9 LANGUAGE AND

THOUGHT
CHAPTER PREVIEW

• Language
• Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making
• Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in
Language and Thought

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LANGUAGE

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THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

Human language: a communication system

specific to Homo sapiens.
• Open and symbolic.
• Has rules of grammar.
• Allows its users to express abstract and
distant ideas.
This last point is what makes human language
unique among the varied communication
systems used by animals.

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THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

Syntax: the rules for arranging words and

symbols to form sentences or parts of sentences
in a particular language.
Grammar: the entire set of rules for combining
symbols and sounds to speak and write a
particular language.

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EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE IN HUMANS

Protolanguage: very rudimentary language used

by earlier species of Homo.
• Also known as pre-language.

It is likely that only our species (Homo sapiens)

has used grammatical and syntactical language.
• If so, it is less than 150,000 years old.

Scientists think that the evolution of language

and the evolution of the brain were intertwined.
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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS

Language learning begins in the womb.

The ability to understand words develops
slightly before the ability to produce words.
• Comprehension precedes production.

Younger infants can distinguish phonetic sounds

outside of their native language, but by 10 or 12
months of age they can no longer do this.

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS

Language develops in stages.

• Cooing: in the first 6 months, consisting almost
exclusively of vowels such as “aah, ee, ooh.”
• Babbling: beginning around 5–6 months,
experimentation with a complex range of phonemes
—consonants as well as vowels.
• One-word utterances: around 12 months of age,
single words such as “mama,” “dada,” or “no!”
• Children tend to acquire words that are spoken at the
ends of sentences first.
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 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS

Two-word utterances: phrases children put

together, starting around 18 months, such as
“my ball,” “mo wawa,” or “go way.”
Sentence phase: the stage when
children begin speaking in fully
grammatical sentences; usually
age 2½ to 3.

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS

There is a sensitivity period for language.

If children are not exposed to any human
language before a certain age, their language
abilities never fully develop.
• By about age 12, after neural pruning and neural
wiring have reached their peak.
• Severe neglect and lack of exposure to language
cause permanent problems in language
development.
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 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS
The association between brain growth and language
development. As a child’s brain approaches its final adult size,
the onset and rapid development of language match the rapid
growth of the brain (Sakai, 2005).

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THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Sociocultural theories emphasize that we learn

language from the people around us.
• Children who hear more total and unique words
develop their language faster and more richly.
• Mirror neurons: active when we see others perform
an action and when we perform the same action.
• Child-directed speech: changes in adult speech
patterns characterized by higher pitch, changes in
voice volume, simpler sentences, emphasis on the
here and now, and use of emotion.
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 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Development of vocabulary as
a function of socioeconomic
status of the family. By age 3,
children from professional
families use more than twice as
many different words as
children from disadvantaged
families (Hart & Risley, 1995).

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THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

In his conditioning and learning theory,

B. F. Skinner argued that language exists
because it is reinforced and shaped.
• The progression of language skills emerges
because of shaping, successive approximations,
and reinforcement.

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 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The nativist view of language suggests that we

discover language rather than learn it—that
language development is inborn.
Linguist Noam Chomsky has
argued that humans are born with a
language acquisition device (LAD).
• Also, that there is a single universal
grammar underlying all human
languages.
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 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Both nature and nurture perspectives are

needed to fully explain language.
• Natural abilities are modified by the learner’s
environment, an interaction described as innately
guided learning.
• Studies of twins suggest grammar
is influenced more by genetics,
while vocabulary is influenced
more by the environment.

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 CAN OTHER SPECIES LEARN
HUMAN LANGUAGE?
Chimps and other primates do not have a vocal
apparatus adequate for speech.
• They have been taught sign language; but most have
only limited ability.

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LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND THOUGHT

Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir proposed the

Whorf-Sapir hypothesis—that language creates
thought as much as thought creates language.
• Linguistic determinism hypothesis: our language
determines our way of thinking and our perceptions of
the world.
Research suggests that language influences, but
does not necessarily determine, the way we think
about and perceive the world around us.
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THINKING, REASONING,
AND DECISION MAKING

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 THINKING, REASONING,
AND DECISION MAKING
Cognitive psychology is the science of how
people think, learn, remember, and perceive.
Cognition: mental processes involved in
acquiring, processing, and storing knowledge.

