COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

SEMESTER 8

History

INTRODUCTION:

Ulric (Dick) Neisser was the “father of cognitive psychology” and an advocate for ecological
approaches to cognitive research.

Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how
people think, perceive, remember, and learn. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this
branch of psychology is related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and
linguistics.

The core focus of cognitive psychology is on how people acquire, process and store information.
Cognitive Psychology revolves around the notion that if we want to know what makes people
tick then we need to understand the internal processes of their mind.

Cognition literally means “knowing”. In other words, cognitive psychology refers to the study of
human mental processes and their role in thinking, feeling, and behaving

NATURE & SCOPE:

Cognitive psychology is not only focused to all what occurs in everyday life, it is even dominant
to psychologist’s mission to realize how of the behavior. It is important to study and examine
cognitive psychology to gain realizing of other people and their thought technique. Cognitive
psychology shelters areas such as verbal, learning and reminiscence, talking, and the storage and
recall of material. Actions occur as a result of how info is received and understood, and
individual variances can vary importantly from one individual to the next. Cognitive
psychologist grind with patients to assist them understand their thought process so they can make
optimistic behavioral variations.
The scope of cognitive psychology could be assumed by realizing its sub disciplines and the
effort or the work done in it

1. Social/Communal Psychologists:

Social psychologists try to examine the mental process involved in thinking about other persons.

2. Scientific Psychologists:

Clinical psychologists inspect the role that mental practice play in psychopathology.

3. Developmental Psychologists:

Developmental psychologists examine about the ways that cognitive procedure amend
throughout the life time.

4. Neuropsychologists:

Cognitive psychology is also connected with neuropsychology, in which neuropsychologists stab

to understand the connotation between mental dispensation and brain action.

5. Managerial Psychologists:

Cognitive psychology plays its role in manufacturing or structural set up where in administrative
psycholohists are maintained to know how cognitive procedure such as memorizing and decision
making plans work out in administrative or industrial workstation.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

 Until the 1950s, Behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in psychology. The
cognitive approach began to transform psychology in the late 1950’s and early1960’s, to
convert the leading approach (i.e. perspective) in thinking by 1970’s. Concern in mental
procedures had been gradually returned the effort of Piaget & Tolman.
 In the mid-20th era, three main impacts stand up that would motivate and form cognitive
psychology as a proper school of thought:

 With the expansion of new warfare technology through WWII, the necessity for a greater
realizing of human enactment came to reputation. Difficulties such as how to best train
fighters to use new skill and how to deal with substances of attention while under
pressure became areas of need for military recruits. 

 Noam Chomsky’s 1959 criticism of behaviorism, and observation more usually, started
what would come to be acknowledged as the “cognitive revolution”.
 Between 1950 and 1970, the tide began to shift against behavioral psychology to focus on
topics such as attention, memory and problem- solving. Often referred to as the cognitive
revolution, this period generated considerable research on topics including processing
models, cognitive research methods and the first use of the term "cognitive psychology."
 Norbert Wiener (1948) published Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the
Animal and the Machine, introducing terms such as input and output.
 Tolman (1948) work on cognitive maps – training rats in mazes, showed that animals had
internal representation of behavior.
 Birth of Cognitive Psychology often dated back to George Miller’s (1956) “The Magical
Number 7 Plus or Minus 2.”
 Newell and Simon’s (1972) development of the General Problem Solver.
 In 1960, Miller founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard with famous
Cognitive developmentalist Jerome Bruner.
 Ulric Neisser (1967) publishes "Cognitive Psychology", which marks the official
beginning of the cognitive approach.
 According to Neisser, cognition involves "all processes by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used It is concerned with these
processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and
hallucinations. Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved
in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is
a cognitive phenomenon.”
  Process models of memory Atkinson & Shiffrin’s (1968) Multi Store Model.
 Cognitive approach highly influential in all areas of psychology (e.g. biological, social,
behaviorism, development etc.).

The information processing approach is based on a number of assumptions, including:

Information made available from the environment is processed by a series of processing systems
(e.g. attention, perception, short-term memory). These processing systems transform, or alter the
information in systematic ways, the aim of research is to specify the processes and structures that
underlie cognitive performance. Information processing in humans resembles that in computers.

 Mediational Processes:

The behaviorists approach only studies external observable (stimulus and response)
behaviour which can be objectively measured. They believe that internal behaviour cannot be
studied because we cannot see what happens in a person’s mind (and therefore cannot
objectively measure it).

In comparison, the cognitive approach believes that internal mental behavior can be
scientifically studied using experiments. Cognitive psychology assumes that a mediational
process occurs between stimulus/input and response/output.

The mediational (i.e. mental) event could be memory, perception, attention or problem solving
etc. These are known as mediational processes because they mediate (i.e. go-between) between
the stimulus and the response. They come after the stimulus and before the response.

Cognitive Psychology—As it is Today

In the 1950s interest again began to focus on attention, memory, pattern recognition,
images, semantic organization, language processes, thinking, and even consciousness (the most
dogmatically eschewed concept), as well as other “cognitive” topics once considered outside the
boundary of experimental psychology (vis-à-vis.behaviorism). New journals and professional
groups were founded as psychologists began more and more to turn to cognitive psychology.

As cognitive psychology became established with even greater clarity, it was plain that this was a
brand of psychology different from that in vogue during the 1930s and 1940s.
Among the most important forces accounting for this neo-cognitive revolution were the
following: Information Processing The “failure” of behaviorism. Behaviorism, which generally
studied overt responses to stimuli, failed to account for the diversity of human behavior as in the
case of language. Furthermore, there were some topics ignored by the behaviorists that seemed to
be profoundly related to human psychology. These included memory, attention, consciousness,
thinking, and imagery. It was apparent that internal mental processes were very real parts of
psychology and required investigation.

The Emergence of Communication Theory:

Communication theory prompted experiments in signal detection, attention, cybernetics, and

information theory – areas of significance to cognitive psychology.

Modem linguistics:

New ways of viewing language and grammatical structure became incorporated into attitudes
concerning cognitions.

Memory research:

Research in verbal learning and semantic organization provided a sturdy empirical base for
theories of memory, which led to the development of models of memory systems and the
appearance of testable models of other cognitive processes.

Computer science and other technological advances:

Computer science, and especially a subdivision of it—artificial intelligence—caused

reexamination of basic postulates of problem solving and memory processing and storage, as
well as of ‘language processing and acquisition. Research capabilities were greatly expanded by
new experimental devices.

Cognitive development:

Psychologists interested in development psychology discovered an orderly unfolding of abilities

with maturation. Notable among developmental psychologists during this period was Jean
Piaget, who described how children develop an appreciation for concepts from infancy to
adolescence. Such progress of abilities seems to be natural.

From the earliest concepts of representational knowledge to recent research, knowledge has
been thought to rely heavily on sensory inputs. That theme runs from the Greek philosophers,
through Renaissance scholars, to contemporary cognitive psychologists. But are internal
representations of the world identical to the physical properties of the world? Evidence is
increasing that many internal representations of reality are not the same as the external reality—
that is, they are not isomorphic. Tolman’s work with laboratory animals and Bartlett’s work with
human subjects suggest that information from the senses is stored as an abstract representation.
Furthermore, studies of neurology clearly show that information from the outside world is sensed
and stored as in a neurochemical code.

Schools of thought

Structuralism

Structuralism is widely regarded as the first school of thought in psychology. This

outlook focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Major
thinkers associated with structuralism include Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener. The focus
of structuralism was on reducing mental processes down into their most basic elements. The
structuralists used techniques such as introspection to analyze the inner processes of the human
mind.

Functionalism

Functionalism formed as a reaction to the theories of the structuralist school of thought

and was heavily influenced by the work of William James. It functioned on the mind's functions
and adaptations. Unlike some of the other well-known schools of thought in psychology,
functionalism is not associated with a single dominant theorist. Instead, there are some different
functionalist thinkers associated with this outlook including John Dewey, James Rowland
Angell, and Harvey Carr. Functionalism has the most influence of any theory in contemporary
psychology. Psychological functionalism attempts to describe thoughts and what they do without
asking how they do it. For functionalists, the mind resembles a computer, and to understand its
processes, you need to look at the software, which is what the mind does, without having to
understand the hardware that includes the underlying how and why.

Gestalt Psychology

According to Gestalt psychologists, the human mind works by interpreting data through
various laws, rules or organizing principles, turning partial information into a whole. For
example, your mind might interpret a series of lines as a square even though it has no complete
lines; your mind fills in the gaps. Gestalt psychotherapists apply this logic to help patients solve
a wide array of problems from issues at work to relationship troubles. Instead of breaking down
thoughts and behavior to their smallest elements, the gestalt psychologists believed that you must
look at the whole of experience. According to the Gestalt thinkers, the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts.

Behaviorism

In the 1950s, B.F. Skinner carried out experiments with animals, such as rats and
pigeons, demonstrating that they repeated certain behaviors if they associated them with rewards
in the form of food. Behaviorists believe that observing behavior, rather than attempting to
analyze the inner workings of the mind itself, provides the key to psychology. This makes
psychology open to experimental methods with results that can be replicated the same as any
other scientific experiment.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic theory, which originated with Sigmund Freud, explains human behavior
by looking at the subconscious mind. Freud suggested that the instinct to pursue pleasure, which
he described as sexual in nature, lies at the root of human development. To Freud, even the
development of children hinged on key stages in discovering this pleasure, through acts such as
feeding at the mother's breast and defecating. He treated abnormal behavior in adults by
addressing these stages.

Humanistic Psychology
 Humanist psychologists teach that understanding psychology must involve looking at
individuals and their motivations. Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" exemplifies this
approach: A system of needs, such as food, love and self-esteem, will determine a person's
behavior; meeting these needs leads to a sense of self-satisfaction and solves psychological
problems.

Cognitivism

Cognitive psychology follows behaviorism by understanding the mind through scientific

experimentation, but it differs from behaviorism by accepting that psychologists can study and
understand the internal workings of the mind and mental processes. This school of thought
rejects psychoanalysis as it regards psychoanalytic theories about the subconscious mind as
subjective and not open to scientific analysis. Cognitive psychology began to emerge during the
1950s, partly as a response to behaviorism. Critics of behaviorism noted that it failed to account
for how internal processes impacted behavior. This period is sometimes referred to as the
"cognitive revolution" as a wealth of research on topics such as information processing,
language, memory, and perception that began to emerge.
 NEURAL BASIS OF COGNITIONS

The brain is divided into several different structures, but of particular importance for cognitive
psychology is the forebrain. In the forebrain, each cerebral hemisphere is divided into the frontal
lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe. In understanding these brain areas, one
important source of evidence comes from studies of brain damage, enabling us to examine what
sorts of symptoms result from lesions in specific brain locations. This has allowed a localization
of function, an effort that is also supported by neuroimaging research, which shows that the
pattern of activation in the brain depends heavily on the particular task being performed.

Different parts of the brain perform different jobs, but for virtually any mental process, different
brain areas must work together in a closely integrated fashion. When this integration is lost (as it
is, for example, in Capgras syndrome), bizarre symptoms can result.

The primary motor projection areas are the departure point in the brain for nerve cells that
initiate muscle movement. The primary sensory projection areas are the main points of arrival in
the brain for information from the eyes, ears, and other sense organs. These projection areas
generally show a pattern of contralateral control, with tissue in the left hemisphere sending or
receiving its main signals from the right side of the body, and vice versa. Each projection area
provides a map of the environment or the relevant body part, but the assignment of space in this
map is governed by function, not by anatomical proportions.

Most of the forebrain’s cortex has traditionally been referred to as the association cortex, but this
area is itself subdivided into specialized regions. This subdivision is reflected in the varying
consequences of brain damage, with lesions in the occipital lobe leading to visual agnosia,
damage in the temporal lobes leading to aphasia, and so on. Damage to the prefrontal area causes
many different problems, but these are generally problems in the forming and implementing of
strategies.

The brain’s functioning depends on neurons and glia. The glia perform many functions, but the
main flow of information is carried by the neurons. Communication from one end of the neuron
to the other is electrical and is governed by the flow of ions in and out of the cell.
Communication from one neuron to the next is generally chemical, with a neuron releasing
neurotransmitters that affect neurons on the other side of the synapse.

One brain area that has been mapped in considerable detail is the visual system. This system
takes its main input from the rods and cones on the retina. Then, information is sent via the optic
nerve to the brain. An important point is that cells in the optic nerve do much more than transmit
information; they also begin the analysis of the visual input. This is reflected in the phenomenon
of lateral inhibition, which leads to edge enhancement.

Part of what we know about the brain comes from single-cell recording, which can record the
electrical activity of an individual neuron. In the visual system, this recording has allowed
researchers to map the receptive fields for many cells, and this mapping has provided evidence
for a high degree of specialization among the various parts of the visual system, with some parts
specialized for the perception of motion, others for the perception of color, and so on. These
various areas function in parallel, and this parallel processing allows great speed; it also allows
mutual influence among multiple systems.

Parallel processing begins in the optic nerve and continues throughout the visual system. For
example, the what system (in the temporal lobe) appears to be specialized for the identification
of visual objects; the where system (in the parietal lobe) seems to tell us where an object is
located.

The reliance on parallel processing creates a problem of reuniting the various elements of a scene
so that these elements are perceived in an integrated fashion. This is called the binding problem.
One key in solving this problem, though, lies in the fact that different brain systems are
organized in terms of maps, so that spatial position can be used as a framework for reuniting the
separately analyzed aspects of the visual scene.
Neural Representation of Information:

The word representation (as in “neural representation”), and many of its related terms, such as to

represent, representational and the like, play a central explanatory role in neuroscience literature.

For instance, in “place cell” literature, place cells are extensively associated with their role in

“the representation of space.” In spite of its extended use, we still lack a clear, universal and

widely accepted view on what it means for a nervous system to represent something,

on what makes a neural activity a representation, and on what is re-presented. The notion of

neural representation plays a central role in explanations of the neural mechanisms underlying

brain function.The human brain stores a vast network of knowledge about the contents of our

environment. This memory system underlies our ability to identify objects in perception, to refer

to things in language, and to engage in complex cognitive processes like imagination and

reasoning. How such conceptual memories are encoded in the brain remains unclear.

