Deck 8: A: Thinking,reasoning,and Language

Question 1

Outline the nature of sign language,including the nature of its linguistic structures.Describe three common myths held by the general public with respect to sign language.

Answer 1

Answers will vary but should contain the following for full credit.
--Sign language was developed by the deaf community to exchange visual rather than auditory messages and is a linguistic system of communication with its own phonemes,words,syntax,and extralinguistic information.There are several forms of sign language,including American,French,Nicaraguan,and so on,and they each consist of the regular components of real language.Many signs are iconic in nature (i.e. ,they resemble things to which they refer,e.g. ,drink).
Myth 1: Deaf people can lip-read.
Myth 2: Learning sign language will slow children's ability to speak.
Myth 3: Sign language is translated word-for-word from English.

Question 2

The case of Genie allows us to draw few conclusions about language development.Discuss the obstacles to such understanding relevant to this case.

Answer 2

Answers will vary but should contain the following for full credit.
--Because Genie was reared in isolation,her case presents particular challenges.We cannot exclude rival explanations for her failure to learn to speak fluently.On one hand,her case supports the notion of a critical period of language development,as she was discovered at the age of 13,having had little exposure to language.Because she was not "activated" during this critical period,she never acquired a meaningful ability to speak or read.However,her lack of language development could also have stemmed from social isolation,as well as abuse.

Question 3

Students asked to solve the "tumor problem" after exposure to the "fortress problem" often failed to do so without priming.Explain why this occurred.

Answer 3

Answers will vary but should contain the following for full credit.
--The salience of surface features distracted students from realizing the underlying similarities of the two problems.Salience refers to how attention-grabbing something is.We tend to focus our attention on the surface-level (superficial)properties of a problem,such as the topic of an algebra word problem,and try to solve problems the same way we solved problems that exhibited similar surface characteristics.When one algebra word problem calls for subtraction and another calls for division,the fact that both deal with trains isn't going to help us.Ignoring the surface features of a problem and focusing on the underlying reasoning needed to solve it can be challenging.
--Imagine learning about two problems.In one problem,a general wants to capture a fortress but realizes that taking all his forces down a single path makes them vulnerable to attack,so he divides the forces up into many smaller units who each attack along a different path.By surrounding the fortress along many paths,the fortress is taken without significant loss of troops.In the second problem,a doctor is attempting to treat a stomach tumor by use of a laser but realizes that sending the full-intensity beam required to destroy the tumor will damage the healthy tissue in its path.Can you think of a solution that destroys the tumor but protects the healthy tissue? Hint: The second problem involves the same reasoning process as the first.Did you realize that the same solution-sending lots of low-intensity beams in from lots of directions-would work for the tumor problem? In one study,only 20 percent of students who saw the fortress problem figured out the tumor problem (Gick & Holyoak,1983).But when researchers told students that the fortress problem could help them solve the tumor problem,their success shot up to 92 percent.The students hadn't noticed that the fortress solution was relevant.