Chapter 9 : Language

The Structure of Language:

– Phonemes: different sounds in a language.
– Phonology: study of the different ways in which phonemes can be combined
– Morphology: study of putting the sounds together in a coherent way(identifying the meaniful
units of a language)
– Morphemes: smallest meaningful units of a language.
– Syntax: structure
– Semantics: meaning
– Pragmatics: For a conversation to flow, listeners must pay attention and make certain
assumptions, while speakers must contribute in ways to make the listener's job feasible.
– Grammar: set of rules for a language; ways of speaking that form intelligible phrases.
– Linguistic Competence: underlying knowledge that lets people produce/comprehend language.
– Linguistic Performance:

– Phonology:
– Phonetics: study of speech sounds and how they are produced
– Phonology: study of systematic ways in which speech sounds are combined and altered.
– Phoneme: smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference in language.
– Syntax
– the structure of sentences, their parts and how they are put together
– preposing: taking a certain part of a sentence and moving it to the front, for emphasis.
– Semantics:
– Must explain:
– anomaly,self-contradiction,ambiguity,synonymy,entailment
– requires an understanding of the meaning of each word in the sentence
– requires unsderstanding of syntax of the sentence
– requires an understanding of the truth conditons of the sentence.
– Pragmatics
– social rules of a language
– Different kinds of utterances demand different responses:
– Assertives: speaker asserts their belief in a propostion, “Im a Raptors Fan”
– Directives:instructions from speaker to listener, “Close the door”
– Commisives: commit the speaker to some later action, “I promise to clean my room”
– Expressives: describe psychological states, “I apologize for the eating the last pie”
– Declarations: speech acts in which the utterances are actions, “Youre fired”
– Speech Act Theory: part of the listener's job is to figure out which of the 5 types an
utterance was, and respond accordingly.
– There are usually a number of ways of stating/asking something.
– How you choose to say it(using one of the 5), depends on the context of the situation.
Language Comprehension and Production:
– Speech Perception:
– 2 fundamental problems:
– speech is continuous, rarely are there pauses around each sound, words blend with each
 other.
– A single phoneme can sound different depending on the context
– men and women have diff pitches
– people have diff accents
– speakers talk differently when shouting, coaxing, whispering, lecturing.
– In processing speech sounds, we automatically, without awareness or intention, force the
sounds into discrete categories.
– We ignore differences in a speaker's speech that are not meaningful
– Also make use of visual info in perception of speech
– Phoneme Restoration Effect: listeners apparently “restore” missing phonemes predicted by
other linguistic info during the course of percpetion.
– Typically use the context of the prevous words in a sentence to predict next word.
Sometimes even “mishear” or “misread” that word if presented in a distorted fashion.
– Speech Errors in Production:
– Sentence Comprehension:
– Lexical Ambiguiuty: when words have 2 meanings
– Comprehending text Passages:
– Propositional Complexity: # of underlying ideas in a sentence
– people recruit their own background knowledhe to draw inferences to comprehend text
– structures such as the schemata, or story grammars, are used to make info in text fit
together.
– Reader's attentional resources are limited, so they do not draw from every logically possible
inference, in order to cut down workload.
– Gricean Maxims of Conversation:
– pragmatic rules for conversation
– Maxims:
– Quantity: make contribution as informative as required, not any more than req.
– Quality: make contribution one that is true
– Relation: be relevant
– Manner: be clear. Avoid obscure expressions, ambiguity. Be clear and brief.
– Language and Cognition:
– Modularity Hypothesis:
– Informationally Encapsulated Process: process that operates independantly of the
beliefs and other info available to the processor.
– Modularity Hypothesis: certain perceptual and language processes are modules.
Modular processes operate automatically and independently of other cognitive
processes. Operate only on certain kinds of input.
– Whorfian Hyporthesis:
– states that: language both directs and constrains thought and perception.
– Languages one grows up learning and speaking, determines the way one perceives the world
– language constrains thought and perception
– cultural differences in cognition could be explained partially by differences in language.
– Neuropsychological Views and Evidence:
– Broca's Area: difficulties in speaking
– Wernicke's Area: difficulty comprehending language
– Both disorders termed apahsia, expressive apahsia(Broca) and receptive aphasia(Wernicke)
 – Aphasias: collective deficits in language comprehension and production that result from
brain damage.
– Lateralization: specialization of function between the 2 brain hemispheres
–

