Content deleted Content added
m Bypass redirect in merge template – apparently MOGUL framework moved to The Modular Online Growth and Use of Language |
m Reflist |
||
Line 1:
{{Merge|The Modular Online Growth and Use of Language|discuss=Talk:Modular Cognition Framework#Proposed merge of MOGUL framework with Modular Cognition Framework|date=September 2020}}
The '''Modular Cognition Framework''' ('''MCF''') is an open-ended theoretical framework for research into the way the mind is organized. It draws on the common ground shared by contemporary research in the various areas that are collectively known as ''cognitive science'' and is designed to be applicable to all these fields of research. It was established, by Michael Sharwood Smith and John Truscott in the first decade of the 21st century with a particular focus on language cognition when it was known as the ''MOGUL framework'' (Modular Online Growth and Use of Language).
The MCF is open-ended in the sense that it has a set of basic principles (see below) describing the architecture of the human mind: these amounts to setting out a ''skeleton model of the mind'' and providing a template for cognitive scientists to use. Both mind and brain are viewed as ''biological'' phenomena but at different levels of abstraction. These fundamental principles can be further interpreted in various ways by any researcher who is working with a theoretical approach that can be said to reflect, or can be aligned with the basic principles. In doing so researchers can identify their own hypotheses and research findings not only as confirming or challenging their own theory but also as a manifestation of the basic principles underlying all cognitive processing and representation.
By the end of 2020 four books based specifically on the framework had been published along with over 35 articles and chapters; numerous publications and theses by researchers using the MCF for their own purposes had also appeared. This has built on the framework giving it a richer, more elaborate structure in those areas that have been investigated. Nonetheless, different version of the elaborations can still be proposed.
The predominant assumption of the MCF is that the mind is composed of a '''collaborative network of functionally specialized systems''' which have evolved over time together with their physical manifestations in the brain that reflect their abstract organization albeit in very different ways. Researchers working in very different areas of cognitive science ought to be able without difficulty to see each other's research as an elaboration of the same framework.
==Basic Principles==
1. '''Functional Specialisation'''. The mind has a modular architecture. This means it has a finite set of functionally specialised cognitive systems such as the auditory system, the motor system and the conceptual system.
2. '''Mind/Brain Relationship'''. Cognitive systems are manifested in the physical brain in various, often very different ways. This means that ''mind'' and ''brain'', though intimately related, still require ''distinctly different levels of description and explanation''.
Line 26 ⟶ 24:
7.'''Each Mind is Unique'''. The way in which combinations of representations of the ''same'' type are formed within a given system and the ways in which associations of representations of ''different'' types are formed over the lifetime of one individual make the mind of that individual unique. In other words, the fixed architecture of the mind still allows everyone to be different from everyone else and to respond to new experiences in different ways.
9. '''Acquisition by Processing'''. Change (development, acquisition, growth) occurs as a result of online processing. This principle is reflected in the following statement: ''acquisition is the lingering effect of processing'' (Truscott and Sharwood Smith 2004a)
9. '''Variable Activation Levels'''. Cognitive representations are activated online to different degrees and may compete with one another for participation in the building of a more complex representations online. This is partly because they possess a '''resting level of activation''' which will rise or decline according to the frequency and regularity with which they are activated. Extremely high levels of activation are associated with phenomena described variously as ''attention'', ''awareness'' and ''consciousness''.
10. '''Language versus Linguistic'''. Human '''language''' development and use comes from product of the online interaction of ''all cognitive systems'''. However, it qualifies as ''human language'' by virtue of one, or two (depending the linguistic-theoretical perspective adopted) functionally specialized systems that have evolved specifically to handle '''linguistic''' structure.
Line 77 ⟶ 74:
* Truscott, J. & Sharwood Smith, M. (2019. ''The internal context of bilingual processing''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* [https://www.cognitionframework.com/] Modular Cognition Framework website.
| |||