Cognition & Perception

Question 1

What is taxonomic categorization?

Answer 1

stimuli are grouped according to the perceived similarity of their attributes (glove and scarf are both clothes – dog and rabbit are both animals)
Analytic thinking

Question 2

What is thematic categorization?

Answer 2

stimuli are grouped together on basis of causal, temporal, or spatial relationships among them (hand wears the glove – rabbit eats the carrot)
Holistic thinking

Question 3

What is analytic thinking?

Answer 3

Way of thinking about the world - focus on objects and their attributes
- objects exist independently of their context
- abstract rules explain and predict the behaviour of objects

Question 4

What is holistic thinking?

Answer 4

Way of thinking about the world as parts that are connected to each other
- focus on the relations between objects
- objects are perceived in terms of how they relate to context
- knowledge about behaviour of objects is based on experience

Question 5

What proximal causes might there be for these different thinking styles?

Answer 5

1. Socialisation - noun bias and the way parents communicate with their kids about objects
   ↪ The way we think of people (as having inner, unique attributes and as being independent from others) extends to the way we think of objects (as having unique properties and as being separate from the background context)
2. Ongoing (social) experiences - being exposed to cultural products that emphasize analytically perceived,* independent selves* (Superman being defined by his super power and his uniqueness even printed on his clothes) or holistically perceived, interdependent selves (the Power Rangers developing their full powers in unison with each other, and each playing a particular role)

Question 6

What distal causes might there be for these different thinking styles?

Answer 6

Philosophical traditions

• Western cultures influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy
  ↪ “The world is a collection of discrete, unchanging objects that can be categorized by reference to a set of universal properties” (Plato)
  ↪ Scientific discoveries in the framework of analytic thinking, e.g. gravity (objects have property of gravity)
  ↪ Development of a formal logic system; abstract rules; syllogisms
• Eastern cultures influenced by Ancient Chinese philosophy
  ↪ ‘‘The world consists of continually interacting substances’’ (Confucius)
  ↪ Scientific discoveries in a framework of holistic thinking: magnetism, acoustic resonance or the moon’s role in the tides (continuously interacting substances)
  ↪ Harmony among people & nature; interconnectedness; change

Question 7

What do we have to be careful when talking about how did thinking styles come about?

Answer 7

Important to keep in mind: Self-concepts don’t “cause” different thinking styles – they likely co-evolve / co-develop within people depending on their experiences
- E.g., talking about objects, using more nouns, and retelling the day with children from an i-perspective both require and afford an independent self and analytic thinking

Question 8

What is the ‘‘default’’ thinking style across the world?

Answer 8

Holistic thinking and people become more analytical thinkers through formal schooling and experience

Question 9

What do thinking styles affect?

Answer 9

1. Attention
2. Attribution
3. Reasoning
4. Tolerance of contradiction
5. Talking and thinking

Question 10

What is a task that examines how people’s attention is influenced by their thinking styles?

Answer 10

In the rod-and-frame task you have to align the rod so that it is vertical. This task requires that you ignore the misleading information of the frame and focus solely on the rod.

Question 11

How does analytic thinking affect attention?

Answer 11

• Attention is on different parts of a scene
• Objects separated from their background fields → Field independence
• Better at rod-and-frame task since they focus better on the individual parts

Question 12

How does holistic thinking affect attention?

Answer 12

• Attention is broad and across the entire scene
• Objects as bound to their backgrounds → Field dependence
• Worse at the rod-and-frame task since they look at the objects as one whole
• Another experiment: Japanese judgments of the target person’s emotional expression were influenced by the expressions of the people in the background. Not for Americans.

Question 13

What did research on eye tracking show whether analytic and holistic thinkers see things differently (is the input different) or are they processing the same information differently?

Answer 13

Eye tracking study of the Masuda emotion comics on the previous flashcard: Where are participants looking most of the time?

They are actually SEEING things differently: their eyes focus on different aspects, even when looking at identical scenes. Asians focus on the entire scene, while Westerners scan for focal objects and pay more attention to these. Our eye movements occur outside of our voluntary control → cultural differences in attention patterns are very deep
↪ Picture 1: the first milisecond almost all participants were focusing on the central figure (Jon) but in the second and third msec, Japanese participants focused way less on the central figure and look at the background as well

It has also been found in other studies that there is a higher number of saccades among Asians (quick gaze shifts between fixation points = more systematic scanning of entire scene) – saccadic movements are rather outside conscious control
=> People in different cultures are not seeing the same things when looking at identical scenes!

