CH-8-9 Learning – Psychology: Perspectives and Connections : Chapter Notes

This Document Contains Chapters 8 to 9 Chapter 8: Learning BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE Basic Processes of Learning Association Conditioning Models of Learning Classical Conditioning Pavlov’s Dogs How Classical Conditioning Works The Conditioning of Little Albert Operant Conditioning Reinforcement and Punishment How Operant Conditioning Works Applications of Operant Conditioning Schedules of Reinforcement Challenging Assumptions About Conditioning Models of Learning Conditioned Taste Aversion Instinctive Drift Latent Learning Social Learning Theory The Interaction of Nature and Nurture in Learning Imprinting Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Learning Synaptic Change During Learning Experience, Enrichment, and Brain Growth Psychology in the Real World: Sleep Facilitates Learning Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in Learning: Why Do People Smoke? Chapter Review EXTENDED CHAPTER OUTLINE BASIC PROCESSES OF LEARNING • Learning is defined as enduring changes in behavior that occur with experience. o Suggestion: Link learning and its definition to memory (Chapter 7). Association • Association occurs when one piece of information from the environment becomes linked repeatedly with another and the organism begins to connect the two sources of information. • CONNECTION: Right now you are habituated to dozens of stimuli, including the feel of clothing on your skin. Now you are sensitized to it. How so? (Chapter 4) CONDITIONING MODELS OF LEARNING • Conditioning is a form of association learning in which behaviors are triggered by associations with events in the environment. • There are two types of conditioning (both are forms of associative learning). o Classical conditioning is a form of associative learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus to which one has an automatic, inborn response. o Operant conditioning is the process of changing behavior by manipulating the consequences of that behavior. Classical Conditioning • Learning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus to which one has an automatic, inborn response. Pavlov’s Dogs • Perhaps the most famous example is Pavlov’s dogs. Initially, Pavlov studied digestion in dogs and he used meat powder to stimulate salivation. After doing this for a while, he noticed that the dogs would begin to salivate even before the meat powder was presented. • Pavlov reasoned that the dogs formed an association between a stimulus that had no inherent deliciousness (the sound of the apparatus) and one that did (the meat powder). To test this, he used new dogs and presented a neutral stimulus (a bell sound) just before showing them the meat powder. After repeated presentation, dogs not only salivated to the meat powder but also to the bell. Thus, the bell (formally neutral) has now become an associated stimuli. How Classical Conditioning Works • Pavlov called the kind of learning he’d observed the conditioning of reflexes. Today this is referred to as classical conditioning. • An unconditioned response (UCR) is the natural automatic, inborn response to a stimulus. In the Pavlov example, salivation is the UCR. It might help to explain to students that unconditioned simply means “unlearned.” • An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is the environmental input that elicits an unlearned, reflexive response. For Pavlov, this is the meat powder. • A conditioned stimulus (CS) is a previously neutral stimulus that an organism learns to associate with the UCS. In Pavlov’s study, the CS would be the bell ringing. It is important to note that Pavlov presented the neutral stimulus (bell) immediately before the UCS (meat powder). • A conditioned response (CR) is a behavior that an organism learns to perform when presented with the CS alone. In Pavlov’s study this was also salivation but here the salivation was in response to the anticipation of food presentation. • Forward conditioning is the neutral stimulus being presented just before the UCS, or the neutral stimulus and the UCS presented simultaneously. • Backward conditioning is a slightly less successful form of conditioning in which the neutral stimulus follows the UCS. • Pavlov’s criterion for successful conditioning is listed below. 1. Multiple pairings of UCS and neutral stimulus (CS) are necessary for an association to occur, so that the CS will produce the conditioned response. 2. Temporal continuity is also important. The UCS and CS must be paired or presented very close together in time in order for an association to form. • Other issues in the acquisition process are stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination. o Stimulus generalization is extending the association between UCS and CS to include a broad array of similar stimuli. o Stimulus discrimination is when a CR (such as salivation) occurs only to the exact CS to which it was conditioned. o Extinction is the weakening of a CR when the CS and the UCS are no longer paired together. For example, if Pavlov stopped providing food after bell ringing would they salivate forever? No. • Spontaneous recovery is the sudden reappearance of an extinguished response. The Conditioning of Little Albert • Perhaps one of the best illustrations of stimulus generalization comes from Watson and Rayner (1920), in the conditioning of Little Albert. o A 9-month-old baby known as Little Albert was conditioned to fear a white rat. Initially, Watson and Rayner brought out a white rat and showed it to Albert. He was curious, but not afraid of it. They then presented the rat with a very loud noise (the sound of a hammer striking a steel bar right behind Albert’s head). Naturally, the loud sound (a UCS) startled Albert (the UCR), and he got very upset. Eventually, the rat (CS) elicited the fear response (CR). Amazingly, Albert further generalized the fear response to a slew of stimuli, including a rabbit, dog, a white fur coat, and even a Santa Claus mask! This generalization is very impressive, if not disturbing, as he generalized from animate to inanimate stimuli. o CONNECTION: The ethics of human research today would not allow Watson do his research on Little Albert (Chapter 2). Operant Conditioning • Thorndike believed that spontaneously emitted behavior can become favored and reinforced when it is followed by certain consequences. He tested this using a device called a puzzle box. Cats are placed in a specially designed cage from which they want to escape. Simply based on its random behaviors, the cat would eventually be rewarded by the door opening. This reward increased the probability of the now specific behavior happening again, leading to further rewards. Moreover, this specific behavior would occur more quickly over time. Thorndike labeled this the law of effect. • Skinner coined the term operant to refer to behavior that acts, or operates, on the environment to produce specific consequences. • Operant conditioning: the process of modifying behavior by manipulating the consequences of that behavior. That is, a behavior that is rewarded is more likely to occur again. Reinforcement and Punishment • Reinforcer is anything that increases the frequency of a behavior (e.g., receiving smiles, money, food, oxygen, compliments, alleviation of pain). o There are two dimensions of reinforcement: primary vs. secondary and positive vs. negative.  Primary reinforcers are innate and satisfy biological needs (e.g., food, water, sex).  Secondary (or conditioned) reinforcers are learned by association (usually via classical conditioning). Examples include money, grades, and peer approval.  Positive reinforcement is the presentation of something, someone, or a situation as a reward for behavior (e.g., giving a child stickers for doing homework correctly, good grades, praise) to increase behavior.  Negative reinforcement is removal of an unpleasant stimulus that increases the probability of behavior (e.g., smoking to alleviate stress, napping to alleviate fatigue, giving a fussy child a cookie to stop them from crying) to increase behavior.  It is important to note that students will often find these concepts difficult. You should explain that the terms “positive” and “negative” are somewhat misleading. They do not refer to polarity of behavior but rather the addition or subtraction of a stimulus. For example, if you give a fussy child a cookie that is a positive reinforcement for the child (they have learned that fussing leads to cookies) but a negative reinforcement for the parent (who has learned that cookies lead to quiet children). • Punishment is any stimulus that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will occur. o Like reinforcement, punishment can be positive or negative. Remind students this refers to the addition or subtraction of the stimulus. That is, all punishment is meant to decrease behavior and all reinforcement is meant to increase behavior.  Positive punishment is the addition of a stimulus that may decrease behavior (e.g., spanking in an effort to stop an undesirable behavior, electric shocks, putting bad-tasting chemicals on a child’s thumb to assist them in stopping undesirable thumb sucking, getting a fine for speeding). In any of these examples, an unwanted situation/stimulus is added in the attempt to dissuade negative behaviors.  