Thinking and Language OUTLINE OF RESOURCES Introducing Thinking and Language Classroom Exercise: The Limits of Human Intuition (p. 2) Classroom Exercise/Student Project: The Need for Cognition Scale (p. 3) UPDATED Thinking Classroom Exercises: Cognitive Complexity (p. 4) Introducing Prototypes (p. 5) Solving Problems Lecture/Discussion Topic: Jokes, Riddles, Insight, and Fixation (p. 9) Classroom Exercises: Dice Games to Demonstrate Problem Solving (p. 5) REVISED The “Aha!” Experience (p. 7) Experts Solving Problems (p. 8) Student Project: Problem-Solving Strategies (p. 6) PsychSim 6: My Head Is Spinning (p. 5) Biases and Heuristics in Reasoning and Problem Solving Lecture/Discussion Topics: The Confirmation Bias and Social Judgments (p. 10) Forensic Confirmation Bias (p. 10) NEW The Sunk Cost Fallacy (p. 16) UPDATED Thinking Errors and International Conflict (p. 19) UPDATED Risks in Everyday Life (p. 19) Classroom Exercises: Confirmation Bias (p. 9) Overcoming Functional Fixedness (p. 11) NEW Mental Set and Luchin’s Water Jug Problem (p. 11) The Availability Heuristic—Drunk Driving Deaths (p. 12) NEW The Availability Heuristic (p. 13) UPDATED The Representativeness Heuristic (p. 14) The Value of the Representativeness Heuristic (p. 15) NEW The Base-Rate Fallacy (p. 15) The Anchoring Heuristic or Bias (p. 16) The Overconfidence Phenomenon (p. 17) UPDATED Framing Alternatives and Human Irrationality (p. 18) Classroom Demonstration: The Availability Heuristic—Firearms Deaths (with Optional Anchoring Bias) (p. 14) NEW Intuition Classroom Demonstration: Determining Truthiness (p. 20) NEW Thinking Creatively Classroom Exercises: Creativity (p. 20) NEW Assessing Creativity (p. 21) Lecture/Discussion Topic/Classroom Demonstration: Boosting Creativity (p. 21) NEW * Titles in LaunchPad are not described within the core resource unit. They are listed, with running times, in the Lecture Guides and described in detail at www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/(followed by myers11e, myer- s11einmodules, exploring10e, exploring10einmodules, or pel4e, depending on which text you are using). 1 Animal Thinking 2 Thinking and Language Lecture/Discussion Topics: Do Chimpanzees Plan Ahead? (p. 21) UPDATED Canine Cognition (p. 22) NEW Corvid Cognition (p. 22) NEW LaunchPad Videos: Problem Solving in Genus Corvus (Crows, Ravens, and Magpies)* How Intelligent Are Animals?* Animal Thinking: Can Chimpanzees Plan Ahead?* Language and Thought Lecture/Discussion Topic: Universals of Language (p. 23) PsychSim 6: Dueling Hemispheres (p. 23) Language Development Lecture/Discussion Topics: Born Ready (p. 24) NEW How Infants Learn Language (p. 24) NEW A Quiet World—Living With Hearing Loss (p. 25) Talking With Our Hands (p. 25) Still Speak With an Accent? (p. 26) NEW Classroom Exercise: Observing Language Development (p. 24) LaunchPad Videos: Chomsky’s View of Language Development* Genes and Personality* The Brain and Language Lecture/Discussion Topic: Dyslexia (p. 26) NEW Inner Speech (p. 26) NEW Language Influences Thinking (and Vice Versa) Lecture/Discussion Topics: The Vocabulary of Taste (p. 27) Think Before You Speak (p. 28) New Words (p. 28) Classroom Exercise: Verbal Information Can “Overshadow” Memory (p. 29) Thinking Without Language Classroom Exercises: Introducing Imagery Research (p. 30) Creating a Mental Model (p. 30) Student Project: Cognitive Maps (p. 30) UPDATED Video: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds (p. 29) NEW Podcasts: Thought With(out) Language (Parts 1 and 2) (p. 29) LaunchPad Video: Learning Through Visualization: A Gymnast Acquires New Skills* RESOURCES because the sum $1.10 separates easily into $1 and 10 cents and because 10 cents is about the right magnitude. Introducing Thinking and Language Frederick reported that 50 percent of Princeton students and 56 percent of University of Michigan students gave Classroom Exercise: The Limits of Human Intuition this wrong answer. Simple subtraction convinces stu- dents of their error: $1.00 for the bat – $0.10 for the ball The limits of everyday intuition are easily demonstrated = $0.90, not $1.00. The correct answer is $1.05 for the in class (rather than use this to introduce the discussion bat, $0.05 for the ball. of thinking, you may prefer to hold it for later when Or, present the classic “horse-trading” problem. you discuss intuition). For example, Shane Frederick (cited by Kahneman, 2003) suggests a simple puzzle: A man bought a horse for $60 and sold it for $70. Then “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 he bought the same horse back for $80 and again sold more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” Most it, for $90. How much money did he make in the horse people report an initial tendency to answer “10 cents” business? Thinking and Language 3 Although the problem seems simple enough, most Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment American college students answer incorrectly. David and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Myers reports that even most German banking