The principle function of the central nervous system is to represent and transform information

and thereby mediate appropriate decisions and behaviors. The cerebral cortex is one of the

primary seats of the internal representations maintained and used in perception, memory,

decision making, motor control, and subjective experience. Although a neural code is a system of

rules and mechanisms, a representation is a message that uses these rules to carry information,

and thereby it has meaning and performs a function. A recurring theme of this review is that

representation is defined by two principal and overlapping characteristics: content and function.

Content is the information that a representation carries, for example, what the signal signifies

about a sensory input. Function is the effect the signal can have on cognitive processes and
resultant behavior, e.g. the function of a neuron’s spikes in triggering an eye-blink reflex.

Content of Representation

The content of a neuronal signal is the message or information that the signal provides when

decoded. This can be assessed using the classical approach based upon the tuning curve, or it can

be assessed using more recent stimulus reconstruction methods.

Function of Representations

In order for a neuronal signal to have meaning for an organism, the signal must have projections

that allow it to have a function in the organism’s activities. The function of neurons or neural

representations is not just to provide a highly correlated and information-rich mirror of the

environment, except perhaps at the earliest stages of sensory processing, but to lead to adaptive

behavioral results. The most faithful copy of sensory stimuli is on the sensory surface—from

here on, information is only transformed or lost, it can never reflect external stimuli more

accurately. Successive representations therefore serve not to add to the available information

within a signal but to transform it, and to extract particular features from it that ultimately lead to

relevant decisions, cognitive processes, or behavior. Once the content of a neuronal signal has

been measured, a second line of investigation must establish its function because to be a neuronal

representation a signal must be able to lead to some behavioral or cognitive result.

 Organization of Brain

Brain Terminology:

Term Meaning with respect to the nervous system

Anterior Located near or toward the front or the head

Caudal Located near or toward the tail

Dorsal On or toward the back or, in reference to brain nuclei, located above

Frontal “Of the front“ or, in reference to brain sections, a viewing orientation from
the front

Inferior Located below

Lateral Toward the side of the body

Medial Toward the middle; sometimes written as mesial

Posterior Located near or toward the tail

Rostral ” Toward the beak”; located toward the front

Sagittal Parallel to the length (from front to back) of the skull; used in reference to a
plane

Superior Located above

Ventral On or toward the belly or side of the animal in which the belly is located or,
in reference to brain nuclei, located below
The Brain’s Surface Features:

The first thing to notice is that the brain is covered by a tough material known as the meninges
which is a three-layered structure. The outer layer is known as the dura mater (from Latin,
meaning “hard mother”). It is a tough double layer of fibrous tissue enclosing the brain in a kind
of loose sack. The middle layer is the arachnoid layer (from Greek, meaning “like a spider’s
web”). It is a very thin sheet of delicate connective tissue that follows the brain’s contours. The
inner layer is the pia mater (from Latin, meaning “soft mother”). It is a moderately tough
membrane of connectivetissue fibers that cling to the surface of the brain.

Between the arachnoid and pia mater is a fluid, known as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is a
colorless solution of sodium chloride and other salts. It provides a cushion so that the brain can
move or expand slightly without pressing on the skull. (Meningitis is an infection of the
meninges

As we look at the brain from the top or the side, it appears to have two major parts, each wrinkly
in appearance. The larger part is the cerebrum, which consists of two cerebral hemispheres,
the left and the right, and the smaller part is the cerebellum. Each of these structures is wrinkled
in large-brained animals because its outer surface is made of a relatively thin sheet of tissue, the
cortex, that has been pushed together to make it fit into the skull.Like a crinkled piece of paper,
much of the cortex is invisible from the surface. All we can see from the surface are bumps and
cracks. The bumps are known as gyri, whereas the cracks are known as sulci.. Some of the sulci
are very deep and so are often called fissures. The two best-known fissures are the longitudinal
fissure and the lateral fissure, along with the central sulcus. If we now look at the bottom of the
brain, we see a whitish structure down the middle with little tubes attached.The thalamus is a
paired gray matter structure of the diencephalon located near the center of the brain. It is above
the midbrain or mesencephalon, allowing for nerve fiber connections to the cerebral cortex in
all directions — each thalamus connects to the other via the interthalamic adhesion.

The hypothalamus is located on the undersurface of the brain. It lies just below the thalamus and
above the pituitary gland, to which it is attached by a stalk. It is an extremely complex part of
the brain containing many regions with highly specialised functions. The pituitary gland is a
pea-sized structure located at the base of the brain, just below the hypothalamus, to which it is
attached via nerve fibers. It is part of the endocrine system and produces critical hormones,
which are chemical substances that control various bodily functions. This middle structure is
known as the brainstem, and the little tubes are cranial nerves that run to and from the head.
The brain appears to be covered in blood vessels.

The Brain’s Internal Features

The simplest way to examine what is inside something is to cut it in half. First, it contains four
cavities, known as ventricles. Cells that line the ventricles make the cerebrospinal fluid that fills
them. The ventricles are connected, so CSF flows from the two lateral ventricles to the ventricles
that lie on the brain’s midline, eventually flowing into the space between the lower layers of the
meninges as well as into the spinal-cord canal. Then comes the light regions, called white
matter, are mostly fibers with fatty coverings. The fatty coverings produce the white
appearance, much as fat droplets in milk make it appear white. The dark regions, called gray
matter because of their gray-brown color, are areas where capillary blood vessels and cell
bodies predominate. Some regions of the brain have a mottled gray and white, or netlike,
appearance. These regions, which have both cell bodies and fibers mixed together, are called
reticular matter. One feature seen is a long band of white matter that runs much of the length of
the cerebral hemispheres. This band is called the corpus callosum which contains about 200
million fibers that join the two hemispheres and allow communication between them. Cortex
covers the cerebral hemispheres above the corpus callosum, whereas below the corpus callosum
are various internal structures of the brain. Owing to their location below the cortex, these
structures are known as sub-cortical regions.

https://www.ndsu.edu/faculty/pavek/Psych486_686/chapterpdfs1stedKolb/kolb_02.pdf

Neural Localization

Neural Localization refers to the idea that functions can be attributed to specific regions of the
brain e.g., certain functions (e.g., language, memory, etc.) have certain locations or areas of
control within the brain. Localization requires an understanding of the anatomy and physiology
of the nervous system, its blood supply, and the disease processes that affect it. This idea of
localization has been supported by recent neuroimaging studies, but was also examined much
earlier, typically using case studies.

One such case study is that of Phineas Gage, who in 1848 while working on a rail line,
experienced a drastic accident in which a piece of iron went through his skull. Although Gage
survived this ordeal, he did experience a change in personality, such as loss of inhibition and
anger. This change provided evidence to support the theory of localization of brain function, as it
was believed that the area the iron stake damaged was responsible for personality.

There are four key areas that are needed to be aware of in neural Localization processes; motor,
somatosensory, visual and auditory areas.

Motor Area

The motor area is located in the frontal lobe and is responsible for voluntary movements by
sending signals to the muscles in the body. Hitzig and Fritsch (1870) first discovered that
different muscles are coordinated by different areas of the motor cortex by electrically
stimulating the motor area of dogs. This resulted in muscular contractions in different areas of
the body depending on where the probe was inserted. The regions of the motor area are arranged
in a logical order, for example, the region that controls finger movement is located next to the
region that controls the hand and arm and so on.

Somatosensory Area

The somatosensory area is located in the parietal lobe and receives incoming sensory
information from the skin to produce sensations related to pressure, pain, temperature, etc.
Different parts of the somatosensory area receive messages from different locations of the body.
Robertson (1995) found that this area of the brain is highly adaptable, with Braille readers having
larger areas in the somatosensory area for their fingertips compared to normal sighted
participants.

Visual Area

At the back of the brain, in the occipital lobe is the visual area, which receives and processes
visual information. Information from the right-hand side visual field is processed in the left
hemisphere, and information from the left-hand side visual field is processed in the right
hemisphere. The visual area contains different parts that process different types of information
including color, shape or movement.

Auditory Area

The auditory area is located in the temporal lobe and is responsible for analyzing and processing
acoustic information. Information from the left ear goes primarily to the right hemisphere and
information from the right ear goes primarily to the left hemisphere. The auditory area contains
different parts, and the primary auditory area is involved in processing simple features of sound,
including volume, tempo and pitch.

The human brain has a highly complex structure. It contains billions of neurons wired together
through trillions of connections. Each portion of the brain has a distinct set of functions. Damage
to a part of the brain results in characteristic clinical manifestations. In this regard, neuroimaging
or laboratory studies may disclose incidental abnormalities that have no bearing on the patient’s
symptoms and the further pursuit of which can lead to unnecessary time, expense, and potentially
harm patient and thus might save the life of the patient from being spoiled.

Localization of Neurological Disease

The nature and pattern of the symptoms and physical signs of neurological disease allow
inferences to be drawn about the sites of the lesions causing them. For example, Lesions of the
hypothalamus affect regulation of metabolism, including water and solute control, sexual
activity, and appetite for food. Also, basal-ganglion diseases lead to loss of control over
movement, resulting in involuntary movements or reduced spontaneity or speed of voluntary
movement.

The frontal lobe, which lies rostral to the central sulcus, is involved with many of the
components of intelligence (foresight, planning, and comprehension), with mood, with motor
activity on the opposite side of the body, and (in the case of the dominant hemisphere) with
speech production. Swelling of the underside of the frontal lobe may compress the first cranial
nerve and result in the loss of smell. Irritation of the frontal cortex may also cause either
generalized or focal motor epileptic seizures.

Moreover, the left parietal lobe shares control of the comprehension of spoken and written
language and of arithmetic, interprets the difference between right and left, identifies body parts,
and determines how to perform meaningful motor actions. Damage to this lobe leads to forms of
apraxia which is the inability to perform purposeful actions. On the other hand, right parietal
lobe is concerned with visuospatial orientation, and damage typically leads to deficits such as
dressing apraxia (inability to put on clothes). Also, each parietal lobe is also involved with so-
called cortical sensation or discriminative touch, the analysis and interpretation of touch
sensations originating on the other side of the body. Irritation of the parietal lobe can also lead to
tactile hallucinations, the false perception of touch sensations on the other side of the body

REFERENCES
https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/biopsychology-localisation-of-the-brain-function

https://neuro.wustl.edu/Education/Medical-Student-Education/Neurology-Clerkship/Localization

https://www.britannica.com/science/human-nervous-system-disease/Cerebellum
 Information Coding In Visual Cell, Perception and Attention

Visual cell and also called photoreceptor cells. Visual cell is one of the cells of the retina that is

sensitive to light. Retina is the innermost light-sensitive membrane covering the back wall of the

eyeball; it is continuous with the optic nerve. The primary light-sensing cells in the retina are

the photoreceptor cells, which are of three known types: rods, cones, and photosensitive retinal

ganglion cells. Rods function mainly in dim light and provide black-and-white vision. Cones

function in well-lit conditions and are responsible for the perception of color, as well as high-

acuity vision used for tasks such as reading. The third type of cells are thought not contribute to

sight directly, but have a role in the entrainment of the circadian rhythm.

The rod and cone are divided into an outer and an inner segment, which are connected by a

conspicuous constriction. The outer segment is the primary site of photoreception and contains a

photosensor substance.  Rods are extremely sensitive, and can be triggered by a single photon. At

very low light levels, visual experience is based solely on the rod signal. Cones require

significantly brighter light (that is, a larger number of photons) to produce a signal. In humans,

there are three different types of cone cell, distinguished by their pattern of response to light of

different wavelengths. Color experience is calculated from these three distinct signals. This

explains why colors cannot be seen at low light levels, when only the rod and not the cone

photoreceptor cells are active. The three types of cone cell respond to light of short, medium, and

long wavelengths, so they may respectively be referred to as S-cones, M-cones, and L-cones.

The firing of the cell depends upon only the number of photons absorbed. The different

responses of the three types of cone cells are determined by the likelihoods that their respective

photoreceptor proteins will absorb photons of different wavelengths. So, for example, an L cone

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cell contains a photoreceptor protein that more readily absorbs long wavelengths of light (that is,

“redder”). Light of a shorter wavelength can also produce the same response from an L cone cell,

but it must be much brighter to do so.

Visual Pathways and Visual Processing:

The visual pathway begins with the retina. The outermost layer of the retina is composed of the

photoreceptors, dendritic processes of the rod and cone neurons. Photoreceptors are distributed

throughout the retina, but a greater density of receptors is located in the area centralis, which is

important for acute vision.

The photoreceptors exhibit a fairly high basal release of glutamate. When light strikes the

photoreceptor cell, it initiates a biochemical process in the cell that reduces the release of

glutamate from its axon terminal. The glutamate, in turn, affects the activity of the bipolar and

horizontal cells. Every rod or cone photoreceptor releases the same neurotransmitter, glutamate.

However, the effect of glutamate differs in the bipolar cells, depending upon the type

of receptor imbedded in that cell's membrane. When glutamate binds to an ionotropic receptor,

the bipolar cell will depolarize (and therefore will hyperpolarize with light as less glutamate is

released). On the other hand, binding of glutamate to a metabotropic receptor results in a

hyperpolarization, so this bipolar cell will depolarize to light as less glutamate is released.

Visual Perception:

It is the brain's ability to receive, interpret, and act upon visual stimuli. Visual perception is the

ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by

21
the objects in the environment. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing

even if they have 20/20 vision.

Elements of Visual Perception:

Perception is based on the following seven elements:

1. Visual discrimination: The ability to distinguish one shape from another.

2. Visual memory: The ability to remember a specific form when removed from your

visual field.

3. Visual-spatial relationships: The ability to recognize forms that are the same but may

be in a different spatial orientation.

4. Visual form constancy: The ability to discern similar forms that may be different in size,

color, or spatial orientation and to consistently match the similar forms.

5. Visual sequential memory: The ability to recall two to seven items in sequence with

vision occluded.

6. Visual figure/ground: The ability to discern discrete forms when camouflaged or

partially hidden.

7. Visual closure.

Visual perception is a process that starts in our eyes. Visual perception happens when the eye

focuses light on the retina. Within the retina, there is a layer of photoreceptor (light-receiving)

cells which are designed to change light into a series of electrochemical signals to be transmitted

to the brain. Visual perception occurs in the brain’s cerebral cortex; the electrochemical signals

get there by traveling through the optic nerve and the thalamus. The process can take a mere 13

milliseconds, according to a 2017 study.

