Handout 7B – 8 • why is there a difference? • Each pose the same alternatives • Framing decisions

28. Language • With person next to you share what you did on Friday and Saturday using telegraphic speech. • Don’t know what that means? LOOK IT UP

29. Rules for Language • Handout:The Simple Language Device (SLD) • Rules: Choose one word or phrase form column A and combine it with one word or phrase from columns B to F and you will automatically produce a sentence • Total of only 54 alternatives: SLD has the capacity to produce 531,441 sentences • Sentence may not be very believable – they are grammatical • SLD has only a small number of words and one rule for combining them: Adult language has a much larger number of words and quite a few rules for combining them into acceptable utterances • Challenge that confronts infants as they begin the long task of becoming fluent speakers of the language spoken by those around them • From book: 40 or so phonemes can be combined to form more than 100,000 morphemes, alone/combined produce 616,500 words in the English Dictionary – can use these words to create an infinite number of sentence, most of which are original • Think turnitin.com

30. Language Development • Statistical Learning • Statistical aspects of human speech – breaking down syllables to create meaning and breaks in sentences • Evidence? • 8 month infants: recognize three-syllable sequences that appeared repeatedly (measuring attention) • 7 month infants: recognize different sequences/language patterns – ABA verse ABB pattern (li-na-li/wo-fe-fe) • What does this show? Nature or Nurture? • Built in ability to learn grammatical rules

31. Critical Period • No exposure to language (spoken or signed) before age seven: lose ability to master ANY language • No stimulation to a brain early on = language learning capacity never fully develops • Second languages? • As adult no accent • Sign language? • Not present from birth = only master the basic words and comprehending subtle grammatical differences • Late learners = less brain activity in right hemisphere regions (active during sign for native speakers) • Conclusion? Is there a critical period of language? • There is a critical period for language • Never fully learn it if deprived from language early on

32. Thinking and Language • Benjamin Lee Whorf: • Linguistic determinism hypothesis • Language determines thought • Evidence? Culture differences • Different sense of self in different languages • How many positive statements? What/who/where do your values align with? • English (vs. Spanish) score higher on measures of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness • How many words a culture has to describe something will change our thoughts on it • Book example: Papua New Guinea Berinmo tribe: distinguish between two shades of yellow • Bilingual advantage: • Bilingual children are better at focusing to irrelevant information • Canadian program: increased aptitude scores and creativity

33. Taste • Write down the difference between Pepsi and Coke • Typically our responses are not very useful: vague and general comments about sweetness or level of carbonation – only an expert taster will pick up on the subtle nuances that distinguish these soft drinks

34. Taste – Language and expert food tasters • Book Blink • Expert food tasters: vocabulary to describe reactions to foods • Mayonnaise is evaluated along 6 dimensions of appearance (color, color intensity, chroma, shine, lumpiness, and bubbles) • 10 dimensions of texture: adhesiveness to lips, firmness, denseness, etc. • 14 dimensions of flavor spilt among 3 subgroups • Aromatics: eggy, mustardy, etc. • Basic tastes: salty, sour, and sweet • Chemical-feeling flavors: burning, pungent, and astringent • Each factor is evaluated on a 15-point scale • Example: Oreos – 90 attributes of appearance, flavor, and texture • 11 attributes that are probably critical • Without the right words we can’t make ourselves clearly understood

35. Double speak Handout 7B-10: translating doublespeak Language designed to alter our perception of reality and to corrupt our thinking • Tax increase • Lies • Greeting cards • Acid rain • Newspaper carrier • Toothbrush • Death • Elevator operators • Recession • Neutron bomb • Car mechanic • First strike/invasion • School desk • Cemetery plot • Thermometer

36. Thinking in Images • Helps! How? • Someone who has learned a skill just watching the activity will activate the brain’s internal stimulation of it • Imagining pain activates neural networks active during actual pain • Mental practice and basketball foul shooting: • 52% to 65% • Visualizing studying • Daily process stimulation resulted in + 8 points

37. Question • Which comes first? Thought or Language? • Thinking affects our language, which then affects our thought -Would not develop language without the thought first – would not have the thought without the language to express it!

38. Create a timeline • Part 1: Create a timeline demonstrating the development of language structure but also incorporating important concepts into a cohesive timeline. Must include: ages, examples of each stage/concept, and pictures. • Part 2: Compare B.F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky’s theory of language development Examples Picture for each