1. Overview of cognitive psychology Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
the science of how the mind is organised to produce intelligent thought and how the human mind is realised in the brain
Why do we study cognitive psychology?
Curiosity-driven intellectual inquiry and for real-world purposes and to understand mechanisms governing human thought.
What will the understanding of mechanisms governing human thought be useful for?
why certain thought malfunctions occur (clinical psychology)
How people behave with other individuals (social psychology)
How financial decisions are made (business and economics)
What is an example of the practical applications of cognitive psychology?
False memory and eyewitness testimony
Spatial cognition and the design of GPS systems
What is an example of how cognitive psychology can help in understanding of the brain?
research on navigation systems and Williams Syndrome
What do patients with Williams Syndrome have difficulty with?
processing visuospatial information. However, their spatial navigation is not entirely impaired.
What evidenced that William Syndrome patients’s spatial navigation was not entirely impaired?
They can learn repeated routes better than age-matched healthy individuals (Bostelmann et al., 2017)
What explains William syndrome patients’ abilities and disabilities?
Humans have two distinct navigation systems which are response-based and place-spaced. Brain structures that are critical for the response-based system are not affected in William syndrome
What is the early philosophy of cognitive psychology>
Where does knowledge come from?
Nativisim: knowledge is innate: Plato, Descartes, Kant
Empiricism: knowledge is acquired through experience: Aristotle, Bacon, Berleley, Locke, Hume, Mill
what were the different ways of studying the human mind?
– Structuralism: by analyzing the mind into components
– Functionalism: by understanding what the mind does in response to stimuli (environments)
– Behaviorism: by studying input-output association
What is structuralism?
Analysis of the human mind into primitive componential elements.
What is the basic idea of structuralism?
Just liek water can be broken down into component parts (hydrogen and oxygen) the mind can be broken down into elements (such as sensation and thought). This can be done by introspection (Wundt and Titchener)
What did structuralism change?
the nature of psychology research - from philosophical to (more) scietntific
What are the two problems of structuralism?
Subjective and unreliable
What is the belief of Functionalism?
The mind is defined solely by its function - how it responds to various stimuli (e.g. sensory inputs). As long as the same functional role is payed, it does not matter what components the mind is made of.
How did Functionalism influence psychological history?
Provided many ideas that formed the foundation of contemporary psychological research
What is the weakness of functionalism?
little or no empirical support
What is behaviouralism?
Only the (directly) observable should be studied. Strictly about stimulus-response relations and involves a rigorous experimental approach (Watson, Skinner)
How did behaviouralism influence psychological history?
Played an important role in introducing experimental methods to psychological research
What was the cognitive revolution?
During World War II, research on human
performance was intensively conducted. It was questioned What makes a better soldier?
This revealed a shortcoming of behaviorism—it was
not so useful for solving practical issues. It nevertheless lead to the development of other scientific fields:
Information theory
– Linguistics
– Computer science (especially artificial intelligence)
– They provided psychologists with tools and models
for the analysis of intelligent behavior
What is the information-processing approach?
Cognitive psychology = re-defining psychology
as the science of human information processing
Input –> Mind (process) –> output
What is involved in the decomposing mental processes?
Formulate a theoretical model of how output is
made from a given input (Models usually consist of multiple processing stages)
• Measure the time taken for each processing
stage
• Analyze which variable affects which processing
stage
What is the science of cognition according to cognitive psychology?
– the science of how the mind is organized to produce intelligent thought and how it is realized in the brain
What is the science of cognition according to neuroscience?
the study of the structure and function of the nervous
system