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Visual perception is not simply a question of where we point the ‘cameras’ of our eyes. Hidden

from introspection, our brain has to perform computations that outclass even the most

sophisticated of modern computers every time we open our eyes in order to make sense of the

pattern of light that reaches the human retina.

Example: Driving is one of the most complex daily tasks that many people do every day. It

requires many different complex processes, once of which is visual perception. If one of the

processes in visual perception fails, you have a chance of dangering yourself or others around

you. It is so important to quickly be able to figure out how close two cars are to each other, how

fast they are going, etc., which wouldn't be possible if your visual perception is poor.

In perception of light, it has been estimated that the human visual system can detect and

discriminate among seven million colour variations, but these variations are all created by the

combinations of the three primary colours: red, green, and blue. The perceived color of light is

determined by three dimensions: hue, saturation, and brightness. Wavelength determines the first

of the three perceptual dimensions of light: hue. The visible spectrum displays the range of hues

that our eyes can detect. Light can also vary in intensity, which corresponds to the second

perceptual dimension of light: brightness. The third dimension, saturation, of one wave length,

the perceived color is pure, or fully saturated. Conversely, if the radiation contains all

wavelengths, it produces no sensation of hue-it appears white.

Hue:

Hue refers to the color quality of the light and corresponds to the color names that we use, such

as orange, purple, green, indigo, yellow, cyan, aquamarine, etc. In fact, hue is the quality of

color. A quality is a value that changes, but it does not make the value larger or smaller. When

23
hue or color changes, it does not make sense to say that red has more or less hue than green. This

is because color is a quality, not an amount.

Saturation:

Saturation refers to the purity of the light. The more saturated the stimulus, the stronger the color

experience and the less saturated, the more it appears white or gray or black that is, achromatic.

The classic example of saturation differences concerns the continuum from red to pink. Pink is a

combination of red light and white light. The more white light is added, the less “red” the pink is.

Eventually, the red may be so overwhelmed by the white that we barely notice the pink at all.

Brightness:

Brightness refers to the amount of light present. The brighter an object is, the easier it is to see

and to notice the colors. Brightness is the dimension that now goes vertically through the color

circle. Brightness does have a relation to color; it is easier to see color at higher brightness

values.

In his important research on colour vision, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) theorized that

colour is perceived because the cones in the retina come in three types. One type of cone reacts

primarily to blue light (short wavelengths), another reacts primarily to green light (medium

wavelengths), and a third reacts primarily to red light (long wavelengths). The visual cortex then

detects and compares the strength of the signals from each of the three types of cones, creating

the experience of colour. According to this Young-Helmholtz trichromatic colour theory what

colour we see depends on the mix of the signals from the three types of cones. If the brain is

receiving primarily red and blue signals, for instance, it will perceive purple; if it is receiving

24
primarily red and green signals it will perceive yellow; and if it is receiving messages from all

three types of cones it will perceive white.

Visual Attention:

You’re in the kitchen, standing at the stove, looking out the window into the backyard. What do

you see? A swimming pool? The dog chasing a squirrel? Whatever it is – whatever object, color,

or movement you zoom in on – results from the proper operation of your visual attention.

After all, seeing is more than our eyes’ ability to view external stimuli. Systems controlling

perception cognition and action all exhibit capacity limitations. The brain is unable to

simultaneously process everything in the continuous influx of information from the environment.

One of the most critical roles for visual attention is to filter visual information. Research shows

that visual attention can perform this function by actively suppressing irrelevant stimuli or by

selecting potentially relevant stimuli. In either case, attention makes it possible to use limited

resources for the processing of some stimuli rather than others

As we observe the environment around us, that information is stored in our working memory, so

that we are aware of potential hazards around us. This sort of focus allows us to perform

everyday tasks, such as walking and driving, without injuring ourselves.

The various features of the visual world are carried by a whole population of different cells, each

involved in coding a different feature of the image. Starting from the retina itself where each cell

responds only to features appearing within its discrete receptive field, the processing of the

image is spread out over many cells. At higher levels, cells become more specialized in the

25
attributes that they are involved in processing. Different systems encode colour, motion, depth,

etc. How this scattered information is put back together to produce a coherent percept of each

individual object is called the binding problem.

Varieties of Attention:

1. External i.e. attending to stimuli in the world.

2. Internal i.e. Attending to one line of thought over another or selecting one response over

another.

3. Overt i.e. directing a sense organ toward a stimulus, like turning your eyes or your head.

4. Covert i.e. attending without giving an outward sign.

5. Divided/limited i.e. attending to stimuli at the same time.

6. Alternating i.e. splitting attention between two different stimuli.

7. Sustained i.e. continuously monitoring some stimulus.

8. Selective i.e. selectively attending certain stimuli in the environment while at the same

time tuning other things out.

Indicators of Reduced Visual Attention:

Poor visual attention lowers the ability to avoid obstacles while walking. Falling or lower levels

of mobility in seniors are strong indicators of reduced visual attention, and may indicate the need

for long-term care.

Contrary to common misconception, poor vision isn’t the primary cause of motor vehicle

accidents among seniors. In fact, older drivers with poor attentional capacity due to a limited

visuospatial field are six times more likely to crash compared to those with no or minimal

impairment.

26
Vision tests aren’t enough to determine someone’s ability to walk, drive, or perform other

mobility tasks. Instead, a cognitive test of visual attention serves as a true indicator of functional

decline.

Mechanisms of Selective Attention:

Selective attention is controlled by mechanisms on at least four levels:

1. The mechanism that leads a high-level executive controller to decide to attend to (or to

ignore) something. This may be a location, a class of objects, a modality, or a single

object, depending on the behaviour in which the subject is engaged.

2. Mechanisms of neural activity.

3. The mechanism that detects the appropriately enhanced or otherwise flagged activity and

passes it to awareness.

4. How awareness uses that information.

Visual sensory neurons are tuned to particular properties of the stimuli to which they respond.

Often, these cells show a spatial tuning, which takes the form of a receptive field: an area of the

retina outside which stimuli will evoke little or no response. They may in addition be tuned to

orientation, wavelength, direction and speed of motion etc. - all the parameters that describe the

image. Different cells in different areas are selective for different attributes. Some cells are tuned

for complex combinations of features that provide a high-level description of the scene. In

response a stimulus with particular features, a given cell will have a particular firing rate. For a

given stimulus, a larger response than usual is evoked when attention is being paid to those

features coded by that cell.

27
Relationship Between Perception and Attention:

Attention plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived.

Imagine you are at a party full of music, chatter, and laughter. You get involved in an interesting

conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the background people. If someone interrupted

you to ask what person had just walked by, you would probably be unable to answer that

question. When we see an object’s light travel to the eyes; we unconsciously interpret what that

light means. In the same way, when we see an animal such as a cat in our environment

(attention) the sensory nerves are able to construct the image which is then created in the mind

and is perceived by us. The same case happens when we hear certain sounds that we are familiar

and we are able to interpret and form an image based on that. This creates the relationship

between attention and perception. For instance, when we hear a dog bark our brain is able to

process this information and creates an image even though we cannot see the dog at that

moment. At times however, there are chances of having abnormal stimuli which can result to

double images or double meaning. Perception can also be determined by culture and social

experiences that an individual has had before; before someone can choose where to put their

focus on, they use what is called “bottom up and top down method”. Bottom up allows one to

scan through the environment or in their minds for already existing information while the top

down method is based on one’s goals which can lead to forming habits. For instance, if one is

used to keeping their car keys in a specific location, their minds will tend to focus their attention

to that specific area whenever they want to use the keys, this is attention. Attention and

perception depend on each other. Perception is part of the brain that interprets what we feel, hear,

taste and touch into images that we can be able to understand before the mind takes any action.

28
Attention picks the image and determines what the mind will concentrate on depending on our

goals, past experience and areas of interest.

29
References:

1. https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/4-2-seeing/
2. https://nba.uth.tmc.edu/neuroscience/m/s2/chapter14.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell#:~:text=There%20are%20currently
%20three%20known,of%20the%20visual%20world%2C%20sight.
4. http://www.yorku.ca/harris/pubs/harris_jenkin_va_chapter.pdf
5. https://braincheck.com/articles/visual-attention-what-it-and-why-its-important/

30
 Perception and Attention
Sensory Memory refers to the brief storage of sensory information. Sensory memory is a

memory buffer that lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is attended to and passed on for

more processing, is forgotten. The purpose of sensory memory is to give the brain some time to

process the incoming sensations, and to allow us to see the world as an unbroken stream of

events rather than as individual pieces.

Iconic Memory

Iconic memory is a form of sensory memory that stores visual short term impressions and

sensations. Sensory memory is ultra-short-term memory that lasts only milliseconds for most

people following stimulus offset or onset. Iconic memory is the sensory memory related to visual

memory, and might also be called “visual short term memory.” It is called iconic because of

icons, or pictures that your brain takes of things that you see, as visual scenes are used to round

out immediate perceptions and reach conclusions regarding visual cues.

Some people confuse iconic memory with photographic memory. Photographic memory is the

ability to see something and remember it from a brief image alone. Iconic memory is simply

your brain's way of processing visual information via the initial display of any given visual

stimuli.

The image you "see" in your mind is your iconic memory of that visual stimuli. Iconic memory

is part of the visual memory system which includes long-term memory and visual short-term

memory. The term iconic memory refers to the short-term visual memories people store when

1
seeing something very briefly. They create pictures in the mind. Unlike long-term memories

which can be stored for a lifetime, these iconic mental images will only last for milliseconds and

will fade quickly. The primary part of the brain that is involved in iconic memory is the occipital

lobe, which is home to the primary visual cortex. The occipital lobe and its primary visual cortex

are responsible for processing and regulating visual information.

Difference from echoic memory:

Iconic memory is visual memory is shorter. Echoic memory is auditory memory is longer. These

memories are not conscious but are implied to exist because they affect conscious behavior.

Examples

1. A deer runs across the road while a man is driving. He only sees the deer very briefly

before it bounds off. The memory left in his mind of the deer leaping across the

roadway is stored for a short period of time.

2. You look around the room, quickly surveying objects that you see on the floor, end

tables, dresser, and bed, before quickly shutting your eyes. The memory of what your

room looked like during your observation is an example of iconic memory.

3. In a dark hotel room, a man turns on the light so that he can get up and go to the

bathroom. As soon as he turns it on, however, the light bulb breaks and the room goes

completely dark again. The memory of how the room looked just before the light bulb

broke is an example of an iconic memory.

Echoic Memory

Echoic memory is the branch of sensory memory used by the auditory system. Echoic memory is

capable of holding a large amount of auditory information, but only for 3–4 seconds. This echoic

2
sound is replayed in the mind for this brief amount of time immediately after the presentation of

the auditory stimulus.

In terms of types of memories, we remember sounds and words in different ways. When looking

at something, we are able to scan over it many times, take it in and remember it. When it comes

to auditory memory, we cannot scan over the same information several times, for example, when

we are listening to the radio, we cannot hear the exact word, phrase or statement again once the

time has passed. Echoic memory is, therefore defined as being the short-term sensory memory of

auditory stimuli. Visual and Auditory memories are not long-term memories so they are

temporary and fade quickly compared to other types of memories.

But how exactly does echoic memory work? Well, when you hear a sound, whether it’s someone

talking, a car in the street or some music, your echoic memory will engage with the sound and

transmit it to the brain. The brain then creates and keeps a perfect version of that sound for a

brief period of time. Whether you pay attention to the sound being repeated in your head. If

you’re not fully listening to a conversation, you might ask whomever you’re speaking to to

repeat what they were saying and then you realise that you’ve already heard what they’re about

to repeat to you. That’s echoic memory doing its work.

Echoic memory, like many aspects of the human mind and body, can become impaired which

can have an effect on how someone might live their day-to-day lives. The inability to retain the

brains versions of the sounds for the short period of time that echoic memory works for (about 4

seconds) is linked to speech impairments, difficulty with language development and

communicative deficits. Echoic memory can also be affected after particular types of strokes,

3
however, studies have shown that by encouraging stroke victims to listen to music or audiobooks

daily, their echoic memory can be improved noticeably.

The process of echoic memory is automatic. This means audio information enters your echoic

memory even if you don’t purposely try to listen. In fact, your mind is constantly forming echoic

memories.

Example:

1. Listening to music

Your brain uses echoic memory when you listen to music. It briefly recalls the previous note and

connects it to the next one.

2. Talking to another person

When someone talks, your echoic memory retains each individual syllable. Your brain

recognizes words by connecting each syllable to the previous one.

Each word is also stored in echoic memory, which allows your brain to understand a full

sentence.

Pattern recognition is a skill of how people identify the objects in their environment which

is what we do all the time in our daily life. For example, you can recognize your teachers,

friends, and also which items can eat or cannot eat. Everything in the world has its own pattern.

Our superiority over computers as pattern recognizers has the practical advantage that pattern

recognition can serve as a test of whether a person or a computer program is trying to gain access

to the Internet.

4
There are many kinds of descriptions of patterns stored in our long term memory (LTM), thus,

when we observe or listen to a pattern, our mind will automatically form a description of it and

compare it against the descriptions which are stored in LTM. If the description closely matches

with one of the descriptions in our LTM, then we are able to recognize the pattern. There are

various description theories used to describe patterns which are template theories, feature

theories, etc.

Template Matching

Template Matching theory asserts that people form Templates for every object they see or

interact with. According to this theory, Pattern recognition progresses by comparing sensory

input to cognitive pictures until a match is located. These copies are stored in the process of our

past experiences and learning as a template in our long term memory.

All sensory input is compared to multiple representations of an object to form one single

conceptual understanding. The theory defines perception as a fundamentally recognition-based

process. It assumes that everything we see, we understand only through past exposure, which

then informs our future perception of the external world

The major criticism for this theory is that it is too basic. Since, the same sensory stimulant can be

observed from many different viewpoints can have a multitude of different variations, it is not

possible to store a template for each particular viewpoint or variation. Which is why this theory

is not popular among cognitive psychologists.

Example

A, A A are all recognized as the letter A

5
Feature Analysis

In pattern recognition, feature analysis aims to understand perception and recognition as

processes rooted in the interactions between our brains and the outside world. Feature analysis

assumes that stimuli consist of combinations of elementary features; (e.g., for the alphabet,

features may include horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonals, and curves) and theorizes the

possibility that humans and animals have neurons and neural networks that function as detectors,

observing the individual characteristics, or features, of every object and pattern we encounter.

