Cognitive Processes PSY 334 Chapter 13 – Individual Differences in Cognition June 6, 2003

Primates & Language Nim Chimpsky Noam Chomsky Roger Fouts and Washoe

Neural Evidence  Studying language acquisition may not settle the question.  Some people with aphasias are impaired forming irregular past tenses, others regular past tenses (Broca’s area).  PET imaging shows activity in Broca’s area only when processing regular past tenses.  Only regular verbs may be rule-based.

Language is Not Taught  Children are not directly taught language No feedback about their errors. Learning is inductive – infer acceptable utterances from experience.  How do they avoid being misled by wrong sentences they hear?  Motherese use is uncorrelated with language development.  Language develops under adversity too.

Critical Period  Do young children learn a second language faster? Controlling for amounts and types of exposure and motivation, older children (11+) learn faster than younger ones.  However, mastery of the fine points, speaking without an accent, depends on learning at a younger age.  It is better to learn a language before 10.

Language Universals  Chomsky – special innate mechanisms underlie the acquisition of language. Competence not performance. Study by seeking universals across languages.  Universals -- adjectives appear near the nouns they modify. May be based on cognitive constraints not language mechanisms.

Parameter Setting  Variability among natural languages can be accounted for by setting about 100 parameters.  Language learning consists of acquiring the settings for these parameters. Also, acquiring vocabulary.  Pro-drop parameter: I go to the cinema (does not drop pronoun) Voy al cinema esta noche (drops pronoun).

What Develops  Two explanations for changes in children’s thinking: They think better – more working memory. They know better – more facts.  Probably both occur, due to neural changes: Increase in synaptic connections. Myelination increases neural transmission speed.

Cognition and Aging  Decreases in IQ performance scores occur after age 20: Related to speed of response on tests.  Older adults do better on jobs.  Age-related declines in brain function: Cell loss, shrinkage & atrophy. Compensatory growth of remaining cells. Brain-related degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Psychometrics  Measures of performance of individuals on a number of tasks – examination of correlations across such tasks. IQ Tests – Binet, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler Mental age vs deviation IQ.  Factor analysis of performance scores: Crystallized intelligence – increases with age Fluid intelligence – decreases with age.

Kinds of Abilities  Reasoning ability: Sternberg connects psychometrics to the information-processing approach. People who score high on reasoning tests perform reasoning steps more quickly.  Verbal ability: Working memory capacity is related to verbal ability. People who recall words more rapidly do better on verbal ability tests.

Kinds of Abilities (Cont.)  Spatial ability: Rate of mental rotation is slower for those with lower spatial ability test scores. People with high spatial ability may choose to solve a problem spatially, not verbally.  Differences in abilities may result from differences in rates of processing and working-memory capacities. Unclear whether this is innate or a difference in practice (nature vs nurture).

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences  Gardner proposed that seven different intelligences are supported by different kinds of knowledge representation: Separate neural mechanisms. Separate developmental histories. Cross-cultural universals in the display of such abilities.  Abilities: linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, personal (self-understanding, social).

Critique of Multiple Intelligences  Strong evidence for distinct linguistic and spatial intelligence.  Mathematical intelligence closely related to spatial so may not be distinct.  Remaining intelligences not usually considered cognitive but may be universal.  Gardner argues that intelligence is not unitary and hard to compare.