PSY274H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Somatosensory System, Initial And Terminal Objects, Internal Monologue
Document Summary
Many studies on this topic struggle to specify points 1-3 with precision; point 4 is an additional methodological challenge. Core idea: thinking is a kind of internal monologue. We catch ourselves verbalizing our thoughts/ talking to ourselves. Just as smart in terms of cognitive ability. Animals display smart behaviours without any language. Monkeys fighting; vocalization not used to develop this analogical reasoning. Common test case for this question: studies of cognitive development in children (assumption: evolving language experience should entail change in cognition) Infants shown a test object, and a nonobvious property is demonstrated (e. g. , if you touch the top of the object, it rings) Infants then shown a new object that varies in terms of perceptual similarity to the initial object (high, med, low) Measure: how long infants manually explore test object (e. g. , to see if this one has the same nonobvious property) reflects whether infants consider new object to be in same category as initial one.
