1. History

Question 1

What is Empiricism vs. Nativisim

Answer 1

Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes from our own experience, and nativism emphasizes the role of biological factors/innate abilities

Question 2

Who supported Empiricism

Answer 2

John Locke, David Hume, Stuart Mill

Question 3

Who supported Nativism

Answer 3

Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant

Question 4

What was Wilhelm Wundt’s approach to psychology

Answer 4

Structuralism: the search for the building blocks of the mind
Best studied in a lab

Question 5

What is Structuralism vs. Functionalism

Answer 5

Structuralism believed consciousness was built up of individual units. They preferred lab settings so they could control all variables
Functionalism says that we should primarily focus on explaining the mind’s functions, and so we need to see the whole organism in real life situations

Question 6

What was William James’s approach to psychology

Answer 6

Functionalism: Experimental psychologists should try to explain the functions of the mind

Question 7

Who’s primary experimental method was introspection?

Answer 7

James Baldwin

Question 8

What is Introspection

Answer 8

Ask highly trained observers to describe their conscious experiences

Question 9

What are some problems with Introspection?

Answer 9

There are parts of human cognition that do not occur with conscious awareness

Question 10

What is Behaviourism

Answer 10

Argued that scientists should only focus on observable behaviour, emphasized on the relationship between inputs + outputs
View of psychology as a purely objective science

Skinner

Question 11

What is a key assumption of Gestalt Psychology

Answer 11

Psychological phenomena should be studied in its entirety and not be reduced to simple elements.
Believed that we experience things as a whole experience or object (top down)

Question 12

What is Francis Galton most known for?

Answer 12

Study of mental imagery as a cognitive ability
was interested in individual differences (genetically intelligence)

Question 13

What are 4 key points that acted as precursors to the cognitive revolution

Answer 13

Human factors engineering
Developments in the field of linguistics
Developments in Neuroscience
Development of computers and AI systems

Question 14

What is the Person-Machine System

Answer 14

Part of Human factors engineering, the idea that machinery operated by a person must be designed to with the operator’s physical + cognitive limitations in mind

Question 15

Why was Human Factors Engineering prevalent to cognitive science?

Answer 15

Recognition that individuals are limited capacity processors of information
Broadbent

Question 16

What did Noam Chomsky do?

Answer 16

Studied linguistics and realized humans have an innate capacity to acquire language that is not grounded by laws/conditioning
Counter to behaviourism

Question 17

What did Donald Hebb do?

Answer 17

Suggested that some kinds of functions like visual perceptions are constructed over time by building cell assemblies

Question 18

What did Donald Hubel and Torsten Weisel do?

Answer 18

Visual Cortex of cats experiement
- Certain cells in cats were specialized to respond to specific kinds of stimuli
- Early exposure shaped brain development

Question 19

What did the work of Donald Hebb + Donald Hubel & Torsten Weisel collectively show?

Answer 19

Causes of cognitive revolution - neuroscience side.
Showed that cognitive functions can be localized to specific parts of the brain

Question 20

What is the Computer Metaphor of the Mind?

Answer 20

Comparison of people’s cognitive activities to a computer
- We need to be fed information (data/acquired through senses)
- Have structures that allow us to process and store information

Question 21

What are four major paradigms used by psychologists to frame their research

Answer 21

Information Processing
Connectionism
Evolutionary Approach
Ecological Approach

Question 22

What is a paradigm

Answer 22

Way of structuring knowledge based on what its proponents consider to be important
- includes assumptions
- specifies experimental methods

Question 23

Describe the information processing approach and its assumptions

Answer 23

Spawned by human mind/computer analogy, and that cognition can be thought of as information
Assumes that:
- cognitive abilities are interconnected “systems”
- people are general purpose symbol manipulators
experimentally, scientists focus on:
understanding the nature of the representations

Question 24

Describe the connectionist approach

Answer 24

• There is no central place where information is stored
• Called neural networks (neuron inspired)
• Units are connected by weights that are modifiable by learning

once activation is strong enough on interrelated connections, a response will come to mind

Question 25

what are two types of connections in the connectivist approach

Answer 25

activation: positively weighted connection between units
inhibition: negative weights

Question 26

what are key differences between information processing + connectionist approaches

Answer 26

info:
assumes cognition unfolds step by step in order (serial)
connectionist:
assumes cognitive processes occur simultaneously (parallel)

Question 27

what are key similarities between information processing + connectionist approaches

Answer 27

both:
assumes cognition is best understood by studying basic mechanisms
assumes these mechanisms are stale across situations + is best tested in a lab

Question 28

Describe the evolutionary approach

Answer 28

argues that we should understand cognition by understanding our evolutionary pressures
cognition as an evolved system

Question 29

what did cosmides and tooby predict for people’s reasoning skills (evolutionary psychology)

Answer 29

they predicted that people’s reasoning + decision making is better in social situations

Question 30

describe the ecological approach to cognitive psychology

Answer 30

cognitive activities are shaped by the culture/context in which they occur

Question 31

what did daniel smilek and allan kingstone do for ecological approach to cognitive psychology

Answer 31

Attention in everyday life:
- investigating eye movements to real life static and dynamic displays
- eye fixations are concentrated to eyes and faces of people on scene
- thus eyes, head position, body positions are main cues for people to understand the gist of a scene

Question 32

What philosophy did john watson support

Answer 32

behaviourism

Question 33

What are some research methods in cognitive psychology

Answer 33

naturalistic observation
introspection
experiments
quasi-experiments

Question 34

what are the advantages + disadvantages of naturalistic observation

Answer 34

advantages:
- ecological validity: occurs in the real world and not just in the lab
disadvantage:
- lack of experimental control
- observer’s recordings are only as good as what they believe important to record

Question 35

explain experiments vs. quasi-experiments

Answer 35

experiments:
manipulate one ore more independent variables to see how the recorded var changes
quasi-experiments:
includes independent variables that cannot be controlled by the experimenter (ex. sex, ethnicity, age)

Question 36

What is a between-subjects vs within-subjects design

Answer 36

between:
different participants are assigned to different experimental conditions and the researcher looks at differences between the two groups
within:
same participants are exposed to more than one condition, and researchers look at difference in performance

Question 37

What did lave, murtaugh find when they studied arithmetic calculation everyday life? (ecological approach)

Answer 37

they found that people buying groceries :
- constructed the problem themself
- often contained many answers vs. just one correct one
tldr: people’s methods of calculation varied with context despite learning the same methods of calculation in schoool

Question 38

Mode, quality, intensity, and duration together comprise __________ that Wundt proposed ___________.

Answer 38

the four building blocks; as the basis for any conscious thought or idea.