Cognitive Processes and Language Learning
Thinking and Cognition
Cognition is primarily about retaining information and using stored knowledge (things you already know).
Thinking involves taking existing knowledge, applying it to current situations, or expanding upon it. It can go beyond personal experiences, involving hypothetical scenarios (e.g., thinking about living in Indonesia without having lived there, unlike cognition which requires direct interaction or experience).
Ways to Identify Thinking
Mental Images: Visual pictures in our brain used to understand, manipulate, or gain insight. Similar to memory, but focused on something being worked on rather than recalled from the past. For example, mentally rotating an object to see if it's backwards, or imagining a specific cat. We can only think about things we have some experience with; without any foundational experience, mental manipulation is impossible.
Concepts: Like schemas or file holders of information, but representing full categories. For instance, the concept of "fruit" contains various examples. Our experience shapes which examples come to mind first (e.g., apples over coconuts in Kentucky).
Prototype: The most representative example of an entire category. For many, an apple is the prototype for fruit, and a dog for a pet. Things that are not prototypes, even if they belong to the category, take longer to identify as such (e.g., a peculiar African long-tailed tangerine as a mammal compared to a dog or cat).
Problem Solving
Problem solving involves finding a solution to an issue or problem.
Strategies for Problem Solving
Trial and Error: Trying different potential solutions until one works. Effective when options are limited (e.g., multiple-choice questions) but highly inefficient for numerous possibilities (e.g., a combination lock with many permutations).
Algorithms: A set of specific, step-by-step instructions that guarantee a correct solution if followed accurately (common in math and computer science).
Heuristics: A "rule of thumb" or general concept that provides a strategy to solve a problem. It's a helpful guideline, not a guarantee. Examples include breaking a research paper into subgoals or working backward on a maze.
Insight: A sudden realization or "light bulb moment" where a solution becomes clear. Often occurs after extended effort and compilation of information, even if it feels sudden.
Intuition: A gut feeling or immediate sense about the right direction or answer, often based on past experiences and previous knowledge.
Barriers to Problem Solving
Functional Fixedness: The inability to see an object as anything other than its intended purpose. This limits creativity in problem-solving. For example, seeing a plastic grocery bag only as a grocery bag, rather than a material for knitting mats for the homeless. Overcoming functional fixedness requires flexibility in thinking, as demonstrated by the matchstick puzzles or the Candle Problem, where the solution involves using the box of tacks as a candle holder, not just a container for tacks.
Mental Set: The tendency to approach a problem in a way that has worked in the past, even if it's not the most efficient or effective method for the current problem. This can be rigid and prevent seeing new solutions. It’s like a habit for problem-solving.
Decision Making
Making a choice between two or more alternatives.
Biases in Decision Making
Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek out and favor information that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring or downplaying contradictory evidence. We often interpret ambiguous information in a way that supports what we already think.
Hindsight Bias: The "I knew it all along" phenomenon. The inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, even if it wasn't.
Representativeness Heuristic: Judging the probability of an event by how neatly it fits our mental prototype for that category. This can lead to stereotyping and overlooking actual statistical probabilities (e.g., assuming a quiet, intelligent person is more likely to be a librarian than a salesperson, even if there are far more salespeople).
Availability Heuristic: Estimating the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples or instances come to mind. If something is easily recalled (e.g., from recent news or personal experience), we tend to overestimate its frequency or probability (e.g., fearing plane crashes more than car accidents because plane crashes are more vivid in media, despite car accidents being statistically more common).
Framing: How information is presented and how it influences decisions. The same information can lead to different choices depending on how it's "framed" (e.g., a medical procedure described as having a "90% success rate" sounds more appealing than "a 10% failure rate," even though they convey the same statistics).
Language
A system of symbols (words, gestures, sounds) that allows us to communicate and understand each other.
Components of Language
Phonemes: The smallest distinctive sound units in a language. (e.g., the "ch" sound in "chat" or the "a" sound in "cat"). Different languages have different sets of phonemes.
Morphemes: The smallest units of language that carry meaning. These can be words (e.g., "dog," "run") or parts of words (e.g., prefixes like "un-" in "unhappy," suffixes like "-ing" in "running").
Grammar: The system of rules governing how we combine sounds, words, and sentences to communicate meaning.
Semantics: Rules for deriving meaning from sounds and words (e.g., "cat" refers to a feline animal).
Syntax: Rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences (e.g., "The cat sat on the mat" vs. "Sat cat the mat on the").
Language Development
Babbling Stage (around 4 months): Infants spontaneously utter a variety of sounds (e.g., "da-da," "ma-ma") that are often universal across languages.
One-Word Stage (around 1 year): Children speak in single words (e.g., "juice," "up"), often using holophrases (single words that convey an entire thought).
Two-Word Stage/Telegraphic Speech (around 2 years): Children speak mostly in two-word sentences, often nouns and verbs, like a telegram (e.g., "want juice," "go park"). They follow basic syntax rules.
Rapid Language Development (after 2 years): Children quickly acquire new vocabulary and begin forming longer, more complex sentences, often showing overgeneralization of grammar rules (e.g., "I goed to the store").
Theories of Language Development
B.F. Skinner (Behaviorist Perspective): Believed language is learned through operant conditioning (association, imitation, reinforcement). Children learn words and grammar by being rewarded for correct usage.
Noam Chomsky (Nativist Perspective): Argued that humans are born with an innate capacity for language, a "Language Acquisition Device (LAD)". He proposed a universal grammar, suggesting that all languages share fundamental rules, and children are biologically predisposed to learn them. This explains why children learn language so rapidly and effortlessly, even without explicit instruction.
Interactionist Perspective: Combines aspects of both Skinner and Chomsky, suggesting that language acquisition is a product of both innate biological predispositions and environmental learning experiences. Social interaction plays a crucial role.