Negative punishment is the removal of a stimulus in order to decrease behavior; in other words, something that is desirable is taken away (e.g., grounding a child by taking away their freedom, taking an adolescent’s cell phone away for breaking curfew, losing your license for a DUI). How Operant Conditioning Works • The basic idea is that any behavior that is reinforced will occur more often in the future. • Skinner box: a simple cage used for operant conditioning in which a small animal (e.g., a rat) can move around, with a food dispenser and a response lever to trigger food delivery. Using this device, Skinner demonstrated how a rat could be coaxed to perform a desired behavior (such as lever pressing) through reinforcement of behaviors that occurred when the rat got closer and closer to pressing the lever using shaping (the reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior). Applications of Operant Conditioning • Operant conditioning is a method used in the treatment of some psychological disorders, nicotine addiction, and learning disabilities. • Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is used in the treatment of autism. Schedules of Reinforcement • The schedules of reinforcement are the variety of conditions or rules about presenting reinforcement. Reinforcement may be presented every time a behavior occurs, or only occasionally. o Continuous reinforcement is rewarding a behavior every time it occurs. For example, giving dogs treats every time they sit on command is continuous reinforcement. o Intermittent reinforcement is reinforcement that does not occur after every response. This type of reinforcement tends to produce a stronger behavioral response than continuous reinforcement. • Skinner identified four patterns of intermittent reinforcement. These schedules vary along two dimensions: whether you are being reinforced based on the number of behaviors (ratio) or the amount of time that passes (interval) and whether reinforcement occurs after a set number or amount of time has passed (fixed) or whether this amount varies (variable). o A fixed ratio (FR) schedule is reinforcement follows a set number of responses. For example, every third time Fluffy the Shih Tzu sits on command, Fluffy gets a cookie. Interestingly, a continuous schedule is a fixed ratio where the number of response is set at 1. o A variable ratio (VR) schedule is the number of responses needed for reinforcement varies. For example, playing slot machines, which reinforce variably but at a preordained schedule, or checking your email to see if you’ve got mail. o A fixed interval (FI) schedule is when responses are always reinforced after a set period of time has passed; for example, getting paid every two weeks. o A variable interval (VI) schedule is when responses are reinforced after time periods of different duration have passed; for example, your instructor may use CPS questions to track attendance or reward you with points, but it varies at which lecture and at which point in the lecture they are asked. Challenging Assumptions About Conditioning Models of Learning Three domains of research challenged traditional learning theory. These three domains are conditioned taste aversion, instinctive drift, and latent learning. Conditioned Taste Aversion • Conditioned taste aversion is the learned avoidance of a particular taste or food if nausea occurs at the same time as or shortly after exposure to the food. • The Traditional Learning Model explained taste aversion as a special case of classical conditioning. • Garcia and his colleagues (1955) wanted to see if they could condition rats to develop an aversion to water sweetened with saccharine—something they normally like a lot—by pairing it with radiation (a UCS for nausea at certain doses). They began with the following questions: 1. Could taste aversion to a preferred substance (saccharine water) be achieved by pairing the taste with radiation (a UCS for nausea)? 2. How long would the taste aversion last without repeated exposure to radiation (the UCS)? • Researchers varied the conditions of groups of rats. All of the groups had access to either plain water or saccharine water during the radiation period. One control group had access to plain water during irradiation. The other control group got saccharine water and no radiation. In the experimental condition, rats subjected to different levels of radiation were given saccharine water. All of the groups that received radiation were exposed to it for the same amount of time, 6 hours overall. In some cases, the interval of time between when the rats were irradiated (UCS) and when they tasted the drink (CS) lasted several minutes. The independent variable was the radiation, and the dependent variable was measured in terms of how much saccharine water the rats consumed after the pairing of saccharine water with radiation. • The results indicated that regardless of radiation level, both groups of rats that had been drinking saccharine water during irradiation consumed significantly less saccharine water after conditioning. • This study is important because it showed that long-lasting conditioned taste aversion could occur even when the UCS and CS were paired only during a single session. This is now known as the Garcia effect. • Garcia and Koelling (1966) varied the type of aversive stimulus (UCS) to which the rats were exposed. Nausea (the UCR) was induced by exposure to X-rays, whereas pain (UCR) was induced by shocks through the floor. When the rat licked the drinking tube, it received the CS of either saccharine water or “bright-noisy water” (plain water accompanied by a light and a buzzer that went on when the rat touched the drinking tube). The UCS for half the rats was X-rays. The other half received a shock. • The results indicated that the rats that were made nauseous avoided the sweet water but not the bright-noisy water, whereas rats that were given a mildly painful shock avoided the bright-noisy water but not the sweet water. • The key finding here is that, contrary to the predictions of traditional learning theory, an organism cannot be conditioned to respond to just any “neutral” stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus. • Garcia’s findings in several studies undermined two major assumptions of classical conditioning: (1) that conditioning (learning) could happen only if an organism was exposed repeatedly within a brief time span to the UCS and CS together and (2) that organisms can learn to associate any two stimuli. Instinctive Drift • Breland and Breland (1961), two of Skinner’s students, successfully conditioned 38 different species and more than 6,000 animals. They coined the term instinctive drift, which they defined as learned behavior that shifts toward instinctive, unlearned behavior tendencies. • In the biological constraint model some behaviors are inherently more likely to be learned than others. In other words, biology constrains, or limits, options to make the adaptive ones more likely to occur. The idea here is that constraints on learning have positive evolutionary implications; that is, it is useful for survival. For example, if you were attacked by a dog and did not learn a fear response, you might wind up dead. • Instinctive drift and biological constraints provide great examples of the limits nature places on nurture. Latent Learning • Latent learning is learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement and is not demonstrated until the reinforcement is provided at a later time. • Tolman reasoned that these rats had formed internal cognitive maps, like pictures in their minds, of the maze from all the practice they had received. When they finally had rewards waiting for them, the rats could use these maps to run the maze more efficiently. It is difficult to know whether the rats really had maps of the maze in their minds. What is clear from these findings is that some learning can occur in the absence of reinforcement. Running the maze, even without rewards, helped the rats in Group 3 run much better when reinforcement was available • Connection: People who cannot form new memories nevertheless learn. The body can learn things of which the conscious mind is not aware (Chapter 7). SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY • Enactive learning is learning by doing. • Observational learning is learning by watching others. • Bandura is the father of social learning. Social learning theory describes learning that occurs when we model or imitate the behavior of others. Modeling is Bandura's term for the process of observing and imitating behaviors performed by others. • People learn best those things they are rewarded for doing, whether the rewards are external (such as praise, money, candy) or internal (such as joy and satisfaction). Bandura realized that reinforcement matters not only for the person carrying out the behavior, but also for those who watch. • A series of classic studies in the 1960s involved a Bobo doll. This research demonstrated that those who viewed aggression were more aggressive with the doll than those who did not see aggression. The consequences for the model also mattered. Children who saw the aggressive adult rewarded for his aggression were more violent with the toys and Bobo doll than those who saw the aggressive adult get punished. Those who did not see an aggressive model did not show much aggression with the toys, nor did those who saw the adult punished. These studies show how modeling and reinforcement can work together to influence behavior. Kids are more likely to copy behavior that they see others get rewarded for doing. THE INTERACTION OF NATURE AND NURTURE IN LEARNING • Four learning processes that illustrate the dynamic interplay between nature and nurture are: imprinting, imitation, synaptic change, and brain growth with enrichment. Imprinting • Imprinting is the rapid and innate learning of the characteristics of a caregiver within a very short period of time after birth. • Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and especially from the work of Lorenz on ducklings and goslings (baby geese). • Imprinting provides clear evidence of sensitivity periods in learning. These are periods during which, if an animal is exposed to a particular stimulus or situation, it will learn it very readily. Once the animal has moved beyond that period, it becomes much harder, if not impossible, to learn certain skills or make use of certain kinds of information. • Imprinting and sensitivity periods in learning make it clear that the mind is not a blank slate but rather is structured in such a way that certain kinds of experiences are more or less easily learned at different periods in life (e.g., vision, hearing, and language). • Imprinting does not occur in human. Babies, however, do form attachments (Chapter 5) that serve much the same function. Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Learning • Imitation by infants may be a result of mirror neuron systems (MNS) in the brain. Mirror neuron systems respond in much the same way while watching an action as they do while making an action (Chapter 3). CONNECTION: Mirror neurons help explains why even newborn infants imitate adult behavior so easily (Chapter 5). Synaptic Change During Learning • Synaptic connections between neurons strengthen and even grow during long-term associative learning, indicating that the brain literally grows and changes as we learn. The development and frequent use of new synaptic connections in response to stimulation from the environment strengthens the associated memories and makes learning easier. It does seem as though “practice makes perfect” and you should either “use it” or you will “lose it.” Experience, Enrichment, and Brain Growth • Later experiments showed that animals did not have to be raised from birth in an enriched environment to benefit. However, the best way to stimulate new neural growth is to be in an enriched environment that continues to have new and novel forms of stimulation. • CONNECTION: Can experience and learning generate new neurons in an elderly person? (Chapter 5) PSYCHOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD: SLEEP FACILITATES LEARNING • To learn material in a class, you have to pay attention, take in new information, form new associations, and then store it in a form that can be recalled or used later. The processes of consciousness, memory, and learning all come together in classroom learning; you need sleep to do all of these things. • A growing scientific literature shows that sleep plays an important role in learning. Beginning in infancy, better sleep is associated with increases in cognitive functioning. Sleep enhances and consolidates what we learn during the day. • College students who have the most and best quality sleep have higher course grades in psychology and higher overall GPAs than those who have disruptive and disturbed sleep Pulling all-nighters is associated with a lower GPA. • Before running a maze, rats had very thin electrodes painlessly implanted in their hippocampus (learning and memory center) to measure activity patterns of specific neurons. When the mice were running the maze, a particular pattern of neural firing was observed. Much to the researchers’ surprise, while these rats slept, a very similar pattern of brain activity was replayed in the hippocampus and the visual cortex. In other words, while they slept their brain spontaneously and without effort was rehearsing and consolidating what it learned during the day. In fact, the phenomenon of “sleeping on” a problem and working it out spontaneously during the night and having a solution suddenly appear in the morning is probably related to rehearsal and replay of learned experience. • Dozens of human studies support a strong role for sleep in memory consolidation and learning. • The following recommendations may help students use sleep to improve school performance. o Get more sleep the night or two before an exam. o Short midday naps enhance learning, alertness, and memory. o Increase physical activity if you are having trouble getting a night's sleep. BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: MAKING CONNECTIONS: WHY DO PEOPLE SMOKE? • Social learning probably offers the best explanation to how the smoking behavior is acquired. Most smokers start smoking as teenagers, and most teens start smoking because they seek some of the rewards that appear to come with smoking: coolness, peer acceptance, and looking like an adult. Kids see that others who smoke get some of these rewards for smoking. They might model the smoking behavior in order to obtain these rewards themselves. • Once someone has become an established smoker, operant conditioning helps maintain smoking behavior. Smoking is bolstered by a number of positive reinforcers: arousal of the sympathetic nervous system (the “rush” of smoking), mild relaxation of the muscles, and in some cases, increased peer acceptance. Smoking also has a number of negative reinforcers, such as the removal of stress, the removal of social isolation for some smokers, and a reduced appetite. • The power of these reinforcers, combined with the physiologically addictive properties of nicotine, makes it very difficult to quit smoking. Moreover, the potential punishers of smoking, a substantially increased risk of lung cancer and heart disease, are threats that are so far off in the future for teens that they tend to ignore them. • There are several other factors to consider. o The first factor to consider is gender. One large-scale study indicated that gender influences susceptibility to smoking, the way people work with their urges to smoke, and the ability to successfully quit. For example, whether or not one’s friends smoke plays a stronger role in whether adolescent girls attempt and succeed at quitting smoking than it does in boys. o The second factor to consider is personality. People who are more sociable, impulsive, rebellious, hostile, and sensation-seeking are more likely to start smoking and less likely to quit successfully than those who do not have these personal characteristics. For example, not having a long-term perspective, they fail to understand the negative effects of smoking on health. o A final factor to is sociocultural variables. Research suggests that cultural variables (ethnic group), social factors (availability of role models), and basic principles of learning (observational learning) can all interact to influence whether young people start smoking. For example, African-American children were less likely to smoke than European-American children, and they had fewer family members and friends who smoked. • Behavior modification is a technique that applies principles of operant conditioning to changing behavior. This may be particularly effective in helping people quit smoking, especially when combined with nicotine replacement therapies (e.g., gum or the patch), which ease the symptoms of withdrawal. KEY TERMS association: process by which two pieces of information from the environment are repeatedly linked so that we begin to connect them in our minds. behavior modification: the application of operant conditioning principles to change behavior. biological constraint model: view on learning proposing that some behaviors are inherently more likely to be learned than others. classical conditioning: form of associative learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus to which one has an automatic, inborn response. conditioned response (CR): a behavior that an organism learns to perform when presented with the CS. conditioned stimulus (CS): a previously neutral input that an organism learns to associate with the UCS. conditioned taste aversion: the learned avoidance of a particular taste or food. conditioning: a form of associative learning in which behaviors are triggered by associations with events in the environment. continuous reinforcement: reinforcement of a behavior every time it occurs. enactive learning: learning by doing. ethology: the scientific study of animal behavior. extinction: the weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response, which occurs when the UCS is no longer paired with the CS. fixed interval (FI) schedule: a pattern of intermittent reinforcement in which responses are always reinforced after a set period of time has passed. fixed ratio (FR) schedule: pattern of intermittent reinforcement in which reinforcement follows a set number of responses. imprinting: the rapid and innate learning of the characteristics of a caregiver very soon after birth. instinctive drift: learned behavior that shifts towards instinctive, unlearned behavior tendencies. intermittent reinforcement: reinforcement of a behavior, but not after every response. latent learning: learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement and is not demonstrated until later, when reinforcement occurs. law of effect: principle that the consequences of a behavior increase (or decrease) the likelihood that the behavior would be repeated. learning: enduring changes in behavior that occur with experience. modeling: the imitation of behaviors performed by others. negative punishment: the removal of a stimulus to decrease behavior. negative reinforcement: removal of a stimulus after a behavior to increase the frequency of that behavior. An example is buckling your seat belt to stop the buzzer in the car. observational learning: learning by watching the behavior of others. operant conditioning: the process of changing behavior by manipulating the consequences of that behavior. positive punishment: the addition of a stimulus that may decrease behavior. positive reinforcement: the presentation or addition of a stimulus after a behavior occurs that increases how often that behavior will occur. primary reinforcers: innate, unlearned reinforcers that satisfy biological needs (such as food, water, or sex). punishment: stimulus, presented after a behavior, that decreases the frequency of the behavior. reinforcer: environmental stimulus that increases the frequency of a behavior. schedules of reinforcement: patterns of reinforcement distinguished by whether reinforcement occurs after a set number of responses or after a certain amount of time has passed since the last reinforcement. secondary (or conditioned) reinforcers: reinforcers that are learned by association, usually via classical conditioning. shaping: the reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior. Skinner box: simple chamber used for operant conditioning of small animals; includes a food dispenser and a response lever to trigger food delivery. social learning theory: a description of the kind of learning that occurs when we model or imitate the behavior of another. spontaneous recovery: the sudden reappearance of an extinguished response. stimulus discrimination: restriction of a CR (such as salivation) to the exact CS to which it was conditioned. stimulus generalization: extension of the association UCS and CS to include a broad array of similar stimuli. unconditioned response (UCR): the automatic, inborn response to a stimulus. unconditioned stimulus (UCS): the environmental input that always produces the same unlearned response. variable interval (VI) schedule: pattern of intermittent reinforcement in which responses are reinforced after time periods of different duration have passed. variable ratio (VR) schedule: a pattern of intermittent reinforcement in which the number of responses needed for reinforcement changes. MAKING THE CONNECTIONS (Some of the connections are found in the text. Other connections may be useful for lecture or discussion.) Basic Processes of Learning CONNECTION: Right now you are habituated to dozens of stimuli – including the feel of clothing on your skin. Now you are sensitized to it. How so? (Chapter 4) o Discussion: Is habituation learning? Ask students to think about their job. How much of what they do is automatic? That is, are they demonstrating habituation (they are oriented to what they do and are exposed to repeatedly) or learning? The Conditioning of Little Albert CONNECTION: Could Watson do research on Little Albert in today’s world? Review the discussion of ethics in Chapter 2. • Discussion: Watson, perhaps the father of the behavioral movement, is best known for the infamous quote: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant—chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors” (Watson, 1925, p. 82). Based on this quotation, what would this mean if you had an IQ of 100 and wanted to be a doctor? What if you lacked the ability for athleticism, as you were born small and weaker than most but you wanted to be a professional football player? What would Watson say? • Discussion: Students are generally interested in this story, and you may want to also talk about little Peter, a follow-up study done by Mary Cover Jones (1924) under Watson’s supervision. Operant Conditioning CONNECTION: What is addiction? See the discussion of drugs in Chapter 6. • Discuss alcohol addiction as it relates to reinforcement and punishment. Instinctive Drift CONNECTION: Every human learns a language. Why is that? (Chapter 9) o Discussion: This might be