Creativity and

Language

Creativity
Definition
The ability to produce original, appropriate, and
valuable ideas and/or solutions to problems
Little correlation between creativity and intelligence.

Creative process
Research studies indicate that useful and genuine
creativity rarely appears in the form of sudden flashes
Creative ideas that come to conscious awareness have
been incubating for some time

Nature of Creative Thinking

Convergent thinking
type of mental activity measured by IQ
and achievement tests
consists of solving precisely defined,
logical problems for which there is a
known correct answer
characterized by greater activity in the
left frontal cortex

Nature of Creative Thinking

Divergent thinking
The ability to produce multiple ideas,
answers, or solutions to a problem for
which there is no agreed-on solution
marked by higher levels of activity in
the right frontal cortex

Language
Formal system of communication

Between 5,000 and 6,000 languages, worldwide

Most languages also have many dialects

Properties of Language
Semantic
There are separate units in a language and
these units have meaning
Phoneme: basic building block of spoken
language
Morpheme: smallest unit that carries meaning

Generative
Combine language in novel ways

Displacement
The property of language that accounts for the
capacity to communicate about matters that are
not in the here-and-now

 Generative
We can combine language in novel ways

Displacement
The property of language that accounts for
the capacity to communicate about matters
that are not in the here-and-now

Language is also

Phonemes &
Morphemes

How many
phonemes
does platypus
have?

Phonemes:
In a spoken language,
the smallest distinctive
__________________unit.
chug has _________
phonemes, ch, u, g.
Morphemes:

The smallest unit of

___________________

Phonemes Practice
How many phonemes (sounds) are in these
words?

Chin
Habits
Thing
Psychology
Nation
Quickly
laughed

Morphemes Practice
How many morphemes are in the following words?
1) People
2) Redevelopment
3) Language
4) Waited
5) Georges
6) Desirability
7) Unhappy
8) Water
9) Higher
10)Houseboat
11) Multi-cultural

Structure of Language
Grammar
The rules of a language
Syntax
Specifies how words can be arranged

Semantics
Specifies how meaning is
understood & communicated

Transformational grammar
Any one thought can be expressed
in different ways

Language Acquisition
Birth
Cooing, crying, gurgling

4-6 months
Babbling
At 10 months the babbling takes on more recognizable
forms, da da ma ma

12 months
First words e.g. juice, puppy, mum, candy, deer,

2 yrs & up
Telegraphic speech e.g. more juice; book sit;
Overextension juice (milk), juice (juice), juice (water)

Nephew time!!!

Language Acquisition
No one disputes the stages of language
development
But there are two main questions in terms
of what it all means
Is language acquisition a product of nature or
nurture?
Which comes first language or thought?

 Is it nurture or nature?
Skinner versus Chomsky

Operant conditioning

 Is it nurture or nature?
Skinner:
Children learn to speak the way animals
learn to run mazes
They associate objects and words, imitate
adults, and repeat phrases that are met
by social reinforcement.
Through trial and error, for example, a
baby of English-speaking parents learns
to repeat the babbling sounds that excite
mom and dad but not foreign sounds that
leave them cold.

 Is it nurture or nature?
Chomsky:
The human brain is specially hard-wired
for the acquisition of language (LAD)
Children are endowed from birth with a
universal grammar (core rules
common to all human languages)
They are also born with the ability to
apply these rules to the language they
hear spoken

Problems with Skinners ideas:

Ask yourself: Do children hear perfectly
formed language?
How can children learn language perfectly
if their input is not perfect?
If we only learn what we hear, how do you
explain the creation of complex, unique
sentences / structures?

jump

jumped

bring

bringed

Jump me down, Mummy!

My do it!

 I hate you Daddy!

Dont take this the wrong way
Mum, but I like Auntie Margaret
better than you.

What kids say

Remember that Chomsky says:

We are born with a Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) and access to Universal Grammar (UG).
We are not born knowing English, or French, or
Thai. Rather, we are born with innate
knowledge of certain universal structures.
How?
Input in a specific language triggers the LAD.
Children discover basic structures of the
language to be learned by comparing their
innate knowledge of language with the structure
of the particular language.

Assessment of Chomskys ideas

Good points:

explains why language is learned relatively

quickly
explains how language is learnt despite poverty of
the stimulus

Bad points:

very little evidence for adult-like grammatical

knowledge in young children (Braine, 1976)
young children make errors Chomsky would not
predict
cannot explain why children make grammatical
errors (e.g. doggie go walkies) even after
extensive language exposure

So, is it nature or nurture?

More proof for the nurture side:
There appears to be a critical period
Extreme examples: Victor & Genie

Victor - the wild boy of Aveyron

Found naked in the woods in 1798,
aged about 11 or 12 yrs
Insensitive to noise and pleasing
smells
Made only gutteral sounds
Did not imitate
Within 5 years he could distinguish
emotions, became genuinely
affectionate, loved helping people and
used objects imaginatively but never
developed language

Genie - a modern feral child

Until her discovery at the age of 13
(1970), she lived in a state of
severe sensory and social
deprivation. Strapped to a pottychair or tied to a bed by a
psychotic father, she was beaten if
she vocalized and her father spoke
only in grunts.

Genie could barely walk and could not talk when found

When she reached 18, Genie was

returned to the care of her mother,
where she stayed only a few
months before living in six different foster
homes. She now is institutionalized
in Southern California.

Genie

 Genies case is suggestive of the

position that there is a critical period for
first language learning
If child is not exposed to language during early
childhood (prior to the age of 6 or 7), then the
ability to learn syntax will be impaired while
other abilities are less strongly affected
However, using such case studies is not
without controversy.

Victor and Genie and children like them were

deprived in many ways other than not being
exposed to language

What do these cases

show?

 What comes first thought or language?

 Piaget believed that children

must understand a concept
before they can use words to
describe it.
Babies cannot say All gone or
bye-bye until they understand the
concept of object permanence

Thought first

 Others believe that language

shapes thought and that children
develop concepts in order to
understand the words they hear
A child hears dog and tries to understand
it by searching for objects that might fit

Language first

 Both views are correct

Words and concepts emerge at roughly the
same time and the causal arrow points in both
directions
Sometimes children use words to communicate
what they already know, and sometimes they
form concepts to fit the words they hear.

The upshot?

Lets review!!!

Whorfs Linguistic Determinism

Language determines the way that we
think
The Hopi tribe has no past tense in their
language, so Whorf believes that is why
they rarely think of the past.

 What are your thoughts on Whorfs

theory of linguistic determinism?
Think: What is the difference between
saying an autistic person and a person
with autism

Why do we balk at the phrase: Man

nurses his young

Language and thought

Language and thought

Daisy, a senior student was remembering

back to her first middle school dance.
A) Explain how each of the psychological
terms could help Daisys recollection of the
middle school dance:
Flashbulb memory
Mood congruent effect.
B) Explain how each of the following
psychological terms could hinder Daisys
recollection or memory of the middle school
dance:
Serial position effect
Retroactive interference
Misinformation effect

Free response example