Mapc 001
Mapc 001
SECTION A
SECTION B
SECTION C
Answer the following questions in 50 words each. 10 x 3 = 30 marks
9. Sensory memory
10.
11. Creativity and intelligence
12. Aspects of creativity
13. Phonemes and morphemes
14. Single system vs dual system hypotheses
15. Dysprosody
16. Means ends analysis
17. Stages in creativity
18. Contextual subtheory of Sternberg
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
SECTION – A
Ans. Cognitive psychology focuses on the study of higher mental processes including
thinking, language, memory, problem-solving,
solving, reasoning, judging and decision-making.
decision
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on the way people process
information.
rmation. It looks at how we process information we receive and how the treatment of this
information leads to our responses. Cognitive psychology is interested in what is happening
within our minds that link stimulus (input) and response (output).
Cognitive Psychology
Memory
Brain damage
Attention Artificial Computer and effect on
Problem-solving intelligence simulation cognition
Language
The term ‘cognitive psychology’ was first used by Ulric Neisser in 1967. Since then, many
interventions have emerged from cognitive study that have benefited the field of psychology.
Cognitive psychology is goal
goal-oriented and problem-focused from the beginning. Imagine
someone is entering treatment with a cognitive psychologist. One of the first things s/he will
be asked to do is to identify his/her problems and formulate specific goals for him/herself.
1
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Then s/he will be helped to organise his/her problems in a way that will increase the chances
of meeting his/her goals.
Suppose that as s/he is preparing for his/her presentation at work tomorrow, s/he fear s/he
will fail. Because of this, s/he is using distractions around him/her as a way to avoid working
on the presentation. This prevents him/her from preparing properly, which actually causes
him/her to fail. S/he believes that s/he failed because s/he is worthless. A cognitive
psychologist would help him/her to examine and then rationalise the situation in order to
understand the most valid reason for his/her failure. Then they would teach him/her how to
make changes that will help him/her succeed.
(2) The belief that psychological distress is largely the result of a disturbance in cognitive
processes.
(4) A time-limited,
limited, educational treatment that focuses on specific problems.
Though often grouped together, cognitive psychology can be divided into two areas, i.e.
cognitive therapy (CT) and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). CT and CBT are very similar
in their theory
ory and application. The difference is that cognitive therapy focuses on eliminating
psychological distress, while cognitive behavioural therapy targets the elimination of
negative behaviour as well.
Ans. Based on information processing approach, J.P. Das, Naglieri and Kirby (1994)
proposed four main cognitive functions, i.e. Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and
Successive processing (hence the name PASS). Das has used A. R. Luria’s,
neuropsychological conceptualisation
conceptualisation of human cognitive processes as a base for developing
this model. The basic statement of the model is that intelligence can be understood as a result
of the interdependent functioning of three neurological systems. These systems constitute
those who are responsible for arousal (and attention), coding (or processing) and planning.
The two coding processes are simultaneous and successive. Thus, the theory is known as
PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous and Successive) Theory.
2
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Input Output
Serial Concurrent Serial Concurrent
According to Luria’s PASS theory, there are three types of cognitive processes responsible
for mental activity associated with three functional units of the brain. These processes refer to
the mental activities which involved
involved attention (first unit), simultaneous and successive
processing (second unit), and planning (third unit) cognitive processes. The first functional
unit, located in the brain stem and reticular activating system, provides the brain with the
appropriatee level of arousal or cortical tone for focussed attention and resistance to
distraction. The second functional unit (occipital
(occipital-parietal
parietal and frontal-temporal
frontal-temporal areas of the
frontal-
brain) is responsible for “receiving, analyzing and storing information” using simult
simultaneous
and successive processing. The third functional unit is located in the frontal lobes of the brain
and is responsible for planning, including the programming, regulation, and verification of
behaviour (Luria 1973: 67). This provides the capability for behaviour such as asking
questions and problem solving and the capacity for self
self-monitoring
self--monitoring (Das et al. 1994). These
processes provide a different perspective that redefines intelligence within the context of
cognitive processes (Naglieri 1999).
Q3. Discuss
Discuss Guilford’s structure of intellect theory.