a good time to preview Chomsky and the nativist perspective in comparison to a learning perspective on language acquisition. Ask students what language skills children are rewarded for, versus prewired for. Do parents punish and correct every grammatical mistake toddlers make in speech? Unlikely. o Discussion: What types of language do animals display? See the bee waggle dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc-mtUs-eis. Latent Learning Connection: People who cannot form new memories nevertheless learn. The body can learn things of which the conscious mind is not aware (Chapter 7). o Activity: If you have Internet access in your classroom, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLK to and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymEn_YxZqZw for clips on Clive Wearing, a man who is unable to form new memory but demonstrates learning none the less. You may also want to use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y Social Learning Theory CONNECTION: Do you think watching violence in movies and TV leads to aggressive behavior? Overwhelmingly, the answer seems to be yes (Chapter 15). o Activity: If you have Internet access in your classroom, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqNaLerMNOE for a video clip of Bandura discussing his famous Bobo Doll study. o Video: Choose any segment from Jackass: The Movie and discuss its implications for young children who idolize these types of behaviors. o Discussion: Ask students to consider how Bandura’s research would map onto the violent videogames on the market today. Imprinting CONNECTION: Mirror neurons help explains why even newborn infants imitate adult behavior so easily (Chapter 5). o Video: Show Fly Away Home (1996) and discuss imprinting. Now ask students how this model is limited in terms of human behavior and attachment. o Activity: Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqZmW7uIPW4 for a brief clip (no sound) of Lorenz with his goslings. Experience, Enrichment, and Brain Growth CONNECTION: Can experience and learning generate new neurons in an elderly person? (Chapter 5) o Discussion: See Chapter 7 for a review on how new proteins form and synapses actually grow in long-term but not short-term memory formation. Tell students that just listening to information and reading the bullets on a PowerPoint cause certain synapses to form between neurons that were not there before. INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTION 1. Classical conditioning and your pet: Ask students to think about their pet. Ask them what happens when they go into the kitchen. How do their fish respond when they walk over to the tank? Why do animals get excited by these mundane behaviors? Their pet has learned to associate these behaviors with food. If you want to continue this line of discussion, ask them about “false alarms.” If you go into the kitchen repeatedly and then don’t give them food, what happens? Ask students to provide additional examples of this learning by association (e.g., how have they trained their significant other?). 2. Combining stimulus generalization, stimulus discrimination, extinction, and spontaneous recovery: o Ask students to assume they were bitten (UCS) by a black and white Shih Tzu (a toy breed of dog, the CS) and that the bite elicited a pain response (UCR) such as crying. Ask them what would happen the next time they saw a Shih Tzu (CS). Most likely, they would cry in fear of being bitten again (CR) but the CR could also be running away due to fear. o With this basic outline in place, ask them if they would generalize their fear response to all Shih Tzus. To all dogs? To all small dogs? Or to only black and white dogs? o Now ask students if they would only fear the offending Shih Tzu. For example, you can expand this by asking students to assume that they have generalized their fear to all Shih Tzus and that they have just met a wonderful person and fallen in love with someone who owns a Shih Tzu named Fluffy. What would they do? Can a conditioned response be unlearned? o Now ask students to assume that their new love had them sit down with Fluffy over and over again so that they could make friends with his/her beloved pet (CS) and that they never got bitten or had any unpleasant experience (UCS). How would they feel about Shih Tzus? Chances are that the fear response (CR) would diminish. This is extinction. o Finally, for an example of spontaneous recovery, ask students to imagine that one day they are out walking and a random Shih Tzu attacks and bites them. How will they feel the next time they see Fluffy? We would predict that the fear response (CR) to Fluffy’s next appearance would be heightened, possibly even to original levels. 3. Differences between primary and secondary reinforcers: Students may have difficulty discriminating the differences between these two types of reinforcements. You can use the advertising example in the text (e.g., how reinforcers may acquire pleasant characteristics by virtue of their association with something that is inherently reinforcing, such as food or sex, in ads for sports cars, beer, beauty supplies, etc.). You can also discuss what types of reinforcers are most effective for different situations. For example, ask how to get classmates to show up at different events—the answer . . . FREE FOOD (a primary reinforcer). How might you as a faculty member get students to attend class regularly? OFFER EXTRA CREDIT (a secondary reinforcer). 4. Behavior modification: How should you best modify behaviors? Ask students how their parents reinforced and punished them. Which actions were most effective? Which were most ineffective? Skinner emphasized that reinforcement is a much more effective way of modifying behavior than is punishment. Specifically, using reinforcement to increase desirable behaviors works better than using punishment in an attempt to decrease undesirable behaviors. As another example, ask students to honestly report if they have ever driven drunk. Then ask if they were ever caught in this act. What can government do to curb drunk driving? Should they punish people with jail sentences, major fines, etc., or should they reward people each time they drive sober? 5. Relating classical conditioning concepts to operant conditioning principles: Have students discuss how concepts such as stimulus generalization, stimulus discrimination, extinction, and spontaneous recovery discussed with classical conditioning can be applied to operant conditioning. 6. Classical conditioning: Through classical conditioning, innate responses—like salivation—can become associated with and changed by almost any experience. Vomiting is another example of a reflex, but you can use the association between the reflex of vomiting with something else, say drinking alcohol, to establish a taste aversion. Another example given is the drug disulfiram, which can be used to condition alcoholics to have an aversion to alcohol. If people drink alcohol while taking disulfiram, then they get very sick. That said, alcohol does not become a CS for nausea when the disulfiram is discontinued. It is tough to condition alcohol to become a CS for nausea because the intoxication it produces is a positive reinforcer, especially for alcoholics. 7. Instinctive drift: Animals are primed from birth to readily learn some things and not others. Humans, for example are primed to talk. Turkewitz (1993) is well known for his work on several species of bird and “innate” skills. In humans, he looked at the development of the brain in utero and discovered that the right hemisphere develops early (before the auditory system is working). The left hemisphere develops later and rapidly surpasses the right in both size and complexity. As the auditory system develops in concourse with the left hemisphere, this is also when mom’s speech is most salient. Thus, the left hemisphere becomes specialized for processing language and speech. The right hemisphere remains “unspecialized” and thus is able to deal with visual information, spatial skills, and face/pattern recognition; thus, new meaning to the term innate. Ask students for their definition of innate. How would this research alter that view? 8. Instinctual drift is a wonderful concept that captures students’ attention. Have students provide other examples of instinctual drift (e.g., my dachshund will sometimes begin to scoot on her brisket after she chases her ball. She is doing what she was bred to do and that is hunting badgers by simulating going into the brush and badger holes). Students love to provide examples of their pets. 9. Have students buy a copy of Sniffy (the virtual rat) or, if you do not want to add to their expenses, load the program onto your in-class computer and work through different types of classical conditioning and operant conditioning principles discussed in class. Students very much enjoy the interactive process, and the hands-on experience tends to clarify their mounting confusion over these different concepts. 10. Students will find it difficult to differentiate different types of punishments and reinforcements. They will also find it very difficult to differentiate negative reinforcement and punishment in general. You may wish to utilize CPS clicker questions to ascertain their understanding of these issues before moving forward. 11. Make an additional connection between this chapter and Chapter 2 by asking students how the Skinner box differs from Thorndike’s Puzzle Box. Students may not understand the fundamental difference here. Review concepts of independent and dependent variables. Remind them that Thorndike measured how long it took cats to escape. Skinner is interested in how many times animals perform an action. 12. Give students a homework assignment of watching television. Have them make note of different types of aggression they see in the course of one evening (you may wish to differentiate physical aggression versus relational aggression). Talk to students in the next class meeting about their observations. They will likely be surprised by just how much aggression they saw. Ask them how this might influence children (you can also talk about cartoon violence here). 