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 PracticeProceduralize knowledge and reduce the

demands made on mental resources

Name the Color of Ink

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX

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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 signalsNo novel communications

• Language is abstract and flexibleMeaning 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