For instance, we perceive features like color, shape, size, and texture. Rather than fitting these

features into a previously existing template, feature analysis theory surmises that we

neurologically encode the features to summarize and understand what we are looking at or

interacting with. For example, by seeing the cat's fur, paws, whiskers, ears, and tail, one finds the

''whole'' to be a cat. Feature analysis theory also functions at a higher and more complex level, as

our feature detectors become attuned and responsive to increasingly complex features, or

features that repeat in complicated ways

In feature analysis, the features that occur in the most meaningful sequences can be perceived

and identified because of the detection systems we have available. Each visual characteristic in

this theory is called a distinctive feature. Feature analysis proceeds through 4 stages.

1. Detection

2. Pattern dissection

3. Feature comparison in memory

4. Recognition

There is some evidence observed to back this theory. For example, Hubel & Wiesel (1962)

inserted microelectrodes in cat’s brains (visual cortex) and found that some neurons respond only

6
to horizontal lines, while others responded to diagonals. Similar evidence was observed by

Maunsell & Newsome (1987) when the similar experiment was conducted on monkeys. Gibson

(1969) further found that it took longer to respond to finding differences between P & R versus

G & M as P & R share many critical features.

Feature analysis theory has the following advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: Consistent with the psychological research and compatible with evidence from

neuroscience. For example, the visual system contains feature detectors that are present when we

are born and these detectors help us recognize certain features of letters and simple patterns.

Disadvantages: These theories were constructed to explain the relatively simple recognition of

letters, in contrast, the shapes that occur in nature are much more complex.

References

Chapter 2: Perceptual Processes I Flashcards by Jennifer Nichols | Brainscape. (n.d.). Retrieved

February 24, 2021, from https://www.brainscape.com/flashcards/chapter-2-perceptual-processes-

i-5378977/packs/8045480

Cognitive Psychology Class Notes: Pattern Recognition. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2021,

from https://www.alleydog.com/cognotes/patrecog.html

Pattern recognition (physiological psychology). (n.d.). Psychology Wiki. Retrieved February

24, 2021, from

https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_(physiological_psychology)

Pattern Recognition through Feature Analysis & Configurational Systems. (n.d.). Study.Com.

Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://study.com/academy/lesson/pattern-recognition-

through-feature-analysis-configurational-systems.html

7
 Template, Feature Analysis & Prototype Theory - General Psychology Class (Video). (n.d.).

Study.Com. Retrieved February 24, 2021, from https://study.com/academy/lesson/template-

feature-analysis-recognition-by-components-theory.html

Template matching APA dictionary. Retreived February 24,2021

From https://dictionary.apa.org/template-matching-theory

Template Matching theory. Psychological Dictionary. Retreived february 24, 2021From

https://psychologydictionary.org/template-matching-theory/

H. Gregg. (2013, May 1). Perception and perceptual illusions. Psychology Today. Retrieved from

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201305/perception-and-perceptual-illusions

8
Topic 5: Psycholinguistics.

Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental aspects of language and speech. It is

primarily concerned with the ways in which language is represented and processed in the

brain. A branch of both linguistics and psychology, psycholinguistics is part of the field

of cognitive science. Adjective: psycholinguistic.

The term psycholinguistics was introduced by American psychologist Jacob

Robert Kantor in his 1936 book, "An Objective Psychology of Grammar." The term was

popularized by one of Kantor's students, Nicholas Henry Pronko, in a 1946 article

"Language and Psycholinguistics: A Review." The emergence of psycholinguistics as an

academic discipline is generally linked to an influential seminar at Cornell University in

1951.

Also known as: Psychology of language

Etymology: From the Greek, "mind" + the Latin, "tongue"

On Psycholinguistics

"Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental mechanisms that make it possible for

people to use language. It is a scientific discipline whose goal is a coherent theory of the

way in which language is produced and understood," says Alan Garnham in his book,

"Psycholinguistics: Central Topics."

As mentioned earlier, Psycholinguistics, the study of psychological aspects of

language. Experiments investigating such topics as short-term and long-term memory,

perceptual strategies, and speech perception based on linguistic models are part of this

discipline. Most work in psycholinguistics has been done on the learning of language by

children. Language is extremely complex, yet children learn it quickly and with ease;

9
 thus, the study of child language is important for psychologists interested in cognition

and learning and for linguists concerned with the insights it can give about the structure

of language. In the 1960s and early ’70s much research in child language used the

transformational-generative model proposed by the American linguist Noam Chomsky;

the goal of that research has been to discover how children come to know the

grammatical processes that underlie the speech they hear. The transformational model has

also been adapted for another field of psycholinguistics, the processing and

comprehension of speech; early experiments in this area suggested, for example, that

passive sentences took longer to process than their active counterparts because an extra

grammatical rule was necessary to produce the passive sentence. Many of the results of

this work were controversial and inconclusive, and psycholinguistics has been turning

increasingly to other functionally related and socially oriented models of language

structure.

History and Introduction

The term psycholinguistics was coined in the 1940s and came into more general

use after the publication of Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok’s

Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems (1954), which reported

the proceedings of a seminar sponsored in the United States by the Social Science

Research Council’s Committee on Linguistics and Psychology.

The boundary between linguistics (in the narrower sense of the term; see the

introduction of this article) and psycholinguistics is difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw.

So too is the boundary between psycholinguistics and psychology. What characterizes

10
 psycholinguistics as it is practiced today as a more or less distinguishable field of

research is its concentration upon a certain set of topics connected with language and its

bringing to bear upon them the findings and theoretical principles of both linguistics and

psychology. The range of topics that would be generally held to fall within the field of

psycholinguistics nowadays is rather narrower, however, than that covered in the survey

by Osgood and Sebeok.

Two Key Questions

According to David Carrol in "Psychology of Language," "At its heart,

psycholinguistic work consists of two questions. One is, What knowledge of language is

needed for us to use language? In a sense, we must know a language to use it, but we are

not always fully aware of this knowledge.... The other primary psycholinguistic question

is, What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language? By 'ordinary

use of language,' I mean such things as understanding a lecture, reading a book, writing a

letter, and holding a conversation. By 'cognitive processes,' I mean processes such as

perception, memory, and thinking. Although we do few things as often or as easily as

speaking and listening, we will find that considerable cognitive processing is going on

during those activities."

How Language Is Done

In the book, "Contemporary Linguistics," linguistics expert William O'Grady

explains, "Psycholinguists study how word meaning, sentence meaning,

and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the mind. They study how

complex words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down

11
 into their constituents in the acts of listening and reading. In short, psycholinguists seek

to understand how language is done... In general, psycholinguistic studies have revealed

that many of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word structure,

and sentence structure also play a role in language processing. However, an account of

language processing also requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts

interact with other aspects of human processing to enable language production and

comprehension."

Language acquisition by children

One of the topics most central to psycholinguistic research is the acquisition of

language by children. The term acquisition is preferred to “learning,” because “learning”

tends to be used by psychologists in a narrowly technical sense, and many

psycholinguists believe that no psychological theory of learning, as currently formulated,

is capable of accounting for the process whereby children, in a relatively short time, come

to achieve a fluent control of their native language. Starting in the 1960s, research on

language acquisition was strongly influenced by Chomsky’s theory of generative

grammar, and the main problem to which it addressed itself was how it is possible for

young children to infer the grammatical rules underlying the speech they hear and then to

use these rules for the construction of utterances that they have never heard before. It was

Chomsky’s conviction, shared by a number of psycholinguists, that children are born

with a knowledge of the formal principles that determine the grammatical structure of all

languages, and that it is this innate knowledge that explains the success and speed of

language acquisition.

Others have argued that it is not grammatical competence as such that is innate

but more general cognitive principles and that the application of these to language

12
 utterances in particular situations ultimately yields grammatical competence. Many works

have stressed that all children go through the same stages of language development

regardless of the language they are acquiring. It has also been asserted that the same basic

semantic categories and grammatical functions can be found in the earliest speech of

children in a number of different languages operating in quite different cultures in various

parts of the world.

Although Chomsky was careful to stress in his earliest writings that generative

grammar does not provide a model for the production or reception of language utterances,

there has been a good deal of psycholinguistic research directed toward validating the

psychological reality of the units and processes postulated by generative grammarians in

their descriptions of languages. Experimental work in the early 1960s appeared to show

that nonkernel sentences took longer to process than kernel sentences and, even more

interestingly, that the processing time increased proportionately with the number of

optional transformations involved. Later work cast doubt on these findings, and most

psycholinguists are now more cautious about using grammars produced by linguists as

models of language processing. Nevertheless, generative grammar remained a valuable

source of psycholinguistic experimentation, and the formal properties of language,

discovered or more adequately discussed by generative grammarians than they have been

by others, were generally recognized to have important implications for the investigation

of short-term and long-term memory and perceptual strategies.

Speech perception
Another important area of psycholinguistic research that has been strongly

influenced by theoretical advances in linguistics and, more especially, by the

development of generative grammar is speech perception. It has long been realized that

13
 the identification of speech sounds and of the word forms composed of them depends

upon the context in which they occur and upon the hearer’s having mastered, usually as a

child, the appropriate phonological and grammatical system. Throughout the 1950s, work

on speech perception was dominated (as was psycholinguistics in general) by information

theory, according to which the occurrence of each sound in a word and each word in an

utterance is statistically determined by the preceding sounds and words. Information

theory is no longer as generally accepted as it was a few years ago, and more research has

shown that in speech perception the cues provided by the acoustic input are interpreted,

unconsciously and very rapidly, with reference not only to the phonological structure of

the language but also to the more abstract levels of grammatical organization.

An Interdisciplinary Field

"Psycholinguistics... draws on ideas and knowledge from a number of associated

areas, such as phonetics, semantics, and pure linguistics. There is a constant exchange of

information between psycholinguists and those working in neurolinguistics, who study

how language is represented in the brain. There are also close links with studies in

artificial intelligence. Indeed, much of the early interest in language processing derived

from the AI goals of designing computer programs that can turn speech into writing and

programs that can recognize the human voice," says John Field in "Psycholinguistics: A

Resource Book for Students."

On Psycholinguistics and Neuroimaging

According to Friedmann Pulvermüller in "Word Processing in the Brain as

Revealed by Neurophysiological Imaging," "Psycholinguistics has classically focused on

14
 button press tasks and reaction time experiments from which cognitive processes are

being inferred. The advent of neuroimaging opened new research perspectives for the

psycholinguist as it became possible to look at the neuronal mass activity that underlies

language processing. Studies of brain correlates of psycholinguistic processes can

complement behavioral results, and in some cases...can lead to direct information about

the basis of psycholinguistic processes."

Other areas of research

Other areas of psycholinguistics that should be briefly mentioned are the study of

aphasia and neurolinguistics. The term aphasia is used to refer to various kinds of

language disorders; research has sought to relate these, on the one hand, to particular

kinds of brain injury and, on the other, to psychological theories of the storage and

processing of different kinds of linguistic information. One linguist has put forward the

theory that the most basic distinctions in language are those that are acquired first by

children and are subsequently most resistant to disruption and loss in aphasia. This,

though not disproved, is still regarded as controversial. Two kinds of aphasia are

commonly distinguished. In motor aphasia the patient manifests difficulty in the

articulation of speech or in writing and may produce utterances with a simplified

grammatical structure, but his comprehension is not affected. In sensory aphasia the

patient’s fluency may be unaffected, but his comprehension will be impaired and his

utterances will often be incoherent.

Neurolinguistics should perhaps be regarded as an independent field of research

rather than as part of psycholinguistics. In 1864 it was shown that motor aphasia is

produced by lesions in the third frontal convolution of the left hemisphere of the brain.

15
 Shortly after the connection had been established between motor aphasia and damage to

this area (known as Broca’s area), the source of sensory aphasia was localized in lesions

of the posterior part of the left temporal lobe. Subsequent work has confirmed these

findings. The technique of electrically stimulating the cortex in conscious patients has

enabled brain surgeons to induce temporary aphasia and so to identify a “speech area” in

the brain. It is no longer generally believed that there are highly specialized “centres”

within the speech area, each with its own particular function; but the existence of such a

speech area in the dominant hemisphere of the brain (which for most people is the left

hemisphere) seems to be well established. The posterior part of this area is involved more

in the comprehension of speech and the construction of grammatically and semantically

coherent utterances, and the anterior part is concerned with the articulation of speech and

with writing. Little is yet known about the operation of the neurological mechanisms

underlying the storage and processing of language.

Cognitive Linguistics

Cognitive linguistics is a cluster of overlapping approaches to the study

of language as a mental phenomenon. Cognitive linguistics emerged as a school of

linguistic thought in the 1970s. In the introduction to Cognitive Linguistics: Basic

Readings (2006), linguist Dirk Geeraerts makes a distinction between

uncapitalized cognitive linguistics ("referring to all approaches in which natural

language is studied as a mental phenomenon") and capitalized Cognitive

Linguistics ("one form of cognitive linguistics").

Observations

16
 "Language offers a window into cognitive function, providing insights into the

nature, structure and organization of thoughts and ideas. The most important way in

which cognitive linguistics differs from other approaches to the study of language, then,

is that language is assumed to reflect certain fundamental properties and design features

of the human mind."

(Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Routledge,

2006)

"Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language in its cognitive function,

where cognitive refers to the crucial role of intermediate informational structures with our

encounters with the world. Cognitive Linguistics... [assumes] that our interaction with the

world is mediated through informational structures in the mind. It is more specific than

cognitive psychology, however, by focusing on natural language as a means for

organizing, processing, and conveying that information...

"[W]hat holds together the diverse forms of Cognitive Linguistics is the belief

that linguistic knowledge involves not just knowledge of the language, but knowledge of

our experience of the world as mediated by the language."

(Dirk Geeraerts and Herbert Cuyckens, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive

Linguistics. Oxford University Press, 2007)

Cognitive Models and Cultural Models

"Cognitive models, as the term suggests, represent a cognitive, basically

psychological, view of the stored knowledge about a certain field. Since psychological

states are always private and individual experiences, descriptions of such cognitive

17
 models necessarily involve a considerable degree of idealization. In other words,

descriptions of cognitive models are based on the assumption that many people have

roughly the same basic knowledge about things like sandcastles and beaches.

