1. Overview of cognitive psychology

Question 1

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

the science of how the mind is organised to produce intelligent thought and how the human mind is realised in the brain

Question 2

Why do we study cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

Curiosity-driven intellectual inquiry and for real-world purposes and to understand mechanisms governing human thought.

Question 3

What will the understanding of mechanisms governing human thought be useful for?

Answer 3

why certain thought malfunctions occur (clinical psychology)
How people behave with other individuals (social psychology)
How financial decisions are made (business and economics)

Question 4

What is an example of the practical applications of cognitive psychology?

Answer 4

False memory and eyewitness testimony

Spatial cognition and the design of GPS systems

Question 5

What is an example of how cognitive psychology can help in understanding of the brain?

Answer 5

research on navigation systems and Williams Syndrome

Question 6

What do patients with Williams Syndrome have difficulty with?

Answer 6

processing visuospatial information. However, their spatial navigation is not entirely impaired.

Question 7

What evidenced that William Syndrome patients’s spatial navigation was not entirely impaired?

Answer 7

They can learn repeated routes better than age-matched healthy individuals (Bostelmann et al., 2017)

Question 8

What explains William syndrome patients’ abilities and disabilities?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What is the early philosophy of cognitive psychology>

Answer 9

Where does knowledge come from?
Nativisim: knowledge is innate: Plato, Descartes, Kant
Empiricism: knowledge is acquired through experience: Aristotle, Bacon, Berleley, Locke, Hume, Mill

Question 10

what were the different ways of studying the human mind?

Answer 10

– 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

Question 11

What is structuralism?

Answer 11

Analysis of the human mind into primitive componential elements.

Question 12

What is the basic idea of structuralism?

Answer 12

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)

Question 13

What did structuralism change?

Answer 13

the nature of psychology research - from philosophical to (more) scietntific

Question 14

What are the two problems of structuralism?

Answer 14

Subjective and unreliable

Question 15

What is the belief of Functionalism?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

How did Functionalism influence psychological history?

Answer 16

Provided many ideas that formed the foundation of contemporary psychological research

Question 17

What is the weakness of functionalism?

Answer 17

little or no empirical support

Question 18

What is behaviouralism?

Answer 18

Only the (directly) observable should be studied. Strictly about stimulus-response relations and involves a rigorous experimental approach (Watson, Skinner)

Question 19

How did behaviouralism influence psychological history?

Answer 19

Played an important role in introducing experimental methods to psychological research

Question 20

What was the cognitive revolution?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

What is the information-processing approach?

Answer 21

Cognitive psychology = re-defining psychology
as the science of human information processing

Input –> Mind (process) –> output

Question 22

What is involved in the decomposing mental processes?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

What is the science of cognition according to cognitive psychology?

Answer 23

– the science of how the mind is organized to produce intelligent thought and how it is realized in the brain

Question 24

What is the science of cognition according to neuroscience?

Answer 24

the study of the structure and function of the nervous

system

Question 25

What is the science of cognition according to cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 25

attempts to gain insights into cognitive processes by

studying the brain and behavior

Question 26

what does cognitive science attempt to do?

Answer 26

Cognitive science attempts to integrate research
efforts from:
– psychology
– neuroscience
– philosophy
– linguistics
– computer science
This interdisciplinary nature is slightly more
emphasized in cognitive science than in
cognitive psychology

Question 27

what is cognitive psychology the science of?

Answer 27

a. how mental disorders such as schizophrenia and
autism can be treated

b. how the human mind processes information to
produce intelligent thought and behavior

c. how people behave differently when they are by
themselves and when they are in a group

d. how unconscious drive controls our thought and
behavior

Question 28

What is the testing effect?

Answer 28

Testing (i.e., retrieval of information from memory) is
actually a powerful learning tool– It works best when you can receive immediate
feedback

Question 29

What is the neuron?

Answer 29

A cell in the brain that accumulates and
transmits electrical activity. It plays essential roles in neural information processing. Neurons are connected with each other at
synapses, forming a network

Question 30

How do neurons work?

Answer 30

For each neuron, how it works is quite simple—
whether it fires or not. The rate of firing can vary. What single neurons can represent is quite
limited. It is thought that groups of neurons, not
individual neurons, represent information in the
brain

Question 31

What is some basic information about the brain?

Answer 31

• The brain is not one uniform thing
• Different areas of the brain have different
functions