Cognition & Language Claudia Stanny PSY 2012

What is Cognition? Processes of knowing  Attending  Remembering  Reasoning Content of these processes  Concepts  Memories

Cognitive psychology is part of the interdisciplinary discipline known as cognitive science

Cognitive Psychology includes the study of a variety of mental processes

Mental Processes Serial Processes  Carried out sequentially, one step at a time Parallel Processes  Carried out simultaneously

Attentional Processes Controlled Processes  Serial processes  Require mental resources Automatic Processes  Parallel processes  Do not make demands on mental resources Effects of Practice  Proceduralize knowledge and reduce the demands made on mental resources

Name the Color of Ink XXXXX XXXXX

Name the Color of Ink GREEN RED YELLOW BLUE BLUE GREEN RED YELLOW RED YELLOW BLUE GREEN YELLOW BLUE GREEN RED BLUE RED YELLOW GREEN RED GREEN BLUE YELLOW YELLOW BLUE RED GREEN

Attention is needed to inhibit irrelevant responses. Color words activated by reading interfere with naming ink color. Stroop Effect

How does language differ from communication among animals? Animal communication systems are specialized and rigid.  Each call or signal has one meaning Territorial calls Danger signals  Animals use a limited number of signals  No novel communications Language is abstract and flexible  Meaning of words is arbitrary  Novel combinations permit the expression of new ideas

Producing Language Audience Design Language is produced differently for different audiences (audience design)  cooperation principle – make language fit the situation at hand Statements are informative without being too detailed Statements should be true Statements should be relevant to the topic at hand Statements should be clear – avoid jargon, ambiguity, or obscure references

Producing Language – Audience Design Common Ground – the knowledge held in common by the person speaking (or writing) and the audience  Community membership Assumptions about the knowledge that members of this community (audience) possess  Linguistic copresence Assumptions about the information presented recently to the audience  Physical copresence Assumptions about what the audience knows based on people present or other objects present in the environment

Understanding Language Resolving Lexical Ambiguity  Lexical Ambiguity Ambiguity created because words have multiple meanings  Resolving lexical ambiguity Frequency-based resolution: consider the most frequent meaning first, consider other meanings later Context-based resolution: use the context (situation, meanings of preceding statements) to determine the first meaning considered

Understanding Language Resolving Structural Ambiguity  Structural Ambiguity Ambiguity created by grammatical characteristics of the sentence (see the two examples below) Visiting relatives can be boring. They are eating apples.  Context is used to resolve structural ambiguity.  Pragmatics of language use Social context determines how statements should be understood Do you think it is cold in here?

What is the relation between language and thought? Sapir–Whorf hypothesis Proposes that differences in language produce differences in how we think.  Linguistic Determinism Strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Argues that language determines how we think  Linguistic Relativity Weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Argues that language influences how we think Application: Gender-neutral terms in language