"However,... this is only part of the story. Cognitive models are of course not

universal, but depend on the culture in which a person grows up and lives. The culture

provides the background for all the situations that we have to experience in order to be

able to form a cognitive model. A Russian or German may not have formed a cognitive

model of cricket simply because it is not part of the culture of his own country to play

that game. So, cognitive models for particular domains ultimately depend on so-

called cultural models. In reverse, cultural models can be seen as cognitive models that

are shared by people belonging to a social group or subgroup.

"Essentially, cognitive models and cultural models are thus just two sides of the

same coin. While the term 'cognitive model' stresses the psychological nature of these

cognitive entities and allows for inter-individual differences, the term 'cultural model'

emphasizes the unifying aspect of its being collectively shared by many people. Although

'cognitive models' are related to cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics while

'cultural models' belong to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics, researchers in

all of these fields should be, and usually are, aware of both dimensions of their object of

study."

(Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-Jörg Schmid, An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, 2nd

ed. Routledge, 2013)

Research in Cognitive Linguistics

18
 "One of the central assumptions underlying research in cognitive linguistics is that

language use reflects conceptual structure, and that therefore the study of language can

inform us of the mental structures on which language is based. One of the goals of the

field is therefore to properly determine what sorts of mental representations are

constructed by various sorts of linguistic utterances. Initial research in the field (e.g.,

Fauconnier 1994, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Langacker 1987) was conducted by way

of theoretical discussions, which were based on the methods of introspection and rational

reasoning. These methods were used to examine diverse topics such as the mental

representation of presupposition, negation, counterfactuals and metaphor, to name a few

(cf Fauconnier 1994).

"Unfortunately, the observation of one's mental structures via introspection may

be limited in its accuracy (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson 1977). As a result, investigators have

come to realize that it is important to examine theoretical claims by using experimental

methods..."

"The methods that we will discuss are ones that are often used in psycholinguistic

research. These are:a. Lexical decision and naming features.

b. Memory measures.

c. Item recognition measures.

d. Reading times.

e. Self report measures.

f. The effects of language comprehension on a subsequent task.

Each of these methods is based on observing an experimental measure to draw

conclusions about the mental representations constructed by a certain linguistic unit."

19
 (Uri Hasson and Rachel Giora, "Experimental Methods for Studying the Mental

Representation of Language." Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Monica

Gonzalez-Marquez et al. John Benjamins, 2007)

Cognitive Psychologists vs. Cognitive Linguists

"Cognitive psychologists, and others, criticize cognitive linguistic work because it

is so heavily based on individual analysts' intuitions,... and thus does not constitute the

kind of objective, replicable data preferred by many scholars in the cognitive and natural

sciences (e.g., data collected on large numbers of naive participants under controlled

laboratory conditions."

(Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., "Why Cognitive Linguists Should Care More About Empirical

Methods." Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Mónica González-Márquez et al.

John Benjamins, 2007)

Supporting Material:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/psycholinguistics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5uNFKEn4_A&ab_channel=CrashCourse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=V0CX_5jKJYI&ab_channel=TheVirtualLinguisticsCampus
References

https://www.britannica.com/science/linguistics/Other-relationships
https://www.britannica.com/science/psycholinguistics
https://www.thoughtco.com/psycholinguistics-1691700
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cognitive-linguistics-1689861

20
Contents
Language and Thought....................................................................................................................2

Differences among Languages.....................................................................................................2

Linguistic Determinism...................................................................................................................3

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.......................................................................................................4

Linguistic Relativity or Linguistic Universals?...........................................................................6

Bilingualism and Dialects................................................................................................................7

Bilingualism—an Advantage or Disadvantage?..........................................................................8

Slips of the Tongue........................................................................................................................10

Gender and Language....................................................................................................................11

SUMMARY...................................................................................................................................13

How does language affect the way we think?............................................................................13

How does our social context influence our use of language?....................................................14

References......................................................................................................................................15

1
Language and Thought 
One of the most interesting areas in the study of language is the relationship between language
and the thinking of the human mind (Harris, 2003). Many people believe that language shapes
thoughts. It is for this reason that the Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association places big value on political correctness in researchers’ writings. And for this reason
politicians and media use labels like “freedom fighters” versus “terrorists,” or “surgical strikes”
versus “bombing raids” (Stapel & Semin, 2007). Many different questions have been asked
about the relationship between language and thought. We consider only some of them here.
Studies comparing and contrasting users of differing languages and dialects form the basis of this
section.

Differences among Languages

Why are there so many different languages around the world? And how does using any language
in general and using a particular language influence human thought? As you know, different
languages comprise different lexicons. They also use different syntactical structures. These
differences often reflect variations in the physical and cultural environments in which the
languages arose and developed. For example, in terms of lexicon, the Garo of Burma distinguish
among many kinds of rice, which is understandable because they are a rice-growing culture.
Nomadic Arabs have more than 20 words for camels. These peoples clearly conceptualize rice
and camels more specifically and in more complex ways than do people outside their cultural
groups. As a result of these linguistic differences, do the Garo think about rice differently than
we do? And do the Arabs think about camels differently than we do? Consider the way we
discuss computers. We differentiate between many aspects of computers, including whether the
computer is a desktop or a laptop, a PC or a Mac, or uses Linux or Windows as an operating
system. A person from a culture that does not have access to computers would not require so
many words or distinctions to describe these machines. We expect, however, specific
performance and features for a given computer based on these distinctions. Clearly, we think

2
about computers in a way that is different than that of people who have never encountered a
computer.

The syntactical structures of languages differ, too. Almost all languages permit some way in
which to communicate actions, agents of actions, and objects of actions (Gerrig & Banaji, 1994).
What differs across languages is the order of subject, verb, and object in a typical declarative
sentence. Also differing is the range of grammatical inflections and other markings that speakers
are obliged to include as key elements of a sentence. For example, in describing past actions in
English, we indicate whether an action took place in the past by changing (inflecting) the verb
form. For example, walk changes to walk in the past tense. In Spanish and German, the verb also
must indicate whether the agent of action was singular or plural and whether it is being referred
to in the first, second, or third person. In Turkish, the verb form must additionally indicate
whether the action was witnessed or experienced directly by the speaker or was noted only
indirectly. Do these differences and other differences in obligatory syntactical structures
influence—or perhaps even constrain— the users of these languages to think about things
differently because of the language they use while thinking? We will have a closer look at these
questions in the next two sections, in which we explore the concepts of linguistic Determinism,
Linguistic relativity and linguistic Universals.

Linguistic Determinism
Linguistic Determinism suggests that one's language determines the ways one's mind constructs
categories. First introduced by Edward Sapir and expanded by his student Benjamin Lee Whorf,
the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis proposed that language patterns lead to different patterns in thought.
A more accepted notion of the relationship between language and thought is that while
interrelated, neither language nor culture creates a direct causal link to the other. In everyday
terms, we hear and experience that the words we use influence our interactions with others and
yet, not having the same native language, do not always prevent us from understanding one
another. This influence of language on culture is called Linguistic Relativism. More recently,
Robert Kaplan (1988) has researched the ways in which language and culture influence narrative
construction and posited that our first language (mother tongue) has a powerful influence on the

3
way we shape our thoughts and organize our ideas. He describes linear, circular, metaphoric,
argument/rebuttal styles, etc. and associates these with particular language groups.

Linguistic determinism states that society is in some way confined by its language, that language
actually determines thought and culture. As an absolutist theory, it is often at the point of great
criticism and without much effort one can think of examples where this is not the case.
Linguistic determinism is, for the most part, ignored in favor of linguistic relativity which states
that one's language influences one's view of the world but does NOT determine it. This is to say,
the worldview of a speech community is influenced by the structure of its language. Humans are
wildly varying and so are their brains. Though the brain does hold universals among all humans,
such as the acquisition of language, the way humans use language to process their environment
differs. For example, drawing from Diana Gainer's (Language and Thought, 2009) article on
linguistic relativity, a doctor said in passing to an elderly patient to “take it easy,” synonymous
with “goodbye” in his vocabulary. She took this as medical advice and refused to leave her bed
for such a long time that she became unable to walk. This is an example of two speakers of the
same language interpreting elements (colloquialisms) of their language in completely different
ways. This is primary evidence against linguistic determinism as the same language by two
native speakers was interpreted in starkly different manners.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 

The concept relevant to the question of whether language influences thinking is linguistic
relativity. Linguistic relativity refers to the assertion that speakers of different languages have
differing cognitive systems and that these different cognitive systems influence the ways in
which people think about the world. Thus, according to the relativity view, the Garo would think
about rice differently than we do. For example, the Garo would develop more cognitive
categories for rice than would an English-speaking counterpart. What would happen when the
Garo contemplated rice? They purportedly would view it differently—and perhaps with greater
complexity of thought—than would English speakers, who have only a few words for rice. Thus,
language would shape thought.

4
The linguistic-relativity hypothesis is sometimes referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
named after Edward Sapir said that “we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as
we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of
interpretation” (p. 69). Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) stated this view even more strongly: We
dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has
been one of the most widely discussed ideas in all of the social and behavioral sciences.
However, some of its implications appear to have reached mythical proportions. For example,
“many social scientists have warmly accepted and gladly propagated the notion that Eskimos
have multitudinous words for the single English word snow. Contrary to popular beliefs,
Eskimos do not have numerous words for snow (Martin, 1986). “No one who knows anything
about Eskimo (or more accurately, about the Inuit families of related languages spoken from
Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do”. Apparently, we must exercise caution in our
interpretation of findings regarding linguistic relativity. Consider a milder form of linguistic
relativism—it is that language may not determine thought, but that language certainly may
influence thought.

Our thoughts and our language interact in myriad ways, only some of which we now understand.
Clearly, language facilitates thought; it even affects perception and memory. For some reason,
we have limited means by which to manipulate non-linguistic images (Hunt & Banaji, 1988).
Such limitations make desirable the use of language to facilitate mental representation and
manipulation. Even nonsense pictures (“doodles”) are recalled and redrawn differently,
depending on the verbal label given to the picture (Bower, Karlin, & Dueck, 1975). To see how
this phenomenon might work. Suppose, instead of being labeled “beaded necklace,” it had been
titled “beaded curtain.” You might have perceived it differently. However, once a particular label
has been given, viewing the same figure from the alternative perspective is much harder.
Psychologists have used other ambiguous figures and have found similar results. When
participants are given a particular label, they tend to draw their recollection of the figure in a way
more similar to the given label. For example, after viewing a figure of two circles connected by a
single line, they will draw a figure differently as a function of whether it is labeled “eyeglasses”

5
or “dumbbells.” Specifically, the connecting line will either be lengthened or shortened,
depending on the label. 

Language also affects how we encode, store, and retrieve information in memory. Eyewitness
testimony is powerfully influenced by the distinctive phrasing of questions posed to eyewitnesses
(Loftus & Palmer, 1974). In a famous study, participants viewed an accident (Loftus & Palmer,
1974). Participants then were asked to describe the speeds of the cars before the accident. The
word indicating impact was varied across participants. These words included smashed, collided,
bumped, and hit. When the word smashed was used, the participants rated speed as significantly
higher than when any of the other words were used. The connotation of the word smash thereby
seems to bias participants to estimate a higher speed. Similarly, when participants were asked if
they saw broken glass (after a week’s delay), the participants who were questioned with the word
smashed said “yes” much more frequently than did any of the other participants. No other
circumstances varied between participants, so the difference in the description of the accident is
presumably the result of the word choice. 

Linguistic Relativity or Linguistic Universals? 

There has been some research that addresses linguistic universals—characteristic patterns across
all languages of various cultures—and relativity. Linguists have identified hundreds of linguistic
universals related to phonology (the study of phonemes), morphology (the study of morphemes),
semantics, and syntax. For example, Chomsky would argue that deep structure applies, in its own
way, to the syntaxes of all languages. Colors an area that illustrates much of this research focuses
on color names. These words provide an especially convenient way of testing for universals.
Why? Because people in every culture can be expected to be exposed, at least potentially, to
pretty much the same range of colors. In actuality, different languages name colors quite
differently. But the languages do not divide the color spectrum arbitrarily. A systematic pattern
seems universally to govern color naming across languages. Consider the results of
investigations of color terms across a large number of languages (Berlin & Kay, 1969; Kay,
1975). Two apparent linguistic universals about color naming have emerged across languages.

6
First, all the languages surveyed took their basic color terms from a set of just 11 color names.
These are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.
Languages ranged from using all 11 color names, as in English, to using just two of the names,
as in the Dani tribe of Western New Guinea (Rosch Heider, 1972). Second, when only some of
the color names are used, the naming of colors falls into a hierarchy of five levels. The levels are
(1) black, white; (2) red; (3) yellow, green, blue; (4) brown; and (5) purple, pink, and orange,
gray. Thus, if a language names only two colors, they will be black and white. If it names three
colors, they will be black, white, and red. A fourth color will be taken from the set of yellow,
green, and blue. The fifth and sixth will be taken from this set as well. Selection will continue
until all 11 colors have been labeled. The order of selection within the categories may, however,
vary between cultures (Jameson, 2005).

Another study had participants name various colors that were shown to them on color plates.
Participants also were asked to choose the best example for each color (e.g., out of the many
color plates presented, which is the best “red”?). This procedure was done for many languages,
and the results showed that the “best” colors tended to cluster around the colors that English
speakers call red, yellow, green, and blue (Regier et al., 2005). This result indicates that there are
some universals in color perception. In contrast, several studies have shown that color categories
vary, depending on the speaker’s language. For example, Berinmo speakers from New Guinea
tend to aggregate colors together in one name (nol) that we call green and blue (Roberson et al.,
2000, 2005). Other languages tend to see categorical differences where English speakers do not
see any. For example, Russian speakers discriminate between light blue (goluboy) and dark blue
(siniy) (Winawer et al., 2007). Various theories have been proposed of why color names differ in
different cultures. It has been proposed, for example, that the sun’s ultraviolet ray’s causes
people’s lenses to yellow, which makes it harder to discriminate between green and blue. The
large sun exposure, then, in areas near the equator could be the reason for the relative scarcity of
separate color terms for blue and green in some languages in this area (Lindsey & Brown, 2002).
It also could be that color names are an evolutionary result of the most frequently occurring
colors in the environment of members of a particular language group (Yendrikhovskij, 2001).
But so far, none of the theories are consistent with each other. So overall, while it seems that
color naming is relatively universal in that it clusters worldwide around the same areas, color

7
categories vary considerably and color names can have an impact on perception and cognition
(Kay & Regier, 2006; Roberson & Hanley, 2007). 

