The system of rules that governs how we assign meaning to the morphemes we use is called ________.

Cognition and Mental Abilities7

Enduring Issues in Cognition and Mental Abilities

Building Blocks of Thought • Language • Images • Concepts Language, Thought, and Culture • Is Language Male Dominated? Nonhuman Language and Thought • The Question of Language • Animal Cognition

Problem Solving • Interpreting Problems • Implementing Strategies and

Evaluating Progress • Obstacles to Solving

Problems

Decision Making • Compensatory Decision

Making • Decision-Making

Heuristics • Framing • Explaining Our Decisions

Multitasking

Intelligence and Mental Abilities • Theories of Intelligence • Intelligence Tests • What Makes a Good

Test?

Heredity, Environment, and Intelligence • Heredity • Environment • The IQ Debate: A Useful

Model

• Mental Abilities and Human Diversity: Gender and Culture

• Extremes of Intelligence

Creativity • Intelligence and

Creativity • Creativity Tests Answers to Problems in the Chapter Answers to Intelligence Test Questions

O V E R V I E W

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“At the Braefield School for the Deaf, I met Joseph, a boyof 11 who had just entered school for the first time—an11-year-old with no language whatever. He had been born deaf, but this had not been realized until he was in his fourth year. His failure to talk, or understand speech, at the normal age was put down to ‘retardation,’ then to ‘autism,’ and these diagnoses had clung to him. When his deafness finally became apparent he was seen as ‘deaf and dumb,’ dumb not only literally, but metaphorically, and there was never any attempt to teach him language.

Joseph longed to communicate, but could not. Neither speaking nor writing nor signing was available to him, only ges- tures and pantomimes, and a marked ability to draw. What has happened to him? I kept asking myself. What is going on inside, how has he come to such a pass? He looked alive and ani- mated, but profoundly baffled: His eyes were attracted to speaking mouths and signing hands—they darted to our mouths and hands, inquisitively, uncomprehendingly, and, it seemed to me, yearningly. He perceived that something was ‘going on’ between us, but he could not comprehend what it was—he had, as yet, almost no idea of symbolic communica- tion, of what it was to have a symbolic currency, to exchange meaning. . . .

Joseph was unable, for example, to communicate how he had spent the weekend. . . . It was not only language that was

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missing: there was not, it was evident, a clear sense of the past, of ‘a day ago’ as distinct from ‘a year ago.’ There was a strange lack of historical sense, the feeling of a life that lacked autobio- graphical and historical dimension . . .a life that only existed in the moment, in the present. . . .

Joseph saw, distinguished, categorized, used; he had no problems with perceptual categorization or generalization, but he could not, it seemed, go much beyond this, hold abstract ideas in mind, reflect, play, plan. He seemed completely literal—unable to juggle images or hypotheses or possibilities, unable to enter an imaginative or figurative realm. And yet, one still felt, he was of normal intelligence, despite the manifest lim- itations of intellectual functioning. It was not that he lacked a mind, but that he was not using his mind fully. . . .” (Sacks, 2000, pp. 32–34)

As Sacks suggests, language and thought are intertwined. We find it difficult to imagine one without the other, and we con- sider both part of what it means to be human. Psychologists use the term cognition to refer to all the processes that we use to acquire and apply information. We have already considered the cognitive processes of perception, learning, and memory. In this chapter, we focus on three cognitive processes that we think of as characteristically human: thinking, problem solving, and decision making. We also discuss two mental abilities that psy- chologists have tried to measure: intelligence and creativity.

ENDURING ISSUES IN COGNITION AND MENTAL ABILITIES The “Enduring Issues” in this chapter are highlighted in four prominent places. We will encounter the diversity–universality theme when we explore the differences and similari- ties in the way people process information and again when we discuss exceptional abilities. We make two additional references to the enduring issues as we discuss the stability–change of intelligence test scores over time and again when we explore how mea- sures of intelligence and performance sometimes vary as a function of expectations and situations (person–situation).

BUILDING BLOCKS OF THOUGHT What are the three most important building blocks of thought?

When you think about a close friend, you may have in mind complex statements about her, such as “I’d like to talk to her soon” or “I wish I could be more like her.” You may also have an image of her—probably her face, but perhaps the sound of her voice as well. Or you may think of your friend by using various concepts or categories such as woman, kind, strong, dynamic, and gentle. When we think, we make use of all these things—language, images, and concepts—often simultaneously. These are the three most important building blocks of thought.

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E • Describe the three basic building

blocks of thought and give an example of each. Explain how phonemes, morphemes, and grammar (syntax and semantics) work together to form a language.

cognition The processes whereby we acquire and use knowledge.

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218 Chapter 7

Language What steps do we go through to turn a thought into a statement?

