What categories are most natural to use?

The categories most natural to use are those that are basic-level: moderately abstract categories that provide a good combination of being informative and efficient.

What is the structure of categories?

Classical categories possess a set of features that determine, unambiguously, whether individual items belong to the category, whereas the boundaries of fuzzy categories are ambiguous. A family resemblance category is one in which category members share a large number of features, but no single feature is absolutely necessary for membership in the category. Within categories, prototype refers to the most central member of a category. Categories vary in abstraction. One category is more abstract than a second if the second category is contained within the first. Ad hoc categories are groupings of items that go together because they relate to a goal that people have in a specific situation.

Do dogs use language?

No, though they do communicate, often with scent. Language differs from general communication in two ways: (1) There is an arbitrary relation between words and things and (2) language’s rules are generative.

How is language organized?

Language is organized by levels. At the highest level is conversation, followed by sentences, phrases, and words. Words are made up of parts called morphemes that themselves convey meaning. At the lowest level of analysis, language consists of sounds.

What do the rules of syntax do?

Rules of syntax specify whether a series of phrases form a sentence that is grammatically correct and how a core sentence can be transformed. A transformational grammar is the full set of rules that indicates how components of a sentence can be shifted around to create other sentences that are grammatically correct.

How do children acquire language?

B. F. Skinner proposed that children learn language through environmental rewards. Noam Chomsky proposed that all humans possess a mechanism in the brain that is dedicated to processing the syntax of language, that is, a universal grammar (although, as we saw in This Just In on universal grammar, more recent research indicates that grammar may not be as universal as Chomsky believed). Statistical language learning proposes that children acquire language by learning patterns of sounds and words that are statistically more common than others.

What did early discoveries in the study of language and the brain say about brain regions involved in producing and understanding language?

This evidence suggested that the brain contained two distinct regions dedicated entirely to, and independently responsible for, the use of language. One, Broca’s area, produced grammatical language, and the other, Wernicke’s area, was responsible for the understanding of spoken language.

How has contemporary brain imaging evidence altered scientists’ earlier beliefs about language and the brain?

Contemporary brain imaging evidence reveals that multiple areas of the brain, beyond merely Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, contribute to language use. Furthermore, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area take part in psychological functions other than just language.

Why don’t animals have language?

To answer this question, Herbert Terrace tried to teach a chimp, Nim Chimpsky, to use sign language to communicate. Terrace found that Nim never combined sequences of signs in a novel manner to express ideas—a behavior that defines language use.

B-20

Does language shape reality?

According to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, yes. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis states that language shapes our thinking, implying that individuals who speak different languages could have fundamentally different views of reality.

What does research on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis tell us about the effect of language on thinking?

One prediction from the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is that if language affects thought, people who speak languages with different numbers of color terms should think differently about colors. However, a study by Berlin and Kay (1969) demonstrated that people who spoke different languages thought similarly about colors. This and other evidence contradict the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and reminds us that people’s thoughts about color are embodied cognitions determined, in part, by the workings of the visual system.

How do we know that thought influences language?

Psychologists have used as evidence the difficulty we experience when trying to express ideas in words that we already communicated by gesturing. Moreover, as we saw in Cultural Opportunities, there are cultural variations in patterns of thinking that are reflected in language. Individuals from Australia use more adjectives and fewer state verbs than do individuals from South Korea.

What psychological processes get in the way of good logical reasoning?

People’s ability to reason logically is impaired by confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out information that is consistent with initial conclusions and to disregard information that might contradict them. Confirmation bias is dangerous because it may cause us to overlook important information.

Do people always have difficulty with logical reasoning?

No. Leda Cosmides’s research demonstrates that people can reason accurately about problems involving the possibility of cheating when goods are exchanged, even if they do poorly on other reasoning tasks.

How do people judge the likelihood of uncertain events?

