The hypocognition page
The hypocognition page
My spell checker tells me that hypocognition isn't a standard word. It's surge in popularity stems from George Lakoff's recent book. According to Lakoff, hypocognition is our inability to see things that we're not conditioned to see or to comprehend ideas for which we have no framework.

I have a wonderful example. As a plant virologist. whenever I see a garden or clover, I notice the virus diseases. I'm one of a few people in the world conditioned to see plant virus disease symptoms. Your first thought is that no sensible person wants to see plant virus symptoms. The point is, however, that virus symptoms are the tip of the iceberg of what we overlook. We perceive only a tiny fraction of the potential. Furthermore we grasp only the small fraction of ideas that fit our frameworks.

Hypocognition is a major problem in education. Students grasp only ideas for which they have frameworks. Well read and more educated students grasp a wider range of ideas. Our problem is to develop frameworks to facilitate learning. This isn't trivial because we teach ideas from our frameworks and we underappreciate the breadth of our students' incomprehension.

Critique of Lakoff

Constructed languages