Human language is a flexible system of symbols that enables us to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Joseph, the deaf boy described at the beginning of this chapter, had great difficulty communicating because he knew no languages. Although all animals com- municate with each other, language is unique to humans (MacWhinney, 2005).

One way to understand language is to consider its basic structure. Spoken language is based on units of sound called phonemes. The sounds of t, th, and k, for instance, are all phonemes in English. By themselves, phonemes are meaningless and seldom play an important role in help- ing us to think. But phonemes can be grouped together to form words, prefixes (such as un- and pre-), and suffixes (such as -ed and -ing). These meaningful combinations of phonemes are known as morphemes—the smallest meaningful units in a language. Unlike phonemes, mor- phemes play a key role in human thought. They can represent important ideas such as “red” or “calm” or “hot.” The suffix -ed captures the idea of “in the past” (as in visited or liked). The pre- fix pre- conveys the idea of “before” or “prior to” (as in preview or predetermined).

We can combine morphemes to create words that represent quite complex ideas, such as pre-exist-ing, un-excell-ed, psycho-logy. In turn, words can be arranged to form sentences according to the rules of grammar. The two major components of grammar are syntax and semantics. Syntax is the system of rules that governs how we combine words to form mean- ingful phrases and sentences. For example, in English and many other languages, the mean- ing of a sentence is often determined by word order. “Sally hit the car” means one thing; “The car hit Sally” means something quite different; and “Hit Sally car the” is meaningless.

Semantics describes how we assign meaning to morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences—in other words, the content of language. When we are thinking about something—say, the ocean—our ideas often consist of phrases and sentences, such as “The ocean is unusually calm tonight.” Sentences have both a surface structure—the partic- ular words and phrases—and a deep structure—the underlying meaning. The same deep structure can be conveyed by different surface structures:

The ocean is unusually calm tonight. Tonight the ocean is particularly calm. Compared with most other nights, tonight the ocean is calm.

Alternatively, the same surface structure can convey different meanings or deep structures, but a knowledge of language permits one to know what is meant within a given context:

Surface Structure Might mean. . . Or. . .

Flying planes can be dangerous. An airborne plane. . .

The profession of pilot. . .

Visiting relatives can be a nuisance. Relatives who are visiting. . .

The obligation to visit relatives. . .

The chicken is ready to eat. Food has been cooked sufficiently. . .

The bird is hungry. . .

Syntax and semantics enable speakers and listeners to perform what linguist Noam Chomsky calls transformations between surface structure and deep structure. According to Chomsky (1957; Chomsky, Place, & Schoneberger, 2000), when you want to communicate an idea, you start with a thought, then choose words and phrases that will express the idea, and finally, produce the speech sounds that make up those words and phrases, as shown by the left arrow in Figure 7–1. When you want to understand a sentence, your task is reversed. You must start with speech sounds and work your way up to the meaning of those sounds, as represented by the right arrow in Figure 7–1.

Our remarkable ability to perform these transformations becomes clear when you attempt to comprehend the following sentence: when lettres wihtin wrods are jubmled or trnasposed (as

language A flexible system of communication that uses sounds, rules, gestures, or symbols to convey information.

phonemes The basic sounds that make up any language.

morphemes The smallest meaningful units of speech, such as simple words, prefixes, and suffixes.

grammar The language rules that determine how sounds and words can be combined and used to communicate meaning within a language.

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Cognition and Mental Abilities 219

they are in this sentence), raeding speed is redcued, though not as much as you might expect (approx- imately 11%–26%). However, it is much more dif- ficult to extract the meaning of a sentence when letter substitutions are made (such as “qroblem” or “problnc”for “problem”) (Rayner,White, Johnson, & Liversedge, 2006).

Images What role do images play in thinking?

Using language is not the only way to think about things. Think for a moment about Abraham Lincoln. Your thoughts of Lincoln may have included such phrases as “wrote the Gettysburg Address” and “president during the Civil War.” But you probably also had some mental images about him: bearded face, lanky body, or log cabin. An image is a mental representation of some sensory experience, and it can be used to think about things. We can visualize the Statue of Liberty; we can smell Thanksgiving dinner; we can hear Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “I have a dream!” Images also allow us to use concrete forms to represent complex and abstract ideas, as when newspapers use pie charts and graphs to illus- trate how people voted in an election (Stylianou, 2002; C. C. Yang, Chen, & Hong, 2003).

Concepts How do concepts help us to think more efficiently?

