manic thoughts, bilingual, Stereotype threat

• manic people also have fast or racing though… is it the speed f our thoughts that make us happier?
• hypothesis: faster thoughts for them mean more elation and more positive mood, more powerful and creative despite if you think about sad things.
• They had four categories: happy/sad/fast/slow
• "mood induction” words/sentences showed up twice as fast vs. twice as slow, and then the participants rated how slow/fast they were thinking.
• Results: participants in fast thinking showed better moods than slow, and fast plus elation had the best moods.
• the strongest correlations between if you think you’re thinking fast and positive mood
• they had more manic thoughts/symptoms with faster thinking speeds
• even if you think depressing thoughts fast, you still are more positive.
• So, maybe it’s the speed of our thoughts that induces mania or depression
• if you had words going fast across a screen, perhaps you could induce a positive mood?

language cont. kids seem to make sign language more grammatical than adults.. kids are inherently grammatical!

Bilingual Article 

1. Does learning two languages simultaneously impede cognitive development?

-This has been a boiling issue for quite a few years. There was a period in which strong claims were made. But, there were findings beginning the 60s to indicate that that was not the case. In the end, we are coming to the fact that this is the case in some respects and not in others.

2. Are mind and brain in bilingual people different than those in people who speak one language?

-Probably yes – some general differences.

3. Metalinguistic awareness

-an awareness of language issues. Perhaps a difference is that bilingual people have more metalingustistic awareness? Maybe the answer is yes... it's not focused on in this article.

-In the end the authors argue that bilingual children that while they have more metalingustic awareness, thats not really the main advantage. They have a better ability to focus on grammar when sentences get confusing. They are able to ignore meaning and focus on grammar. There is an attentional advantage in selectivity and inhibition. This isn't really a language thing, but an attentional thing – components of executive functioning!

4. Executive Function and Bilingualism

-Children gradually master the ability to control attention, inhibit distraction, monitor sets of stimuli, expand working memory, and shift between tasks (executive function) that decline in older age.

*Task: Dimensional Change Card Sort Task: sort cards and some dimension is relevant (color or shape) and then you have to shift to a different dimensional.

-Results show that bilingual children do a better job of shifting dimensions.

*Task: Interpretation of an Ambiguous Feature

-Results show that bilingual children did a better job of shifting executive control processes.

5. Is this just in kids or in adults too?

-parallel results to the kids' study – with *Stroop Task and *flanker task (distraction task)

-greater ability to ignore distractors and shift views from one to another

*Simon Effect: you have compatible and incompatible responses compared

-Results show that differences between bilingual and monolingual individuals widen with age. There is a protective effect as people get older. (especially pronounced in older adults).

6. How do vocabularies differ for mono- and bi-lingual children?

-Bilingual children have smaller vocabularies.

7. Is there evidence for other deficits in bilingual children?

-lower scores of verbal fluency task, experience more tip-of-the-tongue states, and demonstrate more interference in lexical decision.

8. Is it helpful or is it not?

-Proactive Interferences: old learning gets in the way of new learning. Avoiding proactive interference is an executive control issue – can you take what you're attending to and separate it from you what attended to?

-When you're given lots of lists to remember, the interference gets worse and worse

-What about in bilinguals? It is less problematic for bilinguals. They are less affected by proactive interference.

9. Dementia

-Monolingual people acquire dementia 4 years earlier than monolingual persons.

-Implications for practical consequences.

• Cognitive processing in blilinuguals:
• people who are bilingual do better in tasks that involve shifting rules
• bilingualism helps protect against dementia
• it requires a high level of executive control and the tasks require you to inhibit one approach and enhance another
• it seems there is a constant control of the two, so perhaps the high executive control helps you to use this to your benefit in other areas of cognition

Wikibook: Problem solving From an Evolutionary perspective

• what is a problem?
• a situation that differs from the desired goal. Some problems we are naturally adapted to solve, but other more abstrac ones we may not encounter from day to day.
• not all species solve such abstract problems like humans do.
• well defined vs. ill defined problems:
• well defined has a finite set of rules, has a clearly defined state, and it has a clear goal state.
• ill defined: the problem can’t be properly formalized, and this may be the bulk of our everyday experiences.
• it involves creativity and defining the goal~
• Gestalt approach: tried to examine problem solving in a structured way. They want to know, how are you structuring things in the brain?
• Problem representations are models of the situation as experienced by the agent. Analyze it and split it into separate components.
• Wertheimer: restructuring – altering the way you process the info hoping that another way will be fruitful.
• Insight: productive thinking – suddenness component where all of the sudden you see the path to the solution.
• but sometimes a piece by piece step is more needed than one big ah-ha.
• sometimes we get stuck in a mental rut 
• ex. matches candles and tacks to corkboard (if they see the matches as a container, its hard for them to solve it).
• functional fixation is like a mental set we get stuck in.
• ex. water jar problem. 

Stereotype threat and financial decisions:

• decision making is shaped by emotion an intuition… an affect (heuristic) or deliberative processing 
• people tend to use more affect/intuition in decision making.
• Hypothesis: stereotype threat may effect decision making
• study 1 whether stereotype threat increases loss-aversion behavior in women.
• they were told in the stereotype threat condition that they would be measuring their ability
• coin toss lottery: indicate gender or not
• study 2 effect of risk aversiontasks varied in riskiness – risk aversion - # of trials they chose low-risk options.
• used a Stroop task to measure ego depletion
• ego depletion may be depletion of self control resources.
• Results: 
• women were more loss-averse than men in stereotype relevant conditions.
• stereotype threat increased risk aversion in women.
• in the stereotype condition, men were more willing to take risks.
• females showed more ego depletion in stereotype threat conditions.
• conclusion: we need to make sure stereotype threats are not present so people can make the best decision
• they are clear interaction effects in all 3 experiments.