Chapter Introduction

Language and Thought

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  • Language and Communication: From Rules to Meaning
    • The Complex Structure of Human Language
    • Language Development
    • Theories of Language Development
  • Language Development and the Brain
    • Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area of the Brain
    • Involvement of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere
    • Bilingualism and the Brain

    • OTHER VOICES Americans’ Future Has to Be Multilingual

    • Can Other Species Learn Human Language?
  • Language and Thought: How Are They Related?
    • Language and Color Processing
    • Language and the Concept of Time
  • Concepts and Categories: How We Think
    • Psychological Theories of Concepts and Categories
    • Concepts, Categories, and the Brain
  • Decision Making: Rational and Otherwise
    • The Rational Ideal
    • The Irrational Reality

    • CULTURE & COMMUNITY Does Culture Influence Optimism Bias?

    • Why Do We Make Decision-Making Errors?
    • Decision Making and the Brain
  • Problem Solving: Working It Out
    • Means–Ends Analysis
    • Analogical Problem Solving
    • Creativity and Insight

    • HOT SCIENCE Sudden Insight and the Brain

  • Transforming Information: How We Reach Conclusions
    • Practical, Theoretical, and Syllogistic Reasoning

    • THE REAL WORLD From Zippers to Political Extremism: An Illusion of Understanding

    • Reasoning and the Brain

AN ENGLISH BOY NAMED CHRISTOPHER showed an amazing talent for languages. By the age of 6, he had learned French from his sister’s schoolbooks; he acquired Greek from a textbook in only 3 months. His talent was so prodigious that grown-up Christopher could converse fluently in 16 languages. When tested on English-French translations, he scored as well as a native French speaker. Presented with a made-up language, he figured out the complex rules easily, even though advanced language students found them virtually impossible to decipher (Smith & Tsimpli, 1995).

If you’ve concluded that Christopher is extremely smart, perhaps even a genius, you’re wrong. His scores on standard intelligence tests are far below normal. He fails simple cognitive tests that 4-year-old children pass with ease, and he cannot even learn the rules for simple games like tic-tac-toe. Despite his dazzling talent, Christopher lives in a halfway house because he does not have the cognitive capacity to make decisions, reason, or solve problems in a way that would allow him to live independently.

Christopher absorbed languages quickly from textbooks, yet he completely failed simple tests of other cognitive abilities.
ROMAN SIGAEV/STOCKPHOTO

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CHRISTOPHER’S STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES offer compelling evidence that cognition is composed of distinct abilities. People who learn languages with lightning speed are not necessarily gifted at decision making or problem solving. People who excel at reasoning may have no special ability to master languages. In this chapter, you will learn about five key higher cognitive functions: acquiring and using language, forming concepts and categories, making decisions, solving problems, and reasoning. We excel at these functions compared with other animals, and they help define who we are as a species. We’ll learn about each of these abilities by examining evidence that reveals their unique psychological characteristics, and we’ll learn about their distinct neural underpinnings by considering individuals with brain lesions as well as neuroimaging studies. But despite clear differences among them, these five cognitive abilities share something important in common: They are critical to our functioning in just about all aspects of our everyday existence-including work, school, and personal relationships–and as we’ve already seen with Christopher, impairment of these cognitive abilities can result in major and lasting disruptions to our lives.