CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS.

Conceptual analysis is the study of human mental processes that are carried out in day to day

practices. These mental processes include such activities as thinking, judgment, attention,

perception, problem solving, and creativity, amongst others. The study of mental processes can

be conducted in terms of cognitive architecture. Cognitive architecture is a computational system

for modeling some aspect of human cognition through a given technology. Many of these

architectures have been modeled over some time now in the fields of cognitive science,

computational logistics and artificial intelligence. The end results amongst all these architectures

were found to portray human like intelligence. Hence the reason why this approach is being used

in the development of computerized devices.

Heuristic is one of the tools that are used to portray the meaning that a particular writing of a

word means to the observer of that particular word. Heuristic calls upon critical thinking, since it

is not that any word written on a paper or a surface is a decoration but means different things to

different groups of people. For example Sowa gave examples of different words used in different

departments with different meaning. Such word as “H2O” is an excellent acronym for water that

is understood by scientist. Trying to add a web page uniform resource locator (URL) to it will

lead to a meaningless URL.

The use of Conceptual graphs (CGs), is another way of presenting words in a unique way that

will be understandable to a select group only. They are commonly used in designing of objects in

computer programming. An entity will be represented in the diagram as a rectangle; relationship

is shown by an oval or a circle and the arrows to denote the links between different objects. For

example a word like ;

Can be illustrated by use of Conceptual graphs as follows

Another way of representing words in a computer system is by use of a Knowledge Interchange

Format (KIF). Knowledge Interchange Format is a programming language standard that different

programmers will be using to write application programs for different computer platforms. This

language standard is only understandable to the programmer and the translating tool. In fact

computer will not understand the code that is in this format an instead it will have to be

translated into a machine readable form. Since computers understand only machine language that

is in form of one’s (1s) and zeros (0s).

Another Cognitive architecture that can be used to capture the cognition of human beings is

through the use of pictures. A picture is a drawing or a painting that is used to portray the

information that the artist wanted to communicate. A picture even without interpretation of

words will still pass a strong message to the target group. In fact pictures will tend to

communicate faster than words since the viewers will just relate a given picture with a given

meaning, unlike the use of words that one will take some time going through them before finding

the real meaning.

The use of pictures is important especially when it comes to times of communicating warnings

during emergencies and the victims within a given scene are required to respond with an

immediate effect. For example all traffic rules are accompanied by traffic symbols that are

pictorial in nature. These symbols, since they have a hidden meaning that is known only to the
target group in this case the drives who have been trained, will be able to interpret the symbolic

picture.

This art of cognitive architecture by use of pictures were highly studied, analyzed and

implemented by Sean Hall. In his book “This means this and this means that”, Sean Hall

presents many pictures each in independent pages with only a question of what the picture

means. When one goes through these pictures and may be they had once had of a story related to

that scenario before, then the information is said to have been passed.

In this book of Sean Hall, there is a picture that occupies a page with a question that goes;

“What does the Apple in this picture signify?”

From the picture u can see two people, a man and a lady who are almost naked only that they

have rapped themselves with leaves on their private parts of the body. A lady is seen passing a
fruit to a man and behind them is a fruit tree. The two are surrounded by a number of animals

that are both wild and domestic. This picture is connected to a biblical story of the fall of man

and the rise of sin. In the story we are told that in the beginning God created man and named him

Adam and after some time he created him a helper who was a woman named Eve. During those

times the humans used not to be distinguishing between the good and bad and that is why they

could stay together naked. They were also provided with the garden from where they could eat

from and be taking care of God`s creations.

When this is represented in form of a picture, anybody who has ever had of the story will find it

interesting and a message would have been passed. Despite that the authors of the bible did not

use any picture the use of pictures today to reflect what was happening in the bible bring the

scenarios to be as if they are happening in the real life today. The use of pictures is apart from

passing a massage will also attract the attention of many people and are interesting to look at.

The use of pictures nowadays has come to boost the field of computer science, and even it being

transformed to motion pictures.

Cognitive architecture has also been contributed by such elements as non-visual signs, such as

music, or space distribution. The fact that the voice of a parson can be passed through the space

and heard by another person located in some distance away means that signals can be passed

through the space.

It is from these foundations of the use of pictures to convey a given message and voice

interpreting what is being done in a particular event that it has led to the revolution to

technological innovations. Such innovation as that of computers could not have been there if

written words, pictures, audios and videos could have been neglected. Nowadays computers are

used to write and read notes, keeping records and communicating amongst others. These
important tasks that are performed by computers are contributions that came through thoughts

that were worked on in the past. Writing and reading was derived from the power of words,

communication from the perspective that voice can pass through the space and video from a

combination of pictures that are made to move.

The argument of Arieti, that any normal human being uses and associates concepts in

Innumerable complex ways is true since different people would perceive different concepts in

different ways. If different groups of people of different professions are combined together and

given one subject matter to think about it and eventually give a report on it, there would be a

mixed reaction with different results at the end. For example if professionals of different fields

are grouped together and given a case study like that of animal kingdom, tourist will think of it in

terms of how to survey them, a business person will thing on of a business opportunity, a

computer programmer on the other hand will thin on how to come up with a cartoon program of

animal kingdom.

I agree with the Arieti’s point that “ our acquired personal versions of the rigid concepts of

others do not have to remain rigid and exact copies”, since everybody was conceived at different

times, in different environments but with different roles to accomplish in life. What makes the

lifestyle of most people to be the same is the fact that people raised the same environment will be

exposed to the same conditions and will tend to posses the same similarities. Learning is the

most contributing factor that makes people to have similar traits, since it is the only way that

makes individuals to acquire skills. Since the sources of this education are nearly the same

everywhere, the learners tend to acquire nearly the same thing. People who emerge to be unique

in their practices are those who acquire the skills they have been though and use them to

implement in their gifted talent. The experience that I have come across before based on this
argument is that I have seen in my teenage a young guy who used to be aggressive in electronics.

Whenever a radio could develop mechanical problem he was there to attend to it. When he went

to school and was exposed to the environment of physical science he eventually emerged to be a

famous engineer.

It is true that clusters of concepts become the repositories of intangible feelings and values. The

cognitive activity of the human body determines the needs of the human beings when exposed to

different environments. When one for example is exposed to delicious foodstuffs with a nice

smell, there is high chance that that person will be tempted to take that food without a plan.

Game fans will be aroused and even forced to join their fellow fans when they hear cheering

squad shouting in a given stadium even if they were not aware there could be games. In the same

way one will be forced to purchase a tablet phone, laptop or even television just because of the

visible features that may have been portrayed in the screen of the supermarket.