{"id":4312,"date":"2018-09-18T22:05:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T02:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/?p=4312"},"modified":"2019-05-25T23:45:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T03:45:34","slug":"cognition-and-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/cultural-psychology\/cognition-and-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognition and Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Horizons in landscape scenes are painted considerably higher in East Asian pictures than in Western ones<\/li>\n<li>Figures in portraits were much larger in Western picture than they were in East Asians ones<\/li>\n<li>East Asian art looks different from Western art because people from these cultures are literally <em>seeing <\/em>the world differently<\/li>\n<li>Different artistic styles reflect some fundamental differences in basic cognitive and perceptual processes<\/li>\n<li>Cognition and perception is so important in cultural psychology because it informs us about the most elementary and essential psych processes.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s all about how we encode, retrieve memories, and perceive things that help us categorize information<\/li>\n<li>Cultural Variation is guided by two things:\n<ul>\n<li>Cognitive tools are universally available to people but sometimes they are not always used with the same frequency or purpose<\/li>\n<li>Cultural differences arise because of the different experiences that people have growing up in their respective cultures<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h1>Analytic and Holistic Thinking<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Taxonomic categorization strategy<\/u>: the stimuli are grouped according to the perceived similarity of their attributes o Common in Westerners<\/li>\n<li><u>Thematic Categorization strategy: <\/u>the stimuli are grouped together on the basis of causal, temporal, or spatial relationships among them o Common in East Asians<\/li>\n<li><u>Analytic Thinking<\/u>: Characterized by a focus on objects and their attributes\n<ul>\n<li>Objects are perceived as existing independently from their context, and they are understood in terms of their component parts<\/li>\n<li>This type of thinking is common in Western cultures<\/li>\n<li>This type of thinking is evident in the Platonic perspective that the world is a collection of discrete unchanging objects that can be categorized by reference to a et of universal properties<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Holistic Thinking<\/u>: Characterized by an orientation to the context as a whole.\n<ul>\n<li>It represents an associative way of thinking, which gives attention to the relations among objects and among the objects surrounding context<\/li>\n<li>It emphasizes knowledge gained through experience rather than the application of fixed abstract rules<\/li>\n<li>More common in East Asian cultures<\/li>\n<li>Evident in ancient Chinese that emphasized harmony, interconnectedness and change<\/li>\n<li>The classic response of which one doesn\u2019t belong: dog, carrot, or rabit , holistic thinking would say dog doesn\u2019t belong because carrot and rabit have connection<\/li>\n<li>Holistic thinking characterizes the thinking of people form much of the globe o Working class Americans and Russians are more holistic than their middleclass compatriots<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Collectivistic cultures<\/u>: they tend to be socialized in relational contexts and to have their attention directed at relational concerns<\/li>\n<li><u>Individualistic Cultures:<\/u> More likely to be socialized to be independent and to have their attention focused on objects<\/li>\n<li><u>Independent self-concepts:<\/u> come to understand people by focusing on their inner attributes and attending less to relationships<\/li>\n<li><u>Interdependent self-concepts<\/u>: tend to conceive of people in terms of their relationships with others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h1>Attention<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Attention is most fundamental psychological processes<\/li>\n<li>Analytic thinkers perceive world as consisting of discrete objects, more likely to focus their attention on separate parts of a scene o European-Americans are more likely to describe what they see based on a single aspect\n<ul>\n<li><u>Field Independence: <\/u>they separate objects from their background fields (analytic thinkers are good at this)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Holistic thinkers who perceive the world as consisting of an interrelated whole, should direct their attention more broadly, across an entire scene o Chinese-Americans more likely to give a whole-view approach when describing what they see\n<ul>\n<li>Holistic thinkers are bad on tasks that required you to separate a scene into its component parts<\/li>\n<li><u>Field Dependence: <\/u>tend to view objects a bound to their backgrounds\n<ul>\n<li>Those who are more outgoing are more field dependent than people who are more introverted<\/li>\n<li>Religious training in Calvinism emphasizes the independence of individuals and it leads people to be more field independent than atheists or people with training in other religions.<\/li>\n<li>People in industrialized societies also tend to be more field independent, EXCEPT FOR PEOPLE who are living in HIGHLY industrialized EAST ASIA<\/li>\n<li>Mostly in East Asia \u2013 clear evidence for field dependence \u2013 so east<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Asians do relatively poorly on task such as the Rod and Frame<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the fish background experiment, when the fish was shown with its original background, the Japanese were more likely to recognize the fish than were the Americans<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Japanese judgments of the target person\u2019s emotional expression were influence by the expressions of the people in the background o But in contrast to Americans, the expression of background people had no impact of the judgment of the faces for the Americans<\/li>\n<li>There are significantly more objects in the Japanese pictures than in the corresponding American ones.