Ans. J. P. Guilford was born on March 7, 1897 in Marquette, Nebraska. His interest in
individual differences started from his childhood, when he observed the differences in ability
among the members of his own family. As an undergraduate student at the University of
Nebraska, he worked as an assistant in the psychology department. At Cornell University
from 1919 to 1921, he studied under Edward Titchener and conducted intelligence testing on
children. During his time at Cornell University, he also served as director of the university’s
psychological clinic. From 1927 to 1928, Guilford worked at the University of Kansas, after
which he became Associate Professor at University of Nebraska, remaining there from 1928
3
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Guilford’s Structure of Intellect (SI) model is a theory, which aims to explain the nature of
intelligence (Guilford, 1956; 1967; 1977; 1982; 1983; Guilford and Hoepfner, 1971). The
purpose of the theory is to provide a firm, comprehensive and systematic foundation and
empirically
rically based concept of intelligence (Guilford, 1967, p. vii). It is based on experimental
application of multivariate factor analysis of extensive studies of performance on
psychometric tests. The resulting model (figure 2.4) is represented as a three-dimensional
-dimensional
cuboid (5 × 4 × 6) with three main dimensions, i.e. operations, content and product
complexity. The SI model is therefore a way of explaining thinking processes with these
dimensions as key interrelated concepts. Subsequently, Guilford increased the possible
number of subcategories to 150 (Guilford, 1982) and to 180 (Guilford, 1983).
SECTION – B
Ans. Some of the key issues in the study of cognitive psychology are as follows:
(1) Nature versus Nurture: Nature refers to inherited factors, especially genes, and includes
events that occur as the child naturally matures, e.g. puberty. Nurture refers to the
environment the child develops in and this includes the experiences that each child has
throughout their development. The fundamental question concerns what influences
development, nature or nature - but more than this, how much does this influence occur? The
nature/nature debate is especially important in the discussion of the development of measured
intelligence.
4
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
This debate is central to many other issues considered within developmental psychology such
as physical abilities, personality and gender differences. It is likely that if you are studying
other aspects of developmental psychology you will encounter this question again. It is a
controversial issue as it is often difficult to separate the influence of nature and nature and
draw any definite conclusions (Birch, 1998).
(2) Rationalism versus Empiricism:: Two Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle disagreed
regarding how to investigate ideas. Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route
to knowledge is through logical analysis. In contrast, Aristotle (a naturalist, biologist and a
philosopher) was an empiricist. An empiricist believes that at we acquire knowledge via
empirical evidence, i.e. we obtain evidence through experience and observation.
(3) Structures versus Processes: If deals with the study of structures (contents, products and
attributes) of the human mind whereas processes emphasise on the processes of human
thinking.
(4) Domain generality versus Domain specificity: The domain generality deals with
processes we observe limited to single domains, or they are general across a variety of
domains. Whereas in domain specificity, the observations in one domain apply also to all
domains, or they apply only to specific domains observed.
(5) Validity of causal inferences versus Ecological validity: Should we study cognition by
using highly controlled experiments that increase the probability
probability of valid inferences regarding
causality? Or should we use more naturalistic techniques?
Ans. Waugh and Norman (1965) proposed a multistore model of memory, and adopted the
terms primary and secondary memory, originally used by William James in 1890. In this
model, each verbal stimulus to which a subject attended was perceived in primary memory.
Thee primary memory had a very limited capacity. As new stimuli were regarded, and as the
capacity of the primary memory was reached, stimuli previously perceived in the primary
memory were displaced and forgotten. However, when information was rehearsed, it was
either retained in short-term
short term storage in the secondary memory. The more often an item in
primary memory was rehearsed, the more likely it was to be transferred to secondary
memory.
They traced the fate of items in PM (primary memory) by using lists of sixteen digits, that
were read to subjects at the rate of one digit per second or four digits per second. The purpose
of presenting digits every second or quarter second was to determine whether forgetting was
a function of decay or interference in PM. If forgetting was a function of decay, then less
recall could be expected with the slower rate; if forgetting was a function of interference in
PM, then no difference in recall could be expected according to the presentation rate. The
same amount of information is presented at both presentation rates, which, by Waugh and
Norman’s logic, allows the same time for decay to occur. It might be argued that even at one
item per second, subjects would allow extra experimental information to enter their PM, but
later experimentation (Norman, 1966) in which presentation rates varied from one to ten
digits, yielded data consistent with a rate of forgetting expected from the original model. The
rate of forgetting for the two presentation rates is similar. Interference seems to be a greater
factor than decay in forgetting in PM.
5
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Ans:- Perceptual blocks arise from the way we have learnt to recognise information from the
world around us. We develop habits of ‘seeing’ the world, which sometimes can get in the
way of finding the best solution to a problem, e.g. seeing only the most obvious solution.
