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) and in Reasoning and Problem Solving Lecture/Discussion Topics: The Confirmation and Social Judgments (p. 10) Forensic (p. 10) NEW The Sunk Cost (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 —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 (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 Plan Ahead? (p. 21) UPDATED Canine Cognition (p. 22) NEW Corvid Cognition (p. 22) NEW LaunchPad Videos: P roblem 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 (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. (2011). Internet self- sion are more likely to desire and actively seek out efficacy, the need for cognition, and sensation seek- issue-relevant information in forming their attitudes. ing as predictors of problematic use of the Internet. Relative to those low in need for cognition, those Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, high in this need express opinions more quickly when 14(4), 231-234. doi:10.1089/cyber.2009.0462 they have a great deal of prior knowledge and more Sargent, M. J. (2004). Less thought, more punishment: slowly when they have little prior knowledge. In gen- Need for cognition predicts support for punitive respons- eral, those high in cognition are more agentic and es to crime. Personality and Bulletin, conscientious in cognitive domains but are not more or 30, 1485–1493. less sociable, emotional, or extraverted compared with people who are low in need for cognition. Cacioppo and Thinking colleagues (1984, 1996) state that those high in need for cognition see themselves as more in control of their Classroom Exercise: Cognitive Complexity own fate, are more open to experience, and are, indeed, Cognitive complexity refers to how simple or elabo- more effective problem solvers. rate a person’s system of personal constructs is. Some Need for cognition correlates positively with self- people seem to use a very limited number of constructs esteem, masculine sex-role attitudes, various measures to make sense of their social world, while others use a of curiosity, and effective problem solving. It is unrelat- large number of constructs. Young children, for exam- ed to feminine or androgynous sex-role attitudes, socia- ple, may have a very limited number of constructs at bility, shyness, and years of formal education. A factor their disposal: Another child is either a “friend” or “not analysis of the Cacioppo and Petty scale identified three a friend,” a game is either “fun” or “not fun.” Because major components: cognitive persistence, cognitive they do not have constructs that allow them to make confidence, and cognitive complexity. finer distinctions, their view of the world is limited. Sargent (2004) has reported that people All playmates who fall into the “friend” category are high in need for cognition are more sensitive to the treated alike, as are all children in the “not-a-friend” fact that behavior, even criminal behavior, has multiple category. causes (biological, psychological, social-cultural) and To demonstrate the most popular method for thus in some cases may recommend less severe measuring cognitive complexity, have your students punishment. think of a person they like and a person they dislike, Junqi Shi and colleagues (2011) found that Chinese then take a total of 10 minutes to write descriptions people who were low in need for cognition were more of these people. They should pay special attention to likely to use the Internet for entertainment, whereas the person’s “habits, beliefs, ways of treating others, those high in need for cognition were more likely to use mannerisms, and similar attributes”—any aspect of the the Internet for work and study. person’s personality or behavior but not physical char- Hichang Choa and Byungho Park (2014) found that acteristics. Finally, they should add the total number of Koreans viewed smart phones differently, depending different constructs they used for the two descriptions. on need for cognition. Those high in need for cognition With this technique, researchers typically obtain a wide focus on how smart phones can be used, whereas those variation of scores from college students. In one study, low in need for cognition focus on how easily they can the scores ranged from 5 to 43, with a mean of 16. be used. What difference does cognitive complexity make? Jerry Burger describes a number of implications. For Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cog- example, among politicians and world leaders, cogni- nition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, tive complexity has been related to political ideology. 116–131. In describing the issues of the day, conservative U.S. Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J. A., & Jarvis, senators make significantly fewer complex statements W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cogni- than do moderate and liberal senators. Among members tive motivation: The life and times of individuals vary- of the British House of Commons, extremists from ing in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197–253. either side tend to see things in the simplest manner. A cognitively complex person is also better able Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., & Kao, C. (1984). The to take the perspective of others, that is, to see the efficient assessment of the need for cognition. Journal of world through their eyes. Research also suggests that Personality Assessment, 48, 306–307. cognitively complex people are more persuasive than Cho, H., & Park, B. (2014). Testing the moderating role those low on this variable. They seem to match their of need for cognition in smartphone adoption. Behaviour arguments to the audience they are trying to persuade. and Information Technology, 33(7), 704–715. doi: Finally, people who are high in cognitive complexity 10.1080/0144929X.2013.825643 Thinking and Language 5 are better able to deal with . Because they are explains, if you live in Australia, you might name better able to make sense of events in their world, they “kiwi” as a bird, whereas most Russians would prob- are less likely to become anxious when confronted with ably name Pushkin, Tolstoy, or Chekhov as an example unexpected or unstructured situations. of a writer. Burger, J. (2008). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Decyk, B. N. (1994). Using examples to teach concepts. Wadsworth. In D. F. Halpern (Ed.), Changing college classrooms: New teaching and learning strategies for an increasingly PsychSim 6: My Head Is Spinning complex world (pp. 39–63). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. This activity demonstrates thinking with verbal con- Halpern, D. (2003). Thought and knowledge (4th ed.). cepts and mental images, using the concept of mental Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. rotation, thus you may want to hold this until you cover thinking with images. The issue of mental rotation is introduced and students participate in a simulation. Solving Problems Their results are compared with those of a classic study, Classroom Exercise: Dice Games to Demonstrate suggesting that the time required to rotate a mental Problem Solving image increases as the angular distance increases. G. William Hill IV (1994) uses a simple dice game Classroom Exercise: Introducing Prototypes to demonstrate typical stages in solving problems. Betsy Decyk (1994) has devised an exercise for intro- Begin by telling your students that they will be play- ducing prototypes. Tell your students that even though ing a game called “Petals Around a Rose.” You will be you have known most of them for only a short time, throwing dice and after each throw you will tell how you already know much about what and how they many petals are around the rose. A specific rule deter- think. Have them take out a piece of paper and respond mines the number of petals, and students are to discover to the categories you are about to list with the very first the rule. Also tell them that the name of the game itself example that comes to mind. provides a clue to the rule. For the first few throws of the dice (use a docu- 1. a bird ment camera to show the dice throws or create presen- 2. a color tation slides that depict simulated dice throws), simply 3. a triangle (drawing a picture is just fine) identify the correct number of petals. After the first 4. a motor vehicle three throws, have students attempt to guess the number 5. a sentence of petals before telling them the correct answer. Simply 6. a hero inform them whether their guess is correct or incorrect; 7. a heroic action do not confirm a particular rule. Begin by throwing five 8. a game dice. To facilitate acquisition of the rule, progressively 9. a philosopher reduce the number of dice. Most students will figure 10. a writer out the rule by the time you reduce the number to two After students have finished, say that you will or one. The rule is very simple—a rose is defined as a predict many, if not most, of their answers even before die with a center dot (always an odd number). The total they reveal them. Give the following: number of petals is the sum of all the dots that occur around the center dot (on all the dice thrown that have 1. a robin, sparrow, or eagle the dot). 2. red or blue After completing the game, ask volunteers to 3. a picture of an equilateral triangle describe how they solved the problem. Some may refer 4. a car to insight. Others are likely to describe a process of 5. a short declarative statement, e.g., “The boy ran hypothesis formation, testing, and revising. Also ask home.” what information they attended to in attempting to solve 6. Superman, Batman, or possibly a fireman the problem and why. Do obstacles in problem solving 7. a single act by a male, e.g. a rescue by a fireman reflect problems in isolating relevant information or are 8. Monopoly or some other board game they also the result of frustration or performance 9. Socrates or Aristotle anxiety? 10. Stephen King, or some other white male author Hill, G. W. (1991, August). Craps in the classroom: Explain that we tend to think in terms of the “best Dice games to demonstrate problem-solving. Paper example” of a category, or “prototype.” Within a given presented at the Annual Convention of the American culture, there tends to be considerable agreement, in Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. fact near consensus, on some prototypes. However, they may vary across cultures. As Diane Halpern 6 Thinking and Language

Student Project: Problem-Solving Strategies Handout 3 presents specific problems to discuss in 2000 class. You may want students to complete them at home and then discuss problem-solving strategies in the following class period. 1500 1. If a problem can be broken down into categories, it may be best to represent it in a matrix. Diane 1000

Halpern suggests the following three-by-three Altitude matrix to solve the Fred, Ed, and Ted problem: Joan Sally Vickie 500 Fred 0 Ed 6:00 A.M.9:00 A.M. 12:00 3:00 P.M.6:00 P.M. Ted Time Source: Figure from Cognition (4th ed.), by Margaret Matlin, p. 352. Copyright © 1998 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reproduced by Joan cannot be Ed’s wife because she is his sister permission of the publisher. so we can place a “No” in the Joan-Ed cell. Ed weighs more than the man married to Vickie and thus is not married to Vickie. Ed must be married Simply picturing the monk moving up and to Sally. So we have the following: down the hill helps many students. It becomes clear that the two figures must meet at some Joan Sally Vickie point regardless of their speed or how often Fred No they stop. Ed No Yes No Source: From Cognition (4th ed.), by Margaret Ted No Matlin, p. 352. Copyright © 1998 by Holt, The problem contains additional clues. Because Rinehart and Winston. Reproduced by permis- Fred lives in Ann Arbor and Joan lives in Detroit, sion of the publisher. they are probably not married. Because Fred is not 3. We often approach a problem by dividing it into a married to Joan or Sally, he must be married to number of subproblems, or smaller problems. Each Vickie. And, by the process of elimination, Joan of the subproblems is solved by determining the must be married to Ted. The matrix is complete difference between the initial state and goal state and the problem is solved. and then eliminating the difference. Sometimes this Joan Sally Vickie is called means-ends analysis. You determine the “ends” you want and then decide what “means” Fred No No Yes you will use to attain those ends. In studying the Ed No Yes No Hobbits-and-Orcs Problem, James G. Greeno found Ted Yes No No that people stop at different points in the problem Matrix solution suggested by Halpern, D. (2003). and plan their strategy for the next few moves. Thought & knowledge (4th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Subjects took a long time before the first move and Erlbaum. before two other critical moves. At each stage, they reported tackling a subproblem and needing time to 2. The Buddhist Monk problem demonstrates how organize their moves. some problems are most easily solved by represent-  The Hobbits-and-Orcs Problem also demon- ing them graphically or visually. As the graph in strates that the strategy of continuously moving for- the next column indicates, one line can be drawn to ward to the goal may prove to be an obstacle. For show the monk going up the mountain on the first example, if you simply think of moving creatures day, and another line to show him coming down from the right bank to the left bank, you will ignore several days later. The point at which the lines steps crucial to the solution. In solving many prob- cross identifies the spot the monk will pass at the lems we sometimes find that to move forward, we same time on each of the two days. Regardless of must temporarily move backward. The solution? the monk’s walking rate, the two paths must cross at some point. 1. Move 2 Orcs, R to L. 2. Move 1 Orc, L to R. Thinking and Language 7

3. Move 2 Orcs, R to L. Explain to your class that in solving problems, 4. Move 1 Orc, L to R. the pieces sometimes suddenly fall together and we 5. Move 2 Hobbits, R to L. perceive the solution. A reorganization or restructuring 6. Move 1 Orc, 1 Hobbit, L to R. of perception produces the “Aha!” experience we call 7. Move 2 Hobbits, R to L. insight. For example, the first line drawing might be 8. Move 1 Orc, L to R. viewed as a side view of a squinting face. But you can 9. Move 2 Orcs, R to L. reorganize it into a soldier and a dog passing an arch- 10. Move 1 Orc, L to R. way; the mouth becomes the dog’s tail and the squint- 11. Move 2 Orcs, R to L. ing eye a rifle with a bayonet. Similarly, the second fig- ure may first appear to be a ghoul looking over a fence 4. As John Hayes suggests, a good way to solve the and a couple of ears sticking up over a fence. But with “Truthtellers and Liars Problem” is to propose restructuring we may see a custodian cleaning mud off hypotheses. You might first consider, “If the first the floor (the ghoul’s eyes become the soles of the jani- person was a liar, what would he have said?” tor’s shoes, and the ears become the sides of a bucket). Well, he would have lied about himself and said Rebuses necessarily require reorganization. Display he was a truthteller. Alternatively, hypothesize for the following three words and ask your class what the the moment that he was a truthteller. He would phrase means. If necessary, provide the hint, “What is have to tell the truth about himself and say that he the relative position of ‘just’?” was a truthteller. In testing these hypotheses, you learn that the first person must have said he was a you just me truthteller. The second man then must have been a Describing the relative positions of the words pro- truthteller and so was the first man since the second duces the phrase, “just between you and me.” man said so. Now write the following on the board: Classroom Exercise: The “Aha!” Experience stood Michael Wertheimer (1999) describes a classroom well activity that is intended to demonstrate the “Aha!” view experience of achieving insight. The exercise involves the presentation of a series of brain teasers that begins What do the words communicate? As a hint, tell with the call for simple reorganization of perceptions your class, “stood” is above well and both words are and proceeds to the demand for the more challenging above “view.” With proper reorganization, most will restructuring of abstract problems. suddenly recognize “well understood overview.” Before class, carefully draw the following figures After displaying the five sets of links shown below on the board (or reproduce in a presentation slide or on (in a single row), ask students, “What is the smallest a paper to display through a document camera): number of links that needs to be opened and resoldered to make a single continuous chain of 15 links?” To most, it will seem that at least four links need to be cut and closed again. Change the image to show one set of links centered below the other four sets and ask again. Many, if not all, will suddenly recognize that all three links in one set can be opened and used to close the gaps between the remaining four sets. Present the classic story of the wealthy desert dweller whose caravan is approaching an oasis after a long, hot day. He says to two of his lieutenants, “To the Source: From Wertheimer, M., “Reorganization and one of you whose horse gets to the oasis last, I’ll give productive thinking,” in L. T. Benjamin et al. (Eds.), this camel laden with gold.” Immediately, they both Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology stop. By the time the rear guard of the caravan reaches (Vol. 4, pp. 218–219). Copyright © 1999 American the two lieutenants, they have dismounted their horses Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission. and each is waiting on the sand for the other to become

