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How Do We Believe?
1Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences, Brown University.
Topics in Cognitive Science
|November 18, 2021
Summary
Human cognition balances flexible pattern recognition with structured reasoning. Our success as thinkers stems from leveraging a community of knowledge, outsourcing cognitive tasks intuitively and through deliberation.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Human Cognition
- Information Processing
Background:
- Human memory excels at pattern recognition and generalization in familiar contexts.
- Humans also utilize diverse representational schemes for structured understanding, even in novel situations.
- Existing models struggle to reconcile associative (statistical) and representational (compositional, causal) information processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To reconcile seemingly incompatible aspects of human thought: flexible pattern recognition and structured reasoning.
- To explore the role of dual systems in human cognitive abilities.
- To investigate the contribution of social knowledge sharing to cognitive success.
Main Methods:
- Longitudinal research spanning memory, induction, category knowledge, and causal reasoning.
- Theoretical exploration of associative models and representational languages.
- Conceptual framework development appealing to dual systems of thinking.
Main Results:
- Human cognition integrates sophisticated associative learning with powerful representational systems.
- Dual systems of thinking are consistently observed across various cognitive domains.
- Reliance on a 'community of knowledge' is a fundamental aspect of human cognitive success.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive success arises from the interplay between internal processing mechanisms and external social knowledge.
- Humans effectively outsource cognitive tasks, both implicitly and explicitly, through social interaction.
- Understanding human cognition requires acknowledging both individual processing capabilities and collective intelligence.
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