\n<ul>\n<li>This shows the scenes that Japanese and Americans see on a day-to-day basis vary in their complexity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Change Blindness<\/u>: The inability to detect changes in a scene\n<ul>\n<li>Japanese noticed more of the changes to the background than did Americans, which reflect their greater holistic attentional tendencies<\/li>\n<li>Americans AND Japanese were more likely to identify the changes in the background when they had been primed with pictures of Japanese scenes than when they were primed with pictures of American scenes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h1>Understanding other People\u2019s behaviors<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Internal characteristics<\/u>: looking at someone\u2019s characteristics like short temper, or having a disagreeable personality o Trying to understand someone by looking at their internal characteristics is an extension of an analytic way of thinking\n<ul>\n<li>Identifying underlying attributes and understanding inner qualities like personality traits<\/li>\n<li>Westerners will make more underlying dispositions \u00e0 <strong><em>Dispositional Attributions<\/em> <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Characteristics of the situation<\/u>: Looking at someone\u2019s surroundings and their environment to explain why they are behaving that way o Explaining peoples behaviors by considering how the situation is influencing them is an extension of a holistic way of thinking\n<ul>\n<li>You identify the context of the situation and attribute their behavior to the context and what is happening<\/li>\n<li>East Asians will explain someone\u2019s behaviors in terms of contextual variables \u00e0 <strong><em>Situational Attributions<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>The fundamental Attribution Error<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Fundamental Attribution Error<\/u>: tendency to ignore situational information \u2013 such as the conditions under which the writers wrote their essays while focusing on dispositional information o It is deeply ingrained in us<\/li>\n<li>People in other cultures, like the Balinese, do not tend to conceive of people\u2019s behaviors in terms of underlying dispositions, but instead see them as emrging out of the roles of people<\/li>\n<li>Americans are more likely to conceive people in terms of abstract personality traits than were the Indians o Indians attended to concrete behaviors<\/li>\n<li>Older Americans were more likely to make dispositional attributions whereas their situational attributions remained unchanged o Indians were opposite \u2013 made more situational attributions and dispositional didn\u2019t change<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>o Indians show a reverse fundamental attribution error<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Reasoning Styles<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The way people reason is affected by peoples thinking (whether it is analytic or holistic)<\/li>\n<li>Analytic thinkers tend to view the world as operating according to a set of universal abstract rules and laws o They will apply the rules and laws when they try to make sense of a situation<\/li>\n<li>Holistic thinkers should be more likely to make sense of a situation by considering the relationship among objects or events o They look for evidence of similarity among events<\/li>\n<li>Logical Reasoning: more common in analytic thinkers<\/li>\n<li>When there is CONFLICT \u00e0 east Asians rely on holistic reasoning, but when there is NO conflict \u00e0 Westerners are holistic reasoning and East Asians in analytics reasoning<\/li>\n<li>A truly holistic thinker is aware of the countless ways that things in the world are related to each other<\/li>\n<li>Analytic thinkers should focus their attention on the relation between a relatively small number of discrete objects or events<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Toleration of Contradiction<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>East Asians view that reality is continually in flux Ex: Tai Chi<\/li>\n<li>Ying and Yang represent opposites, moon and sun, and they indicate that the universe is constantly in flux<\/li>\n<li>Opposing truths can be simultaneously accepted<\/li>\n<li><u>Law of Contradiction:<\/u> no statement could be both true and false o This law is logical reasoning<\/li>\n<li><u>Na\u00efve Dialecticism: <\/u>Acceptance of contradiction \u2013 contradiction is not something to be rejected, but should be accepted<\/li>\n<li>Westerners tend to view change in more linear way<\/li>\n<li>East Asians think change happens in fluid and unpredictable ways<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Creative Thinking<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Creativity<\/u>: the generation of ideas that are both <u>NOVEL<\/u> and <u>USELFUL<\/u> and <u>APPROPRIATE<\/u><\/li>\n<li>Novel ideas are more from westerners o Westerners prefer novel objects more than East-Asians<\/li>\n<li>Western artists are more likely to suffer from mental illness<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Collectivism appears to be associated with the generation of useful rather than novel ideas<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>East Asians are more likely to have useful innovations, that\u2019s why more patents issued there o They foster innovative environment for incremental innovations<\/li>\n<li>Incremental innovations: they highlight the important role of useful ideas because they involve modifying an idea to better fit with the practical constraints around it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Talking and Thinking<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Humans differ from other species because we talk<\/li>\n<li>Talking has dramatically different implications for the ways we think across cultures<\/li>\n<li>We have an assumption that talking reflects thinking and engagement in a class<\/li>\n<li>Speaking is valued in the West because it is viewed as an act of self-expression and as inextricably bound to thought<\/li>\n<li>Many Eastern religions pursue truth through silent meditation rather than through spoken prayer<\/li>\n<li>Eastern cultural traditions have not cultivated a belief that thought and speech are closely related<\/li>\n<li>Japanese mothers speak less to their young children than their American counterparts<\/li>\n<li>Less speech DOES NOT MEAN less communication<\/li>\n<li>Expressing one\u2019s thoughts out loud interferes with the performance of East Asians on cognitive tasks, whereas it should have little impact on the performance