Cognition

From Memory to Creativity

Robert W. Weisberg, Lauretta M. Reeves

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118233603
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

From memory to creativity—a complete and current presentation of the field of cognition

The process of cognition allows us to function in life; it translates inputs from the world so we can recognize the sound of the alarm clock, remember the day of the week, and decide which clothes to wear.

Cognition: From Memory to Creativity provides readers with a clear, research-based, and well-illustrated presentation of the field, starting with memory—the most accessible starting point—to more complex functions and research in information processing. Authors Robert Weisberg and Lauretta Reeves include the newest neurological findings that help us understand the human processes that allow for cognition.

Unique in its organization, Cognition incorporates both classical and modern research and provides demonstration experiments for students to conduct with simple materials.

Cognition explores:

• Models of memory and memory systems
• Encoding and retrieval
• Forgetting vs. false memory
• Visual cognition
• Attention and imagery
• Sounds, words, and meaning
• Logical thinking and decision making
• Problem solving and creative thinking

Chapter 1

Introduction to the Study of Cognition

Before you even arrived at your first class this morning, you had engaged in numerous cognitive acts: recognizing the sound of your alarm clock and the time depicted on its face, saying “good morning” to your roommate, and categorizing your cereal as a breakfast food. You also had to remember the day of the week so that you knew which classes to attend, you decided which clothes to wear, and you paid attention as you crossed the road to get to your first class. Perhaps you even engaged in some creative thinking as you doodled while waiting for class to start. These are all examples of the cognitive processes—the mental processes—at work. Cognition both allows us to operate in the real world, and makes life richer.

Humans are captivated by how the mind works, and this fascination makes its way into popular culture. Stories about cognitive functioning and the connection between the brain and the mind are in newspapers and on TV all the time. Films about memory—whether the loss of memory (Memento) or implanted memories (Total Recall, Inception)—have become top-grossing hits. Books about consciousness (Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 1991), intelligence (Herrnstein & Murray, The Bell Curve, 1994), language (Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994), memory (Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, 2011), and the relation between talent, practice, and success (Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, 2011) were bestsellers. Articles in popular magazines discuss insight in problem solving (Lehrer, “The Eureka Hunt,” 2012a) and creativity in business (Gladwell, “Creation Myth,” 2011). The appeal of the mind holds even for scientists: Since 2001, psychological topics related to cognition or neurocognition have made the cover story of Scientific American magazine numerous times. The discipline of cognitive psychology has historically encompassed the study of the cognitive or mental processes, and provides the research upon which so many popular films and bestselling books are based. However, more recently, there has been a broadening of research on cognition to include neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, which has spawned a new discipline: cognitive science.

While much of the research on cognitive processes takes place in laboratories, for the cognitive scientist, life itself is an experiment in cognition: Everywhere one looks, it is possible to see evidence of mental processes at work. Dr. Weisberg's daughter used to be a competitive ice-skater, and every day she would go for practice sessions. The ice would be full of skaters, practicing the jumps, spins, and other moves they would need for their competitive programs. The practice sessions were not purely athletic endeavors; we can dissect what is happening at a cognitive level as each skater practices on a crowded ice rink.

First, memory is involved (Chapters 2–4). The main task facing those skaters is to master their material, so that they remember the correct sequence of jumps, glides, spins, and twists in their programs. Sometimes during a competition a skater begins to move in an erratic way, losing synchronization with the music: The skater has temporarily forgotten the program. The pressure of competition often causes skaters to forget or misremember a sequence of movements that was remembered easily many times during practice.

A second cognitive task facing the ice-skaters involves visual and spatial processing (Chapter 5): Each skater has to know the boundaries of the skating rink and the spatial configuration of their routine within those boundaries. They must also recognize other skaters as people to be avoided and determine their own and others' speed and direction, to determine if any collisions are likely. Sometimes younger skaters run out of space and cannot perform a jump because they are too close to the wall. Such skaters are not able to accurately calculate the space available for the move they hoped to carry out. This occurs much more rarely with experienced skaters, indicating that those visual-processing skills have developed over years of practice. This is one example of the general importance of knowledge in cognitive functioning.

Third, attention is involved in our skaters' practicing (Chapter 6). To a spectator, the scene on the ice has a chaotic quality, as all those youngsters zoom this way and that, each seemingly concentrating only on improving his or her own skills. And yet there are very few collisions; the skaters are typically able to practice their routines while avoiding each other. This requires both selective attention—each skater pays attention to his or her own skating routine while ignoring the practice routines of others—and divided attention (i.e., multitasking). As each skater is attending to his or her own routine, he or she must determine where other skaters are headed, so as not to be in the same place at the same time as anyone else. While watching a group of skaters of mixed levels of expertise, one quickly sees that the inexperienced skaters have problems with the multitasking demands of the practice session; they cannot concentrate on practicing their programs while at the same time attending to and avoiding the other skaters. The more-experienced skaters, in contrast, are able to avoid collisions while at the same time working on a jump or spin. So one of the consequences of the development of skill is an increase in the ability to multitask. Another way to put this is to say that the knowledge of the experienced skaters is useful in dealing with the attentional demands of the practice session.

Additional cognitive skills can also be seen in the skaters' practice sessions. Sometimes, one hears a coach give instruction to a skater: “Do you remember how crisply Jane does that tricky footwork at the end of her program? It would be good if you could move like that as you do yours.” Presumably, the coach and the skater are able to communicate because both of them can recall Jane's appearance as she skates. They are able to use imagery (Chapter 7) to remember how Jane looked as she did her footwork. The coach can use the memory of how Jane looked as the basis for judging the quality of the skater's footwork, and the skater can use her memory of Jane's performance as the basis for her own attempt to do the footwork.

Other cognitive skills necessary for optimum ice-skating performance are the acquisition and use of concepts (Chapter 8) and language processing (Chapters 9 and 10). A coach may revise a routine by saying, “I'd like you to insert a Biellmann spin here—it's a layback where you pull your free leg over your head from behind.” This example makes it evident that language is an important vehicle through which we acquire concepts. The skater will recognize a layback and use the coach's elaboration to understand what must be added to produce a Biellmann spin. In so doing, our hypothetical skater has just acquired a new concept. Also, the skaters' coaches constantly monitor the skaters' performance on the ice. One may hear a coach call out, “Keep that free leg up” while the skater spins, and one sees an immediate change in the posture of the skater. The skater processes the coach's linguistic message and adjusts his or her movements accordingly.

Finally, sometimes a coach and skater will change the routine during the practice session. The coach might decide that something more is needed in the way of jumps, for example, or that the choreography needs refinement. Or the skater might ask for some addition to the program, perhaps to make it more challenging. In these examples, the coach or skater has made a decision under uncertainty concerning the structure of the program (Chapter 11). Neither the coach nor skater is certain that the proposed changes will be helpful, but they have weighed the available information and decided that it would be beneficial to make a change. When changing the program, the coach and skater have identified problems to solve (Chapter 12) and creative thinking plays a role in producing changes in the program (Chapter 13).

These examples are by no means extraordinary. Surely each of us could compile, from any randomly selected day, a long list of phenomena in which cognitive processes are centrally involved: seeing a friend today, and picking up the thread of a conversation begun yesterday; using directions acquired online to drive to a new restaurant; being impressed with the creativity of a new song produced by your favorite group. Cognitive processes are at the core of everything we do.

In the past 30 years there has been an explosion in the study of human mental processes, and the momentum shows no signs of slowing down (Robins, Gosling, & Craik, 1999). New developments in the study of cognition have come from many disciplines, and are now best encompassed under the general term cognitive science. First, many areas which researchers had in the past studied only peripherally, if at all, such as imagery, language processing, and creative thinking, have come under investigation and have begun to yield their secrets. Second, in many areas, interdisciplinary cross-fertilization has occurred. Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists regularly collaborate in the study of the relationship between the brain and cognitive processes, to determine the specific cognitive skills lost when a patient suffers a stroke or accident, or to discover, for example, which parts of the brain are most active when someone learns or recalls information. Those studies have increased our understanding of both normal and abnormal neurocognitive functioning. Linguists, cognitive psychologists, and computer scientists have made advances in our understanding of language processes. Philosophers of mind contribute to the study of cognition by clarifying the concepts and theoretical issues within cognitive psychology, including issues related to consciousness and the relation of mind and brain. Third, cognitive scientists have developed new ways of analyzing how we learn, organize information, and carry out cognitive tasks, most notably the computer-based information-processing perspective.

Why Do We Need to Study Cognition Scientifically?

A psychologist once remarked that being considered an expert in the field of psychology is difficult because since everyone has psychological states, everyone thinks that they know everything there is to know about psychology. When students are introduced to the scientific study of cognition, including much new terminology and numerous new concepts, they sometimes wonder why it is necessary to study cognition scientifically. Don't we all know how memory functions, since we each use our memory all the time? Don't we know about attention, from our own experiences attending to events in the environment? We all possess what we could call a commonsense cognitive psychology. Why do we need to learn all this jargon to describe and explain phenomena with which we are already familiar?

The scientific study of cognition is of value is because, contrary to what laypeople believe, they do not know very much about their own cognitive processes. Nisbett and Wilson (1977) found that humans often are extremely bad at giving accurate explanations for their own behavior. A recent bestseller, Blink, begins with an example of art-history experts knowing that a supposedly ancient Greek sculpture is a fake, but even the experts could not explain how or why they could detect the fraud (Gladwell, 2005). Thus, even experts in a field cannot discern the processes that underlie their cognitive abilities.

In many places in this book, we discuss research findings that are surprising or counterintuitive. The dangers of texting while driving are well known, and 39 states have banned the practice (Governors Highway Safety Association, n.d.). However, one example of a nearly universal lack of knowledge about cognitive processes is seen in recent legislation in many states banning the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. Such laws seem totally reasonable: Statistics have shown that using a cell phone while driving increases the risk of accidents, and most people assume that the dangerous aspect of cell-phone use is taking one hand off the steering wheel to hold and dial the phone. Legislators then enact laws banning hand-held cell phones. However, experimental studies of people driving in a simulated vehicle while talking on a cell phone have found that hands-free cell phones are just as dangerous as hand-held phones (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). Driving while talking on a cell phone—hands-on or hands-free—is as dangerous as driving drunk (Strayer et al., 2006; these findings are discussed further in Chapter 6), and increases the risk of a collision fourfold (Redelmeier and Tibshirani, 1997). The problem with talking while on a cell phone is not that your hands are occupied—it is that your mind is.

Only 10 states in the United States have passed laws prohibiting cell phones while driving for all drivers, but not a single state bans hands-free phones (as of 2012; http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/cellphone_laws.html). That means that no state has a policy that is consistent with the research findings (several additional states ban all cell phone use by those under 18 only). The legislators' lack of knowledge about and/or understanding of the cognitive issues underlying cell-phone use could have tragic consequences (Redelmeier & Tibshirani, 1997). This real-life example illustrates why we have to study cognition scientifically; although we each possess the cognitive processes and use them all the time, in actuality most of us do not know very much about the finer points of how they work.

Outline of Chapter 1

This chapter has several purposes. We first examine two uses of the term cognitive psychology, to set the stage for discussion of the development of modern cognitive science over the past 150 years, culminating in the recent ascendance of cognitive psychology as a major area within contemporary psychology. Many disciplines contributed to what has been called “the Cognitive Revolution” in the 1950s and 1960s, in which the study of mental processes supplanted behaviorism, which had been opposed to the study of consciousness and mental events. As part of our discussion of the cognitive revoluti...