Wertheimer, M. (1999). Reorganization and productive thinking. In L. T. Benjamin et al. (Eds.), Activities hand- book for the teaching of psychology (Vol. 4, p. 219). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 8 Thinking and Language so hot and thirsty that getting to the oasis cannot be c. Name and explain two specific variables or resisted. Finally, they tell the guard their dilemma and issues that could lead to mistakes in the decision ask for help. He says two words to them, whereupon making and problem solving of these emergency the lieutenants jump onto the horses and race toward responders. These should be different from the the oasis. What did the guard tell them? Most will be issues you named in part (b). stumped. (If any have heard the story before, ask them not to divulge the answer to the rest of the class.) The Related Reading: guard’s recommendation? “Trade horses.” Ford, J. K., & Schmidt, A. M. (2000). Emergency Finally, tell your class the popular story of the response training: strategies for enhancing real-world hunter who sees a bear 1 mile due south. He shoots, performance Journal of Hazardous Materials, 75(2-3), misses, and the bear runs off. The hunter walks the 1 195–215. doi:10.1016/S0304-3894(00)00180-1 mile south to where the bear had been, then 1 mile due Van Hiel, A., & Mervielde, I. (2007). The search for east, then 1 mile due north—at which point the hunter complex problem-solving strategies in the presence of is standing again at exactly the same spot from which stressors. Human Factors, 49(6), 1072–1082. the gun had been fired. Question: “What color was the bear?” If necessary, provide the additional question, 3. How do you think people’s use of problem-solving “Where on the globe is the hunter? Where can one go, heuristics and might be influenced by successively, 1 mile due south, then 1 mile due east, their expertise in a particular domain? That is, are then 1 mile due north, and end up at the same place experts in a particular subject area likely to use one started from?” Only the North Pole satisfies this heuristics and algorithms differently from novices? requirement. The bear is a polar bear and thus white. Develop a specific hypothesis about the relation- Wertheimer, M. (1999). Reorganization and pro- ship between expertise and problem-solving strate- ductive thinking. In L. T. Benjamin et al. (Eds.), gies. Identify at least one independent variable and Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology one dependent variable in your hypothesis. Then, (Vol. 4). Washington, DC: American Psychological design a quick experiment to test it. Draw a graph Association. to show what your expected results would be. a. Hypothesis: Classroom Exercise: Experts Solving Problems b. Independent variable (and operational Like most concepts, problem solving is most easily definition): understood if students are able to relate it to their own c. Dependent variable (and operational definition): lives. Have students form small groups to discuss and d. The tasks, materials, and methodology you write a response to a couple of questions related to the would use in an experiment to test your hypoth- concepts of problem solving, decision making, biases, esis: algorthims, and/or heuristics. You can ask them as e. A graph to show your expected results: many or as few as you wish, depending on how much time you have to devote to it. Here are some sugges- Related Reading: tions: Bilalicacutea, M., McLeoda, P. & Gobetb, F. 1. Do you have a strategy that you tend to rely on (2008). Expert and “novice” problem solving strate- more than others when trying to solve a problem? gies in chess: Sixty years of citing de Groot (1946). Thinking & Reasoning, 14(4), 395–408. doi: Why do you use it? Estimate how well this strategy 10.1080/13546780802265547 works for you (give a success percentage). 2. Many individuals have to make “split-second” 4. How might research in problem solving and deci- decisions in life-threatening situations (e.g., emer- sion making be useful or relevant to college stu- gency medical personnel, firefighters, police offi- dents? cers, hostage negotiators). a. Name two issues in decision making and prob- Related Reading: lem solving that would be important for these See an excellent website “Teaching Outside the individuals to understand. Classroom: Teaching Students to Solve Problems” main- b. Explain how these professionals could take tained by the Center for the Integration of Research, advantage of these two issues to improve the Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), an NSF Center for accuracy, efficiency, or effectiveness of their Learning and Teaching in higher education at www. decision making and problem solving in crisis cirtl.net/node/2622. It describes some of the obstacles situations. to academic success that “novice” students face in their studies. Thinking and Language 9

Anderson, W. L., Mitchell, S. M., & Osgood, M. P. nothing. (2008). Gauging the gaps in student problem-solving 8. What occurs once in every minute, twice in every skills: Assessment of individual and group use of prob- moment, yet never in a thousand years? Ans: The lem-solving strategies using online discussions. CBE Life letter M. Sciences Education, 7(2), 254–262. doi: 10.1187/cbe.07- 9. A man left home one morning. He turned right 06-0037 and ran straight ahead. Then he turned left. After a while, he turned left again, running faster then Lecture/Discussion Topic: Jokes, Riddles, Insight, and ever. Then he turned left once more and decided to Fixation go home. In the distance he could see two masked The text notes that insight provides a sense of satisfac- men waiting for him. Who were they? Ans: The tion. The solution to a riddle or the joy of a joke may umpire and the other team’s catcher. come in our sudden comprehension of an unexpected 10. Can you translate the following? Y Y U R Y Y U ending or a double meaning. Snopes (www.snopes.com) B I C U R Y Y 4 M E Ans: Too wise you are, Too provides great example of double meaning that you wise you be, I see you are, Too wise for me. might assign students to research and bring to class. The wonderful game Mindtrap (manufactured by Great American Puzzle Factory, Inc., a division of Biases and Heuristics in Reasoning and Problem Fundex, P.O. Box 421309, Indianapolis, IN 46242, and Solving available in many toy departments and gift shops) pro- Classroom Exercise: Confirmation Bias vides dozens of examples to lighten any class. A few examples are provided below. They will elicit laughter, We all have a tendency to search for information that serve to illustrate that sudden flash of inspiration we confirms our preconceptions. If students have read call insight, and provide good openings for discussing the text discussion of thinking, you may want to see if fixation as an obstacle to problem solving. they can apply what they’ve learned to Peter Wason’s (1966) four-card problem. Draw circles and triangles on 1. The maker doesn’t want it, the buyer doesn’t use it, four cards as follows: (1) a black circle (with a black and the user doesn’t see it. What is it? Ans: A triangle on the other side), (2) a red circle (with a black coffin. triangle on the other side), (3) a red triangle (with a 2. What number is next in this series: 10, 4, 3, 11, 15 black circle on the other side), and (4) a black triangle . . . ? a. 14 b. 1 c. 17 d. 12. Ans: 14. When spelled (with a red circle on the other side). Instruct students: out, each number in the series is longer than the “Assuming that each card has a triangle on one side previous number by one letter. and a circle on the other, which card or cards need to 3. Display an image of six glasses in a row: The first be turned over to test this statement: ‘Every card that three should be shaded to illustrate being filled has a black triangle on one side has a red circle on the with water, and the last three should not be shaded other?’” Most people answer “black triangle” or “black to indicate they are empty. Then pose the question.) triangle and red circle” attempting to confirm the rule. Six glasses are in a row. The first three are filled The correct answer is black triangle (which would con- with water, and the last three are empty. By mov- firm the rule) and black circle (which would disprove ing only one glass, can you arrange them so that the rule). the full and the empty glasses alternate? Ans: Pour Another way to demonstrate the confirmation bias the water from the second glass into the fifth glass. is to play an inverse game of “Twenty Questions.” 4. What is so unusual about the sentence below? This can be done either as a classroom exercise or as a (Aside from the fact it does not make a lot of student project. In this game, contestants are provided sense.) “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.” the general category and need to discover the specific Ans: It’s the shortest sentence in the English lan- instance. In the inverted game they are given the specif- guage that includes every letter of the alphabet. ic instance, say, “a Siamese cat,” and must discover the 5. How can you physically stand behind your father general category, say, “all living things.” Questioners while he is standing behind you? Ans: Stand back should be told to announce an answer when they are to back. confident they have discovered it. A tendency to verify 6. Something extraordinarily unusual happened on the rather than disconfirm their hunches will lead many 13th of December 2014, at 10:11 a.m. What was questioners to announce a category that is too narrow. it? Ans: At that moment, the time and day could Wason, P. “Reasoning.” In Foss, B. M. New horizons in be written as: 10:11, 12/13/14. Of the three babies psychology. Hammondsworth: Penguin. born at that time, one weighed 8 lbs., 9 oz. 7. Can you translate the following into a sentence? 100204180 Ans: I ought naught to owe for I ate 10 Thinking and Language

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Confirmation Bias and make it really hard for you to open up to people?”). As Social Judgments a result, those who were tested for extraversion actually Our tendency to search for confirming information may appeared more extraverted; those who were tested for have important implications for our social judgments. introversion appeared more introverted. Interviewers Eldar Shafir (1993) presented research participants with found the personality traits for which they were prob- the following scenario. ing, simply on the basis of the questions they chose to ask. Imagine that you serve on the jury of an only-child sole In similar ways, argues Levy, therapists may custody case following a relatively messy divorce. The selectively elicit clinical information that affirms their facts of the case are complicated by ambiguous eco- initial diagnostic impressions. For example, therapists nomic, social, and emotional considerations, and you decide to base your decision entirely on the following who think a new therapy patient may be suffering from few observations. To which parent would you award alcohol dependence may ask questions regarding his sole custody of the child? Parent A, who has an average drinking habits (“Have you ever had occasion to drink income, average health, average working hours, a reason- alone?”), his history of substance use (“Have you ever able rapport with the child, and a relatively stable social had hangovers?”), any lapses of memory (“Have you life, or Parent B, who has an above-average income, ever forgotten events that happened to you the night minor health problems, lots of work-related travel, a very before?”), experiences with depression (“Do you some- close relationship with the child, and an extremely active times feel very sad?”), and possible marital conflicts social life. (p. 549) (“Do you have arguments with your wife?”). All the responses may confirm the belief that the patient is a Most participants chose to award custody to Parent closet drinker. The problem, of course, is that many B. Interestingly, however, when a different group is people who are not suffering from alcohol dependence given the same scenario and asked to which parent they drink by themselves, have endured hangovers, have would deny custody, the majority also select Parent B. occasional lapses in memory, suffer through periods of Paradoxically, Parent B is thought to be both more and depression, and argue with their wives. less worthy of caring for the child. Why? When asked More generally, therapists’ own personal and pro- who should be awarded custody, people look primarily fessional beliefs may lead them to elicit information for positive qualities and pay less attention to negative from clients that confirms their particular theoretical qualities. This perspective leads them to favor Parent B orientation. Thus, Freudians may search and be more (because of the close relationship with the child and the likely to find unconscious motivational conflicts, high income). When asked who should be denied cus- behaviorists may find maladaptive learning patterns, tody, people look primarily for negative qualities and and cognitive theorists may discover irrational belief pay less attention to positive qualities. This, too, would systems. lead them to Parent B (because of the health problems and extensive absences due to travel). Levy, D. (2003). Tools of critical thinking: Metathoughts If you want to further extend your discussion of for psychology. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. common cognitive biases, use David Levy’s Tools of Shafir, E. (1993). Choosing versus rejecting: Why some Critical Thinking, an excellent resource for both teach- options are both better and worse than others. Memory ers and students. Separate chapters are devoted to each and Cognition, 21, 546–556. of the thinking errors. In his chapter on the confirma- tion bias, Levy explores its implications for social and Lecture/Discussion Topic: Forensic Confirmation Bias clinical judgment. Police officers are not immune to confirmation bias. Levy explains how we often employ strategies for As Mark Costanzo (2013) notes, an officer who decides eliciting information from others that supports our ini- that a suspect is guilty is more likely to interpret behav- tial beliefs about them. For example, in one study stu- iors such as nervousness as evidence of guilt. dents were instructed to conduct interviews with other Saul Kassin and colleagues (2013) report that in students to assess the presence of certain personality 2006 FBI fingerprint experts decided that Brandon traits. Half were asked to determine if the interviewee­ Mayfield (a Muslim from Oregon) had left a finger- was an extravert and the other half were asked to deter- print on a bag used to carry material for the bombs that mine if he or she was an introvert. Findings indicated exploded in the Madrid subway two years earlier. Soon that the subjects who were asked to ascertain whether after, Spanish authorities nabbed the actual bomber. their interviewee was an extravert chose extraversion- Mayfield was awarded two million dollars for his related questions (e.g., “What would you do if you trouble. In a formal investigation into what went wrong, wanted to liven things up at a party?”), whereas those confirmation bias was found to have contributed to the seeking to determine if the interviewee was an introvert misidentification. Having negative information about asked introversion-related questions (e.g., “What factors the owner of fingerprints influenced whether the experts Thinking and Language 11 declared the fingerprints of the accused and those found Kassin, S. M., Dror, I. E., & Kukucka, J. (2013). The at a crime scene a match. forensic confirmation bias: Problems, perspectives, and In a study of polygraph experts, researchers found proposed solutions. Journal of Applied Research in that the experts’ interpretation of polygraph charts was Memory and Cognition, 2(1), 42–52. doi: 10.1016/j.jar- influenced by what they were told about the person mac.2013.01.001 being tested. Charts that they thought belongedattribut- Levy, D. (2003). Tools of critical thinking: Metathoughts ed to people who later confessed to a crime were more for psychology. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. likely to be viewed as “lying” charts. Shafir, E. (1993). Choosing versus rejecting: Why some Kassin and colleagues argue that three conditions options are both better and worse than others. Memory contribute to forensic confirmation bias. and Cognition, 21, 546–556. 1. Stimulus ambiguity. Because forensic evidence is not as clear-cut as fictional television shows would Lecture/Discussion Topic: Overcoming Functional have us believe, there is much room for interpreta- Fixedness tion. Functional fixedness is a type of fixation that limits our 2. Context-driven expectations. Knowing informa- ability to see an object as having more than its tradi- tion about the case can push interpretations in one tional use. Michael Britt has compiled a 2-minute video direction over another. showing several ways in which people have overcome 3. Motivation. When forensic evidence examiners are functional fixedness: http://youtu.be/ksgaup4zqz0. motivated to “catch criminals,” they may be more After showing the video, take a few minutes for a likely to interpret evidence as matching a suspect. think/pair/share activity. Ask students to take a couple of minutes to jot down a personal example or two of Take a few minutes for a think/pair/share activity. overcoming functional fixedness by using an item in Ask students, given the conditions above, what controls an unusual way. Have groups of three or four students could be put into place to reduce the likelihood of con- share their examples. Finally, ask students to share with firmation bias influencing forensic evidence experts. the class any particularly good examples from their Give them a couple minutes to jot down their ideas, groups. then have them pair up to discuss their ideas. Use a student response system or other means to collect ideas Classroom Exercise: Mental Set and Luchin’s Water from the pairs. Jug Problem Kassin and colleagues offer a number of recom- mendations. As noted in the text, human problem solving and deci- sion making (for good and for bad) can be directed 1. Forensic evidence examiners should thoroughly and influenced by a variety of biases. The text briefly evaluate the crime scene evidence on its own merit describes fixation, which can obstruct problem solving before being exposed to other information from the by preventing us from seeing alternative uses to objects case. or from approaching problems in new ways. A related 2. Forensic evidence examiners should be shielded concept is einstellung (in German, literally, “attitude”), from anyone who could unwittingly influence their or a mechanized, set way of thinking about a problem. judgment, including the investigating officer and Abraham Luchins investigated einstellung using the the victims themselves. “water jug problem,” which has become a classic. 3. Rather than being given just one sample, presum- In the water jug problem, participants are told to ably of the accused, to match against crime scene imagine that they have three different water jugs of evidence, forensic evidence examiners should be varying capacities and an unlimited supply of water. given six samples to determine which, if any, is a They are instructed to figure out how to derive a cer- match. tain amount of water using these three jugs for a series Ask students if they think forensic evidence exam- of problems. In Luchins’ research, participants were iners would benefit from taking a psychology course. divided into two groups such that one (the experimental What topics in the introductory psychology course group) was given practice solving the problems before would be especially relevant? Kassin and colleagues they were asked to solve a set of critical test problems. think they would especially benefit from psychology The other (control) group was not given any practice topics such as research methods, perception, social problems. All the practice problems were designed to influence, and judgment and decision making. be solved in the same way: Fill up jug B, then pour out enough to fill jug A, then pour out enough to fill jug C Costanzo, M. A. (2013). Using forensic psychology to twice (2 x C). teach basic psychological processes: Eyewitness memory The critical test problems did not require the B – A and lie detection. Teaching of Psychology, 40(2), 156– – 2C solution. Some could be solved two ways, using 160. doi: 10.1177/0098628312475039. 12 Thinking and Language the B – A – 2C solution or a simpler solution (A – C After you collect your data from the class, you or A + C). Others required a new solution altogether. should find that the experimental group took longer Luchins was interested to see how participants would than the control group. On average, the experimental attempt to solve the critical test items as a function of group should complete fewer solutions overall and previous practice. make more errors. You may want to ask your students Experimental participants—those with the B – A to graph the class results from this exercise and/or dis- – 2C experience—tended to “stick” with that solu- cuss alternative explanations or other variables that they tion strategy on the critical test problems even though would want to include if you were to conduct a follow- simpler solutions were possible. As a result, they took up investigation. longer to finish the task, and they found it difficult Luchins, A. S. (1942). Mechanization in problem solv- to successfully solve some of the test items. On the ing. Psychological Monographs, 54, No. 248. other hand, the control participants had no problem recognizing and using the more direct solutions, and so Luchins, A. S., & Luchins, E. H. (1959). Rigidity of they were faster and had more correct solutions. Thus, behavior: A variational approach to the effect of einstel- Luchins and his wife Edith (1970) argued, prior experi- lung. Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon Books. ence with the practice problems established a set “state Luchins, A. S., & Luchins, E. H. (1970). Wertheimer’s of mind” for solving the problems, and this set prevent- Seminars Revisited: Problem Solving And Thinking, ed the future use of more efficient solutions. Vols. I, II, and III, Albany, NY: SUNY, Albany. The water jug problem has been adapted for class- Classroom Exercise: The Availability Heuristic—Drunk room use here. Handout 4 contains two different ver- Driving Deaths sions of the problem. Prepare­ half as many copies of the handout as you have students and cut the copies in Before discussing the availability heuristic, open your half. Then shuffle the half pages so that the two ver- lecture by posing this question to your students. sions are distributed across the class in the manner you In the United States between 2001 and 2010, 2334 prefer. It may be best to distribute the pages face down children under the age of 15 were killed by a drunk and instruct students not to turn over the page or work driver (blood alcohol content was greater than or equal on the problems until you say to begin. Give students to 0.08 g/dL). What percentage of the children killed enough time so that they feel pressure to work on the were riding in the vehicle with the impaired driver? solutions quickly (5–7 minutes should be enough time). Collect student responses by a show of hands or via You may have students work individually on this task, a student response system—for example, ask, Who or you can have students pair up (one student serves as answered less than 15 percent? Less than 25 percent? the “solver” and the other serves as the “observer,” who Most students will estimate a low number, typically times the solver and scores the solutions). well below 50 percent. The top half of Handout 4 is for the experimental Students will be stunned to learn that 65 percent of group. In this version, Problem 1 is a test item and can the children killed were riding in the car with the be solved by filling up Jug A and subtracting Jug B alcohol-impaired driver (the median blood alcohol con- three times. Problems 2 through 6 are practice items tent for the driver was 0.15 g/dL). Sixty-one percent of and can be solved by filling up Jug B, then subtracting the children were unrestrained. Jug A once, and then subtracting Jug C twice. These Ask students why their estimates were so low. problems are the ones meant to establish a mental set Students will note that anti-drunk driving campaigns for solving the problems with the B – A – 2C solution. involving children typically show the children as being Problems 7 and 8 can also be solved using B – A – 2C, hit by a drunk driver. but they can both be more efficiently solved by fill- If your students wonder if this decade happened to ing up Jug A first. Problem 9 is a critical problem that be an anomaly, assure them it was not. Between 1997 requires a brand new kind of solution. To successfully and 2002, 2,335 children were killed in car accidents solve it, one has to “break out” of the mental set. involving alcohol-impaired driving. Of these 68 percent The bottom half of Handout 4 is for the control were riding in the same vehicle as the drunk driver. group. Problem 1 is the same test problem that begins Again, most of the children were unrestrained. The the experimental version. The rest of the problems are median blood alcohol content was 0.13 g/dL. in a different order. In this version, Problems 2 and 3 U.S. Centers for Disease Control. (2004, February 6). are the critical test items that can be solved using Morbidity and mortality weekly report: Child passenger B – A – 2C or a simpler way. Problem 4 is the one deaths involving drinking drivers—United States, 1997– that requires a “release” from B – A – 2C. Problems 5 2002 (Rep. No. 53(04)). Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/ through 9 are the practice items that require mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5304a2.htm. B – A – 2C. Thinking and Language 13