Bilingualism and Dialects 

Suppose a person can speak and think in two languages. Does the person think differently in
each language? Do bilinguals—people who can speak two languages— think differently from
monolinguals—people who can speak only one language? (Multilinguals speak at least two and
possibly more languages.) What differences, if any, emanate from the availability of two
languages versus just one? Might bilingualism affect intelligence, positively or negatively? 
 
Commonly, when thinking about bilingualism our first thought goes to people who grew up in a
family speaking more than one standard language, but how about the case of people who use
both a standard language, such as English or Italian, as well as a local dialect? This is a very
common situation in many countries around the world. From the linguistic point of view,
regional dialects are just as rich and complex as standard languages, even if, in many cases, they
have similar vocabularies, grammars, and sounds. But from a historical and administrative point
of view, standard languages and dialects have very different statuses, and this is often reflected
in the different contexts in which each is used. For example, the standard language may be
encouraged at school while the local variant may be used in the home. This difference in
statuses, together with the linguistic similarities, means that many people may overlook the
bilingual experience of those who also speak a dialect. In other words, they are not considered
bilingual at all.

In recent years, research on bilingualism has started to pay more attention to different factors
impacting on linguistic experience, such as the quality of exposure to a language. As part of this
trend, some researchers have started questioning whether bidialectalism (that is the bilingualism
of a person speaking a national language and one or more regional dialects) is comparable to
bilingualism. Specifically, researchers have asked whether bidialectalism affects school
achievement, and whether it brings about comparable effects on cognitive agility and attention
associated with bilingualism in other studies.

8
Bilingualism—an Advantage or Disadvantage? 

Does bilingualism make thinking in any one language more difficult, or does it enhance thought
processes? The data are somewhat contradictory. Different participant populations, different
methodologies, different language groups, and different experimenter biases may have
contributed to the inconsistency in the literature. Consider what happens when bilinguals are
balanced bilinguals, who are roughly equally fluent in both languages, and when they come from
middle-class backgrounds. In these instances, positive effects of bilingualism tend to be found.
Executive functions, which are located primarily in the prefrontal cortex and include abilities
such as to shift between tasks or ignore distractors, are enhanced in bilingual individuals. Even
the onset of dementia in bilinguals may be delayed by as much as four years (Andreou &
Karapetsas, 2004; Bialystok & Craik, 2010; Bialystok et al., 2007). But negative effects may
result as well. Bilingual speakers tend to have smaller vocabularies and their access to lexical
items in memory is slower (Bialystok, 2001b; Bialystok & Craik, 2010). What might be the
causes of this difference?

Classroom teachers often discourage bilingualism in children (Sook Lee & Oxelson, 2006).
Either through letters requesting only English be spoken at home, or through subtle attitudes and
methods, many teachers actually encourage subtractive bilingualism (Sook Lee & Oxelson,
2006). Additionally, children from backgrounds with lower socioeconomic status (SES) may be
more likely to be subtractive bilinguals than are children from the middle SES. Their SES may
be a factor in their being hurt rather than helped by their bilingualism. Researchers also
distinguish between simultaneous bilingualism, which occurs when a child learns two languages
from birth, and sequential bilingualism, which occurs when an individual first learns one
language and then another (Bhatia & Ritchie, 1999). Either form of language learning can
contribute to fluency. It depends on the particular circumstances in which the languages are
learned (Pearson et al., 1997). It is known, however, that infants begin babbling at roughly the
same age. This happens regardless of whether they consistently are exposed to one or two
languages (Oller et al., 1997).

9
Adults may appear to have a harder time learning second languages because they can retain their
native language as their dominant language. Young children, in contrast, who typically need to
attend school in the new language, may have to switch their dominant language. So, they learn
the new language to a higher level of mastery (Jia & Aaronson, 1999). A study on second
language acquisition found that age and proficiency in a language are negatively correlated
(Mechelli et al., 2004). This finding has been well documented (Birdsong, 2006). This does not
mean that we cannot learn a new language later in life, but rather, that the earlier we learn it, the
more likely we will become highly proficient in its use. What kinds of learning experiences
facilitate second-language acquisition? There is no single correct answer to that question
(Bialystock & Hakuta, 1994). One reason is that each individual language learner brings
distinctive cognitive abilities and knowledge to the language-learning experience. In addition,
the kinds of learning experiences that facilitate second-language acquisition should match the
context and uses for the second language once it is acquired. For example, consider these
individuals:
 Caitlin, a young child, may not need to master a wealth of vocabulary and complex
syntax to get along well with other children. If she can master the phonology, some
simple syntactic rules, and some basic vocabulary, she may be considered fluent. 
 Similarly, José needs only to get by in a few everyday situations, such as shopping,
handling routine family business transactions, and getting around town. He may be
considered proficient after mastering some simple vocabulary and syntax, as well as
some pragmatic knowledge regarding context-appropriate manners of communicating. 
 Kim Yee must be able to communicate regarding her specialized technical field. She may
be considered proficient if she masters the technical vocabulary, a primitive basic
vocabulary, and the rudiments of syntax.

Slips of the Tongue 

An area of particular interest to cognitive psychologists is how people use language incorrectly.
Studying speech errors helps cognitive psychologists better understand normal language
processing. One way of using language incorrectly is through slips of the tongue—inadvertent
linguistic errors in what we say. They may occur at any level of linguistic analysis: phonemes,

10
morphemes, or larger units of language (Crystal, 1987; McArthur, 1992). In such cases, what we
think and what we mean to say do not correspond to what we actually do say. Freudian
psychoanalysts have suggested that in Freudian slips, the verbal slips reflect some kind of
unconscious processing that has psychological significance. The slips are alleged often to
indicate repressed emotions. For example, a business competitor may say, “I’m glad to beat
you,” when what was overtly intended was, “I’m glad to meet you.” Most cognitive
psychologists see things differently from the psychoanalytic view. They are intrigued by slips of
the tongue because of what the lack of correspondence between what is thought and what is said
may tell us about how language is produced. In speaking, we have a mental plan for what we are
going to say. Sometimes, however, this plan is disrupted when our mechanism for speech
production does not cooperate with our cognitive one. Often, such errors result from intrusions
by other thoughts or by stimuli in the environment, such as a background noise from radio talk
show or a neighboring conversation (Garrett, 1980; Saito & Baddeley, 2004).

Slips of the tongue may be taken to indicate that the language of thought differs somewhat from
the language through which we express our thoughts (Fodor, 1975). Often we have the idea right,
but its expression comes out wrong. Sometimes we are not even aware of the slip until it is
pointed out to us. In the language of the mind, whatever it may be, the idea is right, although the
expression represented by the slip is inadvertently wrong. This fact can be seen in the occasional
slips of the tongue even in preplanned and practiced speech (Kawachi, 2002). People tend to
make various kinds of slips in their conversations (Fromkin, 1973; Fromkin & Rodman, 1988): 
 In anticipation, the speaker uses a language element before it is appropriate in the
sentence because it corresponds to an element that will be needed later in the utterance.
For example, instead of saying, “an inspiring expression,” a speaker might say, “an
expiring expression.” 
 In substitution, the speaker substitutes one language element for another. For example,
you may have warned someone to do something “after it is too late,” when you meant
“before it is too late.” 
 In malapropism, one word is replaced by another that is similar in sound but different in
meaning (e.g., furniture dealers selling “naughty pine” instead of “knotty pine”). 

11
Each kind of slip of the tongue may occur at different hierarchical levels of linguistic processing
(Dell, 1986). 

Gender and Language 

Within our own culture, do men and women speak a different language? Gender differences have
been found in the content of what we say. Young girls are more likely to ask for help than are
young boys (Thompson, 1999). Older adolescent and young adult males prefer to talk about
political views, sources of personal pride, and what they like about the other person. In contrast,
females in this age group prefer to talk about feelings toward parents, close friends, classes, and
their fears (Rubin et al., 1980). Also, in general, women seem to disclose more about themselves
than do men (Morton, 1978). Conversations between men and women are sometimes regarded as
cross cultural communication (Tannen, 1986, 1990, 1994). Young girls and boys learn
conversational communication in essentially separate cultural environments through their same-
sex friendships. As men and women, we then carry over the conversational styles we have
learned in childhood into our adult conversations. 
Tannen has suggested that male–female differences in conversational style largely center on
differing understandings of the goals of conversation. These cultural differences result in
contrasting styles of communication. These in turn can lead to misunderstandings and even
break-ups as each partner somewhat unsuccessfully tries to understand the other. Men see the
world as a hierarchical social order in which the purpose of communication is to negotiate for the
upper hand, to preserve independence, and to avoid failure (Tannen, 1990, 1994). Each man
strives to one-up the other and to “win” the contest. Women, in contrast, seek to establish a
connection between the two participants, to give support and confirmation to others, and to reach
consensus through communication. To reach their conversational goals, women use
conversational strategies that minimize differences, establish equity, and avoid any appearances
of superiority on the part of one or another conversant. Women also affirm the importance of and
the commitment to the relationship. They handle differences of opinion by negotiating to reach a
consensus that promotes the connection and ensures that both parties at least feel that their
wishes have been considered. They do so even if they are not entirely satisfied with the
consensual decision. Men enjoy connections and rapport. But because men have been raised in a

12
gender culture in which status plays an important role, other goals take precedence in
conversations.

Tannen has suggested that men seek to assert their independence from their conversational
partners. In this way, they indicate clearly their lack of acquiescence to the demands of others,
which would indicate lack of power. Men also prefer to inform (thereby indicating the higher
status conferred by authority) rather than to consult (indicating subordinate status) with their
conversational partners. The male partner in a close relationship thus may end up informing his
partner of their plans. In contrast, the female partner expects to be consulted on their plans.
When men and women engage in cross-gender communications, their crossed purposes often
result in miscommunication because each partner misinterprets the other’s intentions. Tannen has
suggested that men and women need to become more aware of their cross-cultural styles and
traditions. In this way, they may at least be less likely to misinterpret one another’s
conversational interactions. They are also both more likely to achieve their individual aims, the
aims of the relationship, and the aims of the other people and institutions affected by their
relationship. Such awareness is important not only in conversations between men and women. It
is also important in conversations among family members in general (Tannen, 2001). Tannen
may be right. But at present, converging operations are needed, in addition to Tannen’s
sociolinguistic case-based approach, to pin down the validity and generality of her interesting
findings.

Gender differences in the written use of language have also been observed (Argamon et al.,
2003). For example, a study that analyzed more than 14,000 text files from 70 separate studies
found that women used more words that were related to psychological and social processes,
whereas men related more to object properties and impersonal topics (Newman et al., 2008).
These findings are not conclusive. A study examining blogs noted that the type of blog, more
than the gender of the author, dictated the writing style (Herring & Paolillo, 2006). Thus far we
have discussed the social and cognitive contexts for language. Language use interacts with, but
does not completely determine, the nature of thought. 

13
SUMMARY

How does language affect the way we think? 

According to the linguistic-relativity view, cognitive differences that result from using different
languages cause people speaking the various languages to perceive the world differently.
However, the linguistic-universals view stresses cognitive commonalities across different
language users. No single interpretation explains all the available evidence regarding the
interaction of language and thought. Research on bilinguals seems to show that environmental
considerations also affect the interaction of language and thought. For example, additive
bilinguals have established a well-developed primary language. The second language adds to
their linguistic and perhaps even their cognitive skills. In contrast, subtractive bilinguals have not
yet firmly established their primary language when portions of a second language partially
displace the primary language. This displacement may lead to difficulties in verbal skills.
Theorists differ in their views as to whether bilinguals store two or more languages separately
(dual-system hypothesis) or together (single-system hypothesis). Some aspects of multiple
languages possibly could be stored separately and others unitarily. Creoles and pidgins arise
when two or more distinct linguistic groups come into contact. A dialect appears when a regional
variety of a language becomes distinguished by features such as distinctive vocabulary,
grammar, and pronunciation. Slips of the tongue may involve inadvertent verbal errors in
phonemes, morphemes, or larger units of language. Slips of the tongue include anticipations,
perseverations, reversals (including spoonerisms), substitutions, insertions, and deletions.
Alternative views of metaphor include the comparison view, the anomaly view, the domain
interaction view, and the class-inclusion view.

How does our social context influence our use of language?

Psychologists, sociolinguists, and others who study pragmatics are interested in how language is
used within a social context. Their research looks into various aspects of nonverbal as well as
verbal communication. Speech acts comprise representatives, directives, commissures,
expressives, and declarations. Indirect requests, ways of asking for something without doing so
straightforwardly, may refer to abilities, desires, future actions, and reasons. Conversational

14
postulates provide a means for establishing language as a cooperative enterprise. They comprise
several maxims, including the maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. Sociolinguists
have observed that people engage in various strategies to signal turn taking in conversations.
Sociolinguistic research suggests that male– female differences in conversational style center
largely on men’s and women’s differing understandings of the goals of conversation. It has been
suggested that men tend to see the world as a hierarchical social order in which their
communication aims involve the need to maintain a high rank in the social order. In contrast,
women tend to see communication as a means for establishing and maintaining their connection
to their communication partners. To do so, they seek ways to demonstrate equity and support and
to reach consensual agreement. In discourse and reading comprehension, we use the surrounding
context to infer the reference of pronouns and ambiguous phrases. The discourse context also can
influence the semantic interpretation of unknown words in passages and aid in acquiring new
vocabulary. Propositional representations of information in passages can be organized into
mental models for text comprehension.

15
References

http://cs.um.ac.ir/images/87/books/Cognitive%20Psychology_Strenberg%206th%20.pdf)

http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/bilingualism-what-about-dialects/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/

228075885_Linguistic_Relativity_and_Linguistic_Determinism_Idiom_in_20th_Century_Cornis

16
Transformational grammar

Transformational grammar, also called Transformational-generative Grammar, a system

of language analysis that recognizes the relationship among the various elements of

a sentence and among the possible sentences of a language and uses processes or rules (some of

which are called transformations) to express these relationships. 

The most widely discussed theory of transformational grammar was proposed by U.S.

linguist Noam Chomsky in 1957. His work contradicted earlier tenets of structuralism by

rejecting the notion that every language is unique. The use of transformational grammar in

language analysis assumes a certain number of formal and substantive universals.

