Cognition & Language (part 1) – Chapter 7
COGNITION
Cognition: (Thinking) the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and
communicating.
Concept: a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
Prototype: a mental image or BEST example of a category (e.g., a prototypical "bird" may be a robin).
Artificial Intelligence (AI): the science of designing and programming computer systems to do
intelligent things and to simulate human thought processes, such as intuitive reasoning, learning, and
understanding language.
Solving Problems
Algorithm: a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
Heuristic: a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems
efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.
Insight: a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based
solutions.
Obstacles to Problem Solving
Confirmation Bias: a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions.
Fixation: the inability to see a problem from a new perspective.
Mental Set: a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially a way that has been
successful in the past but may or may not be helpful in solving a new problem.
Functional Fixedness: the tendency to think of objects only in terms of their usual functions.
Making Decisions and Judgments
Representativeness Heuristic: judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to
represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore relevant information.
Availability Heuristic: estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if
instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are
common.
Overconfidence: the tendency to be
more confident in our judgments that correct---to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and
judgments.
Framing: the way in which an issue is posed (or worded); this can significantly affect decisions and
judgments.
Belief Bias: the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making
invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid.
Belief Perseverance: clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has
been discredited.
LANGUAGE
Language: our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate
meaning.
Phoneme: in spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
Morpheme: in language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word (like a
prefix).
Grammar: a system of rules that enables us to communicate with language and understand each other.
Semantics: the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences; also the study of
meaning.
Syntax: the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.
Language Development
Babbling Stage: beginning at 3-4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant
spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
One-word Stage: the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to age 2, during which a child
speaks mostly in single words.
Two-word Stage: beginning at about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks
mostly two-word statements.
Telegraphic Speech: speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--"go car"--using mostly nouns
and verbs and omitting "auxiliary words (like "the" and "a").
Explaining Language Development
Skinner & Operant Conditioning: Skinner believed that we can explain language development with
familiar behavioral principles, such as association (of the sights of things with the sounds of words);
imitation (of the words
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and syntax modeled by others); and reinforcement (with smiles and hugs when the child says something
right). In other words, NURTURE plays the biggest role in the development of language.
Chomsky & Inborn Universal Grammar: While linguist Noam Chomsky agreed that we do "learn" the
language in which we are raised, he pointed out that children generate all sorts of sentences they have
never heard and, therefore could not be imitating. Additionally, many of the errors young children make
result from overgeneralization of grammatical rules, such as adding -ed to make the past tense (e.g., "I
holded the baby" or "I runned to the store"). They are certainly not imitating parents when they make
these errors. Syntax seems to be particular "hard-wired". You will not hear children say things like, "She
an apple ate."
THINKING & LANGUAGE
Linguist Benjamin Whorf contended that language determines the way we think.
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis or Linguistic Determination: Whorf's hypothesis that language
determines the way we think.
Animals & Language
Honeybees communicate with other worker bees by engaging in an intricate "dance". The dance in forms
other bees of the direction and distance of a food source.
Primates have learned to communicate with American Sign Language or by using symbols. The most
well-known are Washoe (a chimp) and KoKo (a gorilla) who were both taught sign language. Some of
these apes have been found to create new words and sign spontaneously with other apes.
**While primate "language" seems very impressive, critics point out that apes learn vocabulary with great
difficulty (unlike humans) and have a very hard time learning (if they ever do) proper syntax.
Intelligence (part 2) - Chapter 7
Intelligence: mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use
knowledge to adapt to new situations.
Intelligence Test: a method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those
of others, using numerical scores.
Factor Analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test;
used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one's total score.
Reification: When we view an abstract concept (like intelligence) as if it were a concrete thing, we have
made the error of reification.
THEORIES OF INTELLIGENCE
Francis Galton (late 1800's): He believed that some people were more superior than others with respect
to intelligence. He felt those people should be encouraged to mate and that less superior people should
not be allowed to produce offspring (eugenics movement). He felt you could determine one's intelligence
by measuring his/her head size, body proportions, and reaction time.