Quinlan, K., Shults, R. A., & Rudd, R. A. (2014). Child Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin dramatically passenger deaths involving alcohol-impaired drivers. described the effects of slavery, he commented, “I’m Pediatrics, 133(6), 966–972. doi:10.1542/peds.2013- happy to meet the little lady who started the Civil War.” 2318. When you are thinking of buying a new car, whose testimony is most persuasive—a neighbor who has had Classroom Exercise: The Availability Heuristic problems with a particular model or Consumer Reports, The role of vividness in shaping availability is demon- which on the basis of dozens, perhaps hundreds of strated in Handout 5. Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, reports, recommends the car? and Lichtenstein report that the more quiet cause Do the media sometimes lead us to have a distorted of death is actually more prevalent. However, people view of the frequency of certain events by overexposing perceive the more publicized and easily pictured cause us to some events and underexposing us to others? Pose to be more common. Similarly, Norman Brown and the following questions to your students. Robert Siegler report that less familiar countries have The FBI classifies crime in the United States into two greater populations but respondents judge those that are categories—violent crimes, such as murder, rape, rob- familiar to them to be more populous. Finally, larger or bery, and assault, and property crimes, such as burglary, more familiar cities are judged to have a higher crime larceny, or car theft. What percentage of crimes would rate. (The exercise is also structured to provide an you estimate are violent rather than property crimes? example of overconfidence. Students will generally be What percentage of accused felons plead insanity? What confident of their answer even though they are usually percentage are acquitted? What percentage of convic- incorrect.) tions for felony crimes are obtained through trial instead of plea bargaining? Deaths per 100,000 in the United States In 2012, there were 1,214,462 violent crimes (FBI, (2011 data) n.d.a) and 8,975,438 property crimes (FBI, n.d.b). Motor vehicle accidents (11.3) vs. strokes (Note that crime has decreased in the last decade, with (cerebrovascular accidents) (41.4) violent crime in 2012 down 12.2 percent since 2003 and Suicide by firearm (6.4) vs. blood poisoning property crime down 14.1 percent.) Less than 1 percent (septicemia) (11.5) of all accused felons plead insanity and only a quarter Homicide (5.2) vs. diabetes (23.7) of those are ultimately acquitted. Less than 10 percent Drowning (1.1) vs. leukemia (7.4) of convictions for felony crimes are obtained through a Alcohol-induced deaths (8.6) vs. Pneumonia (16.8) trial; more than 90 percent result from plea bargaining. However, aided by the news media’s reporting, we tend Largest Population to overestimate the number of violent crimes, pleas of insanity, and trials, because they are more available to Morocco (33 million) vs. Saudi Arabia (27 million) memory. Nepal (31 million) vs. Australia (23 million) Brown, N., & Siegler, R. (1993). Metrics and mappings: South Africa (48 million) vs. Vietnam (93 million) A framework for understanding real-world quantitative Libya (6 million) vs. Sri Lanka (22 million) estimation. Psychological Review, 100, 511–534. Iraq (33 million) vs. Tanzania (50 million) Federal Bureau of Investigations. (n.d.a). Uniform crime US death rate data from the CDC’s National Vital reports: Violent crime. Retrieved November 6, 2014, Statistics Report of 2011 data (www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the- nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf). Population data from 2009 u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/violent-crime/violent- World Almanac and Book of Facts. crime. By a show of hands, ask how many answered all Federal Bureau of Investigations. (n.d.b). Uniform crime questions correctly. Rarely will a single hand go up. In reports: Property crime. Retrieved November 6, 2014, fact, some students will get every question wrong. To from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the- demonstrate overconfidence, have students compare the u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/property-crime/property- percentage of questions they answered correctly with crime. their average confidence level. How many were more Fischhoff, B., Slovic, P., & Lichtenstein, S. (1977). confident than correct? Virtually every hand will go up. Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme You might cite other examples that demonstrate confidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human the persuasive power of vivid information. Most of Perception and Performance, 3, 552–564. us are more fearful of flying than driving because Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: airplane crashes are vivid and memorable, but flying A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. is in fact safer. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Cognitive Psychology, 5, 209–232. 14 Thinking and Language

Classroom Demonstration: The Availability Heuristic— 7. Prepare half as many copies of the handout as you Firearms Deaths (with Optional Anchoring Bias) have students and cut the copies in half. Distribute the When we use the availability heuristic, we estimate the top halves to students on the right side of the classroom rate of events based on how available they are in mem- and the lower halves to those on the left side.The top ory. Events that are more vivid or that we hear about half of Handout 7 asks students if the number of people more frequently are better remembered, and thus we are killed by firearms in the United States in 2013 is greater more likely to overestimate their occurrence. It is impor- than or less than 500,000. The bottom half asks if that tant to point out that the events we hear about frequently number is greater than or less than 5000 people. Ask really are often the most commonly occurring. But not the right half of the class to report their guesses. Record always. these in one column on the board, on the computer for Before discussing the availability heuristic in class, display to the class, or via a class response system. open the topic with this demonstration. Handout 6 asks Repeat for the left half of the class. Students who are students to estimate how many people were killed by given the bigger anchor of 500,000 will estimate a high- firearms in the United States in 2011 (U.S. Centers er number than those given the lower anchor of 5000. for Disease Control, n.d.). There were 31,897 firearms Hayes, P., & Harruff, R. (2014). King County Medical deaths. Don’t be surprised if student estimates are in the Examiner’s Office Annual Report 2013 (Rep.). Retrieved hundreds of thousands. Students may have a skewed October 25, 2014, from Public Health—Seattle and King sense of this number perhaps because of the continuous County website: www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/ violence shown by the media (see, for example, Potter & health/examiner.asp Chang, 1990). Potter, W. J., & Chang, I. C. (1990). Television expo- Inform students that when someone is killed by a sure measures and the cultivation Hypothesis. Journal of firearm, the death can be classified in only one of four Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 34(3), 313–333 ways: homicide, suicide, , or undetermined. U.S. Centers for Disease Control. (n.d.). Detailed Tables Ask them to estimate the percentage of firearms deaths for the National Vital Statistics Report (NVSR) “Deaths: for each category. The percentages must add up to 100. Final Data for 2011.” (Rep.). Retrieved October 25, 2014, Then have students compare their responses with from Centers for Disease Control website: http://www. the responses of those around them (or collect the data cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf via a student response system). Most students will report the highest percentages for homicides and accidents and Classroom Exercise: The Representativeness Heuristic the lowest percentages for suicides and accidents. As a supplement to the text discussion of the availability heuristic, you may want to discuss the representative- Reveal these death-by-firearms data: ness heuristic, which involves judging the likelihood Homicides: 35% (11,068) of things in terms of how well they seem to represent Suicides: 62% (19,990) or match a particular prototype. Although “representa- Accidents: 2% (591) tiveness” works well much of the time, it leads to error Undetermined: 1% (248) when its conclusions run counter to the laws of chance. Ask students why their estimates are off. Some You can demonstrate the power of the representative- students will immediately see that their estimates were ness heuristic in class with another of based on the availability heuristic. and ’s problems. Read the following If you would like to fit the exercise to be closer to in class and ask students to write down their answer— home, visit the website for your county or city medi- either “a” or “b.” cal examiner. You should be able to find annual reports Linda is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She that contain these data. Or you could ask your favorite majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was librarian to find the data for you. For example, the King deeply concerned with discrimination and other social County (Seattle metro area) Medical Examiner’s Office issues, and she participated in antinuclear demonstrations. (Hayes & Harruff, 2014) reported 145 firearms deaths in Which statement is more likely? 2013. Of those, 30 percent were homicides and 69 per- a. Linda is a bank teller. cent were suicides. One firearms death was categorized b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist as an accident. None were undetermined. movement. If you plan on covering the anchoring bias (the human tendency to use initial information as the stan- Source: From Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D., “Causal dard, or “anchor,” for judgment and decision making), schemas in judgments under uncertainty,” in M. Fishbein you can illustrate it during this same exercise (or you (Ed.), Progress in social psychology, Vol. 1. Copyright © may hold off and use the exercise on page 16 of this 1980 Taylor & Francis. Reproduced by permission. unit). Instead of using Handout 6, distribute Handout Thinking and Language 15

By a show of hands, ask how many chose “b.” The worse on a heuristics quiz than when they were present- overwhelming majority will, since feminism seems ed with both good and bad judgment examples. more representative of Linda than being a bank teller. After discussing the representativeness heuris- In noting that the answer is “a,” point out that the prob- tic, ask students to generate some examples of good ability of any two uncertain events occurring together is decisions resulting from use of the representativeness always less than the odds of either happening alone. heuristic. To help them get started, point out that some- For example, the chance of flipping two heads in a row times when something looks like a duck, quacks like is less than the chance of flipping one. Thus, the a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Then use probability that Linda is both a bank teller and a femi- Shepperd and Koch’s example of asking someone in a nist must be less than that she is a teller, regardless store for help. How do you decide which person to ask of how unsuitable that career may seem for her. You for help in a store? How can you identify the employees might try the following alternative to make the same when they are mixed in with customers? Finding some- point: Ernest is extraverted and literary. Which of the one wearing the store uniform is usually a safe bet, but following is more likely? (a) Ernest majored in engi- of course it’s not a guaranteed solution. Sometimes, a neering. (b) Ernest majored in engineering but took a customer happens to be wearing clothes similar to that job as a newspaper reporter. Most students will again of the employees. Or the employee is not familiar with opt for “b,” although “a” is actually more likely. all of the store’s products. You can also demonstrate how representativeness Ask students to pair up or form small groups to leads to error by asking students to imagine they are generate their examples. After a few minutes, ask offered a bet. A die with four green sides and two red groups to share their favorites. ones will be rolled several times. They can be paid 25 Shepperd, J. A., & Koch, E. J. (2005). Pitfalls in teach- dollars if ing judgment heuristics. Teaching of Psychology, 32(1), RGRRR or GRGRRR 43-46. doi: 10.1207/s15328023top3201_10. occurs. (Write each one on the board.) Which sequence Classroom Exercise: The Base-Rate Fallacy do they think is more likely to pay off? Most will You may want to extend the text discussion of heuris- choose tics to include the base-rate fallacy—the tendency to GRGRRR ignore or underuse base-rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case In fact, when Tversky and Kahneman posed this being judged. choice, either hypothetically or by offering hard cash, Ask your students this question (Ward Casscells, at least two-thirds chose that sequence. Although the Arnold Shoenberger, and Thomas Graboys gave the sequence is more representative of a die with four same problem to physicians and medical students at green faces (because green sides outnumber red sides), four Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals): If a in actuality it is only two-thirds as likely because it is test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1 in 1000 the same as the first alternative with the addition of a has a false positive rate of 5 percent (a false positive “G” (which has the probability of two-thirds on any rate is the percentage of times the test mistakenly indi- given roll). cates that the disease is present), what are the chances Dawes, R. M. (1986). Representative thinking in clinical that a person found to have a positive result actually has judgment. Clinical Psychology Review, 6, 425–441. the disease, assuming that you know nothing else about Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1980). Causal schemas the person? in judgments under uncertainty. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Casscells and his colleagues obtained an average Progress in social psychology, Vol. 1. Hillsdale, NJ: response of 55.9 percent; the most common answer Erlbaum. was 95 percent. The correct answer is about 2 percent. The physicians and students gave too much weight to Classroom Exercise: The Value of the the case information and too little to the base-rate Representativeness Heuristic information. In teaching heuristics, we instructors often rely on mis- Explain to your students that only 1 in 1000 has the judgments to illustrate the concepts. In doing so, stu- disease. However, when the test is given to the 999 who dents may miss the point that heuristics usually work; if do not have the disease, it will indicate that 50 of them they didn’t, we wouldn’t use them. have it (.05 x 999). Yet, of the 51 patients testing posi- James Shepperd and Erika Koch (2005) argue that tive, only 1 (approximately 2%) will actually have it. In we should present heuristics as leading to both good summary, the base rate indicates that the overwhelming and bad judgments. When their students were presented majority of people do not have the disease. The vast with just the poor judgment examples, they scored majority of positive tests will have been from people who do not have the disease. 16 Thinking and Language