Ch 10: Thinking, Problem Solving and Reasoning

– Introspection: detailed concurrent and nonjudgmental observation of the contents of your
consciousness as you work on a problem.
– Well-Defined Problems: have a clear goal,present a small set if info to start with, and a set of
rules/guidelines to follow while working to a solution.
– Ill-Defined Problems: dont have goals, starting info or steps clearly spelled out.
– Classical Problems and General Methods of Solution:
– Generate and Test Technique:
– generating possible solutions and testing them
– loses effectiveness rapidly if there are many possibilities
– Means-Ends Analysis:
– Comparing the goal with the starting point(Toronto to Saskatoon), thinking of possible
ways of overcoming difference(car, bus, train, walk, plane...), and choosing the best one.
– The selected option may have prerequisites(ie. To take plane, you must be at airport with
ticket).
– If the preconditions arent met, then a sub-goal is created (how do you get to airport?)
– With sub-goals, the task is broken down into manageable steps.
– Working Backward:
– user analyzes last step, then next-to-last and so on, working backwards from the goal
– often uses sub-goals
– Reasoning by Analogy
– using knowledge from one relatively known domain, and applying it to another domain.
– ie. tumour problem and problem with the general
– army is analogous to the rays, capturing enemy forces and destruction of tumour
– Blocks to Problem Solving:
– Mental Set: the tendency to adopt a certain framework, strategy, or procedure
– more generally, to see things in a certain way, instead of in other equally plausible ways
– Analogous to Perceptual Set
– Perceptual Set: tendency to perceive an object or pattern in a certain way on the basis
of your immediate perceptual experience
– mental set, often causes people to make certain unwarranted assumptions without being
aware of making them
– Functional Fixedness: apparently adopting a rigid mental set toward an object.
– Lack of Problem-Specific Knowledge or Expertise:
– familiarity with a domain of knowledge seems to change the way one solves problems
with that frame of reference
– problem solvers who come to a problem with a limited knowledge base are at a
disadvantage
– experts excel in their own domain (knowledge is domain specific)
– Finding Creative Solutions:
– creativity: consisting of a combo, or recombination of knowledge, info or mental
 representations – things the creator already knows of.
– Unconscious Processing and Incubation:
– idea: while your minds is actively running other cognitive proceses, some other sort of
processing was happening in the background
– ie. stuck on a problem, then put it aside and move onto other things, then solution pops
into your head
– Everyday Mechanisms:
– Directed Remembering: ability to channel your memory in order to make conscious
some past experience/knowledge that meets various constraints
– Noticing: in revising, one needs to notice where the problems are.
– Contrary Recognition: ability to recognize objects not for what they are, but as
something else

– Reasoning:
– reasoning involves inferences or conclusions drawn from other information
– deductive reasoning: goes from general to specific/particular
– ie. all university students like pizza, terry is a university student, therefore terry likes pizza
– inductive reasoning: from specific to the general
– ie. Brian is a university student, brian lives in a dorm, therefore universitiy students live in
dorms
– in deductive reasoning, no new info is added, any conclusion drawn represents info that was
implicit in the premises.
– Deductive Reasoning:
– Propositional Reasoning:
– invloves drawing conclusions from premises that are in the form of propositions
– like in CS
– Syllogistic Reasoning:
– presents 2 or more premises, and asks the reasoner either to draw a conclusion
– like CS predicate logic
– Inductive Reasoning:
– inferential processes that expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty
– Confirmation Bias: tendency to seek only info consistent with ones hypothesis
– Patterns of Reasoning Performance:
– content effect: two people reasoning with the same kind of premises will perform
differently, depending on the what the premises are “about”
– believability Effect: tendency to draw /accept conclusions from premises when the
content of the conclusion makes intuitive sense, regardless of the logical necessity
– Disconfirmation Hypothesis: people are more critical of conclusions that they do not
believe, and are thus more likely to search for reasons to refute an unbelievable
conclusion than a believable one.
– Two Theoretical Approaches to study of Reasoning:
– The Rules Approach
– using logic rules implicitly
– Mental Models Approach
– processes we use to draw conclusions, are also the ones we use to comprehend language
– reasoning require one more thing: the ability and willingness to try to construct
 alternative models that represent all the possibilities