They include:
(i) Seeing only what you expect to see: To recognise situations, we look for patterns of
key features which we have learnt by experience represent a particular situation. If the key
features ‘fit’, we assume the situations are the same. This often obscures the true nature of a
problem, either because we exclude relevant information (because it isn’t a key feature or
didn’t occur in the past), or include information simply because we assume it is there.
Q7. Compare and contrast the behaviouristic and innate theory of language acquisition.
Ans. Various theories of language acquisition with their limitations are as follows:
(1) Behaviouristic Theory: One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition
was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviourism, he accounted for
language development by means of environmental influence. Skinner argued that children
learn language based on behaviourist reinforcement principles by associating words with
meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child child realises the
communicative value of words and phrases. For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the
mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding,
enhancing the child’s language development (Ambridge and Lieven, 2011). However,
Skinner’s account was soon heavily criticised by Noam Chomsky, the world’s most famous
linguist to date.
(i)
i) Language is based on a set of structures or rules, which could not be worked out
simply by imitating individual utterances. The mistakes made by children reveal that they are
not simply imitating but actively working out and applying rules. For example, a child who
says “drinked” instead of “drank” is not copying an adult but rather over
over-applying a rule. The
child has discovered that past tense verbs are formed by adding a/d/ or /t/ sound to the base
form. The “mistakes” occur because there are irregular verbs which do not behave in this
way. Such forms are often referred to as intelligent mistakes or virtuous errors.
(ii) The vast majority of children go through the same stages of language acquisition.
There appears to be a definite sequence of steps. We refer to developmental milestones. Apart
6
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
from certain extreme cases, the sequence seems to be largely unaffected by the treatment the
child receives or the type of society in which s/he grows up.
(2) Innateness Theory: In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the 1950’s, Chomsky argued
that children would never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of
sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.
Nativist linguistic theories hold that children learn
earn through their natural ability to organise the
laws of language, but cannot fully utilise this talent without the presence of other humans.
This does not mean, however, that the child requires formal tutelage of any sort. Chomsky
claims that children are born with a hard-wired
wired Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in their
brains. They are born with the major principles of language in place, but with many
parameters to set. According to nativist theory, when the young child is exposed to a
language, their LAD AD makes it possible for them to set the parameters and deduce the
grammatical principles, because the principles are innate. (Bigge and Shermis, 1998).
(1) Traditional Approach: Traditional problem solving is a root cause analysis, which
searches for, and analyses the causes of, a problem and makes a diagnosis. Finding fault and
placing blame becomes important to the process, devastating those who have been found
lacking. The best result it ever achieves is that things become as good as they once were. It
restores the organisation to its previous level. Traditional problem solving works with
technical and usually medical problems. Once the organisation
organisation or the people become
involved in the process, the complexities become too great with too many variables for
problem solving. Appreciative inquiry doesn’t ignore or turn a blind eye to limitations nor
does it substitute mindless happy talk and rosy
rosy optimism for objective realism. It accepts
these realities for what they are.
(2) Gestalt Approaches: Gestalt psychologists argued that problem solving was a productive
process. In particular, in the process of thinking about a problem, individuals sometimes
“restructured” their representation of the problem, leading to a flash of insight that enabled
them
m to reach a solution. In The Mentality of Apes (1915), Wolfgang Köhler described a
series of studies with apes in which the animals appeared to demonstrate insight in problem
solving situations. A description of these studies, with photographs, can be found here.
The Gestalt psychologists described several aspects of thought that acted as barriers to
successful problem solving. One of these was called the Einstellung effect, now more
commonly referred to as mental set or entrenchment. This occurs when a problem solver
becomes fixated on applying a strategy that has previously worked, but is less helpful for the
current problem. Luchins (1942) reported a study in which people had to use three jugs of
differing capacity (measured in cups) to measure out a req
required amount of water (given by
the experimenter). Some people were given a series of “practice” trials prior to attempting the
critical problems.
SECTION – C
7
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Ans:- The sensory register is the first memory system that information passes through. The
sensory register perceives and retains information that is received via the five senses for a
very short amount of time, i.e. a few seconds. Though we have sensory registers for all five
senses, only two have been well studied. Research has primarily focussed on iconic memory,
or visual memory, and echoic memory, or auditory memory. It is estimated that we can hold
information in iconic memory for less than one second, while we can keep information in
echoic memory for up to five seconds. We can think of sensory registry as a holding bin that
keeps information until we decide which items we want to pay attention to. Most information
that is not attended to is forgotten. Paying attention
ttention allows us to move information from
sensory register to short-term memory.
According to Thorndike, the common element does not reside in the individual but in the
nature of the tasks themselves. People differ in their ability to perform any specific act in
terms of the level of difficulty they can manage. They also differ in the range or number of
tasks they can or cannot perform.