of<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Westerners o Asian-Americans perform worse on the test when they<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Since Asians are holistic thinkers, nature of holistic thinking makes it hard to express in words because speech is a sequential task<\/li>\n<li>People are able to recognize the faces they had previously seen if they had not tried to describe them before<\/li>\n<li>Verbal description interferes with ability to process the face as a whole<\/li>\n<li>If what you say is viewed to be consistent with what is in your head, then speech can serve an important role for self-expression<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Explicit Vs Implicit Communication<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Communication is expressed also in nonverbal gestures, facial expressions, and voice tone<\/li>\n<li>There is cultural differences in the degree to which communication relies on explicit verbal information vs more implicit nonverbal cues<\/li>\n<li><u>High context culture<\/u>: people are deeply involved with each other, and this leads to have much shared info that guides behavior o East Asian cultures<\/li>\n<li><u>Low Context culture<\/u>: less involvement among individuals, and there is less shared info to guide behavior\n<ul>\n<li>North American cultures<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Words are sometimes less important than the way they are said<\/li>\n<li>The key info is conveyed nonverbally, with the content of the words sometimes being rather empty<\/li>\n<li>Japanese rely a lot on nonverbal communication \u2013 so they hate answering machines o Harder to speak without getting any feedback \uf0b7 The nonverbal communication study:\n<ul>\n<li>The tone was unpleasant or pleasant, participants were asked to identify if word were pleasant or unpleasant regardless if they matched tone. o Americans did better on ignoring the vocal tone and judging meaning of words<\/li>\n<li>They chronically attend to the meaning of what is said more than they do to the tone in which it is spoken<\/li>\n<li>Japan habitually attended to the tone <strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Linguistic Relativity<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Sapir Whorf hypothesis\n<ul>\n<li>Langage determines how we think<\/li>\n<li>We are unable to do much thinking on a topic if we dont have the relevant words available to us<\/li>\n<li>Language we speak affects how we think<\/li>\n<li>Lot of controversy and debate because infants show evidence for complex thinking in the absence of language<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Words we speak are assumed to affect the way we think o If we use the words physically challenged instead of handicapped to describe people we are more likely to think these people as being capable and competent<\/li>\n<li>Language obliges people to think about certain ideas<\/li>\n<li>People who speak different languages think in different ways<\/li>\n<li>Lot of diversity in the ways people label colors \u2013 it emerges in systematic ways o all languages have a minimum of two color terms<\/li>\n<li>Dani remembered colors in similar ways to Americans, despite having such divergent color categories<\/li>\n<li>Color perception and memory are independent from the color words that were in language o Shows evidence that language does not affect color perception<\/li>\n<li><u>Categorical Perception:<\/u> We tend to perceive stimuli in categorical terms , we perceive stimuli as belong to separate and discrete categories<\/li>\n<li>People show perception of the different colors is influenced by the color categories use in their respective languages \u00e0 language CAN? Affect color perception \uf0b7 <u>Perceptions of Agency:<\/u>\n<ul>\n<li>Sentences that are framed in a more agentive way appear more responsible<\/li>\n<li>Especially when they describe an accident Ex: The bodice tore<\/li>\n<li>When people want to avoid blame for something they describe it in a nonagentive way. Ex:\u00a0 JT tore the bodice<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Linguistic Relativity is important to consider peoples spatial descriptions<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We often identify locations based on their position to the speaker<\/li>\n<li>Languages with different spatial referencing would also influence the ways that people represent the passage of time<\/li>\n<li>Spatial perception, time perception, are grounded in the linguistic markers available in one\u2019s language o Left to right in English (east to west if facing south, west to east if facing north)\n<ul>\n<li>Right to left in Arabic<\/li>\n<li>In this task, language differences between groups influenced the way participants thought about the tasks<\/li>\n<li>Whorfian Hypothesis is generally WEAK!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>But it\u2019s not so weak in terms of Math, because absence of linguistic terms for specific number make people to not be able to understand the associated numerical concept \uf0b7 USA kids have a logarithmic sense of numbers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h1>How we understand Humans\u2019 Place in the World<\/h1>\n<p>\uf0b7 Anthropocentric: young children project qualities of people onto animal<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Up until age of 10, children ten to see animals as reflections of humans, having the same kinds of characteristics and experiences as people<\/li>\n<li>Human-centered view of animal kingdom<\/li>\n<li>They understand animals by generalizing from what they know about people<\/li>\n<li>However these studies were all conducted in Western participants o Children who were raised in environments where they coexist with animals will not show typical pattern of anthropocentrism<\/li>\n<li>The way people understand and classify other animals appears to be influenced by their experiences with animals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Horizons in landscape scenes are painted considerably higher in East Asian pictures than in Western ones Figures in portraits were much larger in Western picture than they were in&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/cultural-psychology\/cognition-and-perception\/\">Continue Reading<span> Cognition and Perception<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4857,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions\/4857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}