5.Meaning, reality and truth conditions in cognitive perspective

Cognitive perspective- the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes, such as creativity, perception, thinking, problem solving, memory, and language. Cognitive psychologists are interested in how a person understands, diagnoses, and solves a problem, concerning themselves with the mental processes that mediate between stimulus and response.The cognitive perspective studies how people percieve, remember, reason, decide, and solve problems to find the cause of mental illnesses. Modern cognitivism is not based on introspection like past versions. Today's study of cognition is based on two assumptions: 1) what organisms are going to do can only be found by studying their mental process, and 2) It is possible to objectively study the mental processes by foucusing on specific behaviors and interpreting the underlying mental processes. From its beginings in 1879 to today, many schools of cognitive study have been developed. Some of the older schools include structuralism, functionalism, gestalt psychology, and humanistic psychology.

•Structuralism - This school of psychology believes that the mind can be studied just as one would study fire or blood. Created by Wilhelm Wundt, this school uses a method of introspection to discover the basic elements of thought. Structuralism breaks down thought into sensations, feelings, and images. These elements combine to form experience.

•Functionalism - Created by William James, this school of psychology focuses on past experience and behavior. He adressed how experience permits people to function better in our environment. This school emphasizes the uses and functions of the mind rather than the elements of experience.

•Gestalt Psychology - Gestalt psychologists believe that you can't explain human perception in terms of basic units. This school is based on the idea that humans tend to organize thier ideas and thoughts into patterns. A major idea of Gestalt psychology is insight. Insight is the grouping of mentally represented elements of a problem to where we think we can reach a goal. Once the correct grouping has been found everything seems to fit into place. The school emphasizes human tendancy to organize perceptions into wholes.

•Humanistic Psychology - emphasizes the importance of human conciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity to make choices. Humaists believe that we create our way of responding to the world as we go through life. This school places a lot of importance on conciousness and self-awareness.

6.Classical and cognitive approach to meaning

To employ a "classical approach" is to approach a situation in a manner that has long been recognized as a tried-and-true method.

There are several different schools of thought on what constitutes a classical approach to learning. One distinctive that they all have in common is an education that educates an entire person. A truly educated person will exercise wisdom, and this wisdom is cultivated by reading and sharing ideas from the great minds of the past. Such an education is not practical – in the sense that the objective is to prepare one for a job – but comprehensive in that the student will be adequately fitted as a whole person for any position he may seek in life. With that fundamental point of agreement, the different schools of thought diverge.

Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning.

Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar.

It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.

A variety of activities practised in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified or extended - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner.

Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes.