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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