13. How long does it take for orientation to a dark room to occur? See how long it takes you to move from the orienting response to habituation. You are in a darkened room. Ask a friend to enter the room with a bright light and to start a stopwatch. When your friend sees that you no longer respond to the bright light, your friend should stop the watch. Check how many seconds have elapsed. Repeat this a few times and average the times that it takes you to habituate to the bright light in a dark room. 14. Ask students to describe any taste aversion experiences they have had. 15. If unconditioned responses are biologically built in, does that mean conditioned responses come purely from experience? Another way to approach this would be to ask students to provide examples of instances in which UCR and CR differ. For example, a child is looking at his mom’s pretty scented candle that has been burning for several hours. The child bats at the hot wax pooling by the wick and screams in pain when he is burnt. Several days later his mom has another candle burning. When the child sees the candle he again screams but this time in fear. Discuss the difference in motivation of the UCR and CR and what other possible conditioned responses are viable in this example (e.g., crying, running away, etc.). Suggested Media 1. Bee waggle dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg 2. Fly Away Home (1996) is a good example of imprinting. It is a story of a family of orphaned goslings who have gotten lost and imprint onto a father and daughter who ultimately help them. 3. Traffic (2000) is a good example of social learning and operant conditioning (especially as it relates to drug addiction. This movie intertwines four separate story lines but we recommend you focus on that of the conservative politician recently appointed as the U.S. drug czar who learns that his daughter is a drug addict. 5. Jackass: The Movie (2002). Choose any segment from this film and discuss its implications for young children who idolize these types of behaviors. You can include a discussion of evolutionary and social learning issues at play here. 6. Natural Born Killers (1994). This is a very violent film. You may not want to show clips to illustrate and discuss social learning. You may, however, want to mention this film to students. They have probably seen it! 7. Discovering Psychology—Learning (Annenberg) 8. The Bobo Doll experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr0OTCVtHbU 9. Pigeons Play Ping-Pong http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGazyH6fQQ4 10. Children See Children Do (Observational Learning) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHi2dxSf9hw 11. Original Footage of Little Albert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxKfpKQzow8 12. The Office (Jim classical conditions Dwight) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE8pFWP5QDM 13. Big Bang Theory (Sheldon trains Penny) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_mIEnnlF4 14. Rat basketball (operant conditioning) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAQSEO25fa4 15. Learning and the Brain (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) Concept Clips (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 1. Classical Conditioning 2. Operant Conditioning Suggested Websites 1. Differentiating classical and operant conditioning worksheet: http://www.ar.cc.mn.us/biederman/courses/p1110/conditioning2.htm 2. Using classical and operant conditioning (NOTE: This is a site that provides you with scenarios and solutions. You may not want to assign it to students, though, since the answers are posted.): http://www.utexas.edu/courses/svinicki/ald320/CCOC.html. 3. Operant conditioning worksheet: http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/ironsmithe/Developmental/operant.htm 4. Overview of operant conditioning: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/behsys/operant.html 5. Operant and classical conditioning scenarios and solutions http://www.utexas.edu/courses/svinicki/ald320/CCOC.html Suggested Readings Alloway, T., Wilson, G., & Graham, J. (2005). Sniffy: The virtual rat. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Vicarious reinforcement and imitative learning. Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, 67, 601–608. Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2001). Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation. American Psychologist, 56, 477–489. Dinn, W. M., Aycicegi, A., & Harris, C. L. (2004). Cigarette smoking in a student sample: Neurocognitive and clinical correlates. Addictive Behaviors, 29, 107–126. Garcia, J., Kimeldorf, D. J., & Koelling, R. A. (1955). A conditioned aversion towards saccharine resulting from exposure to gamma radiation. Science, 122, 157–159. Jones, M. C. (1924). A laboratory study of fear: The case of Peter. Pedagogical Seminary, 31, 308–315. Jones, M. C. (1974). Albert, Peter, and John B. Watson. American Psychologist, 29, 581–583. Little Albert regains his identity. (January 2010). Monitor on Psychology, 41. Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1983). Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures. Child Development, 54, 702–709. Pavlov, I. P. (1906). The scientific investigation of the psychical faculties or processes in the higher animals. Science, 24, 613–619. Seligman, M. E. P. (1970). On the generality of the laws of learning. Psychological Review, 77, 406–418. Skinner, B. F. (1959). A case history in scientific method. In S. Koch (Ed.). Psychology—A study of a science, Vol. 2 (pp. 359–379). New York: McGraw-Hill. Watanabe, H., Kobayashi, Y., Sakura, M., Matsumoto, Y., & Mizunami, M. (2003). Classical olfactory conditioning in the cockroach. Zoological Science, 20, 1447–1454. Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1–14. Chapter 9: Language and Thought BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE Language The Nature of Language The Evolution of Language in Humans Language Development in Individuals Stages of Language Development The Sensitivity Period Theories of Language Acquisition Sociocultural Theories Conditioning and Learning Theory Nativist Theory Nature, Nurture, and Language Learning Can Other Species Learn Human Language? Language, Culture, and Thought Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making How Do We Represent Thoughts in Our Minds? Visual Representation Verbal Representation How Do We Reason About Evidence? Critical Thinking Psychology in the Real World: Applying Critical Thinking Beyond the Classroom How Do We Make Judgments and Decisions? The Representativeness Heuristic The Availability Heuristic Challenging Assumptions in Human Rationality Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in Language and Thought: Learning a Second Language Sensitivity Periods and Second-Language Acquisition Second-Language Learning and the Brain Reasoning in a Second language Second Language Acquisition and Metacognition Chapter Review EXTENDED CHAPTER OUTLINE LANGUAGE • Language and thought develop side by side with few exceptions. One is not possible without the other, at least in adult humans. More so, culture and civilization as we know it could not exist without language. The Nature of Language • Human language is an open and symbolic communication system that has rules of grammar and allows its users to express abstract and distant ideas. • This definition involves several assumptions. First, open means that the system is free to change. Second, symbolic means that there is no real connection between a sound and the meaning or idea associated with it. Finally, it is rule-based. o Syntax refers to the rules on how one arranges words in a particular language. o Grammar comprises the entire set of rules for combining symbols and sounds to speak and write a particular language. • Most researchers argue that human language is special because it allows for the communication of abstract ideas and new ideas. The Evolution of Language in Humans • Evidence indicates that early hominids had at least a form of protolanguage or pre-language. Although no one knows for sure when fully grammatical language first appeared, archaeologists and linguists suggest that probably only our species (Homo sapiens) used grammatical and syntactical language. If so, language is less than 150,000 to 200,000 years old. • Anthropologists and psychologists argue that the complexity of the human brain and the human ability to use language co-evolved; that is, as the frontal lobes grew larger, people became capable of thinking and communicating more and more complex and abstract thoughts. Increases in the size of human social groups may have triggered increased brain size as well. The more complex a group is, the greater the need for its members to communicate. Language Development in Individuals In language development we see that receptive language skills come before productive skills. One reason for this may be that receptive skills occur in the left hemisphere, specifically Wernicke’s area. Language production is associated with the left-hemisphere region called Broca’s area. This suggests that Wernicke’s area developed earlier than Broca’s area. Stages of Language Development • Cooing is the first form of speech in infants, present prior to 6 months of age; this is the sound of vowels being repeated. These sounds are universal and are seen in deaf babies as well. • Babbling: around 5 to 6 months of age, infants begin to babble. Babbling is the repetition of sounds that infants extract from their world. These are known as phonemes, a small unit of sound. Before babies’ brains have been fully shaped by their native language, they can make and hear more sounds than their parents can. As children progress through the babbling stage, and with repeated exposure to the subset of sounds in their native language, they “prune” away sounds that are not used in that language and lose the ability to say or perceive non-native sounds. • One-word utterances occur around 12 months. Most children universally speak their first word. Often, this first word is a familiar person or object. • Two-word utterances appear around 18 months of age. This is basically a very simple sentence. • The sentence phase occurs around 2.5 to 3 years of age. At this time children begin to use simple sentences. This transition happens so quickly that linguists usually have a tough time studying it. These sentences may not always be what adults consider grammatically correct, but they are grammatical sentences. • This order is predictable, universal, and is related to brain development. By 3 years of age, the brain is approximately 80% of the size of an adult brain. The Sensitivity Period • Lennenberg argued that there is a critical, or sensitive, period for language acquisition. He argued that if children are not exposed to human language before a certain age will never fully develop language. Why? Because the brain has pruned connections that would have been used. • An example of Lennenberg’s argument is the case of Genie. Her parents severely abused her and locked her away with minimal contact until she was found at approximately 13.5 years of age. At age 17, after 4 years of language training, Genie’s language skills were still extremely delayed. Brain imaging revealed that when she was speaking or listening, the activity was located mostly in her right hemisphere, as opposed to the norm, which would be the left hemisphere. This case suggests that left hemisphere speech