Cognitive Psych - Thinking, language and intelligence Flashcards
Nature vs Nurture
- Chomsky
○ Language is innate
Language acquisition device (LAD) - Skinner
○ Language is learned
Operant conditioning (reinforcement and punishment)
Emergentist view of language acquisition
- Language as an emergent behaviour
A complex phenomena that arises from the interactions of underlying processes but cannot be deduced or explained from the nature and logic of these properties
Multilingualism and cognition a century ago
○ View was extremely negative (believed that bilingualism would impair intelligence)
Multilingualism and cognition in the past 50 years
- Have accumulated evidence to the contrary
“Mental flexibility” (Pearl and Lambert) - Advantages in executive control
Mixed evidence -> bilingual advantage now being questioned - May contribute to “cognitive reserve”
Ex. studies examining the onset of dementia in Toronto hospital patients
Aphasia
- Language impairment affecting the production and/or comprehension of speech
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Linguistic determinism (strong form) vs. linguistic relativism (weak form)
Boroditsky et al
- People that speak languages that use arbitrary gender classification (french, spanish, italian…) vs people that do not (english)
- Asking how they would describe words
Knowledge representation
- A representation is anything that stands in for, or corresponds to, something else
- Ex. a map is a representation of city streets, a portrait is a representation of a person
Mental representation
A hypothetical “internal” cognitive symbol that represents external reality
Analogical representations
- Representations which maintain some of the physical characteristics of the actual object
Ex. an image of a princess
Symbolic representations
- Representations which do not correspond to the physical characteristics of actual objects
Ex. the word princes
Mental images
○ They allow us to answer questions about objects that are not in our presence
○ Also allows us to solve problems
○ We can manipulate these mental images
Ex. is this letter a mirror image or not
Categorization
The process of grouping things based on shared information
Classical categorization
- Objects are categorized according to a certain set of rules or specific set of features
- AKA the defining attribute model
- Membership within a category determined on an all-or-none basis
Ex. “A triangle is a figure with three angles and three sides”
Problems with classical categorization
- We often make exceptions to our rules
- Some attributes are more important for defining category membership than others
- Some concepts appear to be better category members than others
Concept
- A mental representation that groups objects, events, or relations around common themes
Prototype model
- Objects are categorized according to how closely they resemble the “prototype” (or best example) of the category
Ex. pigeons vs ostriches as the “average bird”
Exemplar model
- Instead of a single prototype, all members of the category that we have encountered form the concept; we choose a specific example
- Individuals may rely on either rule-based (defining attribute) or resemblance-based (prototype or exemplar) approaches depending on the situation
cultural differences in thinking styles
○ Analytic thinking (Western)
- Rule based
○ Holistic thinking (Eastern)
- Family resemblance
cultural differences in categorization strategies
○ Taxonomic (Western)
- Cat and dog go together
- Squirrel and the rabbit go together
○ Thematic (Eastern)
- Dog and bone go together
- Rabbit and the carrot go together
