Components of Thought

1. Components of Thought

2. Thinking is a cognitive process in which the brain uses information from the senses, emotions, and memory to create and manipulate mental representations, such as concepts, images, schemas, and scripts Core Concept

3. Concepts • Concepts – Mental representations of categories of items or ideas, based on experience. • They are the building blocks of thinking. • Researchers cannot observe them directly but must infer their influence in people’s thinking directly by studying the observable effects on behavior. • Concepts define us but we all share similar ways in which we form concepts. • Natural concepts represent objects and events • Artificial concepts are defined by rules

4. Natural Concepts • Imprecise mental classifications that develop out of our everyday experiences in the world. (natural concept of a bird) • Prototype: an ideal or most representative example of a conceptual category.

5. Artificial Concepts • Concepts defined by rules or characteristics such definitions and mathematical formulas. • Represent precisely defined ideas or abstractions. • Most concepts we learn in school are artificial concepts.

6. Concept Hierarchies • Levels of concepts, from most general to most specific, in which a more general level includes more specific concepts . • Like the concept of animal includes dog, giraffe, and butterfly. • The most general is at the top and the most concrete at the bottom.

7. Culture, Concepts and Thought • Most research is done by Euro-American Psychologists. • Do not assume that thinking works exactly in the same way in different cultures. • Freedom and democracy may have different connotations in different parts of the world.

8. Imagery and Cognitive Maps • Sensory mental imagery revives information you have previously perceived and stored in memory. • German Shepherd example.

9. Visual Thinking • Visual Imagery adds complexity and richness to our thinking as do images that contain other senses. • Can be useful because we sometimes think more clearly using images than just using words. • Cognitive Maps (Tolman) people form a mental map of their environment to guide their actions.

10. Cultural Influences • Maps reflect our subjective impressions of physical reality.

11. Thought and the Brain • Event-related potentials – Brain waves shown on an EEG in response to stimulation • Various forms of brain scanning provide glimpses of cognitive processes through new windows. • What we must figure out is what this new information is telling us about cognition.

12. Schemas • Schema – A knowledge cluster or general framework that provides expectations about topics, events, objects, people, and situations in one’s life • For example, for an airline passenger a terminal will bring up a schema that includes long corridors, crowds, and airplanes. But to a very ill patient, terminal may mean thoughts of death, long illness etc.

13. Schemas • According to researches, schemas are the primary units of meaning in the human information system. • We comprehend new information with information or input with what we already know.

14. Scripts • Script – A cluster of knowledge about sequences of events and actions expected to occur in particular settings • We have scripts about going to a restaurant, on a date etc. • Each culture has different scripts (women in Middle East)