Chomsky would not claim (although some have) that the rules of a transformational grammar are

intended to be isomorphic with the cognitive system of ‘rules’ that people possess after having

learned a language. The rules and categories of a transformational grammar are part of an

attempt to describe the set of sentences which constitute a ‘‘language.” We may feel that by

providing structural descriptions of sentences we have ‘characterized’ the cognitive structures

stored by the speaker-hearer, but this use of the term “characterize” should not lead us to believe

that we have therefore discovered or even attempted to discover the mental reality which

underlies linguistic behavior.

Structural linguists have also attempted to describe the grammatical structure of languages,

giving the constituent structure of the sentence patterns in the language. Neither they themselves

17
nor anyone else was ever tempted to consider their grammars to be hypotheses concerning the

speaker-hearer’s internal linguistic knowledge. A transformational grammar may provide a better

description in that it attempts to be explicit and considers a wider range of language data, but

both types of grammars attempt to describe language structure. We cannot say that a

transformational grammar makes cognitive claims while a structuralist grammar does not

Notice, however, that transformations as defined by Chomsky are not processes (psychological

or otherwise) but are merely statements of the well-formedness conditions which hold between

two tree structures. Phrase structure rules “generate” trees only in the sense that they define the

structure of trees. They do not imply a cognitive system of phrase structure rules which

“produce” trees. There is no empirical evidence that human beings possess deep syntactic phrase

markers as part of their linguistic knowledge or that people go through a process of categorial

decomposition of the S -NP + VP variety. All that can be stated is that in Chomsky’s theory of

linguistic description there is a level of deep structure trees, defined by phrase structure rules,

which map onto surface structure trees. A further reason for rejecting the direct transfer of

Chomsky’s theory of linguistic description to discussions of cognitive structures is that the tree

structures in Chomsky’s theory are inherently incapable of formally representing the structure of

linguistic knowledge in the mind. A base categorial component such as Chomsky’s is perhaps

powerful enough to generate symbols in a correct order with the correct constituent structure,

and it is therefore not a priori impossible that it could serve as the basis for a sentence generator

in a theory of linguistic description. If, however, our concern is with a cognitive theory of

language, then it is demonstrably inadequate. Trees are only one form of graph structure and not

particularly powerful when compared to other more complex graphs used to model psychological

processes.

18
The neo-transformationalists have rejected Chomsky’s standard theory as inadequate to represent

the facts of language. Chomsky, on the other hand, has dismissed the proposals of the neo-

transformationalists as inferior ‘cnotational variants” of his theory. The schism among

transformationalist grammarians has had its origin in attempts to describe language structure

within the framework of Chomsky’s theory. For some linguists, it seemed necessary to posit

increasingly more abstract deep structures than those which had been proposed in Chomsky

(1965). This increased degree of abstractness appeared necessary if the grammar were to

generate all acceptable surface structures, block unacceptable surface structures, and account for

the unacceptability of certain sentences. Also, the evaluative criterion of simplicity so prominent

in earlier transformational grammar gave way to a greater concern for a criterion of naturalness.

Thus, there was dissatisfaction with categories and structures which, while adequate to generate

correct strings, were intuitively felt not to reflect the facts of human language. Moreover, if

substantive linguistic universals were to play any role in grammar, deep structures had

necessarily to become less language specific.

Chomsky and other transformational grammarians have contributed a great deal to our

understanding of language and language pedagogy, for example, by pointing out the vacuity of

behavioral psychology and the uses to which it has been put in language teaching. However, an

examination of recent second language textbooks shows just how little of any consequence has

been contributed by the theory of transformational grammar itself to the development of teaching

materials. Once we get beyond the superficial misapplications of terminology (e.g., talking about

“two surface structures being derived by transformational rule from a common deep structure”

when it is merely meant that two sentences are related in meaning), we see that the formal

structures and categories defined in a transformational grammar have not been put to

19
pedagogical advantage in second language teaching (Cf. Lamendella 1969b). Moreover, theories

of linguistic description are relevant to language teaching only to the extent that they form part of

the data which psycholinguists may use in constructing a cognitive theory of language. It is this

theory which may properly be utilized as the theoretical basis for second language pedagogy.

Deep Structure and Surface Structure:

In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea that

each sentence in a language has two levels of representation a deep structure and a surface

structure. The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was

mapped on to the surface structure (which followed the phonological form of the sentence very

closely) via transformations. Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities

between languages' deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties, common to

all languages, which were concealed by their surface structures. However, this was perhaps not

the central motivation for introducing deep structure. Transformations had been proposed prior

to the development of deep structure as a means of increasing the mathematical and descriptive

power of Context-free grammars. Similarly, deep structure was devised largely for technical

reasons relating to early semantic theory.

Development of Basic Concepts:

Though transformations continue to be important in Chomsky's current theories, he has now

abandoned the original notion of Deep Structure and Surface Structure. Initially, two additional

levels of representation were introduced (LF (Logical Form), and PF (Phonetic Form)), and then

in the 1990s Chomsky sketched out a new program of research known as Minimalism, in which

20
Deep Structure and Surface Structure no longer featured and PF and LF remained as the only

levels of representation.

To complicate the understanding of the development of Noam Chomsky's theories, the precise

meanings of Deep Structure and Surface Structure have changed over time by the 1970s, the two

were normally referred to simply as D-Structure and S-Structure by Chomskyan linguists. In

particular, the idea that the meaning of a sentence was determined by its Deep Structure (taken to

its logical conclusions by the generative semanticists during the same period) was dropped for

good by Chomskyan linguists when LF took over this role (previously, Chomsky and Ray

Jackendoff had begun to argue that meaning was determined by both Deep and Surface

Structure)

Minimalism:

In the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, much research in transformational grammar was inspired by

Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The "Minimalist Program" aims at the further development of

ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation, which had started to

become significant in the early 1990s, but were still rather peripheral aspects of

Transformational-generative grammar theory.

Economy of derivation is a principle stating that movements (i.e. transformations) only occur

in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features. An example of an

interpretable feature is the plural inflection on regular English nouns, e.g. dogs. The word dogs

can only be used to refer to several dogs, not a single dog, and so this inflection contributes to

meaning, making it interpretable. English verbs are inflected according to the grammatical

21
number of their subject (e.g. "Dogs bite" vs "A dog bites"), but in most sentences this inflection

just duplicates the information about number that the subject noun already has, and it is therefore

uninterpretable.

Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a

purpose, i.e. the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to

satisfy constraints on grammaticality.

Both notions, as described here, are somewhat vague, and indeed the precise formulation of these

principles is controversial. An additional aspect of minimalist thought is the idea that the

derivation of syntactic structures should be uniform; that is, rules should not be stipulated as

applying at arbitrary points in a derivation, but instead apply throughout derivations. Minimalist

approaches to phrase structure have resulted in "Bare Phrase Structure", an attempt to eliminate

X-bar theory. In 1998, Chomsky suggested that derivations proceed in "phases". The distinction

of Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure is not present in Minimalist theories of syntax, and the

most recent phase-based theories also eliminate LF and PF as unitary levels of representation.

Analyzing Sentences: Phrase-Structure Grammar

The preceding examples seem to indicate that we humans have some mental mechanism for

classifying words according to syntactical categories. This classification mechanism is separate

from the meanings for the words (Bock, 1990). When we compose sentences, we seem to

analyze and divide them into functional components. This process is called parsing. We assign

appropriate syntactical categories (often called “parts of speech,” e.g., noun, verb, article) to each

component of the sentence. We then use the syntax rules for the language to construct

grammatical sequences of the parsed components. Early in the 20th century, linguists who

22
studied syntax largely focused on how sentences could be analyzed in terms of sequences of

phrases, such as noun phrases and verb phrases, which were mentioned previously. They also

focused on how phrases could be parsed into various syntactical categories, such as nouns, verbs,

and adjectives. Such analyses look at the phrase-structure grammar—they analyze the structure

of phrases as they are used. Let’s have a closer look at the sentence: “The girl looked at the boy

with the telescope.” First of all, the sentence can be divided into the noun phrase (NP) “The girl”

followed by a verb phrase (VP) “looked at the boy with the telescope.” The noun phrase can be

further divided into a determiner (“the”) and a noun (“girl”). Likewise, the verb phrase can be

further subdivided. However, the analysis of how to divide the verb phrase depends on what

meaning the speaker had in mind. You may have noticed that the sentence can have two

meanings: (a) The girl looked with a telescope at the boy, or (b) The girl looked at a boy who

had a telescope.

In case (a), the verb phrase contains a verb (V; “looked”), and two prepositional phrases (PP; “at

the boy” and “with the telescope”). In case (b), the verb phrase would again contain the verb

“looked,” but there is just one prepositional phrase (“looked at the boy with the telescope”). You

can then work your way further down and divide the prepositional phrases further into

prepositions, determiners, nouns, etc (see Figure 9.2 for details). The rules governing the

sequences of words are termed phrase-structure rules. Linguists often use tree diagrams, such as

the ones shown in Figure 9.2, to observe the interrelationships of phrases within a sentence.

Various other models also have been proposed (e.g., relational grammar, Farrell, 2005;

Perlmutter, 1983a; lexicalfunctional grammar; Bresnan, 1982). Tree diagrams help to reveal the

interrelationships of syntactical classes within the phrase structures of sentences (Clegg &

Shepherd, 2007; Wasow, 1989). In particular, such diagrams show that sentences are not merely

23
organized chains of words, strung together sequentially. Rather, they are organized into

hierarchical structures of embedded phrases. The use of tree diagrams helps to highlight many

aspects of how we use language, including both our linguistic sophistication and our difficulties

in using language. As you can see in Figure 9.2, our example sentence is depicted in two

different ways, depending on its meaning. By observing tree diagrams of ambiguous sentences,

psycholinguists can better pinpoint the source of confusion.

A New Approach to Syntax: Transformational Grammar

In 1957, Noam Chomsky revolutionized the study of syntax. He suggested that to understand

syntax, we must observe not only the interrelationships among phrases within sentences.

Additionally, we have to consider the syntactical relationships between sentences. Specifically,

Chomsky observed that particular sentences and their tree diagrams show peculiar relationships.

For example, consider the following sentences: S1: Susie greedily ate the crocodile. S2: The

crocodile was eaten greedily by Susie. Oddly enough, a phrase-structure grammar would not

show any particular relation at all between sentences S1 and S2. Indeed, phrase-structure

analyses of S1 and S2 would look almost completely different (Figure 9.3). Yet, the two

sentences differ only in voice. The first sentence is expressed in the active voice and the second

in the passive voice. But both sentences represent the same proposition “ate (greedily) (Susie,

crocodile).” Recall from Chapter 7 that propositions may be used to illustrate that the same

underlying meanings can be derived through alternative means of representation. Consider

another pair of sentences that have the same meaning: S3: The crocodile greedily ate Susie. S4:

Susie was eaten greedily by the crocodile. Again, the sentences have the same meaning, but

phrase-structure grammar would show no relationship between S3 and S4. What’s more, phrase-

structure grammar would show some similarities of surface structure between S1 and S3 as well

24
as S2 and S4. The pairs of sentences clearly have quite different meanings, particularly to Susie

and the crocodile. Apparently, an adequate grammar would address the fact that sentences with

similar surface structures can have very different meanings. This observation and other

observations of the interrelationships among various phrase structures led linguists to go beyond

merely describing various individual phrase structures. They began to focus their attention on the

relationships among different phrase structures. Linguists may gain deeper understanding of

syntax by studying the relationships among phrase structures that involve transformations of

elements within sentences (Chomsky, 1957). Specifically, Chomsky suggested a way to

supplement the study of phrase structures. He proposed the study of transformational grammar,

which involves transformational rules. These rules guide the ways in which an underlying

proposition can be arranged into a sentence. There are obviously many different sentences that

can express the same proposition. A simple way of looking at Chomsky’s transformational

grammar is to say that “Transformations … are rules that map tree structures onto other tree

structures” (Wasow, 1989, p. 170). For example, transformational grammar considers how the

tree-structure diagrams in Figure 9.3 are interrelated. With application of transformational rules,

the tree structure of S1 can be mapped onto the tree structure of S2. Similarly, the structure of S3

can be mapped onto the tree structure of S4. In transformational grammar, deep structure refers

to an underlying syntactical structure that links various phrase structures through various

transformation rules. In contrast, surface structure refers to any of the various phrase structures

that may result from such transformations. Many casual readers of Chomsky have misunderstood

Chomsky’s terms. They incorrectly inferred that deep structures refer to profound underlying

meanings of sentences, whereas surface structures refer only to superficial interpretations of

sentences. This is not the case. Chomsky meant only to show that differing phrase structures may

25
have a relationship that is not immediately apparent by using phrase-structure grammar alone.

For example, the sentences, “Susie greedily ate the crocodile,” and “The crocodile was eaten

greedily by Susie” have a relationship that cannot be seen just by looking at the phrase-structure

grammar. For detection of the underlying relationship between two phrase structures,

transformation rules must be applied.

26
27
References

 https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Transformational_generative_grammar

 http://cs.um.ac.ir/images/87/books/Cognitive%20Psychology_Strenberg%206th%20.pdf

28
What Is a Cognitive Test?

Cognitive testing, also called neurocognitive testing or psychometric testing, assesses your
ability to think clearly and to determine if any mental conditions exist. If so, this testing allows
one to determine if said condition is getting better or worse. Assessments of this kind can be used
in mental health facilities or for employment screenings. Cognitive testing checks for problems
with cognition. Cognition is a combination of processes in your brain that's involved in almost
every aspect of your life. It includes thinking, memory, language, judgment, and the ability to
learn new things. A problem with cognition is called cognitive impairment. The condition ranges
from mild to severe.

There are many causes of cognitive impairment. They include side effects of medicines, blood
vessel disorders, depression, and dementia. Dementia is a term used for a severe loss of mental
functioning. Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia.

Cognitive testing can't show the specific cause of impairment. But testing can help your provider
find out if you need more tests and/or take steps to address the problem.

There are different types of cognitive tests. The most common tests are:

 Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)

 Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE)

 Mini-Cog

All three tests measure mental functions through a series of questions and/or simple tasks.

Other names: cognitive assessment, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA test, Mini-Mental
State Exam (MMSE), and Mini-Cog.

