Chapter 1

Question 1

define cognitive psychology

Answer 1

the study of mental processes

Question 2

3 important ways to define cognitive psychology

Answer 2

1. determine the characteristics and properties of the mind
2. how the mind operates
3. the study of mental operations that support peoples acquisition and use of knowledge

Question 3

define the mind

Answer 3

• system that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions
• e.g. perception, attention, memory, etc

Question 4

Neissers definition of the “mind”

Answer 4

refers to all the processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered and used

Question 5

transformation definition and what it does

Answer 5

• discuss external stimuli such as sounds and sites
• stimuli in our environment are transformed into neural signals that travel to our brain, forming a mental representation

Question 6

reduction

Answer 6

stimuli is reduced to its components such as colour, features and location

Question 7

recovery

Answer 7

retrieval processes

Question 8

mental operations

Answer 8

how information is used for decision making, creativity and problem solving

Question 9

donders study (1868)

Answer 9

• illustrates that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behaviour
• reaction time experiment (RT tasks vs. choice RT tasks)

Question 10

structuralism (Wundt)

Answer 10

• an approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations
• was not found to be a fruitful approach

Question 11

analytic introspection (Wundt)

Answer 11

a procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

Question 12

ebbinghaus’ study

Answer 12

• measured the rate of forgetting using 13 nonsense syllables (CVS’s: consonant, vowel, consonant)
• learned the list of syllables and then relearned the list after various intervals of time to determine the amount of “savings” in relearning
• most forgetting occurred after the 1st hour

Question 13

the nature of attention (william james)

Answer 13

observation that paying attention to one thing involves withdrawing from other things still rings true today and has been the topic of many modern studies of attention

Question 14

tolmans study

Answer 14

• rat in a maze with the goal of directing itself to food despite being placed at different starting locations
• used a cognitive map (mental conception of a spatial layout)
• placed emphasis on the mind, not behavior

Question 15

Noam Chomsky

Answer 15

• saw language development as being determined not by imitation or reinforcement, but by an inborn biological program that holds across culture
• the idea that language is a product of the way the mind is constructed, rather than a result of reinforcement, led psychologists to reconsider the idea that language can be explained by operant conditioning

Question 16

behaviourism

Answer 16

states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology

Question 17

consequence of behaviourism

Answer 17

consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists.

Question 18

classical conditioning

Answer 18

pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response, causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response

Question 19

operant conditioning

Answer 19

a type of conditioning which focuses on how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval, or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection.

Question 20

cognitive revolution

Answer 20

• a shift from the behaviourist approach to an approach focussed on explaining behaviour in terms of the mind
• introduction of information-processing

Question 21

paradigm

Answer 21

a system of ideas, which guide thinking in a particular field

Question 22

information-processing approach

Answer 22

an approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition

Question 23

colin cherry

Answer 23

• presented participants with an attended message in one ear and an unattended in the other
• when focused on the attended message, they could hear the sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message

Question 24

donald broadbent

Answer 24

• proposed the first flow diagram of the mind
• represented what he believed happens in a persons mind when directing attention to one stimulus through a sequence of stages
• input and filter

Question 25

John McCarthy on AI

Answer 25

defined the artificial intelligence approach as “making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving”

Question 26

Simon and Newel on AI

Answer 26

- created the logic theorist program - the program was able to create proofs of mathematical theorems that involve principles of logic

Question 27

the model of memory (atkinson and shiffrin)

Answer 27

- pictures the flow of information in the memory system as progressing through three stages - three stages: 1. sensory memory 2. short-term memory 3. long-term memory

Question 28

sensory memory (stage 1)

Answer 28

holds incoming information for a fraction of a second and then passes most of this information to short-term memory

Question 29

short-term memory (stage 2)

Answer 29

has limited capacity and holds information for seconds

Question 30

long-term memory (stage 3)

Answer 30

high-capacity system that can hold information for long periods of time

Question 31

3 components of long-term memory

Answer 31

1. episodic memory 2. semantic memory 3. procedural memory

Question 32

episodic memory

Answer 32

- events, experiences, personal details - can be referred to as a mental diary or timeline

Question 33

semantic memory

Answer 33

- facts, general knowledge - mental encyclopedia of information

Question 34

procedural memory

Answer 34

- how to perform certain actions, skills and tasks - e.g. muscle memory

Question 35

physiology of cognition and its 3 stages

Answer 35

- the “behind the scenes” activity in the nervous system that creates the mind - 3 stages: 1. neuropsychology 2. electrophysiology 3. brain imaging

Question 36

neuropsychology

Answer 36

the study of the behavior of people with brain damage, had been providing insights into the functioning of different parts of the brain

Question 37

electrophysiology

Answer 37

measuring electrical responses of the nervous system, made it possible to listen to the activity of single neurons

Question 38

brain imaging

Answer 38

- PET scans made it possible to see which areas of the human brain are activated during cognitive activity - later replaced by fMRI

Question 39

stephen palmer

Answer 39

-Illustrated how our knowledge about the environment can influence our perception