7.1 What is Cognition?

Cognition

• Cognition: thinking; encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgment, language, and memory.

• Cognitive psychology: the field of psychology dedicated to examining how people think; attempts to explain how and why we think the way we do by studying the interactions among human thinking, emotion, creativity, language, and problem solving, in addition to other cognitive processes.

Concepts and Prototypes

• One technique used by the brain to organize information is concepts.

  • Concepts: categories or groupings of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories

    • Concepts are informed by our semantic memory and are present in every aspect of our lives

    • Concepts can be complex and abstract

• Another technique used by the brain to organize information is the identification of prototypes for the concepts you have developed.

  • Prototype: the best example or representation of a concept.

Natural and Artificial Concepts

• In psychology, concepts can be divided into two categories, natural and artificial.

  • Natural concepts: concepts created “naturally” through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences.

  • Artificial concept: a concept that is defined by a specific set of characteristics.

    • The use of artificial concepts to define an idea is crucial to communicating with others and engaging in complex thought.

Schemata

• Schema: a mental construct consisting of a cluster or collection of related concepts

  • When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate assumptions about the person or object being observed.

• Schemata: a method of organizing information that allows the brain to work more efficiently.

  • It helps you fill in gaps in the information you receive from the world around you.

• Role schema: makes assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will behave

• Event schema or cognitive script: a set of behaviors that can feel like a routine.

  • Since event schemata are automatic, they can be difficult to change.

7.2 Language

• Language: a communication system that involves using words and systematic rules to organize those words to transmit information from one individual to another.

• While language is a form of communication, not all communication is language.

  • Many species communicate with one another through their postures, movements, odors, or vocalizations.

Components of Language

• Language has specific components: a lexicon and grammar.

  • Lexicon: the words of a given language; a language’s vocabulary.

  • Grammar: the set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon.

• Words are formed by combining the various phonemes that make up the language.

  • Phoneme: a basic sound unit of a given language

    • Different languages have different sets of phonemes.

  • Phonemes are combined to form morphemes

  • Morphemes: the smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning

• We use semantics and syntax to construct language. Semantics and syntax are part of a language’s grammar.

  • Semantics: the process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words

  • Syntax: the way words are organized into sentences

• We apply the rules of grammar to organize the lexicon in creative ways that allow us to communicate information about both concrete and abstract concepts.

• The flexibility that language provides to communicate different types of information makes language a distinct mode of communication among humans.

Language Development

• We are born with a biological predisposition to acquire a language

• There’s a critical period for language acquisition, such that this proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life; generally, as people age, the ease with which they acquire and master new languages diminishes

  • Children begin to learn about language from a very early age

  • Newborns show preference for their mother’s voice and appear to be able to discriminate between the language spoken by their mother and other languages.

  • Babies are attuned to the languages being used around them and show preferences for videos of faces that are moving in synchrony with the audio of spoken language versus videos that do not synchronize with the audio.

  • Babies can discriminate among the sounds that make up a language early on

    • They can differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, even those that don’t occur in the languages that are used in their environments. However, by the time that they are about 1, they can only discriminate among those phonemes that are used in the language or languages in their environments

• Babbling stage: the time where babies tend to produce single syllables that are repeated over and over.

  • It’s unlikely that the babies are trying to communicate; they’re just as likely to babble when they are alone as when they are with others

• One word stage: a child’s first word is uttered sometime between the ages of 1 year to 18 months, and for the next few months, the child will only produce one-word utterances.

  • The child’s early vocabulary is limited to familiar objects or events, often nouns. Although children in this stage only make one-word utterances, these words often carry larger meaning

• As a child’s lexicon grows, they begin to utter simple sentences and acquire new vocabulary at a very rapid pace.

  • They begin to demonstrate a clear understanding of the specific rules that apply to their language(s).

• Overgeneralization: an extension of a language rule to an exception to the rule.

Language and Thought

• Psychologists have long investigated the question of whether language shapes thoughts and actions, or whether our thoughts and beliefs shape our language.

• Two researchers, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf wanted to understand how the language habits of a community encourage members of that community to interpret language in a particular manner. Sapir and Whorf proposed that language determines thought.

  • Researchers have since identified this view as too absolute, pointing out a lack of empiricism behind what Sapir and Whorf proposed

• Linguistic determinism: the idea that language influences the way that we think

7.3 Problem Solving

Problem-Solving Strategies

• Problem-solving strategy: a plan of action used to find a solution.

• Different strategies have different action plans associated with them.

• Trial and error: try different solutions until you’ve solved your problem.

• Algorithm: a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome

• Heuristic: a general problem-solving framework; mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems.

  • Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met:

    • When one is faced with too much information

    • When the time to make a decision is limited

    • When the decision to be made is unimportant

    • When there is access to very little information to use in making the decision

    • When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind in the same moment

  • Working backwards: a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result.

  • Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps.

Pitfalls to Problem Solving

• Mental set: where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but isn’t working now.

• Functional fixedness: a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for.

• Anchoring bias: when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem.

• Confirmation bias: the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs.

• Hindsight bias: to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t.

