The Middle Period

In the 1960s and through much of the 1970s, a great deal of work was done to “evoke native domains structured as taxonomies and paradigms” (Cerroni-Long 1999:90). These methodologies attempted to formulate models which explained how different peoples organized their mental and social worlds. To this end, the following methodologies were employed: taxonomies, paradigms, feature models,prototypes, domains, and the mazeway.

Within cognitive anthropology, taxonomies were defined as beginning with a general concept, which was then divided into more precise categories and terms. This process was then repeated until no further subdivisions were possible (ibid.). Paradigms were thought of in terms of a matrix structure. The fundamental difference between a paradigm and taxonomy was the way in which distinctions were structured (Moore 1999:118).

Folk taxonomies are classes of phenomena arranged by criteria which show the relationship between kinds of things (D’Andrade 1995:99). The first level is the all-inclusive general category. Succeeding distinctions are then made by the classification of similarity and dissimilarity of items. With each separation the levels become more explicit, and the differences between groups of items more miniscule (ibid.).

Several early methodologies used by cognitive anthropologists were embedded in the theory of the feature model (Moore 1999:110). Feature models refer to a broad analytic concept that developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, primarily within kinship studies. Its general methodological approach assumed that sets of terms can be contrasted to discover the fundamental attributes of each set (ibid.). Feature models were not only concerned with how people organize information, but what that organization meant in terms of mental information processing.

Another important concept during this period was the domain. A domain was defined as being comprised of a set of related ideas or items which form a larger category (Weller and Romney 1988: 9). The individual items within a domain partially achieve their meaning from their relationship to other items in a "mutually interdependent system, reflecting the way in which a given language or culture classified the relevant conceptual sphere" (ibid.).

Some cognitive anthropologists attempted to formulate methodologies which expanded beyond merely classifying terminology employed by different societies. To that end, the concepts of the mazeway and mental scripts were employed. The mazeway was defined as "the mental image of society and culture" (D’Andrade, 1995:17). The maze is comprised of perceptions of material objects. The methodology studies how people manipulate the maze to reduce stress, both individually and within their society. Similarly, mental scripts are a set of certain actions one performs in a given situation (Shore 1996:43). Existing scripts do not guide every daily action, rather, they are set schemes or recipes for action in a given social situation.

Schema theory

Schemata has been one of the most important and powerful concepts for cognitive anthropology in the past twenty years (Schater 1989:692). A schema is defined as "an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operational in any well adapted organic response” (ibid.). Cognitive anthropologists look for commonalities that can provide keys to the mental structures behind cultural ideologies. These notions are not necessarily culturally universal. Therefore, schemas are culturally specific, and the need for “an emic view is still a primary force in any ethnographic research” (Cerroni-Long 1999:112).

Semantic theory is a recent development. It was built upon an approach that developed with kin terminologies and then extended to other domains (Colby 1996:211). It assumes that there are core meanings and extensional meanings. Core meanings vary less among informants than the extensional meanings (Kronenfeld 1996:6-7). Connectionist theory, on the other hand, allows for multiple flows of information processed “along axes learned and defined probabilistically” (Colby 1996:212). These theoretical approaches draw heavily from the fields of artificial intelligence and computer science. Hence they are attempt to look for simple, rigid, defined rules for cognitive functions within a society.

However, there are psychobiological constraints placed upon the human mind’s capacity for organizing materials and phenomena. To be able to function, the mind must manufacture discriminations of attributes so it can process information without responding to information as if it were new each time it occurs (Cerroni-Long 1999:115). For example, in a cross-cultural study of kinship terminologies Wallace (1964 cited in D’Andrade 1995:225) noted that despite the social and technological complexity of societies, the size of kinship terminologies generally remain constant. These finding helped to create a cognitive model of the mind that combine both cultural and biological aspects of human life.

In contemporary cognitive anthropology methods themselves no longer continue to be the overriding focus, but instead are used to produce ethnographic data in aid of advancing theoretical knowledge of how the mind operates (Weller and Romney 1988:5). This transformation has substantially altered the variety of work produced by cognitive anthropologists. Cognitive anthropologists stress systematic data collection and analysis to address issues of reliability and validity. Consequently, they rely heavily on structured interviewing and statistical analyses (ibid.).

These techniques can be divided into three groups that produce different sorts of data: similarity techniques, ordering techniques, and test performance techniques (Weller and Romney 1988:11). Similarity methods call for respondents to judge the likeness of particular items. Ordered methods require the ranking of items along a conceptual scale. Test performance methods regard respondents as "correct" or "incorrect" depending on how they execute a specified task.

Specific methods used by cognitive anthropologists include “free listing, frame elicitation, triad tests, pile sorts, paired comparisons, rank order, true and false tests, and cultural consensus tasks” (ibid.). The triad method involves either similarity or ordered data. Items are arranged into sets of three. Unlike a pile sort, the triad method is not dependent on the literacy of informants. Triad sorts have been used in studies of kinship terminologies, animal terms, occupations and disease terms (Weller and Romney, 1988:12).

Consensus theory directly addresses issues of reliability in data collection not of the information collected but rather of the people interviewed (Romney 1999:105). Data is determined to be correct or incorrect by the respondents. Consensus theory requires response data rather than performance data, in which respondents themselves are coded as being correct or incorrect. This measures how much a respondent knows, and seeks to aggregate the answers of several respondents to achieve a synthesized representation of their knowledge (ibid.). The goal of consensus theory is to use the pattern of agreement among respondents to make inferences about their knowledge (Weller and Romney, 1988:74).

While the cognitive anthropologists of the last two decades have attempted to address the methodological limitations of the past, there are still some areas of concern. One of the most glaring problems is that almost all investigators do the majority of their research in English (ibid.). In addition, when studying something as fluid as human societies, it is difficult to account for variation by using standard methodologies. Cognitive anthropologists are now attempting to explore the emotional characteristics of culture, identified half a century ago by Benedict and Mead (Cerroni-Long 1999:120; Moore 1999:200). However, as always, there is much more research to be completed before any consensus will be reached.