development requires stimulation from the environment during a certain critical period if it is to develop properly. Theories of Language Acquisition • Barring no major deficit or trauma, all humans learn to speak, including those who were born deaf. This suggests that we have innate, genetically based structures in the brain that enable us to learn language. Sign language is a very complex language that is just as communicative as spoken language. Sociocultural Theories • This is based on how social factors such as culture, socioeconomic status (SES), birth order, school, peers, television, and verbally responsive parents shape language development. • This is based on the role of imitation, or doing what you see others do. Newborns as young as 50 minutes old will stick out their tongues or open their mouths when they see an adult do so. • Adults use child-directed speech to communicate messages. Child directed speech is using a higher pitch, simplifying sentence structure, and using emotion to convey meaning. These are universal effects. • We see the involvement of interdependent brain processes, such as mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are clusters of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs some task, such as sticking out one’s tongue, but also when an individual observes another person do the same task. Mirror neurons facilitate social learning and imitation. • CONNECTION: One reason that newborn infants are capable of imitating behavior immediately after birth is because humans and other animals have “mirror neurons.” These were detected first after a chance observation in laboratory monkeys (Chapters 3 and 8). Conditioning and Learning Theory • As discussed in Chapter 8, learning theorists argue that language is like any other behavior: It exists because it is reinforced and shaped. Skinner argues that parents reinforce language and thus the behavior increases. He argued the universal sequence of language acquisition was in essence due to shaping. Unfortunately, this theory doesn’t account for everything, as parents often don’t reinforce for grammar and syntax. Nativist Theory • The nativist view states that we discover language rather than learn it. Language development is “native,” or inborn. One source of evidence is that the brain appears to be “wired” for language acquisition evidenced by Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas of the brain, which are dedicated to speech production and comprehension, respectively. • Another piece of evidence is that children universally appear to overgeneralize language rule. For example, they learn to add “ed” to a word to show past tense. They will say “bringed” instead of “brought.” These errors and other evidence have led to the idea that there exists a “universal grammar.” • One of the early proponents of this perspective was Noam Chomsky. He argued that humans are born with a language acquisition device (LAD). The LAD is an innate, biologically based capacity to acquire language; that is, because of the universal ease and automatic nature of learning to speak in complete and grammatical sentences, often with no explicit instruction, he argues that language is part of our nature. Moreover, the sequence of acquisition is roughly the same for all children on the planet, in poor or rich countries, industrialized or non-industrialized. Even the difficulty of the language being learned has no effect. All languages will develop about the same way and at the same time, regardless. • Universal grammar follows universal principles, specific rules of a specific language (e.g., syntax), as well as parameters or the different rules of what is allowed and what is not in different languages. Children learn these rules easily because of a built-in language acquisition device. Nature, Nurture, and Language Learning • Social and learning theorists argue for the importance of social input and stimulation, whereas nativist theorists argue for the importance of brain structures and genetic factors. As the case of Genie tells us, both are needed to fully explain language acquisition. That is, innately guided learning is the interaction between nature and nurture. • Genetic factors and innate structures have a stronger influence on some aspects of language development (e.g, grammar). Environmental conditions have a greater influence on other aspects of language (e.g., vocabulary). Can Other Species Learn Human Language? • A number of captive apes have learned ASL to different degrees and have been able to communicate with humans. Perhaps the most linguistically gifted ape to date is Kanzi, a bonobo chimp. Savage-Rumbaugh was attempting to teach an adult chimp, Matata, sign language. Although she never had much success, her son Kanzi had been observing the training and quickly learned a larger vocabulary than his mother. The research team compared 7-year-old Kanzi’s language comprehension to that of a 2½-year-old human child, Alia. They found that they performed commands at similar levels of success, at about 70%. • Other researchers have also found spontaneous teaching of sign language by trained chimps to their offspring. That said, most research indicates that chimps lack universal grammar and take longer to learn language. Language, Culture, and Thought • The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis states that language creates thought as much as thought creates language. • The linguistic determinism hypothesis states that our language determines our way of thinking and our perceptions of the world. • Most research on the topic does not support the strong view that language determines our thinking, but rather that it influences our thinking. This position is known as linguistic relativism. THINKING, REASONING, AND DECISION MAKING • Cognition is the mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, and storing knowledge. • Cognitive psychology is the science of how people think, learn, remember, and perceive. • Three fundamental questions about cognition and reasoning are listed below. o How do we represent thoughts in our minds? o How do we reason about evidence? o How do we make judgments and decision? How Do We Represent Thoughts in Our Minds? • Cognitive psychologists propose that we store and process ideas, knowledge, and memories as mental representations. • Mental representation is a structure in our mind, such as an idea or image, that stands for something else, such as the external object or thing. Mental representations, therefore, allow us to think about and remember things in the past, imagine things in the future, and think about abstract ideas. Visual Representation • We think both in images and in words. • Every animal with eyes perceives visual images, but only those animals with more cortex are better able to keep and store those visual sensations in mind after the sensory stimulation stops. • Visual imagery involves visual representations created by brain after the original stimulus is no longer present. This allows people to imagine things that are not currently being perceived. • Neuroscientists have shown that the brain is activated in much the same way while imagining a task as it is while performing that task. • Visual imagery and imagination are critical in the creative process. • Mental rotation is the process of imagining an object rotating in three-dimensional space. Typically, males show an advantage here and this pattern is cross-culturally supported. Some researchers point to testosterone’s role as studies looking at female rats injected with high doses of testosterone have found increased performance on spatial tasks. • The relationship in humans among testosterone, gender, and mental rotation is not linear. Verbal Representation • A concept is a mental grouping of objects, events, or people. Concepts help us organize our perceptions of the world. • A concept hierarchy organizes information in a particular way, with some being general and others specific. • Parallel distributive processing (PDP) are associations between concepts activate many networks or nodes at the same time. • A category is a concept that organizes other concepts around what they all share in common. Some examples of a category fit that category better than others. • Prototypes are the best-fitting examples of a category. How Do We Reason About Evidence? • Reasoning is the process of drawing inferences or conclusions from principles and evidence. • Deductive reasoning is when we reason from general statements to specific conclusions; if-then thinking. • Inductive reasoning is when we draw general conclusions from specific evidence. Conclusions drawn from inductive reasoning are less certain than those drawn from deductive reasoning. o Causal inferences are a direct result of inductive reasoning. These are statements that explain many specific facts or observations; that is, A causes B. o The confirmation bias is the tendency to selectively attend to information that supports one’s general beliefs while ignoring information or evidence that contradicts one’s beliefs. o Example: Wason looked at the ability of individuals to “falsify” versus “confirm” their own theories. Wason gave subjects the task of determining the hidden rule behind a sequence of three numbers and found that people are so inclined to test only ideas that confirm their beliefs that they forget that one of the best ways to test an idea is to try to tear it down, that is, disconfirm it. Most people are strongly swayed in thinking due to the confirmation bias. Critical Thinking • Critical thinking is the process by which one analyzes, evaluates, and forms idea. • Qualities of Critical Thinking Most Agreed-Upon by Experts are listed below: ▪ Analyze ▪ Interpret ▪ Evaluate ▪ Explain ▪ Make Inferences ▪ Self-Regulate • Metacognitive thinking is thinking about thinking. That is, it requires the ability first to think and then to reflect on one’s own thinking. