Chapter 6Cognition

Language

• Communication: the sending and receiving of information– Language: the primary mode of

communication among humans• A systematic way of communicating

information using symbols and rules for combining them

• Speech: oral expression of language– Approximately 5,000 spoken languages exist today.

Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

• Language acquisition – learning vs. inborn capacities – Behaviorism’s language theory

• People speak as they do because they have been reinforced for doing so.

• Behaviorists assumed children were relatively passive.

• The problem with this theory is that it does not fit the evidence.

• Operant conditioning principles do not play the primary role in language development.

Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

– The nativist perspective: • Language development proceeds according to an inborn

program. • Language Acquisition Device (Noam Chomsky): humans are

born with specialized brain structures (Language Acquisition Device) that facilitates the learning of language.

– Interactionist perspectives: • Propose environmental and biological factors interact together

to affect the course of language development. • Social interactionist perspective strongly influenced by Lev

Vygotsky’s writings

Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

• Assessing the three perspectives on language acquisition:– General consensus:

• Behaviorists place too much emphasis on conditioning principles.

• Nativists don’t give enough credit to environmental influences.

• Interactionist approaches may offer best possible solution.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive

Development - Four Stages

• Jean Piaget contended that cognitive development occurs as children organize their structures of knowledge to adapt to their environment.

• A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge that people use to understand and interpret information.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive

Development - Four Stages

• Acquisition of knowledge occurs through the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation.

– Assimilation: the process of absorbing new information into existing schemas

– Accommodation: the process of changing existing schemas to absorb new information

Piaget’s Stages

• Sensorimotor stage (birth–2 years): – experience the world through actions (grasping,

looking, touching, and sucking) • One of the major accomplishments at this stage is the

development of object permanence.

• Preoperational stage (2–6 years):– represent things with words and images but

having no logical reasoning

Piaget’s Stages

• Concrete operational stage (7–11 years):– think logically about concrete events;

understanding concrete analogies and performing arithmetic operations

• Formal operational stage (12 years–adulthood): – develop abstract reasoning

The Three-Mountains Problem

Conservation

Conservation of Mass

Conservation of Number

Piaget’s Conclusions Have Been Questioned

• Development may be less “stagelike” than he proposed.

• Children may achieve capabilities earlier than he thought.

• All adults may not reach formal operational thought.

Evaluating Piaget

• Despite criticisms, most developmental psychologists agree that Piaget has generally outlined:– An accurate view of many of the significant changes that

occur in mental functioning with increasing childhood maturation; and

– That children are not passive creatures merely being molded by environmental forces, but that they are actively involved in their own cognitive growth.

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Does language determine thought? • Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis

– Proposed that the structure of language determines the structure of thought (without a word to describe an experience, you cannot think about it).

– However, research indicates that just because a language lacks terms for stimuli does not mean that language users cannot perceive features of the stimuli.

– The answer is no. Most psychologists believe in a weaker version of Whorf’s hypothesis—that language can influence thinking.

Thinking

• Thinking—cognition– The mental activity of knowing– The processes through which knowledge is

acquired– The processes through which problems

are solved

Concept Formation

• Concept: a mental grouping of objects, ideas, or events that share common properties – Concepts enable people to store memories in an

organized fashion.

• Categorization is the process of forming concepts.– We form some concepts by identifying defining

features.

– Problem with forming concepts by definition is that many familiar concepts have uncertain or fuzzy boundaries.

Concept Formation

• Thus, categorizing has less to do with features that define all members of a concept and has more to do with features that characterize the typical member of a concept.

• The most representative members of a concept are known as prototypes.

When Is It a “Cup,” and When Is It a “Bowl”?

Fuzzy Boundaries

• Determine whether something belongs to a group by comparing it with the prototype.

• Objects accepted and rejected define the boundaries of the group or concept.

• This is different for different people.

Problem-Solving Strategies

• Common problem-solving strategies: – Trial and error: trying one possible solution

after another until one works – Algorithm: following a specific rule or step-

by-step procedure that inevitably produces the correct solution

– Heuristic: following a general rule of thumb to reduce the number of possible solutions

– Insight: sudden realization of how a problem can be solved

“Internal” Obstacles Can Impede Problem Solving

• Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek information that supports our beliefs, while ignoring disconfirming information

• Mental set: the tendency to continue using solutions that have worked in the past, even though a better alternative may exist

• Functional fixedness: the tendency to think of objects as functioning in fixed and unchanging ways and ignoring other less obvious ways in which they might be used

The Candle Problem

Decision-Making Heuristics

• Representativeness heuristic:– the tendency to make decisions based on how closely

an alternative matches (or represents) a particular prototype

– Availability heuristic:• the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of

an event in terms of how easy it is to think of examples of that event

Decision-Making Heuristics

Five conditions most likely to lead to heuristic use:

• People don’t have time to engage in systematic analysis.

• People are overloaded with information.• People consider issues to be not very important. • People have little information to use in making a

decision.• Something about the situation primes a given

heuristic.