Alternatively, or in addition, read Alan Swinkels’ In their study, they distributed forms to students that example to your class: listed five items: A bottle of Jaboulet La Chapelle, 1996 wine; a cordless trackball (TrackMan Marble FX by Dr. Swinkels’ cousin, Rudy, is a bit on the peculiar side. Logitech); a cordless keyboard and mouse (iTouch by He has unusual tastes in movies and art, he is married to a Logitech); a design book (The Perfect Package: How to performer, and he has tattoos on various parts of his body. Add Value Through Graphic Design); and a 1-pound box In his spare time, Rudy takes yoga classes and likes to col- lect old 78 rpm records. An outgoing and rather boisterous of Belgian chocolates by Neuhaus. person, he has been know to act on a dare on more than Participants were first asked to write the last two one occasion. What do you think Rudy’s occupation most digits of their social security numbers at the top of the likely is? page, then next to each item write those numbers in the form of a price. For example, if the last two numbers A) Farmer B) Librarian C) Trapeze Artist D) Surgeon were 23, they would write $23 next to each item. Next, E) Lawyer they were asked to indicate whether they would be will- Source: From Alan Swinkles, “An Effective Exercise for ing to pay that price for the item. Finally, the students Teaching Cognitive Heuristics,” Teaching of Psychology were asked to write the maximum amount they were 30(2). Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications. Reproduced willing to pay for each product. In analyzing the results, by permission of SAGE Publications. the researchers found a strong positive correlation Rudy’s peculiar habits are suggestive of a performer between social security numbers and the price a person and thus a trapeze artist. However, the base rate of any would bid for a product. Students whose last two social of the other options is significantly higher, making it security digits were between 00 and 19 were willing to more likely that Rudy is a member of any one of the pay $9.55 for the chocolates, whereas those whose digits other occupations. were in the range between 80 and 99 were willing to pay $20.64. Similarly, those in the range between 00 and 19 Swinkels, A. (2003). An effective exercise for teach- were, on average, willing to pay $16.09 for the cordless ing cognitive heuristics. Teaching of Psychology, 30, keyboard; those in the range between 80 and 99 were 120–122. willing to pay $55.64. Stanovich, K. (2010). How to think straight about psychol- This study can be readily replicated in class. The ogy (9th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. items you list should, of course, be somewhat unfamil- iar to your students and moderately priced. Ariely and Classroom Exercise: The Anchoring Heuristic or Bias his colleagues brought each item to class and briefly In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely introduces described it—for example, “for those of you who don’t readers to another heuristic that affects our everyday know much about wines . . . 1996 Hermitage received a judgments, namely, the anchoring bias. It refers to the 92-point rating from the Wine Advocate magazine. . . . it human tendency to use initial information as the stan- has the flavor of red berry, mocha, and black chocolate . dard, or “anchor,” for judgment and decision making. . . only 8100 cases of it were made.” After students have Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman were among responded with the last two digits of their social security the first to demonstrate the power of the anchoring numbers and prices they would be willing to pay, collect heuristic. In an early study, they asked some respon- the forms and analyze the data. Report the results at your dents whether the percentage of African nations that are next class meeting. members of the United Nations was more or less than The Classroom Demonstration: Availability 45 percent? Others were asked whether the number was Heuristic—Firearms Deaths described earlier also pro- more or less than 65 percent. When all respondents were vides an opportunity to illustrate the anchoring bias. Use asked to estimate the actual percentage, those who had the two halves of Handout 7 instead of Handout 6. been asked the former question gave lower estimates Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. New York: than those asked the latter. This pattern has held in other HarperCollins. studies for a variety of different estimates, including fair prices. Tversky and Kahneman described anchoring as a Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec D. (2003). Coherent arbitrariness: Stable demand curves without stable prefer- process in which people start from an initial value, then ences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 73–106. adjust it to yield a final estimate. When the initial value is low, of course, the adjusted value is typically insuf- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under ficient. uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 211, 453–458. Interestingly, even arbitrary anchors affect the esti- mates people provide. For example, Dan Ariely and his Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Sunk Cost Fallacy colleagues found that asking people to provide the last Another frequent error in everyday decision making is two digits of their social security numbers affects their the sunk cost fallacy. Students will readily recognize estimate of the price they are willing to pay for an item. from their own behavior this tendency to invest resources Thinking and Language 17 after some have already been made. Even when initial Those with an action orientation are more likely to look investments sour, we “throw good money after bad.” to the future, paying less attention to past decisions Probably everyone has had the experience of making a (van Putten, Zeelenberg, & van Dijk, 2010). phone call and being put on hold. You need to decide Halpern, D. (2004). Thought & knowledge (4th ed.). whether to hang up or continue waiting. Many of us Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. continue to wait because of the time we have already van Putten, M., Zeelenberg, M., & van Dijk, E. (2010). invested. Or take the decision to fix an automobile. Who throws good money after bad? Action vs. state ori- After investing money in a muffler, brakes, and new entation moderates the sunk cost fallacy. Judgment and tires, we may discover that we have the much larger Decision Making, 5(1), 33–36. expense of needing a new transmission. Because we Strough, J., Mehta, C. M., Mcfall, J. P., & Schuller, K. L. have already invested so much money in fixing the car, (2008). Are older adults less subject to the sunk-cost fal- we feel trapped into replacing the transmission rather lacy than younger adults? Psychological Science, 19(7), than buying a new car. 650-652. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02138. As Diane Halpern explains, making decisions in light of previous decisions demands that we consider Classroom Exercise: The Overconfidence Phenomenon why the value of the investment has been so high in terms of time or money, and whether, at this point in The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our cur- time, the phone call is worth an additional 10 min- rent knowledge is a powerful phenomenon and readily utes on hold or the car is worth the additional sum of demonstrated in class. money. She provides the following example that you might read in class to illustrate how people respond in a. Perhaps the simplest demonstration of the tendency is sunk cost situations: to have students predict their score on a multiple-choice You and a friend just spent $10 to see a movie. About a or another type of short-answer test immediately after half hour into the movie, you both realize that it’s “two they have completed it (have them note their estimate at thumbs down”—a really bad movie. What do you do? the top of the test). The majority will overestimate the List some good reasons for staying until the end of the number of questions they got right. While the strength movie, then list some good reasons for leaving after a of this tendency will depend to some degree on the half hour. amount of feedback they have received on previous Those who indicate that the investment of $10 is tests, students often continue to overestimate through- a good reason for staying demonstrate the sunk cost out the term. fallacy. The $10 is gone regardless of what one now decides, so it is actually not relevant to the decision of b. Handout 8 presents several questions like those used staying or leaving. Staying means not only enduring a by Kahneman and Tversky in assessing overconfidence. bad movie but missing out on a pleasurable activity that If your students are as correct as they are confident, one could be doing instead. Thus, there is a dual cost to only 2 percent of their responses should be wrong. staying—seeing a bad movie and missing out on a bet- Thus, if each of 50 students responds to the 10 ques- ter activity. tions, there should be a total of 10 errors (50 x 10 x Older adults are less likely than younger adults 0.02 = 10). The actual proportion of errors will be more to commit the sunk cost fallacy. This may be because than 10 times that. After students have completed the younger adults focus on potential losses, which leads questions, you may wish to collect, shuffle, and redis- them to avoid losses by staying in the situation longer. tribute them so that students need not report their own Older adults do a better job of weighing both positive mistakes. By a show of hands, count the number of and negative information when deciding whether to stay errors for each item after providing the correct answers in (Strough et al., 2008). below. Overconfidence will be obvious. Some people have a “state orientation”—when a 1. 3.6 million square miles project fails, they ruminate about the past. Other people 2. 31.8 million people (www.cia.gov/library/ have an “action orientation”—when a project fails, publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html) they take whatever action is needed to move on. Ask 3. 3.01 billion dollars students who is more likely to fall prey to the sunk cost 4. 385 deaths fallacy: people with a state orientation or people with 5. 19 female generals in the U.S. army (www.cnn. an action orientation. Those who answer state orienta- com/2013/01/24/us/military-women-glance) tion are correct. People with a state orientation are 6. 437 nuclear plants (www.euronuclear.org/info/ much more likely to use past decisions in making future encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide. decisions, a hallmark of sunk cost fallacy thinking. htm) 18 Thinking and Language

7. 39,518 suicides (www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/ Ariely reports that 16 students chose the Internet- nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf) only subscription and 84 students chose the print-and- 8. 92 (yes, just 92) vehicles Internet subscription for $125. Obviously, the latter alter- 9. 91.6 million bushels native represented a huge advantage over the print-only 10. 19 medals (espn.go.com/olympics/winter/2014/med- subscription. als) But what happens when a comparable group of respondents are offered only alternatives 1 and 3? Do c. An experiment by James Milojkovic and Lee Ross is they respond as before (16 for the Internet only and 84 readily adapted to provide an amusing and memorable for the print-Internet combination)? The option no one demonstration of how overconfidence contaminates our selected has simply been removed. Remarkably, the judgment of others. results were now quite different. Sixty-eight students Distribute Handout 9 to the entire class and explain chose the Internet-only option for $59 and only 32 that you are going to test their ability to distinguish truth students chose the combination subscription for $125. from lies. Explain that you have put 10 slips in a hat, 5 Obviously, the chosen alternative depends on the context. of which say “Tell the truth,” and 5 of which say “Tell As Ariely concludes, the best choice is relative. a lie.” Solicit a volunteer for each of the 10 topics, hav- The study is one you can readily replicate in class. ing each person draw one of these slips. Then invite each Simply prepare two sets of written subscription options person to stand and tell his or her truth or lie, after which to a popular magazine such as Time, Newsweek, or the remainder of the students are to guess whether it was Psychology Today. Present half your class with each set a truth or a lie, and to indicate their confidence. When of options. You can collect their written responses and all the stories are told, have the volunteers reveal which report the results at the next class period. Alternatively,­ statements were truthful and which were lies. Have the you can more simply use an immediate show of hands to students then compute (a) their percentage correct out of report the specific choices of each group on the board (or 10 and (b) their average confidence level. Finally, ask use a student response system). for a show of hands (or use a student response system): Businesses exploit the principle of alternative “How many of you were more correct than confident?” framing (and human irrationality) with regularity. Ariely (Few hands will rise.) “How many of you were more con- reports how, given three choices, customers are strongly fident than correct?” (Most hands will rise.) You may fur- inclined to pick the middle option. So, in selling televi- ther wish to compute the class average; Milojkovic and sion sets, retailers may price the ones they really want to Ross report that their Stanford students were 52 percent sell in the middle. If they want to sell a 42-inch Toshiba correct and 73 percent confident, a result close to what for $850, they place it between a 36-inch Panasonic for we have obtained using these materials. Milojkovic and $690 and a 50-inch Philips for $1480. Similarly, a res- Ross also report that when people were 90 to 100 percent taurant consultant who prepares menu pricing knows confident, they were no more correct than when they that customers are unlikely to choose the most expensive were only 50 to 65 percent confident. item, but they will choose the second most expensive Milojkovic, J. D., & Ross, L. (1981, August). Telling truths dish. By creating an expensive dish, a restaurateur can from lies: Miscalibration of confidence and base-rate uti- lure customers into ordering the second most expensive, lization. Paper presented at the 89th Annual Convention providing the restaurant with a higher profit margin. of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, Finally, research by Nicholas Epley and his col- California. leagues’ reveals that referring to money given to college students as a “rebate” or as a “bonus” can affect their Classroom Exercise: Framing Alternatives and Human tendency to spend it. Epley’s research team reasoned Irrationality that if research participants were given a $50 check as Dan Ariely opens his helpful book Predictably Irra­ a “bonus,” they would interpret it as a positive change tional with an excellent example of how the framing of from the status quo. In contrast, the same check given as alternatives influences people’s judgments and decisions. a “tuition rebate” would be coded as a return to a previ- Presenting the results of his study in class not only illus- ous wealth state. The researchers further hypothesized trates the power of framing but also reinforces the text’s that framing money as a bonus would lead to more emphasis on the limits of human intuition and rationality. immediate spending than framing it as a rebate. The Replicating what he had found on the Internet, he results confirmed the prediction. Epley, a University of offered 100 students at MIT’s Sloan School of Manage­ Chicago business professor, has suggested that if the U.S. ment the following subscription options to the Economist: Congress and the president want to stimulate the econo- my by getting people to spend more, they should label the 1. Internet-only subscription for $59. money that the government gives to taxpayers as a “tax 2. Print-only subscription for $125. bonus” rather than as a “tax rebate.” 3. Print-and-Internet subscription for $125. Thinking and Language 19

Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. New York: loss averse as well as wishful thinkers can prolong con- HarperCollins. flict. U.S. policymakers, many analysts would argue, Epley, N., Mak, D., & Chen, I. L. (2006). Bonus or demonstrated this thinking error in the Vietnam War as rebate? The impact of income framing on spending and well as the Iraq War and thus prolonged both conflicts. saving. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19, Kahneman, D., & Renshon, J. (2007, January/February). 213–227. Why hawks win. Foreign Policy, 34–38. Epley, N. (2008, January 31). Rebate psychology. New York Times, p. A27. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Risks in Everyday Life Laura Lee’s 100 Most Dangerous Things in Everyday Lecture/Discussion Topic: Thinking Errors and Life and What You Can Do About Them provides a International Conflict good extension of the text discussion of how we assess You can extend the text discussion of thinking errors as risk. Lee notes that human beings tend to overestimate well as illustrate their importance in everyday life with the dangers of rare, vivid events while disregarding the Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon’s provocative dangers of everyday, commonplace events. Here are a essay, “Why Hawks Win.” The essay anticipates some few of the latter that you might present to your students. additional cognitive biases that will be discussed later in the text, including the fundamental attribution error 1. Books. Each year 10,683 U.S. citizens lose their (in the Social Psychology unit) and the self-serving bias battle with what the U.S. Consumer Product (in the Personality unit). Kahneman and Renshon’s cen- Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury tral thesis is that a bias in favor of hawkish beliefs and Surveillance System calls “books, magazines, preferences is built into the fabric of the human mind. albums, or scrapbooks.” Another 1490 are clob- For example, the fundamental attribution error bered by magazine racks or bookends. What’s is the tendency of observers to underestimate the situ- happening? Miller of the American Library ational causes and overestimate the dispositional (or Association explains, “I could offer up things like trait) causes of another’s behavior. In conflict, we broken toes when books fall, losing one’s balance are likely to see our opponents’ negative behavior as when reaching for books, and repetitive stress from evidence of their underlying hostility rather than their shelving them. Magazines could also become dan- response to the current situation, including our own gerous if the staples are loose and scrape the skin.” negative behavior. The tendency of both sides to view Back injuries from moving overloaded books is themselves as peace-loving and others as hostile char- common. Heavy school bags are also a problem. In acterizes not only our interpersonal (e.g., marital) con- 2003, a Hong Kong schoolboy died when his heavy flicts but also international tensions. book bag pulled him over the railing of a high-rise Self-serving bias (the tendency to see ourselves apartment building. favorably) leads us to exaggerate our strengths. The 2. Chairs. Chairs are more than 13 times as likely to overwhelming majority of respondents, research indi- cause injuries as chain saws. More than 410,000 cates, believe they are better than average. The bias Americans have seating mishaps each year. Most leads politicians and generals to accept the judgment of are injuries from falls as people, for example, lean personal advisors who tell them that the war they begin back too far in their office chairs. Most lower-back will have a favorable outcome, that is, will be won. In pain is caused by long stretches of chair sitting. effect, the advisors are confirming the judgments of the Five children met their death by unzipping bean politicians and generals. When both sides to a conflict bag chairs, crawling inside, and suffocating. hold to this bias, war is likely. 3. Cotton swabs. These bathroom tools send more Naturally, pessimism marks our evaluation of people to the hospital than razor blades or shavers. our opponents’ prospects. Moreover, we are likely to Why? Contrary to directions on the package, peo- see any concessions offered by somebody perceived as ple use them to clean their ears. Experts claim that hostile as an indication of their weakness. This intuition using cotton swabs to remove earwax is like using that something is worth less simply because the other a broom on a dirt floor. You merely move things side has offered it has sometimes been identified as around. The swab pushes the gunk farther down reactive devaluation. the ear canal where it causes bigger problems. And Finally, our deep aversion to avoid losses may between 1992 and 1997, more than 100 people in lead us to continue a conflict even when things are the United States experienced a serious eardrum going badly. Research indicates that people prefer to injury as a result of cleaning their ears with swabs. avoid a certain loss in favor of a potential loss, even if 4. Hospitals. Deaths attributable to hospital-acquired they risk losing significantly more. Our tendency to be infections kill more people annually than car crash- 20 Thinking and Language

es and homicides combined. In fact, 1 of every 20 You can replicate part of the Newman study. On people who enter a hospital leaves with an infec- presentation slides, show these 16 names of actors, all tion he or she did not have before. Infections affect deceased, that will likely be unfamiliar to your students. nearly 2 million people each year; between 20,000 For the first 8 names, show just the names one at a time and 90,000 die from them. and ask for each one, “Is this person alive?” Have stu- 5. Natural foods. Healthy fruits and vegetables, even dents respond by raising their hands or by using a stu- those grown without pesticides, contain cancer- dent response system. Record the results. For the next 4 causing nitrates. The National Academy of Science names, show just the names, but this time ask, “Is this reports that 72 percent of nitrate exposure to the person dead?” For the next 4 names show the name and mouth and esophagus comes from vegetables and a photo of the person (say, from a Google image search only about 9 percent comes from cured meats. The IMDB.com – or photos of your family and friends) and only difference between processed and organic ask “Is this person alive?” For the last 4 names, show foods is that the former have synthetic chemicals the name and a photo of the person and ask “Is this per- and the latter get their chemicals from nature. son dead?” (Of course, in the original study, they used 6. Stairs. An estimated 1091 American stair climb- counterbalancing, but to make things easier in the class- ers are killed annually and an astounding 769,400 room, forgo counterbalancing.) are injured. Missteps can kill you. An extensive For the last 8 names, you can expect to see more study of stair use revealed that a noticeable mis- True responses as student intuition is influenced by the step occurs every 2222 steps. Generally, people presence of photos. misjudge the distance and plant one of their feet wrong. It takes just one-quarter of an inch differ- Names only: Is this person alive? ence between where the stair is and where you 1. Grant Tilly expect to be to throw you off balance. 2. Felipe Levy 7. Staying in bed. Annually, 411,689 people in the 3. Claude Nollier United States experience injuries related to beds, 4. Robin Goodchild mattresses, and pillows. How about putting up side rails, the kind used in hospitals and nursing homes? Names only: Is this person dead? From 1985 to 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug 5. Joseph Tan Administration received 479 reports of patients 6. Frit Muliar becoming trapped in hospital beds, and of these, 7. Giancarlo Cobelli 297 died. 8. Roberto Contreras Lee, L. (2004). 100 most dangerous things in every- day life and what you can do about them. New York: Names and photos: Is this person alive? Broadway Books. 9. Patrice O’Neal 10. Joachim Brennecke Intuition 11. Malachi Throne 12. Ralph Hatley Class Demonstration: Determining Truthiness When given a statement and asked if it is true or false, Names and photos: Is this person dead? we are more likely to say True if the statement is 13. Jerry Grayson accompanied by a picture, even when the picture gives 14. Michael Clarke Duncan us no clue to the truthfulness of the statement. 15. Greg Giraldo Eryn Newman and colleagues (2012) showed 16. Daniel Venegas volunteers the names of familiar and unfamiliar celebri- Newman, E. J., Garry, M., Bernstein, D. M., Kantner, ties; some names were accompanied by photos of the J., & Lindsay, D. S. (2012). Nonprobative photographs person, some were not. The participants were some- (or words) inflate truthiness. Psychonomic Bulletin and times asked if the person was alive and sometimes Review, 19(5), 969–974. asked if the person was dead. The results? If there was an accompanying photo, regardless of how the question Thinking Creatively was framed, the participants were more likely to say True when asked about an unfamiliar celebrity. In other Classroom Exercise: Creativity words, when asked about an unfamiliar person, you go After covering Sternberg’s five components of creativ- with your intuition, and if there is an accompanying ity (expertise, imaginative thinking skills, venturesome photo of the person, your intuition pushes you to say, personality, intrinsic motivation, and creative environ- “True!” regardless of what the question is. ment), ask students to choose a domain that might be of Thinking and Language 21 interest to a child, such as theater, music, art, or science. interferes with creativity. The noise typical of a coffee Then, they should consider what they could do as parents shop is well-suited for creativity. Too much noise, how- to foster creativity in their (real or hypothetical) child, ever, and it’s too distracting. being sure to address each of the five components of cre- If you decide to go the brainwriting/brainstorming ativity. route, consider doing it electronically (Dean, 2013) in, say, a chat room, like TodaysMeet.com. Everyone can see Classroom Exercise: Assessing Creativity everyone else’s ideas as they appear, and there’s no need A variety of tests have been designed to assess creativ- to wait until someone is done talking to share your ideas. ity. In the Unusual Uses Test, respondents are given two You can use this technique while everyone is sitting in minutes to name as many uses as they can for a com- the same room or sitting in different coffee shops. mon object such as a toothpick, a brick, or a paper cup. You can demonstrate this electronic brainwriting to To illustrate, use Tony Buzan’s quick test: give students your students. Create a room at TodaysMeet.com. Bring two minutes to write down all the different uses they an object to class, such as a rubber ball or a wire clothes can think of for an ordinary paper clip. Have them score hanger. Ask students who have Internet access to visit their responses by adding up the total number of uses and the TodaysMeet.com room you created. Ask students to dividing by two to give an average number per minute. type in as many uses as they can think of for the object, This test, Buzan notes, is given in schools and business one idea per entry. After a few minutes, ask your students organizations to determine “inherent creative capacity.” if the responses became more creative over time. Would An average score is 4, 8 is an unusually high score, 12 students consider using this technique the next time they is very rare, and 16 makes you better than one in a thou- have a group project? sand. The Remote Associates Test is another popular test Dean, J. (2013, February 11). The brainstorming tweak: of creativity. Still a third, the Consequences Test, asks How to boost creativity in groups. Retrieved from www. such questions as: What would happen if everyone in the spring.org.uk/2013/02/the-brainstorming-tweak-how-to- world suddenly went blind? boost-creativity-in-groups.ph. Buzan, T. (1984). Make the most of your mind. New York: Jarrett, C. (2013, September 13). The Digest guide to . . . Linden Press. creativity. Retrieved from digest.bps.org.uk/2013/09/the- digest-guide-to-creativity.html. Lecture/Discussion Topic/Classroom Demonstration: Boosting Creativity O’Connor, A. (2013, June 21). How the hum of a cof- fee shop can boost creativity. Retrieved from well.blogs. To extend the text’s list of suggestions for boosting cre- nytimes.com/2013/06/21/how-the-hum-of-a-coffee-shop- ativity, here are some ideas from the Research Digest can-boost-creativity. (Jarrett, 2013), a blog of the British Psychological Society. Animal Thinking 1. Work when you are not quite awake yet, typically Lecture/Discussion Topic: Do Chimpanzees Plan Ahead? first thing in the morning. Being less focused makes The text provides several examples of animals’ remark- you more open to new ways of thinking. able capacity to think. For example, not only dem- 2. Drink a small amount of alcohol, for the same rea- onstrate the ability to use tools but also the foresight to son. It will make you less focused thus more open to store a tool that they can use to retrieve food the next new ways of thinking. day. Mathias Osvath (2009) provided additional evidence 3. Brainstorm ideas on your own before brainstorming of animals’ capacity to plan for the future. as a group. Write them down, which is sometimes Santino, a male at Sweden’s Furuvik referred to as brainwriting. Zoo, plans rock-throwing attacks at zoo visitors. He 4. And then brainstorm as a group. The more ideas began attacking people at the age of 19, about the time brought to the group, the better they can be combined that male chimps become aggressive and seek to establish into something new. dominance. Each morning, before visitors arrive, Santino 5. Imagine that the problem being addressed is some explores his outdoor enclosure looking for small stones. one else’s problem. A little emotional distance causes He has also learned to make his own stones by tapping on us to think more abstractly. weak areas of surrounding concrete walls. Sometimes the Ambient noise at about 70 decibels also boosts chimp shapes his weapons into discs so they sail through creativity (O’Connor, 2013). Need a creative shot in the the air more accurately. He stockpiles them and waits arm? Head down to your local coffee shop. Or if you’re until midday before throwing them at human visitors not ready to get out of your jammies, plug in your head- who observe him from across the moat that encircles his phones and visit coffitivity.com. Researchers found that enclosure. Interestingly,­ Santino does not attack his fel- focus increases the quieter it gets, but too much focus low chimps, perhaps because he is at ease with his posi- 22 Thinking and Language tion as group leader. Fortunately, chimps have poor aim top 10. Notice how many are considered ‘”working’” and even visitors who have been hit have not suffered dogs. serious injury. 1. Border Collie Osvath concludes that his observations, as well as 2. Poodle those of three caretakers who have worked with Santino 3. German Shepherd for 10 years, “convincingly show that our fellow apes 4. Golden Retriever do consider the future in a very complex way. It is very 5. Doberman Pincher special that he first realizes that he can make these 6. Shetland Sheepdog stone missiles and then plans how to use them.” 7. Labrador Retriever Some psychologists are skeptical, believing that 8. Papillon researchers are reading too much into Santino’s behav- 9. Rottwieler ior, and suggest that he was simply repeating previously 10. Australian Cattle Dog learned behavior. However, Osvath and Elin Karvonen have recently observed 35 repeats of this behavior, For students who are especially interested in this including finding stones hidden under hay heaps and topic, point them to Brian Hare’s dognition.com web- behind logs. To them, this further indicates Santino is site. able to plan ahead. Coren, S. (1994). The intelligence of dogs: Canine con- Balter, M. (2012, May 9). Stone-throwing chimp is sciousness and capabilities. New York: Free Press. back—and this time it’s personal. Retrieved November 27, 2014, from news.sciencemag.org/2012/05/stone- Hare, B., & Woods, V. (2013). The genius of dogs: How throwing-chimp-back-and-time-its-personal. dogs are smarter than you think. New York City, NY: Plume. Osvath, M. & Karvonen E (2012). Spontaneous innova- tion for future deception in a male chimpanzee. PLoS Kaminski, J., Call, J., & Fischer, J. (2004). Word learn- ONE 7(5): e36782. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036782. ing in a domestic dog: Evidence for “fast mapping.” Science, 304(5677), 1682–1683. Osvath, M. (2009). Spontaneous planning for future stone throwing by a male chimpanzee. Current Biology, Murphy Paul, A. (2011, October 11). What your dog is 19(5), R190–R191. thinking. Retrieved from ideas.time.com/2012/10/11/ what-your-dog-is-thinking. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Canine Cognition Lecture/Discussion Topic: Corvid Cognition To open the topic and extend the text discussion of canine cognition, ask students how many words If Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds makes you the average dog can learn. The answer: 165. Some uneasy, you may want to skip this topic. dogs have learned many, many more words than The Corvidae family (commonly known as cor- that. A fun example appears in this 4-minute video, vids) includes birds such as crows, ravens, jays, and which shows Chaser, a border collie, at work: youtu. magpies. And corvids are smart. Very smart. be/_6479QAJuz8. If you’d rather, there is a 15-minute John Marzluff and Tony Angell (2012) report on a NOVA ScienceNOW episode devoted entirely to canine University of Washington study that came about after cognition: youtu.be/mTTuiE1_Oe8. students, who had been tasked with catching crows Brian Hare of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab on campus to put bands on their legs, reported being and Vanessa Woods have written a book that summa- dive-bombed by crows whenever they walked across rizes what we currently know about how dogs think, campus. The researchers then asked a different group The Genius of Dogs (2013). Creative researchers have of students to put on masks while trying to band crows. adapted tests designed for toddlers for use with dogs. (You really have to wonder what the other students Dogs do as well on the tests as do 2- to 3-year-old chil- thought was going on!) When the masked students dren. Dogs are also unique among animals in that they walked across campus, they too were dive-bombed by look to humans for assistance, even as very young pup- crows. Without the masks, they were ignored. What pies, suggesting that the ability is innate. For example, would happen, the researchers wondered, if the students when wolf puppies and dog puppies are given an wore the masks upside down? The crows rotated their impossible problem to solve, wolf puppies will keep at heads to get a look at the masks. And then dive-bombed it or give up and move on. Dog puppies will look at the the students. humans in the room as if to say, “Fix this.” Dogs will Crows are master problem solvers. In one Japanese also look where humans point; wolves won’t. city, crows drop walnuts into the street so cars can Stanley Coren (1994) surveyed more than 200 dog run over the nuts, cracking them open. But they don’t obedience judges, asking them to rank-order dog breeds just drop them anywhere. Some crows have learned to according to intelligence. Invite students to guess the drop walnuts in a crosswalk, so when the traffic light Thinking and Language 23 changes, they can pick up the nut pieces in safety. See Balter, M. (2013, January 11). Crow intelligence study youtu.be/_5_DuZ8WuMM for a 2-minute video showing suggests the birds have ‘theory of mind’ Retrieved from this behavior. www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/crow-intelligence- Crows are as good at solving cognitive puzzles mind_n_2457181.html. as 7-year-old children. as shown in a video at Daily Daily Mail Online. (2014, March 27). Crows are as intel- Mail Online (see also the short LaunchPad video, ligent as children: Study reveals birds are as clever as a Problem Solving in Genus Corvus [Crows, Ravens, and seven-year-old human. Retrieved from www.dailymail. Magpies]). In the water displacement task, a crow sees co.uk/sciencetech/article-2590046/Crows-intelligent- a treat floating on water. The problem is that the water CHILDREN-Study-reveals-birds-intelligence-seven-year- is in a narrow tube and the water level is low. The crow old.htm. can’t get to the treat directly. The solution? The crow Marzluff, J. M., & Angell, T. (2012). Gifts of the crow: needs to take the nearby stones and drop them into the How perception, emotion, and thought allow smart birds tube, raising the water level high enough to retrieve the to behave like humans. New York: Free Press. floating treat. And that’s exactly what the crows do. But what’s even more impressive is that crows ignore the Language and Thought tubes with sand, choosing the ones with water, particu- PsychSim 6: Dueling Hemispheres larly those with the highest water levels; they also ignore objects that float and instead use objects that sink (like This activity is appropriate for use here or in conjunction stones). with the text discussion of hemispheric specialization. It Crows can also make tools. When a crow finds a opens with a brief review of research on left-hemisphere treat in a little bucket at the bottom of a tube, the crow specialization for language and then presents a simula- takes a piece of wire and pokes at the pail for a bit. tion of a classic word recognition experiment that typi- After about 20 seconds, it becomes clear to the crow that cally demonstrates a right visual field advantage in iden- another strategy is needed. It bends the wire into a hook, tifying words. sticks the wire into the tube, and retrieves the bucket by Lecture/Discussion Topic: Universals of Language fishing the hook under the bucket handle. This 40-second Mark Ashcraft (1999) identifies a number of characteris- video shows this behavior: youtu.be/OYZnsO2ZgWo. tics shared by all languages. They not only help to define If that’s not enough, corvids appear to have theory language but also show how it “is the jewel in the crown of mind, although this assertion is not without debate of cognition,” according to cognitive scientist Steven (Balter, 2013). Scrub jays, like other corvids, cache Pinker. Although not an exhaustive list, the food. Researchers let scrub jays cache peanuts in a tray following are among the most important features of filled with shredded corncobs, either while alone or language. with another scrub jay watching. The scrub jays then were given an opportunity to recache the peanuts with 1. Semanticity. The sounds of human language convey no other scrub jays present. The jays that cached unob- meaning. Other sounds we make, such as coughing served did recache some peanuts. The jays that had been or clearing our throats, are not part of our language observed, when alone, unburied the peanuts and reburied because they do not usually convey meaning. them in different locations at twice the rate of the unob- 2. Arbitrariness. There is no inherent connection served jays. The researchers contend that these results between the symbols in a language and the mean- suggest that the jays had a theory of mind: They realized ings they convey. For example, the word dog bears the jay that had been watching knew where the peanuts no inherent resemblance to the four-legged furry had been cached, and so they buried the nuts elsewhere creature named by the word. Whale is a small sym- to prevent other jays from know where their food was bol for a very big thing; microorganism is just the stashed. Other researchers offered a different hypothesis. reverse. Knowledge of a language must involve Perhaps scrub jays just engage in more caching when knowing the arbitrary connections. stressed. So, the original researchers went back to their 3. Flexibility of symbols. The principle of arbitrariness scrub jay participants. After the jays cached their pea- makes the connection between symbol and meaning nuts, the researchers stole the peanuts. Presumably, this changeable and “inventable.” We rather routinely would be stressful. The researchers then gave the jays shift our terms for the objects in our world. Early in another opportunity to cache peanuts. The jays didn’t this century we called cars automobiles but that is cache any more peanuts than jays in the control condi- now a rather archaic term. People also used to play tion, in which no peanuts were stolen. “LPs on their hi-fis.” After covering this topic, students will have a new 4. Naming. A corollary to arbitrariness and flexibility appreciation for the corvids that live among us. is naming. We assign names to all the objects in our environment, to all the feelings and emotions we experience, and to all our ideas and concepts. 24 Thinking and Language