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD: APPLYING CRITICAL THINKING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM • To apply critical thinking skills we should ask ourselves, “What is the evidence for this conclusion, and is it valid?” Unfortunately, many people, including adults, sometimes are lacking in critical and scientific reasoning. • Kuhn (1993) studied the connection between scientific and informal or everyday reasoning skills in adults. She asked 160 subjects, ranging in age from teenagers through people in their 60s, their theories on three topics: what causes prisoners to return to a life of crime, what causes children to fail in school, and what causes unemployment. After stating their theories, participants were asked for evidence on which they based their ideas. Only 40% of the participants could give actual evidence (that is, information that is based on actual observations that bear on the theory’s correctness). • Critical thinking requires that we be open to evidence that bears on whether our ideas are correct or not, even if we are not happy with the evidence. How Do We Make Judgments and Decisions? • Heuristics are methods for making complex and uncertain decisions and judgments. The Representativeness Heuristic • The representativeness heuristic is a strategy used to estimate the probability of one event based on how typical or representative it is of another event. The Availability Heuristic • The availability heuristic is a strategy we use when we make decisions based on the ease with which estimates come to mind. One reason may be the event’s vividness. Vividness increases availability and thus may lead us to overestimate how likely certain events are. • Example: People’s fear of a shark attack after one is publicized. Even though you are statistically more likely to get struck by lightning, most folks have a greater fear of getting bitten than struck. This may also be why people stayed out of the ocean after Jaws came out. CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS IN HUMAN RATIONALITY • It was thought that when given a choice between two or more options, humans would choose the one that is most likely to help them achieve their particular goals, that is, the rational choice. Economists called this rational choice theory (Scott, 2000). This theory is based on principles of behaviorism; that is, that people base decisions on a cost-benefit analysis. • In the 1970s, Tversky and Kahneman began to challenge rational choice theory with their research on human judgment and decision-making. Tversky explained that people are generally rational in their judgments; that is, they take into account differences in base rates. • In 1974 they published a paper that summarized the results of 13 of their studies on judgments under uncertainty. In it, they presented several principles that would change the fields of psychology, economics, and even philosophy. We have already discussed two of them: the availability and representativeness heuristics. • Additional research by Kahneman and Tversky revealed other areas in which people are less than rational in their decision making and judgments. For example, if people were rational, they would realize that the odds of two events can never be higher than the odds of one of those events alone. This is the conjunction fallacy, which occurs when people say the combination of two events is more likely than either event alone. • These findings and others like them point to the conclusion that people sometimes ignore base rates, sometimes are biased by stereotypes, and sometimes use shortcuts to arrive quickly, but not completely rationally, at their decisions and conclusions. In short, Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that people bypass fully rational decision making and make use of automatic shortcuts in their reasoning and judgments. • To some psychologists, these conclusions about less than rational reasoning were not surprising; after all, psychologists know as well as anyone about irrational thought and biased behavior. Yet to others, the findings were nothing short of revolutionary. • In 2002 Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics (Tversky had died in 1996). The Nobel committee stated that their work had revolutionized the study of intrinsic motivation and human thinking. BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: MAKING CONNECTIONS IN LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT: LEARNING A SECOND LANGUAGE Sensitivity Periods and Second-Language Acquisition • There is a critical or sensitive period for second language acquisition: Children learn second languages more quickly than adults do, and speak them more fluently. • By around age 7, learning a second language starts to become more difficult, and proficiency is reduced. The sensitive period for learning to speak a second language without an accent appears to end in early adolescence. • Researchers have found that age of acquisition of a second language was directly related to the strength of accent. The age of exposure to a second language is more important than the number of years speaking the language. Thus, exposure in childhood is better than adolescence, and adolescence is better than adulthood. Second Language Learning and the Brain • Researchers have found that people who are fluent in two languages are capable of more efficient cognitive processing than those who speak only one language. • When matched for age, gender, and other qualities, elderly speakers of two languages develop dementia more than 4 years later than do elderly speakers of only one language. This again reinforces the idea of brain development being affected by stimulation from the environment. • Bilingual speakers have a greater density of neurons in the language centers of the brain and neural density is proportional to the age at which the person learned the second language. The earlier the second language is learned, the greater the neural density. • Bilingual people exhibit differences in brain activation, depending on when they learned their second language; the brains of people who learn a second language early in life are more efficient at language processing than are the brains of people who learn a second language late in life. However, the age at which a person learns a second language is reflected in differences in the brain, but only in areas involved in producing rather than understanding speech. Reasoning in a Second Language • In research that compared students’ deductive reasoning in their native language and their deductive reasoning in a second language, subjects not surprisingly performed better in their native language. Second Language Acquisition and Metacognition • Accurately knowing what you do and do not know and the ability to monitor your thinking as you work on a problem are two hallmarks of metacognition. In meta-analysis of the research it was found that 20 out of 24 published studies found that bilingual students scored higher on creativity tasks than did monolingual students. Flexible and creative thinking are thus closely aligned with metacognitive thinking. KEY TERMS 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. babbling: sounds made as a result of an infant’s experimentation with a complex range of phonemes, which includes consonants as well as vowels; starts around 5 to 6 months. category: a concept that organizes other concepts around what they all share in common. causal inferences: judgments about causation of one thing by another. child-directed speech: changes in adult speech patterns—apparently universal—when speaking to young children or infants; characterized by higher pitch, changes in voice volume, use of simpler sentences, emphasis of the here and now, and use of emotion to communicate their messages. cognition: mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, and storing knowledge. concept: a mental grouping of objects, events, or people. concept hierarchy: arrangement of related concepts in a particular way, with some being general and others specific. confirmation bias: the tendency to selectively attend to information that supports one’s general beliefs while ignoring information or evidence that contradicts one’s beliefs. conjunction fallacy: occurs when people say the combination of two events is more likely than either event alone. cooing: the first sounds humans make other than crying, consisting almost exclusively of vowels; occurs during first 6 months of life. critical thinking: process by which one analyzes, evaluates, and forms ideas. deductive reasoning: reasoning from general statements of what is known to specific conclusions. grammar: the entire set of rules for combining symbols and sounds to speak and write a particular language. heuristics: mental shortcuts; methods for making complex and uncertain decisions and judgments. human language: a communication system specific to Homo sapiens; it is open and symbolic, has rules of grammar, and allows its users to express abstract and distant ideas. inductive reasoning: reasoning to general conclusions from specific evidence. language acquisition device (LAD): an innate, biologically based capacity to acquire language, proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of his nativist view of language. linguistic determinism hypothesis: the proposition that our language determines our way of thinking and our perceptions of the world; the view taken by Sapir and Whorf. mental representation: a structure in our mind—such as an idea or image—that stands for something else, such as the external object or thing sensed in the past or future, not the present. mental rotation: process of imagining an object turning in three-dimensional space. metacognitive thinking: process that includes the ability to think and then to reflect on one’s own thinking. nativist view of language: the idea that we discover language rather than learn it; that language development is inborn. one-word utterances: single words, such as “mama,” “dada,” “more,” or “no!”; occurs around 12 months of age. protolanguage: very rudimentary language, also known as pre-language. prototypes: the best-fitting examples of a category. reasoning: the process of drawing inferences or conclusions from principles and evidence. representativeness heuristic: a strategy we use to estimate the probability of one event based on how typical it is of another event. sentence phase: stage when children begin speaking in fully grammatical sentences; usually age 2 ½ to 3. syntax: the rules for arranging words and symbols to form sentences or parts of sentences in a particular language. two-word utterances: phrases children put together, starting around 18 months, such as “my ball,” “mo wawa,” or “go way” ([go away)]. visual imagery: visual representations created by the brain after the original stimulus is no longer present. MAKING THE CONNECTIONS Some of the connections are found in the text. Other connections may be useful for lecture or discussion.) Theories of Language Acquisition: Sociocultural Theories CONNECTION: One reason newborn infants are capable of imitating behavior immediately after birth is humans and other animals have “mirror neurons.” These were first detected after a chance observation in laboratory monkeys (Chapters 3 and 8). o Discussion: This is a good time to discuss material from Chapter 5 and imitations as discussed in Piaget’s work. Remind students about the different types of imitation and how Piaget argues that imitation is the purest form of accommodation; that is, it is a key factor in the development of thought. o Discussion: This is also a good time to discuss the adaptive value of imitation in humans. For example, when an infant imitates an adult gesture or behavior, do