Question 14

What is the evidence for the effects of thinking styles on people’s attention to the world in portraits and landscape paintings?

Answer 14

Research on cultural products

Picture 2
- Left side: French artist Blanche → Larger figures serve to focus one’s attention on the portrayed individual. The figure dominates the scene and stands apart from the background
- Right side: Chinese artist who painted the Qing dynasty → Busier scene that includes a lot of information. The individuals remain firmly embedded in the context.

Picture 3
- Left side: Flemish artist Berckheyde → A lower horizon reduces the range of the scene that is visible → direct one’s attention to the foreground
- Right side: Japanese artist Hokusai → A higher horizon calls attention to the depth of the setting and allows for all the different objects in a scene to be seen in relation to each other → more complex background, with more contextual objects, busier scenes

Picture 4
- The same pattern of findings when kids were asked to draw a landscape (American child drawing on the left, Japanese on the right). East Asian art appears to be “busier” than Western art. The same is true for Facebook pictures, scientific posters, websites, and…

Question 15

What did research on daily scenes show about the effects of thinking styles on attention?

Article

Answer 15

Picture 5 - Japanese vs. U.S. scenes in cities of different sizes are more complex vs. simple and thus afford more holistic versus analytic perception

Question 16

What is attribution?

Answer 16

The process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events. One’s action is the product of a tension between environmental forces and one’s personal force
Example: A friend forgets your birthday. You can either assume that they are generally forgetful or not interested in you; or focus on the possible situational forces at play (e.g., them having been really busy at school)

Question 17

How does analytic thinking affect people’s attribution?

Answer 17

• Identify underlying attributes
• Consider people’s inner, stable qualities
• Dispositional attributions
• Likely to fall pray to fundamental attribution error

Question 18

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 18

The tendency to ignore situational information while focusing on dispositional information in explaining other people’s behavior

Question 19

How does holistic thinking affect people’s attribution?

Answer 19

• Identify situational influences
• Consider people’s changing relation with context
• Situational attributions

Question 20

What research shows the different effects of thinking styles on attribution?

Answer 20

At what age does the attribution error occur (Miller 1984)? Participants described situations in which others acted in prosocial or deviant ways; then they were asked to explain why the person behaved that way.
- the difference is very visible in adults, not so much in children (picture )

U.S. adults clearly show the fundamental attribution error: They give much more dispositional than situational attribution.
The Indian participants show reverse fundamental attribution error - they mostly disregarded the dispositional attributions and focus on the situational ones

Question 21

How does thinking style affect reasoning style?

Answer 21

Example with a picture of a flower and asked to which group does the flower belong to? (Picture 6)
Group 1: because all the flowers in this group have a straight stem → rule-based reasoning (more prominent among european-american participants)
↪ Universal abstract rules and laws are important in analytic thinking

Group 2: because the target flower resembles most of the flowers in Group 2, most of them have round petals, one leaf, only one circle but none of these features characterize all of the flowers, and so the resemblances cannot become a rule → associative reasoning/ family resemblance (more prominant in east asian participants)
↪ Considering relationships among objects and events is important in holistic thinking

Almost half of Asian American participants used family resemblence and half used rule-based reasoning

Question 22

How does thinking style influence tolerance of contradiction?

Answer 22

Aristotle believe in law of non-contradiction (“No statement can be both true and false, and thus “A” can not equal “not A”.)
↪ Related to change that it occurs in linear ways, is predictable and static

On the other hand, Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism - opposing truths can be simultaneously accepted → acceptance of contradiction or naive dialecticism (‘‘To shrink something, you need to expand it first. To weaken something, you need to strengthen it first. To abolish something, you need to flourish it first. To take something, you need to give it first.”)
↪ change is fluid, unoredictable, non-linear, even change changes
↪ Reality is in constant flux. Fluidity of reality is captured by the T’ai chi (yin and yang, the moon and the sun, the darkness of the night will yield the brightness of the day, which will lead to the darkness again, and the cycle will continue to repeat).
↪ Also, think of the higher acceptance of negative emotions in Japan: Being overly happy may be a prelude to being much less happy before long

Question 23

How could the difference in thinking style influences talking and thinking for example in a classroom?

Answer 23

Is an „interactive” teaching style helpful for all students? What about those students with more interdependent selves?

