I have always been fascinated by people’s ability to communicate in multiple languages. I imagine this is because I was brought up in a dual culture, where two languages are the norm, not the exception. I love to read in French, speak Spanish and write Mandarin, as each language brings a different feeling depending on what is being communicated. I am interested in how an infant acquires language, and how when we are brought up learning one language, how we are able to learn another. What are some of the underlying cognitive mechanisms that facilitate language?

Throughout history people have been interested in language acquisition, but not until Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke began studying language in the late 1800’s that some theories about where language resides in the brain were explored. They felt that language was in two different areas of the brain called Broca and Wernicke’s areas. Later, research found there are not only specific areas, but that language is distributed throughout different areas of the brain.

In the 1950’s, in order for it to fit their school of thought, behaviorist proposed language is learned through reinforcement. They believed children are reinforced positively for speaking correctly and punished for incorrect language usage. After reading this in our text, my first thought was that the behaviorist must not have had children, because if they had they would know how absurd that theory sounds to a parent. When my son was almost 2, he insulted someone he did not like by calling him a “baggy of meat,” was that learned behavior? No, I am positive we did not teach him that, but it was interesting.

Luckily, Noam Chomsky came to the rescue directly challenging the absurd behaviorist when he published his book called, “Syntactic Structures.” In this book, Chomsky proposed language is coded in our genes and that all language has a similar underlying mechanism. He felt we all have a genetically enhanced ability for grammar structure. This was a fortuitous as it facilitated a way of studying the properties of the mind which helped usher in the age of the cognitive revolution. Chomsky, and I, definitely agree that, “as children learn language, they produce sentences that they have never heard and have never been reinforced.” (Chomsky, 1957)

So, just how do infants acquire language ability? According to Eve Clark from Stanford University, children build on categories they have already distinguished. Then, they are able to map language using broad conceptual representations on a cognitive basis. Also, learning to speak draws their attention to grammar, and they are able to build upon what they know. Their ability to conceptualize information is later replaced by linguistic abilities. For a child, language begins with perceptual and auditory input which is a bottom up process, and then they output language by talking which turns it into a top down process.

References:

Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience. (3rd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth.

Clark, E. (2004). How Language Acquisition Builds On Cognitive Development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 472-478.

No, I am not referring to throwing your chess pieces across the room when you get frustrated. Chunking refers to our ability to retain more information in our short term memory than originally thought. When George Miller wrote his seminal paper, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information” he showed our short term memory can expand past 5-7 items by utilizing a process called “chunking”. Chunking is defined as, “a collection of elements that are strongly associated with one another but are weakly associated with elements in other chunks.” (Goldstein, 2011) It is how we group items into categories according to how they relate to each other semantically or perceptually. I believe the most important aspect of chunking is that it has to have meaning to the person who is trying to recall the information.

For a chess player, one of the most essential aspects of playing successfully is the ability to recognize patterns of piece arrangement on the board. This recognition happens only after thousands of hours of studying and playing at the chess board. This identification of configurations, or to put it in cognitive psychology terms, chunking, is an integral aspect of chess tactics. The ability to recognize a tactic, whether it is a pin or a skewer, is the main component which separates a chess master from a chess patzer. Most of us can push the pieces across the board in some meaningful way, but do we have the ability to recognize a smothered mate when it presents itself? I have found, most people do not, as they do not have the time it takes to devout to chess.

Adrian de Groot was the first to hypothesis about the ability of chess masters recognition of patterns of chess piece placement on the board. The masters were able to recognize the patterns, if they were ones they were familiar, after only a few seconds. If the chess masters were unfamiliar with the patterns, then their ability to retain the pattern in their memories were equivalent to a regular player.

Recently for my English class I wrote an ethnography which was based on chess players my local chess club. I was able to see firsthand how some of the grandmasters and international masters were able to pick out patterns which were familiar to them in order to defeat their opponent. Some patterns I recognized, though most I did not. It became clear to me quickly, who put in more time at the chess board than whom. The use of chunking in chess is an easy concept to understand, as the more you play the more patterns you recognize, and the more you recognize, the more significant the patterns become.

References:

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience. (3rd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth.

http://snitkof.com/cg156/chesschunkingtheory.php

https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Chunking

Living in a stimulating world with constant demands on our perception can be exhausting. What do we pay attention to, what do we filter out, and why? One source of stimulation continually bombarding our senses is television advertising. Since advertising is my career, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about these issues. What impact does perceptional awareness have on the world of advertising? How do we perceive the world in a way that has the greatest impact on our awareness? What neurological influence does advertising have on our audience, and how do we utilize those results order to make more effective advertising? My goal is to identify is how to sell my product in the most effective way, touching people on their deepest, operational level.

We decided to use focus groups to find out what type of advertising affects our audience strongest. The clear outcome was that when we advertise to people’s emotions we acquire the best results. One of our clients is a car dealership who allowed us to make commercials which affect people on a strong emotional level, instead of using hard sell, obnoxious tactics. We use life-affirming, positive shots with families, friends, children, babies, puppies or sunsets; rarely showing a car.  No one has an emotional investment in what a car show room looks like, or in watching people shaking hands with a salesman. Still, the question remains why do emotions sell? We did not know why it worked; only that it did

Selling with emotion utilizes two processes. The first is bottom-up processing, where we see an image that appeals to us; and are affected. The second is top-down processing, where we utilize what we already know about “feel good” moments and combine them with what we are seeing. When we implemented our emotional car selling method we had not heard of Eric Du Plessis or his theories about the discoveries in neuroscience where “emotion establishes a firm memory of an advertisement and predisposes consumers to buy the brand that is being advertised”. (Du Plessis, 2008) He determined “we unconsciously monitor our environment and reference existing memories to help us decide what to pay attention to.” (Sumner, 2009) This is why we pay attention to the images on the screen which evoke positive feelings; such as puppies and friends. “In advertising it is the combination of top-down and bottom-up processing working in conjunction which create good advertising, and the stronger the emotion, the greater the influence.” (Sumner, 2009) According to Du Plessis, “In top-down processing, the emotion is recognized in the frontal lobe and then signals are sent to the lower level of the brain for further interpretation. In bottom-up processing, the emotion starts out in the amygdala (limbic system) where it is “tagged” as positive or negative, and is then sent to the upper brain to be processed in more detail. It is there where the emotion is labeled and interpreted.” (Sumner, 2009)

In our experience, clever, smart advertising appealing to our audience’s emotions has always proven the most advantageous way to advertise. In order for us to compete in a world with diverse mediums we need to have an understanding of not only what we are doing, but why we are doing it. Knowing we have some “neurological legs” to stand on gives us a distinct advantage as the bottom-up, top-down processing play an integral part in how a consumer decides to spend their money.

References:

Sumner, J. (2009). Retrieved from http://joannesumner.net/?p=1276

Du Plessis, E. (2008). The advertised mind: Groundbreaking insights into how our brains respond to advertising. Kogan Page.