Concepts are mental categories for classifying specific people, things, or events. Dogs, books, fast, beautiful, and interesting are all concepts. When you think about a specific thing—say, Mt. Everest—you may think of facts, such as that it is 29,029 feet high or that it is on the border between Nepal, Tibet, and China. You may also have an image of it. But you are also likely to think of the concepts that apply to it, such as mountain, highest, dangerous, and snow-covered. Concepts help us to think efficiently about things and how they relate to one another. They also give meaning to new experiences and allow us to organize our experiences. For example, most children soon develop a concept of fish that allows them to recognize, think about and understand new kinds of fish when they see them for the first time. And over time, we often find it necessary to modify some of our concepts to better match our experiences. Thus, as they grow older, children come to understand that whales and dolphins are not fish (though, like fish, they swim in water) and they modify their concepts of fish and mammals accordingly. Conversely, for most of us there is no need to understand that killer whales and pilot whales are actually dolphins and thus no need to modify our concepts of dolphins and whales accordingly.

Although it is tempting to think of concepts as simple and clear-cut, most of the concepts that we use are rather “fuzzy”: They overlap one another and are often poorly defined. For example, most people can tell a mouse from a rat, but listing the critical differences between the two would be difficult (Rosch, 1973, 2002). If we cannot explain the difference between mouse and rat, how can we use these fuzzy concepts in our thinking? It turns out that we often construct a prototype (or model) of a representative mouse and one of a representative rat, and then use those prototypes in our thinking (Rosch, 1978, 2002; Voorspoels, Vanpaemel, & Storms, 2008). For example, when thinking about birds, most of us have a prototype, in mind—such as a robin or a sparrow—that captures for us the essence of bird. When we encounter new objects, we compare them with this prototype to determine whether they are, in fact, birds. And when we think about birds, we usually think about our prototypical bird.

Concepts, then, like words and images, help us to formulate thoughts. But human cog- nition involves more than just passively thinking about things. It also involves actively

Figure 7–1 The direction of movement in speech production and comprehension. Producing a sentence involves movement from thoughts and ideas to basic sounds; compre- hending a sentence requires movement from basic sounds back to the underlying thoughts and ideas.

Meaning (thought, idea)

Sentences (phrases)

Morphemes (words, prefixes, suffixes)

Phonemes (basic sounds)

Producing speech

Co m

pr eh

en di

ng s

pe ec

h

“Well, you don’t look like an experimental psychologist to me.” Source: © The New Yorker Collection, 1994, Sam Gross from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

image A mental representation of a sensory experience.

concepts Mental categories for classifying objects, people, or experiences.

prototype (or model) According to Rosch, a mental model containing the most typical features of a concept.

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220 Chapter 7

CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING

1. ____________, ____________, and ____________ are the three most important building blocks of thought.

2. In language, units of sound, called ____________, are combined to form the smallest units of meaning, called ____________. These smallest meaningful units can then be combined to create words, which in turn can be used to build phrases and whole ____________.

3. Language rules that specify how sounds and words can be combined into meaningful sentences are called rules of ____________.

4. Indicate whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F). a. _____ Images help us to think about things because images use concrete forms to

represent complex ideas. b. _____ People decide which objects belong to a concept by comparing the object’s

features to a model or prototype of the concept. c. _____ Concepts help us give meaning to new experiences.

Pablo Picasso, the great 20th-century artist, developed a style of painting known as Cubism. In paintings such as Nude with Bunch of Irises and Mirror, 1934, shown here, he re-formed objects into basic geometric shapes. We recognize the figure in this paint- ing as a woman because its shapes repre- sent the “concept” of a female.

Answers:1. language, images, concepts.2. phonemes, morphemes, sentences. 3. grammar.4. a. (T);b. (T);c. (T).

Answers:1. d.2. a.

APPLY YOUR UNDERSTANDING

1. “I will spend tonight studying.” “Tonight I will be studying.” These two sentences exhibit the same

a. surface structure. b. syntax. c. phonology. d. deep structure.

2. Harry cannot list the essential differences between dogs and cats, but he has no trouble thinking about dogs and cats. This is most likely due to the fact that he

a. has a prototype of a representative dog and another of a representative cat. b. has developed a morpheme for a dog and another morpheme for a cat. c. is exhibiting functional fixedness. d. is using heuristics.

using words, images, and concepts to fashion an understanding of the world, to solve prob- lems, and to make decisions. In the next three sections, we see how this is done.

LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND CULTURE How do language, thought, and culture influence each other?

Diversity–Universality Do We All Think Alike? For at least 100 years, psychologists and philosophers assumed the basic processes of human cognition are universal. They accepted that cultural differences affect thought— thus, Masai elders in the Serengeti count their wealth in heads of cattle, whereas Wall Street bankers measure theirs in stocks and bonds. But habits of thought—the ways peo- ple process information—were assumed to be the same everywhere. The tendency to cat- egorize objects and experiences, the ability to reason logically, and the desire to understand situations in terms of cause and effect were thought to be part of human nature, regardless of cultural setting (Goode, 2000a). In this section, we will examine the validity of these viewpoints. ■