As students look around the room, each object has dren. Have them “code” the linguistic utterances of the a name. In a strange setting, we may not know the child being observed and write a brief summary of their name of everything, but it never occurs to us that findings. Remind students that they should first iden- something might therefore not have a name. We tify and operationally define the landmarks they will be are constantly generating or inventing names for watching for (a nice opportunity to review the features the new objects and ideas we need to talk about. of good research design principles!). Students can work Imagine how meaningless the sentence, “I am alone, or they can work together in small groups. When texting on my cell phone,” would have sounded 50 you have played all the videos and students have had a years ago. chance to code their observations, you can review their 5. Displacement. Language enables us to talk about findings, taking advantage of the opportunity to discuss something other than the present moment. By means issues of interrater reliability and other important meth- of verb constructions denoting past and future we odological issues. can talk about things that are not present but are remembered or anticipated. Lecture/Discussion Topic: Born Ready 6. Productivity. This feature, also referred to as gen- Not all syllables are created equal. Some syllables, like erativity, is perhaps the most notable characteristic blif, are likely to occur in any language. Other syllables, of language. Aside from customary greetings and like lbif and bdif, occur much less frequently. David perhaps some trite phrases, our utterances are ever Maximiliano Gómez and his colleagues (2014) wondered new. We generate sentences rather than repeat what would happen if newborns (2 to 5 days old) were them. Language is a creative system as opposed to a exposed to both likely and unlikely syllables. repetitive system. The number of possible sentences The researchers found that newborns, when hearing in a language is infinite. The novelty of language the more likely syllables, showed greater brain activity in and the productivity it implies formed the basis of the left temporal lobe, the area responsible for processing Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s work. language. Ashcraft, M. (1999). Human memory and cognition (3rd The researchers acknowledge that newborns have ed.). New York: Prentice Hall. been exposed to language prenatally, but they argue the sound quality in utero is so poor, that a fetus is not likely Language Development to be able to detect the sound differences between similar consonants, such as b and d. To bolster their argument Classroom Exercise: Observing Language Development that not much in the way of language acquisition is hap- To give students a better sense of children’s language pening prenatally, they point out that infants do not sort development, show video clips of children at differ- out their own language’s phonemes from those of other ent ages. About one week before the class meeting in languages until late in their first year. In other words, which you plan to cover this topic, ask your class for a infants are born with a library of likely phonemes and couple of volunteers who might be willing to share some then spend the first 10 to 12 months weeding out the videos of themselves or their children when they were phonemes they don’t need. very young. Ideally, the children will be younger than Maximiliano Gómez, D., Berent, I., Benavides-Varela, S., 3; it would be best to get two or three clips of the same et al. (2014). Language universals at birth. Proceedings of child at different ages (at least a few weeks apart in age). the National Academy of Sciences, 111(16), 5837–5841. The clips should include the child speaking for at least doi: 10.1073/pnas.1318261111. a few seconds. The context for the child’s speech needs to be included in the clip, and the child’s speaking must Lecture/Discussion Topic: How Infants Learn Language be recorded clearly enough that it will be understood Brock Ferguson and his colleagues (2014) were interest- when played through your classroom speakers. A good ed in how infants use what they know to learn something estimation of the child’s age is also necessary. You new. Specifically, does knowing a verb help a child learn should review all videos that are submitted to you to new nouns? check for appropriateness of content, length, and so on They showed infants two images, an animal and before showing them to the class. If you do not receive an object. For the control conditions, the researchers good candidates for presentation from your students, used animals and objects known to the child. For the you might go through your own home movies, or search experimental condition, they used unfamiliar animals YouTube and other video archives on the Internet for and objects. After showing an animal/object pair, they examples. blanked the screen, and the child heard two adults hav- Before showing the video clips, review the text sum- ing a conversation. One person would say, for example, mary of milestones in language development. Then, ask “The blick is crying.” The other person would repeat it students to pretend that they are language development as a question, and then the first person would say, “Let’s researchers conducting observational research on chil- Thinking and Language 25 find the blick!” The researchers again showed the unfa- He recounts errors tragic and humorous. Both from miliar animal/object pair to the child. If the child knows his personal experience and his expertise as a research that animals are more likely than objects to cry, the psychologist, he helps readers understand the impact researchers reasoned, then the child would spend more of the impairment on sufferers and on those closest to time looking at the animal. The 19-month-olds did them. As Paul Chance observes, Myers helps his audi- indeed spend more time looking at the animals than the ence appreciate how the inability to hear can become objects, as compared with the 15-month-olds. the inability to connect. Myers’ later journal entries Ask students to consider reasons for this differ- describe, for example, his encounters with new tech- ence. The researchers offer up two, noncompeting nologies and insights into the nature of hearing. An explanations. Younger infants may not have a solid appendix provides a host of helpful resources for the grasp of verbs yet, that is, younger infants may not yet hard of hearing. understand that while animals can cry, objects can- Of special note is the chapter on “Aids and not. Another possibility is that younger infants don’t Advice.” Myers passes along these specific tips for have the cognitive capacity just yet to pull it off. The friends, colleagues, and family members. fact that, compared with the control condition, the 1. Invite us to a quiet place, for example, a room 19-month-olds were slower to settle their eye gaze on without loud music, a carpeted restaurant, a chair the animal with the “The blick is crying” sentence tells away from the air conditioning. us that this is a cognitively demanding task. It may be 2. Capture our attention. If we are reading or watch- that the cognitive processing needed for this task isn’t ing television, make certain we’re looking at you. quite there yet at 15 months. 3. Face the light and face us. Since we all do some Earlier research by Erica Cartmill and her col- lipreading, it helps to see your mouth. And don’t leagues (2013) also provides evidence that the more conclude that we are rude if we look at your mouth clues infants get about words, the easier it is for them rather than your eyes. to learn more words. The researchers video-recorded 4. Rephrase. If we don’t seem to hear it, restate it. Try caregiver/toddler interactions, and then censor-bleeped using different words to express the same thought. out some of the words. They showed the recordings to Change “Do you want something from the store?” research participants. How well could the participants to “Can I get you something at Safeway?” guess the words? When the caregiver was commenting 5. Create a context. Help us to know the subject. or gesturing on something in the child’s environment, Have a printed agenda for meetings, use visual the word was easy to guess. If, for example, the child aids. Caller I.D. is a blessing for us. was looking at a bookshelf, and the caregiver pointed 6. Speak slowly. Don’t holler, but enunciate each toward the bookshelf, the censor-bleeped word would word with pauses between phrases and sentences. likely be book. The researchers found great variability 7. Ask us if we have heard. Remember, we don’t like in the nonverbal clues caregivers provided children, to seem inept or to embarrass both of us by volun- everywhere from 5 percent to 38 percent of the time. teering that we did not hear. Cartmill, E. A., Armstrong, B. F., Gleitman, L. R., Myers, D. G. (2000). A quiet world: Living with hearing Goldin-Meadow, S., Medina, T. N., & Trueswell, J. loss. New Haven: Yale University Press. C. (2013). Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(28), 11278-11283. doi: Lecture/Discussion Topic: Talking With Our Hands 10.1073/pnas.1309518110. What role do gestures play in communication? Susan Ferguson, B., Graf, E., & Waxman, S. R. (2014). Infants Goldin-Meadow (2006) reviews important research on use known verbs to learn novel nouns: Evidence from this interesting question. 15- and 19-month-olds. Cognition,131(1), 139-146. doi: Goldin-Meadow introduces the interesting case 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.014. of a deaf child who was obviously unable to acquire spoken language and whose hearing parents chose not Lecture/Discussion Topic: A Quiet World—Living With to expose her to sign language. We might imagine that Hearing Loss such a child would be unable to communicate. How­ In his book A Quiet World, text author David Myers ever, the child did communicate. She gestured. For gives a personal account of his mother’s and now his example, reports Goldin-Meadow, when shown a pic- own personal challenge in dealing with hearing loss. ture of a snow shovel, she produced gestures for dig, It’s a book you will want to recommend to your snow-falls, and pull-on boots. In addition, she pointed students. outside and downstairs. That is, the child conveyed In diary fashion, Myers relates the problems at several propositions about snow shovels including how, home and at work that accompany gradual hearing loss. when, and where they are used, as well as where they 26 Thinking and Language are stored. Gestures assumed the function of language think when produced with speech. The time is ripe to take including many of its formal features such as segmen- advantage of our hands.” tation (separate gestures to represent objects and the Goldin-Meadow, S. (2006). Talking and thinking with our relations among them), combination (combining those hands. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, gestures in a structured manner), and recursion (produc- 34–39. ing more than one proposition within a single gesture sentence). Lecture/Discussion Topic: Still Speak With an Accent? Goldin-Meadow cites these additional intriguing At 6 months, babies are responsive to all syllables pro- research findings on gestures: duced in, say, Japanese and English. By 10 months, • Studies of profoundly deaf children who have mas- they are specialists, only responding to syllables of the tered neither oral nor sign language indicate that they language spoken by those around them. For example, spontaneously use gestures to communicate. These Japanese infants lose the l and r distinction by 10 months gestures show many of the structural properties of of age. But there is hope. natural language including a description of events The strength of your accent is directly correlated with that are not taking place in the here and now. when you learned another language. Those who learn • Gestures that accompany speech in hearing persons languages before puberty will speak with less of a foreign do not assume a languagelike form. However, they accent than those who learn later. convey information in their own right and may offer Even adults can learn to speak a new language with- insight into a speaker’s unspoken thoughts. Listeners out a foreign accent, but it takes work. The first task is to pay attention to these gestures and respond accord- get practice in hearing the differences in the sounds of the ingly. new language. You can’t reproduce what you can’t hear. • Adults who are asked unexpectedly to communicate This also explains why it’s easier to imitate a different only with their hands display gestures with language- domestic accent. In English, for example, the basic sylla- like properties much like the communication of the ble library is the same. Whether you grew up in Alabama deaf children. The appearance of these properties is or Massachusetts, the sounds are the same, you’re just intriguing in that they are not found in the gestures using them differently. that speakers routinely produce when they talk. Stockton, N. (2014, September 28). What’s up with that: • The gestures that children make as they learn a chal- Why it’s so hard to lose an accent. Retrieved from www. lenging task reflect their knowledge of the task. Some wired.com/2014/09/whats-up-with-losing-accents. children’s gestures match or duplicate their speech; other children’s gestures express ideas that go beyond The Brain and Language their speech. When all the children are then given Lecture/Discussion Topic: Dyslexia further instruction in the task, those whose earlier People with dyslexia have difficulty connecting sounds gestures went beyond their speech seemed to profit with their written symbols. Dyslexia researchers have most from the additional never been sure about the source of the problem: Is it the instruction. sounds themselves or the ability to access those sounds? • A teacher’s gestures may promote learning. For The auditory cortices in the temporal lobe are respon- example, following a carefully prepared script, an sible for processing sound, with Wernicke’s area in the experimenter taught children a correct strategy for left temporal lobe (in most people; for some it’s in the solving a math problem. In some cases, no gestures right hemisphere) partially responsible for sounds associ- accompanied the spoken instruction; in other cases, ated with speech. Broca’s area, in the left frontal lobe gestures provided the same information that was (in most people; for some it’s in the right hemisphere) is spoken; and in still other cases, the gestures provided responsible for producing speech. information (including strategy) that went beyond the Bart Boets and his colleagues (Shen & Nature spoken words. Children who were taught with ges- Magazine, 2013) have evidence suggesting that people tures that went beyond spoken language proved most with dyslexia do detect the difference in speech sounds. successful. For example, when researchers played the sounds ba and • Children may imitate the gestures that a teacher pro- da, the neurons in their temporal lobes responded differ- duces. Those who do are more likely to succeed after ently. However, brain imaging revealed weakened path- instruction than are children who do not ways between the areas in the left temporal lobe respon- imitate. sible for processing speech sounds and Broca’s area, the Goldin-Meadow concludes: “Gesture offers insight area responsible for producing speech. into the basic capacity we have for structured communi- Boets and colleagues hope that knowing the source cation when produced without speech and into how we of the disconnect in dyslexia could lead to more effective strategies in helping people with this problem. Thinking and Language 27

