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The Heuristic Value of Cognitive Terminology

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Abstract

If judiciously applied, cognitive terminology can encourage further examination of phenomena in useful ways that may not otherwise be studied. I give examples of 3 phenomena, the study of which have benefitted from a cognitive perspective. For the first, transitive inference behavior, it appears that noncognitive accounts cannot satisfactorily account for the effects that have been found. For the second, functional equivalence, positing the development of common representations has identified the possible nature of those representations. For the third, cognitive dissonance (or justification of effort), producing it in the laboratory with nonhuman animals suggests that a simpler mechanism, such as positive contrast, may be involved. If one approaches cognitive terminology with an open mind and conducts well-designed experiments that juxtapose cognitive accounts against simpler accounts, cognitive terminology can be the impetus for experiments that explore phenomena in novel, exciting, and useful ways and that ultimately have considerable heuristic value.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    Thomas R. Zentall

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  1. Thomas R. Zentall
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Correspondence to Thomas R. Zentall.

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Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant HD060996.

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Zentall, T.R. The Heuristic Value of Cognitive Terminology. Psychol Rec 62, 321–336 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395805

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