Heejung Kim argues that the focus put on talking in general, and talking in classrooms in particular, is grounded in Western cultural practices.
Observation in some U.S classrooms: Students of Asian decent speak up less in class than American students. Does this mean they are less motivated/ engaged?

Question 24

How does analytic thinking affect ‘talking and thinking?’

Answer 24

• Focusing on separate parts, each part can be described separately and sequentially
• Talking is intertwined with thinking
  ‘‘There is no greater skill than being a good debater’’ - Homer
  ‘‘Knowledhe exists within people and can only be revealed through verbal reasoning’’ - Socrates

Question 25

How does holistic thinking affect ‘talking and thinking?’

Answer 25

• Attention to the whole, not easy to describe multiple relations at once
• Talking may interfere with thinking
  Important to remember that less talking does not necessarily mean less communication! Communication can work along non-verbal channels
  ‘‘An empty cart rattles loudly.’’ - Korean proverb
  ‘‘He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know.’’ - Lao Tzu

Question 26

What reserach shows the difference in thinking styles on talking and thinking?

Answer 26

Picture 7
Participants completed a version of Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Kim, 2002); the first 10 items without any instruction, the second 10 items either in the “thinking aloud” or “articulatory suppression” condition. How well did they do on the second compared to the first part? (A negative score indicates a worse result in the second part)

Asian Americans did worse when thinking aloud, because sequentially ordering their thoughts goes against their holistic reasoning; however, they are unaffected by the task of reciting the alphabet, because a verbal task was unrelated to how they solve Raven’s matrices and did not cause interference.

European Americans did just as well when they thought out loud – speaking their thoughts in sequential order was no different from what they were doing anyways. However, in the articulatory suppression condition, the task interfered with their (presumably verbal) thinking

Question 27

How does explicit and implicit communication differs between low-context and high context cultures?

Answer 27

Low-context cultures (independent self):
- Less involvement between speakers, less shared information, loosness, less clear rules governing social interaction
- Focus on the verbal content of the message
- Explicit, direct communication
- Might be due to lot of migration in the past where people didn’t share a common ground on lot of things so everything had to be said explicitly for no misunderstandings to occur

High-context culture (interdependent self):
- Deep involvement between speakers, more shared information, tighter
- Non-verbal (gestures, facial expressions, tone)
- Implicit, indirect communication

E.g. signs in the US are very colorful and explicit, whereas in Belgium (high context culture), the signs are small and not as informative (assuming that people know their way since it’s only for the students of that school)

Question 28

What is linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorfian hypothesis)?

Answer 28

The idea that the language a person speaks has an influence on this person’s cognition

Two versions of this hypothesis:
1. Strong version - language coerces thoughts; the words that are available to people determine how they think
2. Weak version - language influences thought; the words that are available to people influence how they think

The strong version has been proven wrong but there is evidence for the weak version through 4 examples: colour perception, odor perception, spatial perception, numerical cognition

Question 29

Why could research into colour perception explain how language influences our thinking?

Answer 29

A colour wheel (picture 8) is actually a continuum of colours, it doesn’t have distinct categories. However, when we are asked to label the colours, we group them in categories that are actually not there
- so if people label a continuous variable differently (e.g. due to experience), do they also process info about colour differently (recognition of memory of colour)?

Perceptually: cotinous variable
Linguistically: categorical variable (i.e. colour labels)

Question 30

How does number of colour labels differ between cultures?

Answer 30

There is cultural variation in number of colour labels but it seems systematic (as colour terms increase across languages, the distinctions are similar; focal points are similar)
↪ The first two that are named in every culture are black and white, then red, then either green or yellow, then blue… picture 9
↪ Indication of universalism of colour perception?

Question 31

What research shows evidence against the Whorfian hypothesis?

Answer 31

Rosch Heider (1972): Color recognition/memory task with the Dugum Dani (2 color terms - dark and warm) and English speaking U.S. Americans
- Remembered colors in similar ways despite their very different color terms
- Despite having only two color terms, the Dani found it easier to learn and to recognize the focal colors (best examples) of the eight basic chromatic categories of English proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969). Her research shows evidence of superior learning and memory for focal colors by participants who did not code the categories linguistically
- Also Dani made confusions in memory that were similar to those of English speaking participants, rather than being based on their own color names.

However!…

Question 32

How did Roberson et al. replicated Heider’s study?

Answer 32

Berinmo: Language spoken also in Papua New Guinea
If there is an influence of linguistic categories (color labels) on the perception of colors, then cultures that divide the color spectrum in a different way should show evidence for categorical perception (example of phonemes “ba” and “pa”): they should perceive colors that fall between their categories differently.

