Mostafa Moawad Essays - Cognitive Science, Psychology, Cognition

Mostafa Moawad Cognitive Processes November 22, 2016 Frank Gengaro Cognition describes how humans acquire, store, transform and use knowledge. Cognition plays a major role in every person's life as it allows us to get new information, have memories , and apply our knowledge. Humans are generally social creatures and need to interact with society in order for survival. In the three movies we watched, The Wildboy, Dr. Strangelove, and The Pawnbroker and the three articles we read Transformation of Man in Society, Reflections, and On Memory and Childhood Amnesia we can see how cognition has an impact human development throughout. There are seven attributes that pertain to cognition which are motivated whether intrinsically or extrinsically, structured, flexibly focused, social, affectively tinged, self-reflective, and layered. Those seven features of cognition highlight human interactions with society bringing out the positive and negative facets of each individual. Solomon Asch in the article Transformation of Man in Society discusses how interactions with society really shape individuals. He explains how our social experiences allow us to perceive things in a certain way. As Solomon Asch writes, "It is individual human beings who have speech, make tools and objects of adornment, observe categories of kinship rules of property, and distinguish between the sacred and the profane" (Asch 118). This explains how social interactions help in the development of humans. We see what Solomon Asch is talking about in the movie The Wild Child. In the movie there's a naked boy that was found running around in the forest people then start hunting him down and send him back to Paris where he is first put in a school for the deaf. Dr. Itard then comes along and realizes that the boy is not deaf so he decides to take custody of the boy and starts educating him . Dr. Itard names the boy Victor and makes him live in his house in the out skirts of Paris. Dr. Itard embarks on a journey where he tries to civilize the wild boy Victor with the help of a housekeeper that he appoints. Victor actually becomes educated and learns the basics of language under Dr. Itard. During the movie however, we can see that Dr. Itard was studying the case of Vi c tor as he was writing everything he noted in a diary. The Wild Child, Victor, can be seen as a metaphor of our life because we can see how if we were humans with no set rules we would be just like animals living in a jungle. The movie also shows how we need to interact with people to in order to keep our lives sane . This bring s back a connection to Solomon Asch's article how he emphasizes that social interactions really impacts a human's life. So in short we are creature s that cannot survive without other human interactions. I believe we did the right thing taking Victor out of his world because we civilized him and made almost just like another any boy in his age. The amazing thing about Victor too is that he showed the capabilities of learning so quickly. This connects to one of the 7 features of human, flexibly focused. Even though there were some obstacles and difficulties in him learning, Victor showed some great adaptability in responding to what he was learning. Dr. Itard seemed very enthusiastic about Victor coming to be a civilized human being and becoming just a normal boy instead of living in the wild. At times though it seemed like Dr. Itard care more about his scientific project rather than the person in front of him as he was ardent for it to be successful. An evidence for that would be the aggressive response towards Victor when he wouldn't respond well to the things he was learning. However, one can argue that sometimes one needs to use force so that the person can learn better. Another feature of cognition that was seen in the movie was how Victor was motivated where intrinsically or e xtrinsically . Victor was motivated intrinsically by going around the forest to look for food in order to survive. In addition Victor was also motivated extrinsically to learn and show