Early versions of cognitive tests were established around 100 years ago and developed through
the ages. “Pencil and pen” tests were widely used up until the advent of computerized testing in
the 1970s and 1980s. These new tests offered more accurate data reporting and a better
assessment on response time.

What Areas of Cognition Do These Tests Study?

Cognition tests are not necessarily considered intelligence tests, or IQ tests. As reported by
CogState, an Australian cognitive science and technology company, these assessments measure
three common areas of cognition: memory, executive function, and attention. Of course, these
areas have more specific facets. The questions asked during a cognitive test aim to explore basic
function and these areas. Some cognitive regions that may be tested are:

29
  Physical appearance including age, weight, height, and other vitals. This can help
differentiate mental and physical conditions. This can be useful in the case of substance
abuse or alcohol dependency.

 Orientation of basic information such as your name, the date, the season, where you
live, and names of family members. As confusion can be associated with some mental
illnesses, this can help make a better and more accurate diagnosis.

 Attention span, according to MedlinePlus, can be a determinant in the rest of the

cognitive assessment. This tests your ability to complete a thought and think rationally.
This portion of an assessment also looks at how easily you are distracted.

 Recent past and memory can include questions on childhood memories, family members,
your current job or living situation, or current events. As memory can be impacted with
certain mental illnesses or substance addictions, it’s important to understand if and how
severely memory has been impaired.

 Language testing involves your ability to read, write, and speak clearly. Testing may
involve you writing or reading sentences or saying words out loud.

 Judgment can be largely subjective but the questions generally asked during this stage of
testing help a physician to understand any impairments to reasoning and problem-solving
abilities. Questions might include moral decisions like what might you do if you found
someone’s wallet or if you got pulled over by the police while driving.

Cognitive testing is often used to screen for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). People with MCI
may notice changes in their memory and other mental functions. The changes aren't severe
enough to have a major effect on your daily life or usual activities. But MCI can be a risk factor
for more serious impairment. If you have MCI, your provider may give you several tests over
time to check for a decline in mental function.

Why Cognitive Testing Is Important

Cognitive testing is crucial in assessing and diagnosing any mental health conditions you may
have. Without a proper evaluation, very little can be done to solve the problem on a long-term
basis.

Why do I need cognitive testing?

You may need cognitive testing if you show signs of cognitive impairment. These include:

 Forgetting appointments and important events

 Losing things often

30
  Having trouble coming up with words that you usually know

 Losing your train of thought in conversations, movies, or books

 Increased irritability and/or anxiety

Your family or friends may suggest testing if they notice any of these symptoms.

What happens during a cognitive test?

There are different types of cognitive tests. Each involves answering a series of questions and/or
performing simple tasks. They are designed to help measure mental functions, such as memory,
language, and the ability to recognize objects. The most common types of tests are:

 Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test. A 10-15 minute test that includes
memorizing a short list of words, identifying a picture of an animal, and copying a
drawing of a shape or object.

 Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE). A 7-10 minute test that includes naming the current
date, counting backward, and identifying everyday objects like a pencil or watch.

 Mini-Cog. A 3-5 minute test that includes recalling a three-word list of objects and
drawing a clock.

https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/cognitive-testing/

https://dualdiagnosis.org/testing-assessments-comorbidity/cognitive-testing/

31
32
 Ways to Improve Cognitions

Cognition is described as the mental actions or processes involved in acquiring,

maintaining and understanding knowledge through thought, experience and the senses (definition

of Cognition from the English Oxford Dictionary, 2018). It is described by Licht, Hull and

Ballantyne (2014) as the “mental activity associated with obtaining, converting and using

knowledge. These are higher-level functions of the brain and encompass language, imagination,

perception, and planning.

Types of Cognitive Processes

There are many different types of cognitive processes. These include:

1. Attention: Attention is a cognitive process that allows people to focus on a

specific stimulus in the environment.

2. Language: Language and language development are cognitive processes that involve the

ability to understand and express thoughts through spoken and written words. It allows us

to communicate with others and plays an important role in thought.

3. Learning: Learning requires cognitive processes involved in taking in new

things, synthesizing information, and integrating it with prior knowledge.

33
4. Memory: Memory is an important cognitive process that allows people to encode,

store, and retrieve information. It is a critical component in the learning process and

allows people to retain knowledge about the world and their personal histories.

34
 3

5. Perception: Perception is a cognitive process that allows people to take in information

through their senses (sensation) and then utilize this information to respond and

interact with the world.

6. Thought: Thought is an essential part of every cognitive process. It allows people

to engage in decision-making, problem-solving, and higher reasoning.

Uses of cognitive processes

Cognitive processes affect every aspect of life, from school to work to relationships. Some

specific uses for these cognitive processes include the following.

Learning New Things

Learning requires being able to take in new information, form new memories, and make

connections with other things that you already know. Researchers and educators use their

knowledge of these cognitive processes to help create instructive materials to help people

learn new concepts.

Forming Memories

35
 Memory is a major topic of interest in the field of cognitive psychology. How we

remember, what we remember, and what we forget reveal a great deal about how the

cognitive processes operate.

Making Decisions

Whenever people make any type of decision, it involves making judgments about things

they have processed. It might involve comparing new information to prior knowledge,

36
 4

integrating new information into existing ideas, or even replacing old knowledge with

new knowledge before making a choice.

Ways to improve cognitions

Strengthening ones’ cognitive skills can help perform better in almost every aspect of

life. Improving attention skills can not only help you stay on task, but it can also help you be a

more active listener. Building your logic and reasoning skills can also help you generate

creative solutions to difficult challenges.

Techniques and Strategies

1. Reduce stress

Stress impairs nearly every cognitive skill you rely on to live your life, including your

ability to pay attention, remember, solve problems, make decisions, and think critically. Stress,

anxiety and depression, when prolonged, have all been shown to take a toll on cognitive

functioning, leading to impaired memory and cognitive decline. Neuroscientists have discovered

that high levels of the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol damages the brain, leading to long-term changes

in structure and function. Over time, this can lead to mental problems such as anxiety, mood

disorders and difficulties learning.

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 To help minimize the negative implications of prolonged stress, the key is to identify the

root cause and situations where stress is likely to occur, and then develop effective strategies

to help cope. You can manage stress on a fundamental level by adopting a healthy lifestyle that

includes eating unprocessed food, getting adequate sleep and exercise. It’s often better to walk

away when you’re stressed than to try to muscle through. To reduce stress, take a break. Get

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some fresh air to help you clear your head and avoid being reactive. Moreover, getting out

into nature is good for the soul.

2. Meditation

Meditation also helps with stress reduction. Even five minutes of meditation a day can

have significant impacts on stress levels. Meditation is about monitoring your thoughts more

than forcing yourself to not think. As new thoughts pop in your head, just let them roll on by.

Some people visualize their thoughts as clouds to help themselves with their meditation practice.

3. Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises for stress reduction should include slow, measured deep breaths.

Focus on the breath itself as you breathe in and out. This takes your mind off your stressors and

delivers some much-needed oxygen to the brain, something it needs for optimal cognitive

thinking.

4. Care for your body

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 Maintaining your physical health can improve your cognitive skills. Drinking plenty of

water, eating a balanced diet and getting at least seven hours of sleep every night can improve

your attention-related abilities and help you perform better in the workplace. Sufficient sleep

can also drastically improve your memory skills, as sleep helps your brain sort through and store

memories.

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5. Eat for brain health

Foods rich in nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants and B vitamins have all

been shown to support brain health. Foods particularly rich in these healthful compounds

include:

• Leafy green vegetables

• Fatty fish

• Berries

• Tea and coffee

6. Use Caffeine Wisely

Caffeine, the most common psychoactive drug, speeds up your cognition in many ways,

including improving mental processing speed and accuracy. However, if you regularly consume

caffeine, keep in mind that too much can be counterproductive. Too much caffeine can increase

stress, anxiety, and insomnia, which, in turn, will impair your ability to think clearly.

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 7. Vitamin D

Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic that affects over 1 billion people worldwide.

Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to slower thinking and poor cognitive function.

8. Practice focusing

You can actively improve your attention and memory skills by purposefully focusing your

mind throughout the day. When you are at work, find ways to remove distractions, and see how

long you can remain focused on a task without losing concentration. This could include placing

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your smartphone in a drawer or wearing headphones if your workplace allows it. You can also

improve focus by engaging more senses. While at work, read a customer’s concern out loud, or

if you are at home, try memorizing a poem or a favorite passage in a book by reading it

repeatedly out loud.

9. Socialize

Enjoying company of friends may be a mentally engaging leisure activity and may help

preserve cognitive function. A 2019 study found that people with more frequent social

contact were less likely to experience cognitive decline and dementia. Some social activities

that may help stimulate the brain include:

• having discussions

• playing games

• participating in social sports

Even if you are an inveterate introvert, seeking social interactions can be beneficial to your

brain in both the short and long-term. Some ideas for staying socially engaged to include signing

up for volunteer opportunities in your community, joining a club, signing up for a local walking

group, and staying in close touch with your friends and family.

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Exercises

The brain is involved in everything we do and, like any other part of the body, it needs to

be cared for too. Exercising the brain to improve memory, focus, or daily functionality is a top

priority for many people, especially as they get older. That said, people of all ages can benefit

from incorporating a few simple brain exercises into their daily life. Brain training is all the rage

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these days, often touted as a way to sharpen your mind and even boost intelligence. While many

cognitive scientists suggest that the claims surrounding brain training are both exaggerated and

misleading, there is an abundance of research suggesting that certain types of activities can be

beneficial for your brain's health.

1. Have fun with a jigsaw puzzle

Whether you’re putting together a 1,000-piece image of the Eiffel Tower or joining 100

pieces to make Mickey Mouse, working on a jigsaw puzzle is an excellent way to strengthen

your brain. Research has shown that doing jigsaw puzzles recruits multiple cognitive abilities

and is a protective factor for visuospatial cognitive aging. In other words, when putting together

a jigsaw puzzle, you have to look at different pieces and figure out where they fit within the

larger picture. This can be a great way to challenge and exercise your brain. A 2018 study

found that puzzles activate many cognitive functions, including:

• perception

• mental rotation

• working memory

• reasoning

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 The study concluded that doing jigsaw puzzles regularly and throughout life may protect

against the effects of brain aging.

2. Play board games and card games

Games that involve strategy are excellent for the brain, especially those that involve

puzzle solving or new learning of some sort, such as Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy,

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Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire — all available in digital form as

well. Chess and checkers are excellent games because almost every game is unique, requiring a

different set of strategies each time. Card games can similarly help preserve cognitive

functioning because the player continues to perfect the most effective strategies according to

the opponent’s playing style.

3. Learn Something New

In one study, researchers assigned older adults to learn a variety of new skills ranging

from digital photography to quilting. They then did memory tests and compared the

experimental groups to control groups. Those in the control groups had engaged in activities that

were fun but not mentally challenging such as watching movies and listening to the radio. The

researchers found that only those participants who had learned a new skill experienced

improvement on the memory tests. They also discovered that these memory improvements were

still present when tested again a year later.

Some things you might want to try include learning to play a musical instrument or

learning a new hobby. Not only will you be stretching your mind, but you will also be

continually learning something new as you keep expanding your skills and becoming

more accomplished.

4. Learn a New Language

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 “Bilingualism” refers to the ability to speak two languages. A 2019 review notes that

bilingualism increases and strengthens connectivity between different areas of the brain.

The researchers propose that this enhanced connectivity may play a role in delaying the

onset of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. A 2012 review of research has

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overwhelmingly proven the many cognitive benefits of being able to speak more than one

language.

According to numerous studies, bilingualism can contribute to better memory, improved

visual-spatial skills, and higher levels of creativity. Being fluent in more than one language

may also help you switch more easily between different tasks, and delay the onset of age-

related mental decline. The good news is that it’s never too late to reap the rewards of learning

a new language. According to researchers, you can boost your memory and improve other

mental functions by becoming a student of a new language at any time in your life.

5. Build your vocabulary

A rich vocabulary has a way of making you sound smart. But did you know you can also

turn a quick vocab lesson into a stimulating brain game? Research shows that many more

regions of the brain are involved in vocabulary tasks, particularly in areas that are important for

visual and auditory processing. To test this theory, try this cognitive-boosting activity:

• Keep a notebook with you when you read.

• Write down one unfamiliar word, then look up the definition.

• Try to use that word five times the next day.

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 6. Visualizing more

Visualization involves forming a mental image to represent information. The mental image

may be in the form of pictures or animated scenes. A 2018 review notes that visualization helps

people organize information and make appropriate decisions. People can practice visualization in

their day-to-day lives. For example, before going shopping, people can visualize how they will

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get to and from the grocery store, and imagine what they will buy when they get there. The

key is to imagine the scenes vividly and in as much detail as possible.

7. Use all your senses

A 2015 research report suggests that using all your senses may help strengthen your

cognitive process. To give your senses and your brain a workout, try doing activities that

simultaneously engage all five of your senses. You could try baking a batch of cookies, visiting a

farmer’s market, or trying a new restaurant while you focus on smelling, touching, tasting,

seeing, and hearing all at the same time.

8. Listening to music

A 2018 study published in Brain Sciences found that listening to music a person enjoys

engages and connects different parts of the brain. The researchers propose that this may lead to

improvements in cognitive function and overall well-being.

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Brain exercises: 22 ways to improve memory, cognition, and creativity. (2021, January 28).

www.medicalnewstoday.com. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/brain-

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Brain Exercises: 13 Ways to Boost Memory, Focus, and Mental Skills. (2019, August 7). Healthline.

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/brain-exercises#use-your-senses

Alban, P., & DC. (n.d.). How to Improve Cognitive Skills, Your Core Mental Abilities. Be Brain

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Cognitive Skills: Definitions, Examples and How to Improve Them | Indeed.com. (n.d.).

www.indeed.com. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/cognitive-skills-

how-to-improve-them

Eight Habits That Improve Cognitive Function. (2014). Psychology Today.

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cognitive-function

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5 cognitive strategies to enhance your brain power (and productivity). (2017, November 5). Workopolis

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and-productivity/

7.1 What is Cognition? – Introductory Psychology. (n.d.). Opentext.wsu.edu.

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https://www.facebook.com/verywell. (2015). How You Can Strengthen Your Brain With Exercises.

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