CHAPTER 9 COGNITION AND LANGUAGE LECTURE NOTES Cognition o Thinking gaining knowledge and dealing with knowledge Cognitive Psychology o Studies how they get knowledge how they imagine and how they solve problems Language acquisition and organization It is not as easy as asking someone what they are thinking Sometime people make mistakes with what they think or experience Sometimes people don t know what they think or experience Mental Imagery o Shepard and Metzler Studies how people solve problems They hypothesized that the time it takes people to rotate mental images is the same as if they were rotating a real image The further it has to be rotated the longer it would take to do Categorization o The easiest way we categorize is by using yes no o Some argue that categories are best defined by familiar or typical examples Prototypes typical example Some things do not have prototypes Conceptual Networks and Priming o We naturally organize information into hierarchies Animal Bird Sparrow Measured by the delay in responding to certain Spreading Activation Cross cultural studies of concepts Words do not translate exactly Arranged pictures of objects into groups of similar items similar categories but different names People speaking different languages do not think very differently Attention Limits o Change blindness The frequent failure to detect changes in parts of a scene If changes occur suddenly we but if the change is slow or when you are not watching then Change deafness the frequent failure to detect changes in speaking The point is that we remember the gist of things but not many details Attentional Blink o During a brief time after perceiving one stimulus it is difficult to attend to something else Expertise Practice makes nearly perfect 10 years of concentrated practice expertise Experts are made not born Extremely impressive only in their area of specialization Problem Solving Understand problem Generate one or more hypotheses Test the hypotheses Check results Algorithms test out every possible hypothesis Heuristics Strategies for simplifying a problem or for guiding an investigation Errors in Human Cognition o Overconfidence believe one s opinion or predictions are highly correct wheni n fact they are not o Confirmation Bias We accept something and THEN look for evidence to support it rather than looking for another explanation o Functional Fixedness Tendency to adhere to a single approach or a single way of using an item Language o Many species have language yet none have The ability to express new ideas The ability to generate sentences that no one else has ever said before Transformational Grammar o A system for converting a deep structure into a surface structure o Deep Structure o Surface structure Non Human Precursors to Language o Vocal chords o Chimps are trained to use language using symbols These are mostly used to and are not strung together in sentences Language in Non Humans o Chimpanzees Vocal cords are poorly adapted to making voice sounds Learned sign language Washoe 100 words o Bonobos Specie of chimps that has been very good at learning language Can use symbols to name objects no request Describe past events Creative request 2 2 5 year old child Their abilities are approximately at the level of a 2 2 5 year old child Interestingly learning by observing humans is the fastest way for chimps to learn language Language in Humans o Language is not synonymous with overall intelligence you do not need one for the other Language Acquisition Device o A built in mechanism for acquiring language It is still unclear if we are born with concepts and primitive grammar or if we are just born with the ability to learn them Language and the Brain o 2 brain areas are responsible for language Broca s area Broca s aphasia o Inarticulate speech and difficulty with both using and understanding grammatical devices Wernicke s area Wernicke s aphasia o Difficulty recalling the names of objetc and impaired comprehension o Speech is often nonsensical Language Development o By age 3 months most infants can use random voaclizations One of the first is muh o By 1 5 years most infants know about 50 words but can t link words together o By 2 most children can make short phrases that are grammatically inaccurate allgone outside o By 3 children can generate full sentences Not very good yet at forming negative sentences o By 4 speech is competence Exposure to no language or multiple ones o Deaf children exposed to no language at all will invent their own sign language As they grow older the system becomes more complex If no one responds to the language they eventually abandon it and become language less o Critical time to learn is before 12 Bilingualism o Able to use two language about equally well Brain activity is identical to that of people who know 1 language Gains include increased cognitive flexibility Intelligence Internal capacity that accounts for individual differences in mental test performance