Intelligence

• Intelligence consists of the mental abilities necessary to adapt to and shape the environment. – Intelligence involves not only reacting to

one’s surroundings but also actively forming them.

Early IQ Testing Shaped by Racial/Cultural Stereotypes

British Sir Francis Galton founded the eugenics movement to improve the hereditary characteristics of society.

• Eugenics proposed that:– White and upper-middle-class individuals—who were assumed to

have high mental ability—should marry and have children.

– Lower-class Whites and members of other races —who were assumed to have low mental ability—should not reproduce.

Early IQ Testing Shaped by Racial/Cultural Stereotypes

• Unlike Galton, French psychologist Alfred Binet:– Made no assumptions about why intelligence differences exist.

Believed intellectual ability could be increased through education.

• Over Binet’s objections, American Henry Goddard used Binet’s intelligence test to identify the feebleminded so they could be segregated and prevented from having children.

Aptitude & Achievement Tests

• Two categories of mental abilities measures:

– Aptitude tests: measure capacity to learn new skill

– Achievement tests: measure what is already learned• Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT): measures learned

verbal and mathematical skills– SAT scores influenced by quality of test takers’ schools

• Difference in intent/use of the test

Aptitude & Achievement Tests

– Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test: the widely used American revision of the original French intelligence test.

• Intelligence quotient (IQ): originally, the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100 (MA/CA 100).

• Today, IQ is calculated by comparing how a person’s performance deviates from the average score of her or his same-age peers, which is 100.

– Wechsler Intelligence Scales: the most widely used set of intelligence tests, containing both verbal and performance (nonverbal) subscales

Test Standardization

• Process of establishing uniform procedures for administering a test and interpreting its scores

– Reliability: the degree to which it yields consistent results

– Validity: the degree to which a test measures what it is designed to measure

Content validity

Predictive validity: degree to which test results predict other behaviors or measures

The Normal Distribution

Are intelligence tests culturally biased?

– Critics claim that Whites and higher SES individuals have had greater exposure than ethnic minority and lower-class individuals to topics on most commonly used IQ tests.

– Supporters of IQ tests respond that although IQ tests do not provide an unbiased measure of cognitive abilities, they do provide a fairly accurate measure of academic and occupational success.

What is Intelligence? One or

Several Distinct Abilities?

• One of the primary questions about the nature of intelligence is whether it is best conceptualized as:– A general, unifying capacity or – Many separate and relatively independent

abilities.

What is Intelligence? One or

Several Distinct Abilities?

• British psychologist Charles Spearman concluded there was a general intelligence, or g, factor underlying all mental abilities.

• Louis Thurstone argued there were seven primary mental abilities: – Reasoning, verbal fluency, verbal

comprehension, perceptual speed, spatial skills, numerical computation, and memory

What is Intelligence? One or

Several Distinct Abilities?

– Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences contends that intelligence consists of at least eight independent intelligences:

• Linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal, and intrapersonal

What is Intelligence? One or Several Distinct Abilities?

• Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence proposes that intelligence consists of analytical, creative, and practical abilities.

• Research still supports both perspectives:– There is evidence that we have distinct mental

abilities and a general intelligence factor.

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

People Differ in Their Neural Complexity & Quickness

– Intelligence is partly based on neural complexity, quickness, and efficiency.

– Additional studies suggest that smarter brains become more efficient with practice.

– These findings suggest that intelligence is a product of both our biology (nature) and our experience (nurture).

People Differ in Their Neural Complexity & Quickness

• Extremes of intelligence– Diagnosis of mental retardation given to people

who:

• Have an IQ score below 70 and also have difficulty adapting to the routine demands of independent living.

• Only 1-2 percent of the population meets both criteria.

• Males outnumber females by 50 percent

People Differ in Their Neural Complexity & Quickness

• Extremes of intelligence– About 75 percent of mental retardation cases

thought to result from unfavorable social conditions or subtle and difficult-to-detect physiological effects

– Remaining 25 percent of cases considered to have a specific organic cause, such as fetus or infant exposed to harmful substances

• Down syndrome caused by an extra chromosome coming from either the mother’s egg (the primary source) or the father’s sperm.

People Differ in Their Neural Complexity & Quickness

• The gifted category used for IQs above 130 or 135

• U.S. federal law designates that giftedness should be based on superior potential in any of six areas:

• General intelligence, specific aptitudes (for example, math and writing), performing arts, athletics, creativity, and leadership

Twin and Adoption Studies of Intelligence

• Twin studies indicate that the average correlation of identical twins’ IQ scores is .86, while fraternal twins’ correlation is .60.

– Fraternal twins—who are genetically no more similar than regular siblings, but who are exposed to more similar experiences due to their identical ages—have more similar IQ scores than other siblings.

– In addition, nontwin siblings raised together have more similar IQs (r = .47) than siblings raised apart (r = .24).

The Nature-Nurture Debate

Racial Differences in IQ Scores

Sources: Data from N. J. Mackintosh. (1998). IQ and human intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neisser, U. (1998). The rising curve: Long-term gains in IQ and related measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Plant-Pot Analogy