Picture 10
Experiment set-up: Chip 1 and Chip 2 were equally distant from the Target Chip in terms of hue. Most English speakers select Chip 1 because both the Target Chip and Chip 1 fall within the English category of green, whereas Chip 2 is usually perceived as blue. (picture 11)
(Picture 12) Berinmo speakers are equally likely to select either chip because both Chip 1 and Chip 2 fall within the same color category (nol)
(Picture 13) English speakers are equally likely to select either chip.
Most Berinmo speakers select Chip 1 because both the Target Chip and Chip 1 fall within the Berinmo category of nol, whereas Chip 2 is usually perceived as wor.

Question 33

What are the conclusions from Roberson’s study?

Answer 33

Evidence in favour of Whorfian hypothesis
Cultural variation in learning and remembering of colors
New methods showed that color categories affect perception – people recognize colors more in line with respective terms

Question 34

Why has majority of research been conducted on colour rather than odor?

Answer 34

Partly because the languages that the majority of researchers speak, do not have a lot of terms for odor, and doing research on how odor terms influence odor perception seems of little interest

Question 35

What does research show into codability of odors of english speakers and Jahai (Malaysian tribe)?

Answer 35

Odors are expressible in language, as long as your language provides you with terminology
English speakers show poor codability for odors in comparison to color (that is, there was little agreement between English speaking participants), thus replicating previous studies. They use predominantly source-based descriptions for odors, but abstract descriptions for colors. Jahai speakers show equal codability for odors and colors, using abstract terms for both. (Picture 15)
Is it possible that if English speakers learned a set of olfaction words would also become better at recognizing different odors?

Question 36

How do people differ in spatial perception depending on what kind of orientation language they use?

Answer 36

Two kinds of orientation language:
Relativistic orientation: locations are indicated with words relative to the speaker (left, right, front, back) - egocentric perception (e.g. Dutch speaker)
Absolute orientation: locations are indicated with words independent of the speaker (e.g., North, South, ..) - geocentric perception (e.g. Guugu - Australian tribe)

If language determines restructuring human cognition, spatial perception/ orientation might then also be used in non-linguistic cognitive tasks
E.g. Levinson, 1997: recreation of scene (cow, pig, human) differently - asked to arrange the things in the same orientation as the shown object - arrangement of world is perceived differently; dutch arranged egocentrically disregarding the world’s orientation (e.g. North, south…) - (egocentric perception), whereas Australian tribe arrange it win regards to the world’s sides (geocentric perception)

Question 37

How do the differences in spatial perception resulting in differences when it comes to talking about time?

Answer 37

The spatial perception and the writing system affect the way people perceive the passing of time
Time is grounded in space: “we are looking forward to a brighter tomorrow, falling behind schedule, or proposing theories ahead of our time”, we are relying on spatial terms to talk about time.
- In English time passes from left to right (regardless of one’s own spatial orientation)
- In Arabic time passes from right to left
- Australian Aborigines (Pormpuraaw) see time as passing from East to West (movement of sun) – thus depending on own orientation in room (if they are facing South they do similar to English speakers, if they are facing North they do similar to Arabs)
In an experiment, they were asked to arrange photos of evolution and the order differed between english, arabic and aborigine speakers (picture 17)

Question 38

How do people from different cultures differ on numerical cognition?

Answer 38

Picture 18: Tasks A through D required the participant to match the lower array presented by the author using a line of batteries; task E was similar, but involved the unfamiliar task of copying lines drawn on paper; task F was a matching task where the participant saw the numerical display for only about 1 s before it was hidden behind a screen; task G involved putting nuts into a can and withdrawing them one by one; (participants responded after each withdrawal as to whether the can still contained nuts or was empty); task H involved placing candy inside a box with a number of fish drawn on the lid (this was then hidden and brought out again with another box with one more or one less fish on the lid, and participants had to choose which box contained the candy).

Piraha have rough quantity estimation skills (they know that 12 is a larger quantity than 8), but they cannot distinguish between more similar quantities (such as btw 8 and 9 batteries). This suggests that rough quantity estimation skills might be innate whereas numerical skills beyond 2 are acquired through cultural experiences.

Pirahã is the indigenous language of the isolatedPirahã peopleofAmazonas,Brazil. The Pirahã live along theMaici River, a tributary of theAmazon.