13.2: The Elements of Cognition

Section Learning Objectives

• Define cognition.
• Describe the four main elements of cognition.

What is Cognition?

Cognition concerns thinking and includes such processes as attention, learning, memory, language, reasoning, decision making, problem-solving, and learning. It consists of four main elements — concepts, schemas, propositions, and images.

Concepts

Concepts are mental categories of objects, ideas, abstractions, events, relations, or activities that have common properties and are shared by all members of the category.

The concept of “textbook” includes having a table of contents, preface, chapters with summaries at the end of each, a glossary, index, and references. Concepts summarize information making it manageable and allow us to make comparisons. If we were asked which was heavier, a feather or a brick, we would be able to decide easily based on our concept of each object. Concepts can take two forms — formal and natural.

Formal concepts are more rigid and defined for us as in the case of a square. All squares have four equal sides and four right angles. Natural concepts have only a typical set of characteristics. An example is the natural concept of bird and the characteristic of being able to fly. An exception to this is the penguin which has wings but cannot fly as we typically think of flying. They instead “fly” underwater at speeds of up to 15 to 25 miles per hour but like other birds, lay eggs and raise their chicks on land.

When trying to determine if something belongs in a natural concept, we need to compare it against a member that shares most of the characteristic features. This member is called a prototype. In our example, a penguin was found to be a bird, but maybe not the best example since it does not fly in the typical sense. Instead, a prototypical bird would be a pigeon or a woodpecker and a person would not have trouble deciding quickly if it was one.

Propositions

Propositions are units of meaning that are composed of concepts and express a relationship between the concepts. They express a unitary or single idea and can express nearly any type of knowledge. Let’s say we consider our friend, John, to be a good friend. This would be an example of a proposition. What if he spoke some gossip about another friend and so we had to resolve the cognitive dissonance this event created in relation to our previously held belief or proposition. We want to believe it is true and Chris is a good friend, but we have evidence to the contrary which creates tension.

Schemas

Propositions are linked together in a network of associations, knowledge, beliefs, and expectations called schemas. A schema is an organized way of making sense of experience.

Types of schemas.

We have several types of schemas that we use to assign meaning to our world. First, there are role schemas, which relate to how people carrying out certain roles or jobs are to act. For instance, what it the role schema you have for someone working in your Human Resources office at work? What about the cashier at your local grocery store?

Another schema we have is called the person schema and relates to certain types of people such as firefighters, geeks, or jocks. For each of these people, we have specific beliefs and expectations about what their personality is like and how they are to behave in various situations. What traits do you believe cheerleaders hold?

The final schema is called an event schema or script. This type of schema tells us what is to occur in certain situations such as at a party or in a chemistry lab. The parking garage I use daily requires me to swipe my card as I enter. Now the garage houses more than just those with my special permit. It is used as a public parking lot too. Recently, the gate as you exit has been broken and so left up. Usually, when I leave I would swipe my card again, thereby causing the gate to go up. What I have to do when entering and exiting the lot is usually pretty clear. Since the gate is just up now, I have been confused about what to do when I get to the pay station. I have been trying to swipe my card again but really, it is not needed. The gate is up already. I finally asked what to do and the parking attendant told me that those with parking permits can just pass through. Until this point, I was afraid to just go through, even though I have an orange permit sticker on the bottom left of my windshield. I was not sure if the university would consider my behavior to be trying to skip payment and send the police after me. The broken gate has left my event schema in turmoil. Hopefully, it is fixed soon. That is the gate, not my event schema. I guess you could say by fixing the gate they restore my event schema too.

Let’s put them all three schemas together. Imagine you are at a football game for your favorite team, whether high school, college, or professional. Who are some of the people there? Fans, coaches, players, referees, announcers, cheerleaders, and medical staff are all present. We expect the fans to be rowdy and supportive of the team by doing the wave or cheering. We expect the head coach to make good decisions and to challenge poor decisions by the referees. To that end, we expect the referees to be fair, impartial, and accurate in the judgments they make. We would not be surprised if they threw a flag or blew a whistle. Cheerleaders should be peppy, cheerful, and do all types of gymnastics on the field and wave pom poms, etc… These are the main people involved in the football game. In terms of roles, the head coach fulfills the role of leader of the team along with the Quarterback. The role of promoting team spirit and energizing the crowd goes to the cheerleaders and maybe some key players on the field. The medical staff is there to diagnose and treat injuries as they occur and so their role is to keep everyone safe. Finally, what do we do as a fan when we attend a football game? We have to enter the stadium and likely go through a search of our bags and present our ticket. We walk to our assigned seat. Though we cheer our team on, we need to be respectful of those around us such as not yelling obscenities if children are nearby. We also are expected to participate in the wave and sing the team’s fight song, etc…. This is the event schema that dictates our behavior.

Benefits of schemas.

It should not be surprising to learn that schemas make cognitive processing move quicker. But they also complete incomplete pictures in terms of what we know about someone. Though we may not know Johnny personally, placing him in the schema football player helps us to fill in these blanks about what his personality is like and how he might behave. Using our schema for football player we can now predict what a future interaction with Johnny might involve. Let’s say he is assigned to be our lab partner in chemistry. We use our schema to make a quick assessment if the experience of working with him might be pleasant or unpleasant and we might be able to predict what his level of involvement in the project will be as well as the potential quality of his work.

Mental Images

Mental images are like pictures in the mind’s eye. If you are asked to picture an apple in your mind, can you do it? Maybe we recall previous times when we saw, touched, smelled, or tasted an apple. As we recall more and more memories, we can form a more complete mental image. Or maybe we have had limited experience with an apple, or maybe some exotic fruit, and so seek them out to gain additional sensory information? These images become more complete as we gain additional information either from existing memories or new information from our world. In the case of the latter, we learn about the object in question.