Chapter 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

define cognitive psychology

A

the study of mental processes

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2
Q

3 important ways to define cognitive psychology

A
  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
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3
Q

define the mind

A
  • system that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions
  • e.g. perception, attention, memory, etc
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4
Q

Neissers definition of the “mind”

A

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

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5
Q

transformation definition and what it does

A
  • 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
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6
Q

reduction

A

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

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7
Q

recovery

A

retrieval processes

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8
Q

mental operations

A

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

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9
Q

donders study (1868)

A
  • illustrates that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behaviour
  • reaction time experiment (RT tasks vs. choice RT tasks)
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10
Q

structuralism (Wundt)

A
  • 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
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11
Q

analytic introspection (Wundt)

A

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

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12
Q

ebbinghaus’ study

A
  • 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
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13
Q

the nature of attention (william james)

A

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

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14
Q

tolmans study

A
  • 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
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15
Q

Noam Chomsky

A
  • 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
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16
Q

behaviourism

A

states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology

17
Q

consequence of behaviourism

A

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

18
Q

classical conditioning

A

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

19
Q

operant conditioning

A

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.

20
Q

cognitive revolution

A
  • a shift from the behaviourist approach to an approach focussed on explaining behaviour in terms of the mind
  • introduction of information-processing
21
Q

paradigm

A

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

22
Q

information-processing approach

A

an approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition

23
Q

colin cherry

A
  • 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
24
Q

donald broadbent

A
  • 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
25
Q

John McCarthy on AI

A

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

26
Q

Simon and Newel on AI

A
  • created the logic theorist program
  • the program was able to create proofs of mathematical theorems that involve principles of logic
27
Q

the model of memory (atkinson and shiffrin)

A
  • 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
28
Q

sensory memory (stage 1)

A

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

29
Q

short-term memory (stage 2)

A

has limited capacity and holds information for seconds

30
Q

long-term memory (stage 3)

A

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

31
Q

3 components of long-term memory

A
  1. episodic memory
  2. semantic memory
  3. procedural memory
32
Q

episodic memory

A
  • events, experiences, personal details
  • can be referred to as a mental diary or timeline
33
Q

semantic memory

A
  • facts, general knowledge
  • mental encyclopedia of information
34
Q

procedural memory

A
  • how to perform certain actions, skills and tasks
  • e.g. muscle memory
35
Q

physiology of cognition and its 3 stages

A
  • the “behind the scenes” activity in the nervous system that creates the mind
  • 3 stages:
    1. neuropsychology
    2. electrophysiology
    3. brain imaging
36
Q

neuropsychology

A

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

37
Q

electrophysiology

A

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

38
Q

brain imaging

A
  • PET scans made it possible to see which areas of the human brain are activated during cognitive activity
  • later replaced by fMRI
39
Q

stephen palmer

A

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