Ch 11: Making Decisions

– to be rational means to consider all your relevant goals and principles, not just the first ones
that come to mind.
– Cognitive overload: when info available overwhelms the cognitive processing available.
– Phases of Decision Making:
– Setting Goals:
– Decisions influenced on what youre trying to accomplish
– Gathering Information
– needs to know the options and their consequences
– Structuring the Decision
– Decision Structuring: a way of managing info related to making a decision
– Making the Final Choice:
– select from a final set of options
– Evaluating:
– reflect on the process, and identify aspects that could be improved
– Basic Concepts of Probability:
– Subjective Probabilities and Objective Probabilites
– Cognitive Illusions in Decision Making
– Systematic Biases : ways of thinking that lead to systematic errors.
– These systematic biases have been labelled cognitive illusions
– Availability:
– Availability Heuristic: instances that are more easily thought of, remebered, or
computed, stand out more in ones mind
– Representativeness:
– Representativeness Heuristic: belief that outcomes will always reflect characteristics
of the process that generated them
– ie. expectation that that the outcome of a series of coin flips will always look random
– Gambler's Fallacy: erroneous belief that a random process will automatically keep
track of outcomes, in order to make the overall rate of the outcome in the short term,
equal to the long term
– Law of Small Numbers: people expect small sample sizes to represent larger sample
sizes.
– Framing Effects:
– decision making bias caused by a propensity to evaluate outcomes as positive/negative
changes from their current state.
– The decription is said to “frame” the decision, or to provide a context for it.
– Simply changing the description of a situation can lead us to adopt different reference
points, and therefore to see the same outcome as a gain in one situation, and a loss in the
other.
– Anchoring
– heuristic where final estimate are heavily influenced by initial estimates
– Sunk Cost Effects
– the greater tendency to continue an endeavour once investment in money, effort or time
is made.
 – Illusory Correlation:
– phenomenon of seeing nonexistent relationships
– Hindsight Bias:
– tendency to consistently exaggerate what could have been anticipated in foresight, when
looking back(hindsight) on an event
– Confirmation bias
– tendency to search only for info that will confirm one's initial hunch/hypothesis, and to
overlook/ignore other info.
– Overconfidence
– Calibration Curve: 45 degree line, in an Accuracy vs. Confidence Graph
– below the curve indicates overconfidence
– above the curve is under-confidence
– Overconfidence: overly positive judgement of one's own decision-making abilities and
performance
– Utility Models of Decision Making
– Normative Models: define ideal performance under ideal circumstances
– Prescriptive Models: tell us how we “ought” to make decisions, they provide guidance
– Descriptive Models: simply detail what people actually do, they describe actual
performance.
– Expected Utility Theory:
– Utility: ideas of happiness, pleasure and satisfaction that comes from achieving one or
more personal goals.
– Expected Utility Theory: a normative model of decision making in which the decision
maker weights the personal importance and probabilities of different outcomes in
choosing among alternatives in order to maximize overall satisfaction of personal goals
– Image Theory:
– fundamental assumption: in making real-life decisions, people rarely go through a
formal structuring process in which they lay out all their options and then weigh and
integrate various pieces of info. Instead, most decison-making work is done during
“prechoice screening of options”
– In this phase, decision makers ask themselves whether a new goal, plan or alternative is
compatible with: value image, trajectory image, strategic image
– Value Image: containing their values, morals and principles
– Strategic Image: way in which they plan to attain their goals
– Trajectory Image: contains goals and aspirations for the future
– Recognition-Primed Decision-making
– theory of expert decision making, that holds that decion makers choose options based on
analogy of a given situation with previously encountered situations
– experts take stock of a new situation, compare it to other situations theyve previously
encountered.
– Decision-making, Emotions and the Brain
– Neuroeconomics: examines how the brain interacts with the environment to enable us to
make complex decisions