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Summary cognition and process
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Summary of the lectures of cognition and process
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Cognition and ProcessLecture 1
Cognition: a faculty for processing information, applying knowledge (reasoning), and changing belief
states (learning), or preferences (choosing). Domains of cognition are attention, memory, language
interpretation and production, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. Psychology,
linguistics, neuroscience and computer science all study cognition.
Cognitive processes can be:
- Natural or artificial
- Conscious or unconscious
Figure 1: the evolution of cognition
Humans reasoning is based on induction, abduction and deduction. Induction is the inference of a
general law from particular instances. Abduction is a form of inference which starts with an
observation and then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation for the observations.
Deduction is the process of reasoning from the general to the particular.
Induction:
These beans are white. (result)
These beans are from this bag. (case)
⇒The beans from this bag are white. (rule)
Abduction:
The beans from this bag are white. (rule)
These beans are white. (result)
⇒These beans are from this bag. (case)
Deduction:
The beans from this bag are white. (rule)
These beans are from this bag. (case)
⇒ These beans are white. (result)
First half 20th century: mainly descriptive and prescriptive theory (the rules of grammar) and research
on language as a sociocultural phenomenon.
1950/1960: Chomsky’s first attempt to develop a linguistic theory: should explain how we learn
language in a limited time (5 years), and on the basis of unsystematic input. Our linguistic
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competence is supposed to be an isolated faculty. Rule system of grammar is similar to exact
sciences. A dominant group “generative linguists” work from this perspective.
1970/1980: cognitive linguistics is a gradually growing alternative theory of language (comprising
conceptual systems, human cognition, and meaning construction). No autonomous linguistic faculty;
grammar is conceptualization; linguistic knowledge is emergent.
Various approaches develop, in-between positions develop, and camps (incidentally) start to meet
and to discuss. Cognitive linguistic theory gets organized and becomes a serious alternative to
generative linguistics.
The language system can (and should) be described apart from its actual use and even apart from its
cognitive processing; that explains the acquisition process – no psychology. The language system is
unique – especially syntax is autonomous, independent from any other aspect. Therefore, to study
language one needs to “idealize” the object and abstract from ‘wild’ language with its
ungrammaticalities, incomplete utterances, false starts, interactions with gestures, and so on. One
should describe the patterns in a formal language.
The language system is a cognitive system that will share its basic architecture with other cognitive
systems; the cognitive language system and the way it operates resembles other (cognitive) systems.
Linguistic competence is the capacity to extract regularities from the language one is exposed to,
similar to how a child needs to extract regularities from all kinds of input it is exposed to. Language
does not do the cognitive building, it gives the clues for building in a given situation. Our ‘backstage’
cognition warrants our ability to build and interpret all kinds of constructions (unaware).
Language is a complex system; parts of this system can be captured in formal systems. Formal
descriptions help to recognize regularities and make computer simulations available as a research
tool. Phenomena like quantifier scope, presupposition projection, and counterfactuals are significant
in the language system.
Language can be approached as a product or as a process, although both are fundamentally related:
1. Linguistic, as a product: which meaning can be said to be ‘encoded’ in the linguistic
expression? Or be implied by this expression? Or be implied in this expression, given a
pragmatic context in which it has been uttered? Or be inferred from it, given the knowledge
and beliefs of its interpreter?
How can we represent such meaning?
2. Psycholinguistic, as a process: what happens in the head of a language user when a certain
linguistic expression is presented? Which processes run in which order to result in a specific
representation of meaning? How do reconstructions of language processing relate to models
about the functioning of the brain? How do these models of language processing explain
errors, hesitations, obvious difficulties, ‘imperfections’?
Interpretation is not a 1:1 mapping of a ‘linguistic’ form on a (mental) world. Interpretation is a
process in which a mental representation is built from the instructions in the utterance - based on all
contextual information (via any of the senses) and relevant knowledge and attitudes. However, we
can abstract from a context, vary in contexts, and so on, to learn about what seems to be encoded in
the linguistic form as such. The representation resulting from interpretation cannot be observed
immediately – it is in fact ‘theory’ (a model). Linguistic modeling can be tested in experiments. The
processes leading to the representations are meant to be psychologically plausible.
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Lecture 2
Language comprehension is in essence the construction of a coherent mental representation:
a) When skiing, John lost one of his skis and fell.
b) He is at home now with a broken leg.
These are very simple sentences, you integrate them based on the knowledge of what’s being said
and the language being used. This is when the comprehension comes in. These sentences are
connected by reference. We assume that ‘he’ refers back to John, ‘he’ could not refer to something
else. You need to resolve the ‘he’ before you can go on with the comprehension. Many references
are ambiguous, that’s what makes texts difficult to understand.
Establishing a coherent representation involves:
Interpreting ‘he’ in b) as referring to john in a) = referential coherence;
Interpreting b) as the consequence of a) = relational coherence.
The process of creating coherence is called inference. You can not say that it is completely true. You
have to test the assumptions. You have to assume that the author of these sentences has the
intention to convey information the way the sentences suggest.
Scripture has been developed to communicate knowledge over time and over distance (social
cultural). Scripture also functions as memory and as a way to reflect on your own work by rereading
it over and over again (psychological).
Model of language comprehension:
1. Visual perception of characters;
2. Word recognition;
3. Syntactic parsing, semantic interpretation, relations between the words;
4. Sentence integration;
5. Integration with word knowledge;
6. Text representation.
During all of this we need all this knowledge:
- World knowledge;
- Text topic;
- Text structure;
- Meaning;
- Syntactic function;
- Words;
- Sounds;
- Orthography.
Three processing systems
1. The perceptual system:
- Sensory perception;
- Peripheral signal processing.
2. Parser system:
- Phonological or graphemic decoding: converts sounds or signs into characters and words;
- Lexical access: retrieve words from the mental lexicon;
- Syntactic analysis (parsing): calculate the sentence structure (S VP NP);
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- Semantic analysis: integrate word meanings into a sentence internal meaning representation
(propositions, clauses).
3. The interpreter system:
- Enrich the sentence internal meaning representation with prior knowledge (inferences); this
type of representation is not restricted to language, but contains, for instance, spatial, visual,
auditory, tactile, emotional information, as well;
- Determine the communicative goal of the text.
Three types of text representations:
o Surface representation: the literal reproduction of the text; stays only for a short period of
time in memory. You can address this information while it’s there and moments later it will
be gone.
o Propositional representation: the meaning representation. The text internal meaning; stays
longer in memory.
o Mental model representation: meaning of the text enriched with (non-linguistic) knowledge
(what is the text about?); stays the longest time in memory.
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