People judge the likelihood of uncertain events by using judgmental heuristics, which are simple cognitive procedures for making estimates that otherwise might be made through formal calculations. In the availability heuristic, people base their judgments on the ease with which information comes to mind. In the representativeness heuristic, people base judgments about the likelihood that an individual belongs to a given category on the degree to which the person or object resembles the category. In the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, people estimate an amount by formulating an initial guess (the “anchor”) and adjusting it to reach a final judgment. These heuristics can be helpful but they can also lead us to make judgmental errors.

How logically do we make decisions?

Though the standard model of decision making suggests that we make decisions by considering the subjective value and net worth of outcomes, framing effects and mental accounting suggest that people are not always this logical. In a framing effect, people’s decisions are influenced by the way that alternative choices are described, not by the subjective value of choices. In mental accounting, people divide their assets and expenditures into distinct cognitive categories and, in doing so, ignore net costs.

How do people solve problems?

We know the answer to this question thanks, in part, to think-aloud protocol analysis (see Research Toolkit). Because people can’t envision a problem’s entire problem space, they rely on problem-solving heuristics, such as means–ends analysis. In means–ends analysis, instead of imagining every possible step that could lead to a desired outcome, people simply try to reduce the distance between where they are now and where they want to end up.

How do computers solve problems?

Researchers studying problem solving have written computer programs that solve problems using means–ends analysis. When they compare the computer’s performance to human performance, results are similar, which suggests that both computers and humans use a means–ends problem-solving strategy.

What determines how quickly we can rotate images in our head?

According to research by Shepard and colleagues, the time it takes people to rotate images correlates almost perfectly with the number of actual degrees the images must be mentally rotated.

What does research on mental distance suggest about how we use mental imagery?

Kosslyn and colleagues’ research indicates that people take longer to answer a question about a mental image if they have to cover more distance across the image in their minds to do so.

What is—and isn’t—intelligence?

Intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge, to solve problems, and to use acquired knowledge to create new, valued products. It does not refer to personality traits, physical abilities, or specific skills.

B-21

How has intelligence been measured?

In the early 1900s, French psychologist Alfred Binet constructed a test including items important to school achievement: logical reasoning, vocabulary use, and factual knowledge. He found that individual differences in test performance predicted individual differences in classroom achievement, a finding that holds true today. A German psychologist, William Stern, supplemented Binet’s efforts with a scoring system that included children’s mental age in a formula for intelligence quotient, or IQ: IQ = (mental age/chronological age) × 100. When intelligence tests are given to adults, the tests are scored so that the mean score in a population is 100 and the standard deviation 15; about two-thirds of people, then, get IQ scores between 85 and 115.

Is there a “general” intelligence?

People’s scores on tests measuring different mental abilities tend to correlate positively. These positive correlations can be explained by proposing that there exists general intelligence, an overall mental ability that affects performance on different types of tests.

What cognitive processes contribute to individual differences in general intelligence?

Individual differences in fluid intelligence, which refers to mental abilities that are useful in the performance of almost any challenging task that a person may attempt, can be explained by individual differences in working memory capacity, which refers to the ability to focus attention and avoid distraction.

Is inherited biology the only determinant of intelligence?

Four findings suggest that biological factors alone cannot explain people’s level of intelligence. The first is the Flynn effect, which refers to the rise in a population’s average IQ over time. This change has occurred over decades—too fast to be accounted for by genetic changes. The second is the finding that education increases intelligence. The third is that individual differences in intelligence can change over time. The fourth is that the effect of genes on intelligence depends on the population being studied.

Are there multiple types of intelligence?

According to Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory, people possess a number of different mental abilities, each of which is a distinct form of intelligence. He cites as evidence the existence of child prodigies. Another source of evidence is savant syndrome, characterized by mental impairment in most areas of life but exceptional performance in one domain. A third type of evidence consists of cases in which people develop exceptional intellectual abilities late in life, in the midst of declining overall mental capacity.

Do people with big brains tend to be smarter?

Yes, but the correlation is only of modest size, which means that many people with smaller brains can have relatively higher levels of intelligence, and vice versa.

How are brain connections related to intelligence?

Intelligent behavior requires the use of multiple regions of the brain. People who have relatively strong neural connections among these brain regions can process information more efficiently, and thus tend to get higher IQ scores.