execu- Psychologist, 58, 697–720. tives get it wrong. The most common answer is $10. Levesque, H. (1986). Making believers out of computers. Respondents apparently reason that when the man buys Artificial Intelligence, 30, 81–108. the horse back for $80 he lost the $10 he made in the Myers, D. G. (1987). Social psychology (2nd ed.). New original deal. The man actually made $20. You can York: McGraw-Hill. show this by comparing the total amount paid out ($140) with the total amount taken in ($160). Alternatively, Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (1994). Inevitable illusions. New present the problem in modified form. Instead of having York: Wiley. the man buy the horse back for $80, state that he bought Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: firewood for $80 and then sold it for $90. The problem Norton. suddenly becomes easier. You can also use this manipu- Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What intelligence tests miss: lation to introduce the importance of framing discussed The psychology of rational thought. New Haven: Yale later. University Press. Keith Stanovich uses the “Anne problem” (drawn from the work of Hector Levesque, 1986) to demon- Classroom Exercise/Student Project: The Need for strate how we are all cognitive misers who fail to con- Cognition Scale sider all possible states or alternatives when solving a problem. Pose the following scenario and question to Introduce the literature on thinking with Handout 1, your students: John Cacioppo and Richard Petty’s Need for Cognition Scale. The scale attempts to identify differences among Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. individuals in their “tendency to engage in and enjoy Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person thinking.” To calculate scores, students should reverse looking at an unmarried person? Is the answer yes, no, or the numbers they placed before items 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, it cannot be determined? 16, and 17. That is, change 1 to 5, 2 to 4, 4 to 2, and 5 Stanovich reports that over 80 percent of people to 1. They should then add the numbers before all items answer incorrectly; they claim that the answer cannot be to obtain a total score. The higher the score, the greater determined. The correct answer is yes, a married person the need for cognition. is looking at an unmarried person. If you consider all After scoring the scale and talking about the need the possible alternatives, the answer becomes clear. If for cognition, distribute Handout 2 for students to com- Anne is unmarried, Jack who is married is looking at plete on their own or in small groups. Or, create a pre- her. If Anne is married, she is looking at George who sentation slide for each pair, labeling each choice A or is unmarried. Indeed, a married person is looking at an B, and use a student response system to gather student unmarried person. responses. High need for cognition items are as follows: Alternatively, present the following premises: All 1. University faculty members of the cabinet are thieves. No composer is 2. Prefer complex problem-solving task a member of the cabinet. Ask your class what logical 3. See self in control of own fate conclusion can be drawn. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini 4. Open to new experiences reports that a vast majority of thoughtful, intelligent 5. See behavior as having multiple causes respondents will say that one can draw no logical con- 6. Use the Internet primarily for work and study clusion. Yet there is a valid conclusion, namely, that 7. Focus on smart phone usefulness. some thieves are not composers (or, there are thieves who are not composers). Having had some practice, see In constructing and validating the scale in Handout if your students do better with the following provided 1, Cacioppo and Petty found that total scores success- by Steven Pinker: Some archaeologists, biologists, and fully discriminated between university faculty (people chess players are in a room. None of the archaeologists who presumably engage in and enjoy thinking for a liv- are biologists. All of the biologists are chess players. ing) and factory workers on assembly lines (people who What follows? Pinker reports that a majority of stu- perform repetitive, monotonous tasks for a living). In dents conclude that none of the archaeologists are chess addition, scores correlated positively with field indepen- players, which is not valid. About one-fifth claim that dence (preferring internal rather than external sources the premises allow no valid inference. However, one of information in both perceptual and social situations) valid inference is that some of the chess players are not and general intelligence and negatively with dogmatism, archaeologists. and were unrelated to test anxiety and social desirability. As predicted, those high in need for cognition preferred a complex problem-solving task over a simple one. 4 Thinking and Language Studies have also found that those high on this dimen- Junqi, S., Zhuo, C., & Mei, T.