Charles Spearman (1930's): Noted that people "smart" in one area were often skilled in other areas.
Thus, he believed in an underlying general intelligence or g-factor.
g-factor: a general intelligence factor that Spearman and others believed underlies specific mental
abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
L.L. Thurstaone (1930's): Disagreed with Spearman. He identified "8 Primary Mental Abilities" and
believed they were all independent from each other. They included: perceptual speed, numerical ability,
verbal meaning, memory, spatial skills, reasoning, word fluency, & comprehension. The existence of
Savant Syndrome supports his viewpoint.
Savant Syndrome: a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an
exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or music.
Howard Gardner (1980--): agreed with Thurstone in that intellectual skills were independent of one
another. He identified 8 independent multiple intelligences: logical/mathematical, spatial, linguistic,
body-kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, & naturalist.
Robert Sternberg (1980-): believed there are 3 general types of IQ. He called this the Triarchic Theory of
Intelligence.
Academic (or analytic): intelligence which is assessed by intelligence tests, which present welldefined problems with a single correct answer (i.e., school smarts).
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Creative: intelligence demonstrated by reacting adaptively to new situations and generating novel
ideas.
Practical: intelligence required for everyday tasks, which are frequently ill-defined with multiple
solutions (i.e., street or business smarts).
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Other Types of Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence: the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.
Creativity: the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Brain Functions and Intelligence
While Galton was incorrect and you cannot determine IQ from head size, there is a moderate correlation (+.44)
between brain volume and IQ (i.e., more cortical tissue and 17% more synapses in educated versus less educated
people). Also, we find moderate correlations between IQ and (1) processing speed; (2) perceptual speed and; (3)
neurological speed.
ASSESSING INTELLIGENCE
Aptitude Test: a test designed to predict a person's future performance. Aptitude refers to the capacity to
learn (IQ tests are considered to be aptitude tests).
Achievement Test: a test designed to assess what a person has already learned (e.g., AP exams, driver's
license test).
**While the SAT is designed to predict future performance (and is thus an aptitude test), it is clearly also
an achievement test.
Alfred Binet: Along with Theodore Simon developed the first intelligence test in France in 1904. It was
designed to measure a child's mental age in order to predict future school performance. The test was
called the Simon-Binet Intelligence Test. It was later revised at Stanford University in California by
Lewis Terman and is now known today as the Stanford-Binet.
Intelligence Quotient (IQ): defined originally (Stern) as the ratio of mental age (MA) to chronological
age (CA) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = MA/CA * 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average
performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) & Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC):
These are the 2 most frequently used IQ tests in the US. They provide a verbal IQ along with a nonverbal or performance IQ. They also provide an overall or full-scale IQ score. The Wechsler tests have a
mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.
Principles of Test Construction
Standardization: defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested "standardization
group".
Normal Curve: the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical
and psychological traits (including intelligence). Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer
scores lie near the extremes.
Reliability: the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on
two halves of the test (split-half reliability) or on retesting at a later date (test-retest reliability).
Validity: the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.
a) Face Validity: the extent to which questions on a test appear to measure the construct of interest.
b) Content Validity: extent to which a test actually measures the construct of interest.
c) Predictive Validity: the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict.
This is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior (also called criterionrelated validity).
Criterion: the behavior (such as college grades) that a test (such as the SAT) is designed to predict.
Extremes of Intelligence
Mental Retardation: a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an IQ score below 70 and
difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound.
Down Syndrome: a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra
chromosome at the site of the 21st pair.
GENETICS & ENVIRONMENT
Heritability: the proportion of variation among people on a particular trait that can be attributed to the
differences in their genes. Heritability never pertains to an individual, only to what extent group differences in
intelligence are attributable to genes.
Twin & adoption studies show that genetics do play a role in intelligence (e.g., IQ's of identical twins
correlate at about .85, while fraternal twins at about .60).
However, the same studies show how important environment is in that identical twins reared
together correlate at .85, while those raised in different homes correlate at .71.
Most psychologist agree that differences in group IQ scores based on ethnic background or gender are due
to environmental differences not genetics.