parents find it endearing? You can also point out the strong survival value of imitation. If a parent doesn’t eat something or avoids another stimulus, it may be adaptive to just model the behavior. How Do We Represent Thoughts in Our Minds? CONNECTION: The occipital lobes and parietal lobes of the brain develop before the temporal and frontal lobes. This pattern of growth partly explains why we see before we can talk (Chapter 5). o Discussion: You may also want to reiterate the concept of developmental timing here. Also discuss Turkewitz’s work on the lateralization of the two hemispheres. Showing that the timing of the development of the brain is in part due to species-typical genes interacting with species-typical environment. Reiterate that the key to timing is that some capabilities will show deficits so that other skills can come on line. o Discussion: This is a great time to also discuss how evolution would have selected vision to develop before speech. Not only has vision presumably been a trait for phylogenetically longer in humans, it also may have greater adaptive value. Ask students what they think the adaptive mechanism for both skills is and why evolution might select one to develop faster than the other. INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTION 1. Animal language. This is a great time to ask students what they think about animal language. You may want to show a clip of the bee waggle dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg. Ask students what they feel are potential barriers to studying animal cognition and language. Ask if they think their dog is thinking. Communicating with other dogs? Engaging in reflective thinking? Problem solving and reasoning? Do they think that we are currently underestimating other species’ abilities in thinking and overestimating our own? Another great clip on this can be seen in the work of Susan Savage-Rumbaugh talking about her work with bonobos and language: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html. 2. Benefits of heuristics: You may want to spend some time going over the representativeness heuristic and availability heuristics. Remind students that all heuristics are fallible but they allow us to make snap judgments quickly, and what we sacrifice for accuracy is the ability to make quick general appraisals. Point out the adaptive value of these devices. Both have strong survival implications. 3. Language and thinking: This is a good time to also point out that language and memory go hand in hand. You may also want to tie in for students the relationship between thought and language being the representation of things symbolically. Point out that Piaget and Vygotsky both argued that language is required for higher-order thinking. Ask students if they think metacognition, for example, would be possible without language. 4. Evolutionary approaches: Ask students which approach to language acquisition they think best explains universal grammar. They should answer “natavist.” Discuss evolutionary pressures that could pressure language to be selected for. 5. Feral children: Discuss the case of Genie. Show part or all of the BBC’s series on Genie. You may also want to mention the case of Itard’s Victor, the first documented feral child. These cases support the critical period and also illustrate the link between thought and language. 6. Representative heuristic: You may want to ask students if this could be a serious error. Point out that racial profiling is an example of the representativeness heuristic and thus could have very serious errors associated with it. 7. Learning a second language: This is a great time to point out to students the disparity between research and curriculum. As many students will be taking a Spanish class in the next four years, they will no doubt bring it up anyway. You may want to point out to students that most of the research on bilingualism shows that it results in greater cognitive flexibility. This includes ASL. Ask students why they think that is. 8. Learning a second language: Ask if there are any bilingual students in the room. Ask them if they think more in one language than another. You may also want to point out that early plasticity in the brain may also account for these differences. 9. Visual representation: Hormones affect our way of thinking. Moderately high levels of testosterone, in both men and women, are associated with the ability to perform spatial and mental rotation tasks such as finding one’s way around a new building or playing a three-dimensional video game. You may want to discuss the role of evolution in selecting a male bias in spatial thinking. Evolutionary psychology would suggest that the male advantage in spatial thinking comes from hunter-gatherer days when males would need to travel great distances and to hunt, skills that would require good mental rotation and spatial orientation. 10. Assign students to watch The Mockingbird Don’t Sing, released in 2001, a movie based on the case of Genie. Have them write a paragraph on the interaction of species-typical genes in a species-atypical environment. Make sure they grasp that species-typical genes require a species-typical environment to develop in a species-typical manner. 11. Have students write a paragraph on the role of pragmatics, the linguistic rule of who can say what to whom, and an example from their lives when the rule was violated. You can then read some examples in class and discuss the importance of rules in language. 12. Have students do some brief Internet research on Steven Pinker and write a brief paragraph on the natavist perspective and on Pinker’s own perspective. 13. Ask students to engage in a metacognitive exercise. Ask them to think about their study habits from the last test. Did they work? What could they do differently to improve performance? This will not only demonstrate what metacognition is but also prove useful in their studying for the next exam. 14. Talk to students about Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex, the Gray Parrot. Do they think that Alex has language? Why or why not? Suggested Media 1. An interview with Stephen Pinker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsRUQCN2lak 2. Very funny interview with Steven Pinker (warning: it does involve swearing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H7utm3eco4&feature=related 3. Bee waggle dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg 4. Funny clip of Ali G interviewing Noam Chomsky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro 5. John Abbott discussing critical periods in language acquisition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0yGZnJqMXY’ 6. Pinker discussing human thinking: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_language_and_thought.html 7. Murray Gell-Mann discusses the relationships between human languages: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/murray_gell_mann_on_the_ancestor_of_language.html 9. NOVA clip on mirror neurons: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html 10. NOVA special on birdsong learning (45 minutes): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0304/01.html 11. The Mockingbird Don’t Sing, released in 2001. This is based on the case of Genie. 12. Why Do We Talk? The Science of Speech 13. The Human Spark, with Alan Alda, Part 3: Brain Matters 14. Discovering Psychology: Judgment and Decision Making (Annenberg) 15. Discovering Psychology: Language Development (Annenberg) 16. Discovering Psychology: Cognitive Processes (Annenberg) 17. Baby Sign Language (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg) 17. Alex the Gray Parrot and Language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiARReTwBw&feature=related Concept Clip (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 1. Critical Thinking and Metacogniton Suggested Websites 1. BBC article on deaf babies’ babbling: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3894007.stm 2. European Science Foundation article on brain involvement in babbling: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/citation/297/5586/1515 3. A transcript of Steven Pinker discussing the evolution of the human mind: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/2/l_072_03.html 4. Thinker is a site on decision making and errors: http://cat.xula.edu/thinker/decisions/heuristics/ranking Suggested Readings Ariely, D. (2010). Predictably irrational, revised and expanded edition: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. Houghton-Mifflin. Chomsky, N. (2000). New horizons in the study of language and the mind. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Curtiss, S. (1977). Genie: A psycholinguistic study of a modern day `wild child'. New York: Academic Press. Dunbar, R. I. M. (2001). Brains on two legs: Group size and the evolution of intelligence. In F. B. M. deWaal (Ed.), Tree of origin: What primate behavior can tell us about human social evolution (pp. 173–191). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26, 55–88. Holowka, S., & Petitto, L. A. (2002). Left hemisphere cerebral specialization for babies while babbling. Science, 297 (5586), 1515. Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60–99. Kim, K. H. S., Relkin, N. R., Lee, K. M., & Hirsch, J. (1997). Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages. Nature, 388, 171–174. Krueger, J. (2012). Social judgments and decision making. Psychology Press. Newport, E. L. (2003). Language development, critical periods in. In L. Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, (pp. 733–740). London: Nature Group Press. Pepperberg, I. M. (2007). Gray parrots do not always “parrot”: the roles of imitation and phonological awareness in the creation of new labels from existing vocalizations. Language Sciences, 29, 1–13. Pepperberg, I. M. (2009). Alex and me: How a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence and formed a deep bond. Harper. Petitto, L. A. (2000). On the biological foundations of human language. In H. Lane & K. Emmorey (Eds.), The Signs of Language Revisited (pp. 447–471). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Petitto, L. A., & Holowka, S. (2002). Evaluating attributions of delay and confusion in young bilinguals: Special insights from infants acquiring a signed and a spoken language. Sign Language Studies, 3(1), 4–33. Pinker, S. (2005). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: HarperPerennial Modern Classics. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.) (2004). Definitions and conceptions of giftedness. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Turkewittz, G., & Devenny, D. A. (1993). Developmental time and timing. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Instructor Manual for Psychology: Perspectives and Connections Gregory J. Feist, Erika Rosenberg 9780077861872, 9781260397031