Shen, H., & Nature Magazine. (2013, December Scott, M. (2013). Corollary discharge provides the senso- 5). Dyslexia linked to brain communication break- ry content of inner speech. Psychological Science, 24(9), down. Scientific American. Retrieved from www. 1824-1830. doi: 10.1177/0956797613478614. scientificamerican.com/article/dyslexia-linked-to- brain-communication-breakdown. Language Influences Thinking (and Vice Versa) Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Vocabulary of Taste Lecture/Discussion Topic: Inner Speech In his wonderful book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell As you read these words, you are likely hearing your describes the skills of professional food tasters Gail own voice inside your head. We do the same when we Vance Civille and Judy Heylmun who run a New Jersey think. How does our brain distinguish between what is company called Sensory Spectrum, which now also has internally produced and what is speech that comes from a facility in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Before they outside? introduce a new product, many food companies call on Mark Scott (Association for Psychological Science, these two experts for their advice. 2013) at the University of British Columbia has evi- As Gladwell explains, part of the success of expert dence to suggest that corollary discharge is responsible. food tasters, such as Civille and Heylmun, is that they Corollary discharge is the process that allows the brain have learned a vocabulary that allows them to describe to predict what it is going to experience next. It is the their specific reactions to foods. So mayonnaise is reason we can’t tickle ourselves. When the motor areas evaluated along 6 dimensions of appearance (color, of the brain generate a movement signal, they motor color intensity, chroma, shine, lumpiness, and ), areas also send a signal to the somatosensory areas of 10 dimensions of texture (adhesiveness to lips, firm- the brain to let them know what is about to happen, ness, denseness, etc.), and 14 dimensions of flavor split so they can expect it. Corillary discharge is also how among 3 subgroups—aromatics (eggy, mustardy, etc.), the somatosensory areas know whether something is basic tastes (salty, sour, and sweet), and chemical- being internally or externally generated. When some- feeling flavors (burning, pungent, astringent). Each one else lightly touches your ribs in an effort to tickle factor is evaluated on a 15-point scale. Or take cookies. you, the somatosensory areas of the brain experience Heylmun explains, “We just did Oreos and we broke the signal as coming from something other than your them down into 90 attributes of appearance, flavor, and own brain. When you lightly touch your ribs, it’s not a texture.” Re-creating in her mind what an Oreo feels surprise. The motor areas, through corollary discharge, like, she concluded, “It turns out there are 11 attributes have already told the somatosensory areas to expect that are probably critical.” it. Vision works the same way. Changes in the image This points to the importance of a specific vocabu- projected onto your retina result either from your mov- lary to describe our opinions or reactions. Without ing your eyes or from your eyes staying stationary and the right words, we can’t make ourselves clearly the world moving around you. When it’s the former, the understood. For example, ask your students, “Can you motor areas tell the brain areas responsible for vision describe the difference between Coke and Pepsi?” that the eyes will be moving and to be prepared for a It’s very difficult. Expert food tasters like Civille and change in the visual signal. Heylmun use what they call a DOD (degree-of-differ- When you speak out loud, the motor areas send a ence) scale that goes from 0 to 10 to compare products signal to the brain areas that process sound to let them in the same category. Two things that are totally differ- know that they’ll be hearing your own voice. That ent are assigned a 10, whereas a 1 might describe the allows those auditory areas to essentially ignore the difference between two batches of the same product. sound of your voice and stay alert for any other sounds Coke and Pepsi are only a 4. In fact, the difference is that may happen at the same time. Because the auditory even less if the colas have aged or lost some of their areas need to know what to expect, those areas generate carbonation. an internal copy of the expected sound. When you think What this means is that if we are asked to give our or read to yourself, that inner voice you hear is the thoughts about Coke and Pepsi, typically our responses same internal copy you get when you speak out loud. are not very useful. At most we make some vague and As a preview for disorders later in the course, you general comments about sweetness or level of carbon- may want to note that a dysregulation in this process ation. Only an expert taster will pick up on the subtle has been tied to auditory hallucinations. nuances that distinguish these soft drinks. Association for Psychological Science. (2013, July This can be demonstrated quite remarkably with a 16). Inner speech speaks volumes about the brain. simple test (you might try it in the classroom or assign ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 4, 2014 from www. it as an out-of-class student project). Although people sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130716080028.htm. may be able to detect the difference between Coke and 28 Thinking and Language

Pepsi (in fact, even correctly identifying each product) You lose the flow. There are certain kinds of fluid, intui- with Coke in one glass and Pepsi in another, they per- tive, nonverbal experiences that are vulnerable to this form at chance when there are three glasses, two filled process.” with one of the colas and the third with the other. As In contrast, verbalization would not be expected to Gladwell explains, in the beverage business, this is interfere with noninsight problems because they involve called the triangle test. For this test, the person does not a series of incremental steps, each of which is separately have to identify which is Pepsi and which is Coke but reportable. In fact, verbalization may facilitate our solv- simply has to tell which of the three drinks is not like ing such problems. the other two. Just over one-third of nonexperts can Schooler, J. W., Ohlsson, S., & Brooks, K. (1993). identify the odd glass, which is little better than chance. Thoughts beyond words: When language overshadows The explanation for the difference between the two- insight. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, versus-three-beverage test is that with two colas, one 122, 166–183. only has to compare two first impressions. With three colas, one has to be able to describe and hold in memory Lecture/Discussion Topic: New Words the taste of the first and second in comparing them with Although language influences our thinking, thinking the third. That requires knowledge and understanding also affects our language. New words provide an excel- of the vocabulary of taste. In contrast to nonexperts, lent example. New words and new combinations of Heylmun and Civille have no problem passing the tri- old words express new ideas. In The Stuff of Thought, angle test. Steven Pinker suggests that we need merely examine the Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The power of thinking with- jargon of a given specialty, from photography to skate- out thinking. New York: Little, Brown. boarding, to appreciate that “lexical suppliers will step up to meet a demand.” Even casual computer users have Lecture/Discussion Topic: Think Before You Speak a vocabulary unknown to most people a generation ago: Sometimes, language seems to interfere with thought. modem, reboot, RAM, upload, browser, and so on. Although we are often advised to “talk through” a prob- Alan Metcalfe, a past president of the American lem, Jonathan Schooler and his colleagues reported that Dialect Society, uses the acronym FUDGE, to explain verbalization can interfere with insight problem solv- how new words make it into the language: Frequency, ing. Present the following insight problem suggested by unobtrusiveness, diversity of users and situations, gen- Schooler to your class: eration of other forms and meanings, and endurance of A giant inverted steel pyramid is perfectly balanced on the concept help us to understand why some new words its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to make it while others fall by the wayside. The more a topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How word is used by many people in a variety of situations, would you remove the bill without disturbing the pyra- the tendency of the word to generate new forms, and mid? (p. 183) (The insight is that the bill can be removed the endurance of the concept that the word represents by destroying it, that is, by tearing it, burning it, etc. The increase the probability it will find a permanent place in obstacle is that we think only in terms of preserving the our language. bill.) Still, Pinker notes, many gaps in our language Ask your students to think about the problem for a simply refuse to be filled. He observes that we have no few minutes, then write down in detail everything they word for the first decade of the twenty-first century or can remember about how they tried to solve the for unmarried homosexual partners. We have had enor- problem—from strategy to any solutions they mous difficulty finding a gender-neutral third-person considered. pronoun to replace he or she despite no shortage of When research participants were asked by Schooler suggestions (e.g., na, shehe, thon, herm). Yet none has and his colleagues to do this in solving a series of made an inroad. We have no term for one’s adult chil- insight problems, they actually solved 30 percent fewer dren nor a collective term for one’s nephews and nieces. problems than those who were not asked to explain There’s no word for the parents of a child’s spouse (as themselves. The investigators speculate that the ver- in the Yiddish machetunim). We should have a word for balization may cause nonreportable aspects of a task to disgusting lumps of brown snow that accumulate behind become overshadowed by those that are more readily a car wheel and fall onto the garage floor, as well as for reported. Solutions to insight problems occur suddenly, the early-morning insomnia in which our bladder is too suggesting that the critical steps leading to the solution full to fall back to sleep while we are too tired to get up are unavailable for conscious inspection. “It’s the same to empty it. kind of paralysis through analysis that you find in sports Pinker notes that an entire genre of humor has contexts,” suggests Schooler. “When you start becoming developed to fill the gaps in our language. Comedian reflective about the process, it undermines your ability. Rich Hall uses the word sniglet for a word that should Thinking and Language 29 exist but does not. See if your students identify with a from iTunes as well as directly from their website few of his examples. How about elbonics for the actions (www.radiolab.org); they vary in length from about 6 of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie minutes to more than an hour (depending on the topic theater, or peppier for the waiter in a fancy restaurant and purpose of the episode). They are produced with whose sole purpose is to ask diners if they want ground high production value (lots of sound effects, music, pepper? Finally, could we use furbling to refer to wan- suspense); you and your students will enjoy listening to dering through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank them as well as learning from them. even when you are the only one in line? One Radiolab episode, “Words” (1:00:07 hours, More simply, the Washington Post Style aired August 9, 2010), explores the concept of life with- Invitational Column asks readers to fill a word gap by out words. The hosts and guests discuss various topics, changing one letter in an existing word. Here are a few such as signing by deaf people, loss of language after to share with your students: a stroke, and a new language that emerged among deaf Sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic children in Nicaragua when they were grouped together wit and the person who does not get it for the first time to attend school in 1978. A short “bonus video” (length: 3:05) was produced to comple- Hipatitis: terminal coolness ment this episode; a link to it is posted on the Radiolab Dopelar effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to website at (www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words). seem smarter when they come at you rapidly You might want to recommend that students read an interesting story titled The Writer Who Couldn’t Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito that Read (June 21, 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/ gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and story.php?storyId=127745750), Robert Krulwich cannot be cast out describes the experience of Howard Engle, a Canadian Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a novelist, who woke up one morning to discover he had window into human nature. New York: Viking. lost the ability to read (a disorder called alexia) as the result of an undetected stroke. The article is short and Classroom Exercise: Verbal Information Can engaging, and it includes two multimedia demonstra- “Overshadow” Memory tions: (1) a brief video describing what it was like for This exercise was recommended in the Memory unit of Engle to lose his reading ability (3:06 min.), and (2) these resources in relation to the effect of verbal infor- a short audio clip of Engle “reading” with his tongue mation on memory. Research has found that in certain (6:56 min.). circumstances giving detailed verbal descriptions of Also, Sacks, the world-famous neurolo- certain types of objects and visual events can actually gist and author of many books, has published the book impair our ability to remember them accurately. This The Mind’s Eye (Knopf, 2010), which details the lives phenomenon is known as verbal overshadowing. If you of several individuals who have adapted to the loss of did not use this material earlier, you may want to do so certain abilities and cognitive functions that many of now as you discuss language. us take for granted. All of these cases share the feature that their losses create paradoxes and perplexities in Thinking Without Language social communication and interaction. A few cases in this new book involve language, communication, and/or Video: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds thinking. Students might enjoy reading this book; Sacks In this 20-minute TED talk (www.ted.com/talks/ keeps the reader interested. Radiolab also has a Podcast temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds), in which they interview Dr. Sacks on his 90th birthday Temple Grandin (PhD in Animal Science) discusses (July 9, 2013) at www.radiolab.org/story/305470- how her autistic mind thinks in pictures, not language. happy-birthday-good-doctor-sacks. Podcasts: Thought With(out) Language? Part 2: Part 1: Another program relevant to the topic of language is Radiolab is a biweekly radio program produced by a “Shorts” piece titled “Voices in Your Head” (14:05 WNYC and heard across the country on public broad- min., aired September 7, 2010). In this episode, the host casting stations. The episodes, hosted by Jad Abumrad interviews developmental psychologist and researcher and Robert Krulwich, are witty, insightful, and focused Charles Fernyhough about the relationship between on understanding and informing the public about inter- thinking and language, and, in particular, the hypothesis esting (even intriguing) scientific issues and (based on the work of Russian theorist Lev Vygotsky) phenomena. that children may not be able to think until they have Radiolab produces podcasts from the weekly epi- learned to “internalize” the voices of the adults who sodes. The podcasts are available as free downloads guide and teach them. 30 Thinking and Language

Fernyhough’s blog (hosted by Psychology Today) inspection of the data will convince your class that the includes several postings related to this topic called small-difference decisions take longer than the large- “The Voices Within.” Two very relevant posts are difference decisions. “What do we mean by ‘thinking’?” (August 15, 2010; Before discussing the exercise with the entire class, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ the-voices-within) you may wish to have students work in small groups and “‘Accents’ in the womb? A brief note” (November to generate possible explanations or theories about 7, 2009; www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dad-the- how people make size comparisons. Many, but perhaps observer/200911/accents-in-the-womb-brief-note). not all, may claim that we use imagery. If a proposed Consistent with Vygotskian theory, several lines theory includes the generation of images, ask the class of developmental research present converging evidence how supporting evidence might be obtained, that is, that maternal speech patterns play a significant role how researchers might show that imagery is involved. in children’s linguistic development. Richer, more As Thompson explains, the discussion naturally leads to “elaborative” maternal speaking styles are predictive of consideration of how information is represented in the more complex vocabulary and syntax, more dynamic mind. and detailed reminiscing about past events, and better Thompson, W. B. (2000). Is a bee bigger than a flea? understanding of time in the future. A classroom mental imagery activity. Teaching of Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Psychology, 27, 212–214. Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal remi- niscing style in cognitive and socioemotional devel- Student Project: Cognitive Maps opment. Child Development, 77(6), 1568–1588. doi: Cognitive maps provide a good basis for introducing 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00960.x. thought without language. Cognitive maps are mental Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influ- repre­sentations of the spatial environment. They repre- ence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary sent the world as we believe it to exist. If students are development via maternal speech. Child Development, asked to think of the layout of the house in which they 74, 1368-1378. grew up, or are asked the shortest route from class to Hudson, J. A. (2006). The development of future the library, they think in terms of images, not words. time concepts through mother-child conversation.” Sometimes our cognitive maps are very detailed and Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 52(1),70-95. doi: 10.1353/ accurate; in other cases, they may be sketchy and bear mpq.2006.0005. little correspondence to reality. You might have students draw from memory a Classroom Exercise: Introducing Imagery Research map of your institution as an out-of-class project and W. Burt Thompson (2000) suggests an excellent class- then bring it to class to compare with the maps of other room activity for introducing imagery research. Not students. They are likely to find wide individual differ- only does it illustrate how we often think in images, ences. Previous research has shown that people tend to but it also quickly and reliably replicates the symbolic expand the size and detail of the buildings most impor- distance effect. That is, when people must decide which tant to them. You might sort maps by majors and show of two imagined objects is bigger, their decision time how this holds. Also compare the maps of new students increases as the size difference between the two objects with those of students who have been on campus for decreases. Handout 10a is a list of animal pairs in some time. which the size difference is large. Handout 10b is a list of animal pairs in which the size difference is small. Classroom Exercise: Creating a Mental Model Ran­domly distribute copies of the handouts (face down) Margaret Matlin (2009) notes that when we hear a to your students. Tell them not to turn over their copy description of a place, we actively create a mental until you give the signal. model that represents the important features of the Explain that you are going to measure how quickly scene. Research suggests that those who have been they can decide which of two objects is larger. For asked to draw maps of environments they have merely example, write car-house, penny-dime on the chalk- read about are just as accurate as those who have stud- board. Tell your students that they will have 25 seconds ied a map. To illustrate this process, tell students you to complete as many as possible. In each case, they are going to read the description of a place. They are to should circle the larger item in each pair, working listen carefully because you will ask questions about it quickly and accurately. when you are finished. Then slowly read the following After giving them 25 seconds to work, have them account that Matlin adapted from Barbara Tversky’s tabulate and report their results, using separate columns research. on the chalkboard for Handouts 10a and 10b. A visual Thinking and Language 31

