Understanding Cognition, Language, and Creative Thinking

• Cognition: All mental activities associated with thinking, remembering, and communicating. We use concepts (mental group of similar objects, events, ideas, people. Ex: chairs mean many items. Prototypes mental image or best example of a category. Easy method to sorting items into categories. Ex: robin/bird.
• Strategies of Cognition: Algorithm (logical rule of procedure/step by step/guarantees a solution to a problem. Heuristic (simpler strategy/speedier than algorithm/more error-prone. Insight (not a strategy based, flash of inspiration, solves a problem.
• Obstacles of Cognition: Confirmation Bias: Peter Wason, predisposes to verify/search information that supports our perceptions and ignore or contradictory evidence. Mental Set: Fixation, prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution.
• Intuition: Automatic, immediate, feelings or thoughts instead of reasoning, most contrasted with conscious. Availability Heuristic: Make decisions based on information available. We judge likelihood of events based on how mentally available they are. Lead us to fear wrong things. Overconfidence: More confident than correct/overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments. Explained discredited. Belief Perseverance: Support opposite/tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Get justified. Framing: Effects perception/way we present an issue/how affect decisions. Same information but not same effect. Ex: encourage citizens to be organ donors.
• Smart Thinkers: Use intuition when making complex decisions (analysis, enable quick reactions, flows unconsciously). Take time to let their two-track mind process all available information.
• Thinking Creatively: Ability to produce new and valuable ideas. More than school smart. Convergent Thinking: Narrow the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution. Divergent Thinking (R. Sternberg) expanding the number of possible solutions diverges in different directions. 5 components: expertise/imaginative thinking skills/venturesome personality/intrinsic motivation/creative environment.
• Other species (animals) conscious + intelligent based on behavior. Studies show they use concepts number tools. (transmit learning from generations, show insight self-awareness, altruism, cooperation...

Language: Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. Influence thinking.

• Structure: Phonemes (basic units of sound) Morphemes: elementary units of meaning. Grammar: System of rules that enables us to communicate. Includes syntax + semantics.
• Development of Language (frontal cortex) timing varies but children follow the same sequence. Receptive Learning understand what is said. Productive Language produce words. 4-month babble (make sounds) 12m one-word stage/first words. 24m two-word speech (telegraphic)Critical Period people who learn a second language/difficult in grammar.
• Areas Involved in Language Process/Speech: Aphasia impairment language caused by left hemisphere damage/cannot talk. Broca Area a region in front. lobe that controls language expressions/speech center. Wernicke's Area a region in left temp lobe that control language reception. different neural networks (speak, perceive, think, remember) had specific lingual subtasks.
• Chimpanzees and Bonobos learn to communicate with humans by signing or pushing buttons. Developed vocab of nearly 400 words. Communicate by stringing words together, teach skills to younger animals, demonstrate syntax. Only humans complex sentences.
• Relation between Thinking and Language Benj Lee Whorf: linguistic determinism (language determines thought/different languages embody different ways of thinking.
• Think in images: increase our skills when we mentally practice upcoming events. We use implicit memory/automatic.