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HOW DO WE REPRESENT
THOUGHTS
IN OUR
Mental MINDS? a structure in the mind
representation:
that stands for something else.
• An idea or image.

Visual imagery: visual representations created

by the brain after the original stimulus is no
longer present.
• Imagining an activity activates the brain similarly to
the actual doing of the activity.

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 HOW DO WE REPRESENT
THOUGHTS IN OUR MINDS?
Mental rotation: the process of imagining an
object turning in three-dimensional space.

In this example, the figures on the right are always rotated 80 degrees
compared to the figures on the left. It takes most people about 2.5
seconds to mentally rotate the figures. The pairs in (a) and (b) are the
same, whereas the pair in (c) is different (Shepard & Metzler, 1971).
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HOW DO WE REPRESENT
THOUGHTS
INmajor
A OURfunction
MINDS? of the brain is to organize and
classify our perceptions into categories.
One way we do so is by labeling things.
Category: a classification created by perceiving
similar features in objects, ideas, or events and
treating them as if they are the same.
The best-fitting examples of a category are
known as prototypes.
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HOW DO WE REPRESENT
THOUGHTS
IN OURaMINDS?
Concept: mental grouping of objects, events,
or people.
Concept hierarchy: an arrangement of related
concepts in a particular way, with some being
general and others specific.
• Helps us order and understand our world.

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HOW DO WE REPRESENT
THOUGHTS
IN OUR MINDS?

A hierarchical model of the verbal concept “living thing.” Concepts are

represented by circles, or nodes, and are interconnected. The properties
of concepts are depicted by arrows, which represent statements.
Relationships are shown in CAPS. The concept Flower, for instance, HAS
petals and leaves, IS pretty, IS a plant, and IS a rose or a daisy. The concept
Plant is more general than Rose and Daisy (McClelland & Rogers, 2003).
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HOW DO WE REASON ABOUT EVIDENCE?

Reasoning: the process of drawing inferences or

conclusions from principles and evidence.
• Deductive reasoning: reasoning from general
statements to specific conclusions.
• Inductive reasoning: reasoning to general
conclusions from specific evidence.
• Causal inferences: judgments about causation of one
thing by another.
• Confirmation bias: the tendency to selectively attend
to information that supports one’s beliefs.
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CRITICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THINKING

Critical thinking involves our ability to question,

evaluate, and analyze information and then form
sound opinions based on evidence.
Scientific thinking is closely connected.
The essence is forming beliefs (hypotheses) that
are then empirically tested to determine
whether they are valid or not.

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HOW DO WE MAKE JUDGMENTS

AND DECISIONS?
Heuristics: mental shortcuts for making complex
and uncertain decisions and judgments.
Representativeness heuristic: a strategy we use
to estimate the probability of one event based
on how typical it is of another event.
• This depends on being aware of base rates, or how
common something is in the population as a whole.

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HOW DO WE MAKE JUDGMENTS

AND DECISIONS?
Availability heuristic: a device we use to
make decisions based on the ease with which
estimates come to mind or how available they
are to our awareness.
• Affected by the vividness of an idea, such as the
thought of a plane crash.
• Conjunction fallacy: an error in logic that occurs
when people believe that the combination of two
events is more likely to occur than either of the
events alone.
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 HOW DO WE MAKE JUDGMENTS

AND DECISIONS?
Rational choice theory suggests that when given
options, humans will choose the one that is
most likely to help them achieve their goals.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found that
instead, people often make decisions based on
intuition.

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THINKING, REASONING,
AND DECISION MAKING

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 BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER:
MAKING CONNECTIONS IN
LANGUAGE
AND THOUGHT
Learning a second language can be challenging,
but it also offers cognitive advantages.
• There is a sensitive period for second-language
acquisition.
• People fluent in two languages are capable of more
efficient cognitive processing.
• The validity of entrance exams for nonnative
speakers is somewhat questionable.
• Bilingual individuals are more skilled in theory of
mind tasks.
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