You are at the Jefferson Plaza Hotel, where you have just lowed by objects ahead of and behind them; the longest taken the escalator from the first to the second floor. You reaction times were for objects to the right and left of will be meeting someone for dinner in a few minutes. them. You now stand next to the top of the escalator, where Franklin and Tversky compared three models that you have a view of the first floor as well as the second could explain how people might explore their mental floor. You first look directly to your left, where you see models. The equiavailability model states that people a shimmering indoor fountain about 10 yards beyond a carpeted walkway. Though you cannot see beyond the can make decisions equally rapidly about all direc- low, stone wall that surrounds it, you suppose that its tions because all are equally available to the observer. bottom is littered with nickels and pennies that hotel Clearly, the different reaction times are inconsistent guests have tossed in. The view down onto the first floor with this model. allows you to see that directly below you is a darkened, According to the mental transformation model, candle-lit tavern. It looks very plush, and every table you reaction times should depend upon the amount of see seems to be filled with well-dressed patrons. Looking mental movement needed to inspect each location. For directly behind you, you see through the window of the example, you should respond more quickly to objects in hotel’s barbershop. You can see an older gentleman, front of you because they require no mental movement. whose chest is covered by a white sheet, being shaved Objects behind you should take the longest because you by a much younger man. You next look straight ahead have to turn completely around. Those objects on the of you, where you see a quaint little giftshop just on the other side of the escalator. You’re a sucker for little left and right should require intermediate times. Again ceramic statues, and you squint your eyes to try to read the data do not fit this claim. the hours of operation posted on the store’s entrance. According to the spatial framework model, our Hanging from the high ceiling directly above you, you mental images do not mirror our perceptions. Some see a giant banner welcoming the Elks convention to spatial directions are more prominent than others. When the hotel. It is made from white lettering sewn onto a we are in an upright position (as opposed to reclining), blue background, and it looks to you to be about 25 feet we distinguish between one vertical (above-below) and long. (Based on Tversky, 1991b, p. 133, from p. 205 of two horizontal spatial directions (front-back and left- M. Matlin [1992] Cognitive Psychology, 4e, New York: right). West Publishing.) Of these three directions, the above-below dimen- After you have finished, ask the students to imagine sion is most prominent because it remains constant that they have turned to face the barber shop. Then have regardless of our body position. It is also readily acces- them write down answers to the following questions. sible because of its association with gravity—that is, objects only fall downward, not upward. Thus, judg- 1. What is above your head? ment times for the above-below dimension should be 2. What is below your feet? fastest. In contrast, objects in the two vertical spatial 3. What is ahead of you? dimensions (what is in the front-back or left-right 4. What is behind you? dimension) changes with our body position. Because 5. What is to your right? we can more readily attend to and move toward the When Nancy Franklin and Barbara Tversky had front than toward the back, the front-back dimension participants read descriptions such as this one, they has more accessibility and prominence than the right- found that all had constructed images of the environ- left dimension. Thus, judgment times for front-back ment as they were reading. Most also said they had should be intermediate and those for left-right should be constructed imagery from the observer’s point of view. slowest. Franklin and Tversky were especially interested in Matlin, M. (2009). Cognition (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: knowing whether response time varied with the location Wiley. of the object being tested. It did. The shortest reaction times were for those objects above and below them, fol- 32 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 1

Need for Cognition Scale

Rate each of the following statements in terms of how well it characterizes you. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers, and your responses will remain anonymous. Write a number in the blank from “1” indicating “extremely uncharacteristic of me” to “5” indicating “extremely characteristic of me.”

1. I would prefer complex to simple problems. 2. I like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking. 3. Thinking is not my idea of fun. 4. I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my thinking abilities. 5. I try to anticipate and avoid situations in which I may have to think in depth about something. 6. I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours. 7. I only think as hard as I have to. 8. I prefer to think about small, daily projects to long-term ones. 9. I like tasks that require little thought once I’ve learned them. 10. The idea of relying on thought to make my way to the top appeals to me. 11. I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems. 12. Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me very much. 13. I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles that I must solve. 14. The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me. 15. I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important to one that is somewhat important but does not require much thought. 16. I feel relief rather than satisfaction after completing a task that required a lot of mental effort. 17. It’s enough for me that something gets the job done; I don’t care how or why it works. 18. I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they do not affect me personally.

Source: From Cacioppo, J. T. et al, “The Efficient Assessment of Need for Cognition,” Journal of Personality Assesment 48(3) 306–307. Copyright © 1984 Taylor & Francis Ltd. Reproduced by permission. Thinking and Language 33

HANDOUT 2

For each item below, circle the one that is most associated with a high need for cognition.

1. Factory workers University faculty

2. Prefer complex problem-solving task Simple problem-solving task

3. See self in control of own fate See self as not in control of own fate

4. Open to new experiences Not open to new experiences

5. Sees behavior as having multiple causes Sees behavior as having one cause

6. Uses the Internet primarily for entertainment Uses the Internet primarily for work and study

7. Focuses on smart phone ease of use Focuses on smart phone usefulness 34 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 3

Problem Solving

1. Husbands and Wives Problem

Three men—Fred, Ed, and Ted—are married to Joan, Sally, and Vickie, but not necessarily in that order. Joan, who is Ed’s sister, lives in Detroit. Fred dislikes animals. Ed weighs more than the man who is married to Vickie. The man married to Sally breeds Siamese cats as a hobby. Fred commutes over 200 hours a year from his home in Ann Arbor to his job in Detroit. Match up the men with the women they married.

Source: Whimbey, A., & Lochhead, J. (1982). Problem solving and comprehension: A short course in analytic reasoning (p. 67). Philadelphia: Franklin Institute Press.

2. The Buddhist Monk Problem

Exactly at sunrise one morning, a Buddhist monk set out to climb a tall mountain. The narrow path was not more than a foot or two wide, and it wound around the mountain to a beautiful, glittering temple at the mountain peak. The monk climbed the path at varying rates of speed. He stopped many times along the way to rest and to eat the fruit he carried with him. He reached the temple just before sunset. At the temple, he fasted and meditated for several days. Then he began his journey back along the same path, starting at sunrise and walking, as before, at variable speeds with many stops along the way. However, his average speed going down the hill was greater than his average climbing speed. Prove that there must be a spot along the path that the monk will pass on both trips at exactly the same time of day.

Source: ‘Problem Solving (The Buddhist Monk Problem)’ from The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. Reprinted by per- mission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Arthur Koestler.

3. The Hobbits-and-Orcs Problem

Three Hobbits and three Orcs arrive at a river bank, and they all wish to cross onto the other side. Fortunately, there is a boat, but unfortunately, the boat can only hold two creatures at one time. Also, there is another problem. Orcs are vicious creatures, and whenever there are more Orcs than Hobbits on one side of the river, the Orcs will immediately­ attack the Hobbits and eat them up. Consequently, you should be certain that you never leave more Orcs than Hobbits on any river bank. How should the problem be solved? (Note that the Orcs, though vicious, can be trusted to bring the boat back!)

Source: From James G. Greeno, “Hobbits and orcs: Acquisition of a sequential concept,” Cognitive Psychology 6(2) 270–292. Copyright © 1974 with permission from Elsevier.

4. Truthtellers and Liars Problem

You are visiting a strange country in which there are just two kinds of people—truthtellers and liars. Truthtellers always tell the truth and liars always lie. You hail the first two people you meet and say, “Are you truthtellers or liars?” The first person mumbles something you can’t hear. The second says, “He says he is a truthteller. He is a truthteller and so am I.” Can you trust the directions that these two may give you?

Source: From John R. Hayes, The Complete Problem Solver. Copyright © 1989 SAGE Publications. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. Thinking and Language 35

HANDOUT 4

The Water Jug Problem

Imagine that you have three water jugs of varying capacities (quart sizes noted below) and an unlimited water supply. How would you use the jugs to end up with the desired amount of water indicated for each problem?

Problem Jug A Jug B Jug C Desired Quarts of Water Solution?? 1 29 3 20 2 21 127 3 100 3 14 163 25 99 4 18 43 10 5 5 9 42 6 21 6 20 59 4 31 7 23 49 3 20 8 15 39 3 18 9 28 76 3 25

Adapted from Luchins A. S., & Luchins. E. H. (1970). Wertheimer’s Seminars Revisited: Problem Solving and Thinking, Vols. I, II and III, Albany, NY: SUNY, Albany.

Thinking and Language 35 HANDOUT 4

The Water Jug Problem

Imagine that you have three water jugs of varying capacities (quart sizes noted below) and an unlimited water supply. How would you use the jugs to end up with the desired amount of water indicated for each problem?

Problem Jug A Jug B Jug C Desired Quarts of Water Solution?? 1 29 3 20 2 23 49 3 20 3 15 39 3 18 4 28 76 3 25 5 21 127 3 100 6 14 163 25 99 7 18 43 10 5 8 9 42 6 21 9 20 59 4 31 Adapted from Luchins A. S., & Luchins. E. H. (1970). Wertheimer’s Seminars Revisited: Problem Solving and Thinking, Vols. I, II and III, Albany, NY: SUNY, Albany. 36 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 5

Which of the following are the more frequent causes of death in the United States?

1. All motor vehicle accidents or strokes (cerebrovascular accidents)?

I am % certain of my answer. *

2. Suicide by firearm or blood poisoning (septicemia)?

I am % certain of my answer.

3. Homicide or diabetes?

I am % certain of my answer.

4. Motor vehicle (car, truck, bus) accident or colorectal cancer?

I am % certain of my answer.

5. Drowning or leukemia?

I am % certain of my answer.

6. Alcohol-induced deaths or pneumonia?

I am % certain of my answer.

Which country has the largest population?

7. Morocco or Saudi Arabia?

I am % certain of my answer.

8. Nepal or Australia?

I am % certain of my answer.

9. South Africa or Vietnam?

I am % certain of my answer.

10. Libya or Sri Lanka?

I am % certain of my answer.

11. Iraq or Tanzania?

I am % certain of my answer.

*Estimates can range from 50 percent (I’m just guessing) to 100 percent (I’m absolutely certain).

Source: Adapted from Fischhoff, B., Slovic, P., & Lichtenstein, S. (1977). Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 3, 552–564; and from Brown, N., & Siegler, R. (1993). Metrics and mappings: A framework for understanding real-world quantitative estimation. Psychological Review, 100, 511–534. Thinking and Language 37

HANDOUT 6

Please provide estimates for the following.

1. How many people were killed by firearms in the United States in 2011?

2. What percentage of these deaths were by (be sure the percentages add up to 100)

Homicide?

Suicide?

Accident?

Undetermined means? 38 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 7

In estimating the number of people killed in the United States in 2013, would you say that the number is more or less than 500,000?

More than 500,000

Less than 500,000

38 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 7

In estimating the number of people killed in the United States in 2013, would you say that the number is more or less than 5000?

More than 5000

Less than 5000 Thinking and Language 39

HANDOUT 8

For each of the following questions, answer in terms of a range within which you expect the correct answer will almost certainly fall. Given a 98 percent confidence level, if you give answers between 100 and 200, for example, this would mean you think there is only a 2 percent chance that the real answer is either less than 100 or more than 200.

1. I feel 98 percent certain that the area of the United States is more than square miles but less than square miles.

2. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2013 the population of Afghanistan was more than but less than .

3. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2013 Amazon.com spent more than $ but less than $ on advertising.

4. I feel 98 percent certain that the number of American battle deaths in the Spanish-American War was more than but less than .

5. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2011 the number of female generals in the United States Army was more than but less than .

6. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2014 the number of operating nuclear plants in the world was more than but less than .

7. I feel 98 percent certain that the number of suicides in the United States in 2011 was more than but less than .

8. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2001 the number of cars imported into the United States from France was more than but less than .

9. I feel 98 percent certain that in 2007 the production of oats in the United States was more than bushels but less than bushels.

10. I feel 98 percent certain that the number of medals Germany won in the 2014 Winter Olympics was more than but less than .

Sources for data: 2. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html; 5. www.cnn.com/2013/01/24/us/military-women-glance; 6. www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/ nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm; 7. www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf; 10. espn.go.com/olympics/ winter/2014/medals. 40 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 9

Guess: Did the speaker I am % confident tell the truth or a lie? that my guess is correct.*

1. Something that happened to me during grade school

2. My favorite meal

3. My earliest memory

4. My favorite vacation trip

5. A high point of my high school days

6. The most influential person in my life

7. My favorite professor outside the psych department

8. The part of the country in which I’d most like to live

9. A surprising talent that I have

10. Something interesting about a member of my family

* Estimates can range from 50 percent (I’m just guessing) to 100 percent (I’m absolutely certain). Thinking and Language 41

HANDOUT 10a

cow-rat bear-flea ant-elk horse-quail moth-wolf roach-horse mouse-lamb moose-frog rat-horse bear-quail bee-hog roach-whale hog-ant fox-worm bear-rat quail-cow horse-fox quail-whale cat-moose whale-dog flea-wolf rat-elk duck-flea bear-frog

Source: From Thompson, “Faculty Forum,” Teaching of Psychology 27(3). Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. 42 Thinking and Language

HANDOUT 10b

flea-bee ant-moth deer-cow horse-sheep moth-flea pig-fox flea-roach duck-dove ant-roach hog-cow wolf-bear cow-sheep cat-rat wolf-cow ant-bee moth-flea rat-duck frog-moth bear-hog flea-roach frog-rat hog-cat roach-ant

Source: From Thompson, “Faculty Forum,” Teaching of Psychology 27(3). Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications.