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Notes Cognitive psychology I (H002135)
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2021COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
GHENT UNIVERSITY
CLAUDIA BLANCO GARCÍA
,Cognitive psychology I
1
, Cognitive psychology I
LECTURE 1 – CECILIA HEYES
Cognitive gadgets: the cultural evolution of thinking
Overview:
1. Cognitive gadgets
a. Imitation
2. Cultural evolutionary psychology
a. Metacognition
Human minds are transformed in the course of development through social interaction. The engines of this
change, in addition to social interaction, are cognitive mechanism that we have in common with other
animals. The mechanisms that are only human mechanisms are called cognitive gadgets (distinctively human
cognitive mechanisms).
Cecilia is resistant to the view that human minds are all new. She thinks that we get new kinds of thinking
from old parts.
Our cognitive processes are based on the same computations as cognitive mechanisms found in other
animals. But as I said, we also have cognitive gadgets.
Examples: Language, maths, imitation, theory of mind, mental time travel, metacognition… We are only going
to talk about imitation and metacognition.
1. COGNITIVE GADGETS
Her theory is a contrast with standard evolutionary psychology. Distinctively humans cognitive mechanisms
have been shaped by cultural selection, not genetic. That is, socal inherited variants sometimes show
improvements, and those improvements proliferate: people with these variants attract more people who
learn from them their improved variant.
Each of us is born with a quantitatively expanded cognitive processes relative to other animal, not with a
program for the development of a cognitive gadget. This builds trough social interaction the cognitive gadget.
In summary, cognitive gadgets are simple pieces of technology (wheels, canoes…). Example: people made
different types of boats, and the bots that made their job best were copied more than the other variants.
1.1.IMITATION
Imitation is learning by observation how to move the parts of the body. The gadget account suggests that we
are born with the capacity for perceptual sequence learning and a capacity for motor sequence learning.
Motor sequence learning enables us to encode a sequence of body movements.
In humans, these two sequences become together in the development to create a new system which is
capable of imitation. In this system, perceptual sequence learning can drive motor sequence learning. They
are put together by matching vertical associations (bidirectional excitatory links), each connection a sensory
representation of an action and the movements.
2
, Cognitive psychology I
These vertical associations are learned through basic mechanisms present in lots of animals: at birth there’s
no connection, but later experiences result in correlated activations of these representations. This means that
these associations are created through social experience.
1.2.EVIDENCE FOR THE GADGET ACCOUNT
It comes from training experiments that shows that imitations behaviour and the activity of mirror neurons
can be changed by giving people novel sensorimotor experiences.
But what about neonatal imitation? (because if we learn to imitate through experiences, how do neonates
imitate? We now know that neonatal imitation is not a reliable phenomenon.
2.CULTURAL EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
What are the implications of the gadget view for cognitive science? How does a cultural evolutionary
psychologists look like?
1. It doesn’t infer innateness from adaptiveness or early development or neural localisation. A cognitive
mechanism can do well its job, appear early in development and show neural localisation without
being a cognitive instinct.
2. Would ask about old parts. It would ask how these mechanism work and how they came to work that
way.
3. Would look for “wealth of the stimulus”. It would look for evidence that there is sufficient information
in the environment to support the development of the cognitive mechanism.
4. Would look for evidence of cultural learning. It’s not the same as social learning. In cultural learning
the agents learn about other agents and from other agents. The signs of cultural learning are:
a. Cultural variation
b. Training +expertise effects
2.1.METACOGNITION
It’s the capacity to monitor, represent and control behaviour processes (cognitive processes). A conscious
explicit form of metacognition may be only human.
The unconscious processes that control behaviour send to consciousness different experiences (perceptual,
experiences of acting etc). These processes algo give rise to metacognitive experiences.
The developing child has to learn to distinguish these experiences and to learn what they mean (discriminate
and interpret). Cecilia argues that this learning is cultural learning, so it occurs trough social interaction.
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