• Representative bias: a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something

• Availability heuristic: a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision**.**

7.4 What Are Intelligence and Creativity?

Classifying Intelligence

• Crystallized intelligence: characterized as acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it.

  • Helps you overcome concrete, straightforward problems

• Fluid intelligence: the ability to see complex relationships and solve problems.

  • Helps you tackle complex, abstract challenges in your daily life

• Triarchic theory of intelligence: sees intelligence as comprised of three parts: practical, creative, and analytical intelligence.

• Practical intelligence: you find solutions that work in your everyday life by applying knowledge based on your experiences

• Analytical intelligence: academic problem solving and computations; demonstrated by an ability to analyze, evaluate, judge, compare, and contrast.

• Creative intelligence: marked by inventing or imagining a solution to a problem or situation.

• Multiple Intelligences Theory: each person possesses at least eight intelligences. Among these eight intelligences, a person typically excels in some and falters in others

• Emotional intelligence: the ability to understand the emotions of yourself and others, show empathy, understand social relationships and cues, and regulate your own emotions and respond in culturally appropriate ways

  • People with high emotional intelligence typically have well-developed social skills.

• Intelligence can also have different meanings and values in different cultures.

  • Some cultures place a high value on working together as a collective. In these cultures, the importance of the group supersedes the importance of individual achievement. When you visit such a culture, how well you relate to the values of that culture exemplifies your cultural intelligence.

Creativity

• Creativity: the ability to generate, create, or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities.

• Creativity is often assessed as a function of one’s ability to engage in divergent thinking.

• Divergent thinking: thinking “outside the box;” it allows an individual to arrive at unique, multiple solutions to a given problem.

• Convergent thinking: the ability to provide a correct or well-established answer or solution to a problem.

7.5 Measures of Intelligence

Measuring Intelligence

• Alfred Binet was asked by the French government to develop an intelligence test to use on children to determine which ones might have difficulty in school; it included many verbally based tasks.

  • Louis Terman, a Stanford professor, modified Binet’s work by standardizing the administration of the test and tested thousands of different-aged children to establish an average score for each age. As a result, the test was normed and standardized.

• Standardization: the manner of administration, scoring, and interpretation of results is consistent.

• Norming: giving a test to a large population so data can be collected comparing groups, such as age groups.

• Norming and standardizing the test ensures that new scores are reliable.

• David Wechsler, a psychologist, developed a new IQ test in the United States.

• Wechsler combined several subtests from other intelligence tests used between 1880 and World War I. This combination of subtests became one of the most extensively used intelligence tests in the history of psychology. There are three intelligence tests credited to Wechsler. These tests are periodically normed and standardized as a means of recalibration.

• Flynn effect: the observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ than the last.

• The WISC-V is composed of 14 subtests, which comprise five indices, which then render an IQ score.

  • The five indices are Verbal Comprehension, Visual Spatial, Fluid Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed.

  • When the test is complete, individuals receive a score for each of the five indices and a Full Scale IQ score.

The Bell Curve

• Bell curve: a graph in the general shape of a bell.

• When the bell curve is used in psychological testing, the graph demonstrates a normal distribution of a trait, in this case, intelligence, in the human population. Many human traits naturally follow the bell curve.

• Without a large sample size, it’s less likely that the bell curve will represent the wider population.

• Representative sample: a subset of the population that accurately represents the general population.

• Standard deviations: how data are dispersed in a population and give context to large data sets.

• The bell curve uses the standard deviation to show how all scores are dispersed from the average score.

• A score of 70 or below indicates significant cognitive delays. When these are combined with major deficits in adaptive functioning, a person is diagnosed with having an intellectual disability it has four subtypes: mild, moderate, severe, and profound

• People are considered gifted if they have an IQ score of 130 or higher, or superior intelligence in a particular area.

Why Measure Intelligence?

• Without IQ testing—or another measure of intelligence—children and adults needing extra support might not be identified effectively.

7.6 The Source of Intelligence

High Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?

• Some researchers believe that intelligence is a trait inherited from a person’s parents. At the same time, other psychologists believe that intelligence is shaped by a child’s developmental environment.

• Range of Reaction: the theory that each person responds to the environment in a unique way based on their genetic makeup.

  • Your genetic potential is a fixed quantity, but whether you reach your full intellectual potential is dependent upon the environmental stimulation you experience, especially in childhood.

  • A challenge to determining the origins of high intelligence is our human social structures. Some ethnic groups perform better on IQ tests than others—and it is likely that the results do not have much to do with the quality of each ethnic group’s intellect. The same is true for socioeconomic status.

What are Learning Disabilities?

• Learning disabilities: cognitive disorders that affect different areas of cognition, particularly language or reading.

• Learning disabilities are not the same thing as intellectual disabilities.

• Often, learning disabilities are not recognized until a child reaches school age.

• They often affect children with average to above-average intelligence.

• They tend to exhibit comorbidity with other disorders, like ADHD.

• Dysgraphia: a learning disability that results in a struggle to write legibly.

• Dyslexia: an inability to correctly process letters.

  • The neurological mechanism for sound processing does not work properly in someone with dyslexia. As a result, dyslexic children may not understand sound-letter correspondence.