Ans:- Intelligence is classically defined as “the ability to acquire and utilise knowledge”. In
testing circumstances, an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is gauged by one’s ability to utilise
information gained historically. Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas through a
mental process of connecting existing concepts. The ideas don’t have to be revolutionary
(which is a common misconception many people have about creative thinking), they just have
to be new for the thinker. Around the 1950s, scientists began trying to find a link between
creativity and intelligence, but all the published correlations between the two concepts were
low enough to justify treating intelligence and creativity as distinct cognitive attributes. Over
the next decade, other researches explored the link between intelligence and creativity. In
Ellis Paul Torrance’s “The Threshold Hypothesis”, Torrance concluded that although various
cognitive factors are involved in creative performance, instrument scores on intelligence te tests
were poor predictors of creative performance.
Ans:- In 1986, J.P. Guilford introduced creative thinking as involving divergent thinking,
emphasising on the fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. However, he noted that
the creative thinking is not same as that of divergent thinking due to the reason that creativity
needs sensitivity to problems and redefinition abilities, which constitute transformations of
8
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Another psychologist, Torrance, has explained six components of creativity to develop TTCT
(i.e., Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking). He has described these aspects of creativity in
terms of their mode of measurement. These six aspects of creativity are as follows:
(1) Fluency: It refers to the number of relevant ideas and also shows an ability to produce
a number of figural images.
(2) Flexibility: It refers to an individual’s ability to produce not only a large number of
responses, ideas or solutions to a problem, but also a variety of these.
The phonemes are the smallest distinguishable units in a language. In the English language,
many consonants, correspond to single phonemes, while other consonants, can correspond to
more than one phoneme. Typically, vowels can also correspond to more than one phoneme.
Some phonemes correspond to combinations of consonants. Morphemes
Morphemes are the smallest
meaningful units in a language. In the English language, only a few single letters, are
morphemes. Morphemes are usually whole words or meaningful parts of words, such as
prefixes, suffixes and word stems.
Ans:- For approaching multilingualism, one way is to apply what we have learned from
cognitive-psychological
psychological research to practical concerns regarding how to facilitate acquisition
of a new language. Another approach is to study multilingual individuals to see how
multilingualism may offer insight into human mind. For example, some cognitive
psychologists have been interested in finding out how the different languages are represented
in multilingual’s mind.
Q15. Dysprosody
Ans: Dysprosody refers to the loss of normal rhythm or melody of speech. It is usually the
Ans:-
result of neurological damage such as brain trauma, severe head injury, stroke, brain vascular
damage or brain tumors. This relates to individuals with verbal apraxia because they often
have difficulty in changing the pitch of their spoken messages and using appropriate word
stress. Some cases of dysprosody are due to neurological causes, though it is the rarest type of
neurological speech disorder. Other cases are the result of acquired brain injury or traumas
such as tumours, lesions, or strokes that damage the part of the brain that controls speech and
language, though these are also rare. Sometimes dysprosody is also associated with
Parkinson’s Disease.
9
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam
© Copyright with gullybaba.com only. Not for resale. 9350849407
Ans:- Means-ends analysis is an approach to problem solving which, rather than blindly
searching through all possible actions, focuses on actions that reduce the difference between
the current state and the target state. Another feature is that if an action is found that refuses
this difference, then it will be considered even if it can’t be applied in the current state.
Getting to a state where the useful action can be applied
ied is set as a new sub problem to solve.
(1) Preparation: In this stage, the thinker formulates the problem and collects the facts
and materials considered necessary for finding new solutions. Many times, the problem
cannot be solved even after days, weeks or months of concentrated efforts. Failing to solve
the problem, the thinker turns away from it initiating next stage.
(2) Incubation: During this period, some of the ideas that were interfering with the
solution will tend to fade. The overt activity and sometimes even thinking about the problem
is absent in this
is stage. But the unconscious thought process involved in creative thinking is at
work during this period. Apparently, the thinker will be busy in other activities like reading
literature, playing games, etc. In spite of these activities, the contemplation about finding a
solution to problem will be going on in the mind.
(3) Illumination: Following the period of incubation, the creative ideas occur suddenly.
Consequently, the obscure thing becomes clear. This sudden flash of solution is known as
illuminationn and is similar to ‘aha (eureka)’ experience. For example, Archimedes found
solution to the crown problem. But at this stage, the subject is more active and more
conscious work is needed.
10
Read GPH Help Book for IGNOU Exam