Cognition II Flashcards
three theories of imagery and their evidence
- Paivio’s dual coding hypothesis : info is represented in a verbal and imaginal (visual) code.
- concrete words are remembered better than abstract words - Conceptual - Propositional Hypothesis (Anderson & Bower) predicate (or propositional) calculus, analogue storage is beyond our capacity , storage likely to be un propositional format
- o____o - barbells and spectcles test
- transformations: (making a boat out of D and 4)
- size effect (Kosslyn): when you imagine two things, you’re faster at answering questions about the bigger one
- image scanning: when you imaging doing a task on an island, things that are farther away took longer - functional equivalence hypothesis (Shepard Kosslyn): mental imagery neither abstract propositional nor a simple analogue representation. relationships between objects in imagery are functionally equivalent to the relationships these objects have in the real world. Perception and imagery use the same cognitive mechanisms with imagery instigated top-down and perception bottom-up. mental rotation
- effects may be explained by demand characteristics (subjects behaving as they think they should)
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empirical reasons for the claim that imagery involves similar processes as perception
Strong evidence imagery involves similar processing (neurological pathway) as perception:
visual detection task (was there a line on screen?)
auditory task (was there a tone?)
do them while imagining a telephone ringing (aud) or imagining a scene(vis).
aud-aud & vis-vis many errors
aud-vis - no problem.
explain the findings of mental rotation studies
as rotation increases, so does reaction time (linear)
evidence for analogue representation because when it’s rotated it’s less analogue (looks more like the object)
describe links between memory and foresight
memory enables simulation of potential events.
past behaviour is best predictor for future events.
debate the claim that mental time travel is uniquely human
scrub jay bird would bury food and remember where it is but kept track of time because I knows how long it takes for a worm to go bad.
scepticism that birds just know semantically know what is where and whether it’s still good to eat. Or it could just be associative learning.
we can ask humans whether they remember of merely know, but it requires language. so alternatively study foresight:
being prepared matters: ecoli activating genes to digest maltose while still in lactose rich environment
individual learning: CS predicts arrival of US - short term prediction - some long term like the Garcia effect
MTT into the future? no evidence yet for domain general, flexible acts to secure remote future benefits (eg. opportunistic escape not planned).
Preparing for mutually exclusive possibilities: the tube with two ends, 4yo knows to use both hands, chimps usually just use one.
historical approaches to comparative cognition
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describe the clever hans phenomenon
The intelligence of the animal was actually just subtle cues from the instructor (in hans case it was unintentional)
Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis
social intelligence the prime mover for evolution. (primates became smarter through social pressures, not physical ones).
strong linear association between neocortex ratio and group size
results of research on MSR (Mirror Self Recognition)
children typically pass by 18mths, success in greater apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans)
lesser apes: gibbons
- n=17 marked with icing
- mirror exposure 5-6hrs
- motivation check (feed icing, surreptitiously mark limb with icing
none showed and mark-directed behaviour.
post test: marked ON vs. IN the mirror
- evidence of absence and not just absence of evidence.
argument by homology
homology = ancestry, analogy = bug wings and bird wings
- self recognition is linked to a common ancestor of orangutan, gorilla, humans, chimpanzee and baboon but not OW monkey or gibbons because they branched earlier.
phoneme
smallest unit of speech that makes a difference to meaning
phonology
how sounds are put together
the McGurk effect
acoustic and visual stimuli are mashed together in perception to give a different outcome.
morpheme
smallest unit of meaning (root words, prefixes, suffixes,)
syntax
rules by which words are structured into phrases and phrases into sentences
recursion
clause within clause
- tail (ends) or embedded (middle, get complicated quickly).
parsing
phrase could be interpreted different ways (not a case of comma placement)
Chomsky’s Universal Grammar
languages differ in surface structure, but underlying rules share many elements. this underlying structure reflects innate organising principle of cognition
pragmatics
how we use language indifferent settings (politely, sarcastically)
cooperative principle - Gricean Maximes (4)
WHAT ARE THEIR VIOLATIONS!?
1- quantity - no more no less info than needed
2- quality - truthful
3- relation - make contributions relevant to aims of the convo
4- manner - avoid obscure expressions and make your vocab contextually appropriate.
Language instinct
growth rather than learning
critical period
- Genie case study
- right hemisphere can take over left if damaged in early childhood (left damage is adult = aphasia)
property of the stimulus
-impossible to learn language from the info given, therefore must be biologically predisposed
- overgeneralisation like I runned home
role of learning
- phoneme selection
- grammatical parameter setting
-words acquired through association
BILINGUALISM
- children differentiate language as early as 2
- 2nd language difficult to lean in adulthood (evidence for crit. period).
- accent - suggests that phoneme acquisition is especially dependent on critical period.
GESTURAL LANGUAGE
- gestures accompany speech to convey analogue or additional info.
- language can be conveyed entirely by manual and facial gestures
- sign language of the deaf not recognised as fully syntactic, natural, language (same developmental stages like babbling)
- theory that language evolved originally from manual gesture and late switched to vocal mode (Corballis 1999)
What is mental rotation about?
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Symon’s interference hypothesis about dreaming
dreams mostly visual and kinaesthetic, not auditory, tactile or olfactory.
visual hallucinations okay because it’s dark and eyes are closed.
but you need unimpaired vigilance for hearing smell and touch to void predators etc.
Mentalese: the language of the mind
thinking can be verbal, imaginal and conceptual-propositional form
imagery engages some of the same cognitive resources as perception and shows some functional equivalence.
means-end reasoning
selecting appropriate tool even when problem is out of sight
filling ‘the gap’: Hominins
all of the hominins actually overlap in their existence, we’re also currently increasing the gap by exterminating the great apes.
Does language influence thought?
Saphir-Whorf Hypothesis
Linguistic Relativity
Strong version: you can’t think certain things in certain languages, because you don’t have the concepts to shape thought (little to support)
Weak version: certain thoughts are more difficult because they are clumsy to express in one’s native language.
- colour names a language has a small effect on colour organisation
- Brown & Lennenberg found that colours the one has words for are slightly easier to remember than noncodable ones.
- limits in number words (eg. Piraha: one, two, many) associated with limits in computing (though not estimating).
SUPPORTED: language you speak may bias you to think in certain ways.
Motor theory of speech perception
(LIberman) invariance lies in production, not in the acoustic signal
i.e. we hear sounds according to how we produce them
Behaviourism’s attempt to explain language and Chomsky’s reply
Skinner (1957) VERBAL BEHAVIOUR
- child utters sound at random, gets reinforced for approximations to correct
- language is shaped over time
Chomsky
-parents don’t do that: typically concerned with truth value not grammatically
eg. child saying ‘other one spoon’
Language acquisition
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Teaching Apes Language systems
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