Chapter 1 Flashcards
Define Cognitive Psychology.
A branch of psychology that is concerned with the scientific study of the mind.
Define Cognition.
Mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, etc. that are what the mind does.
Franciscus Donders
Conducted the first experiment in cognitive psychology. Concerned with measuring Reaction Time and Decision Making. How long it takes a person to make a decision, used technique referred to as mental chronometry
Reaction Time
A behavioral measure of
how long it takes an individual to respond to a stimulus.
Reaction Time: Simple RT Task =
Participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears
Reaction Time: Choice RT task =
Participant pushes one button if light is on right side, another if light is on left side
Donders Subtraction Methodology
Choice RT – Simple RT = Time to make a decision
What was learned from Donder’s experiments?
Mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant’s behavior.
Wilhelm Wundt
Built the first scientific psychology laboratory. Structuralism. Introspection.
Wundt’s Structuralism
An approach to psychology stating experience is determined by combining elementary units called sensations.Looking under the hood of a car to determine which parts do what.
Wundt’s Analytic introspection
Goal was to train participants to describe sensory experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli. Super subjective because everyone will describe things differently.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Researched memory & forgetting. Used himself to experiment on. How many days he could remember nonsense words for.
Ebbinghaus’s Savings curve
Savings curve shows savings as a function of retention interval. The amount of time you have in between forgetting something is your savings.
William James
Interested in how mind allows people to function in the real world.
James’s Functionalism
Looking under the hood of a car to determine how various parts function together to allow the car to propel itself
John Watson
Father of Behaviorism. Focused on Classical Conditioning of a Fear Response
Watson’s Little Albert
Evidence that behaviors are not innate or biological, rather they are learned. Behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind. Everything is the result of experience.
Pavlov
Classical Conditioning: Pair a neutral event with an event that naturally produces some outcome. The dog salivating at the sound of the bell because he’s been trained to expect food with the bell.
B.F. Skinner
Interested in how the relationship between stimuli and response can be weakened or strengthened. Operant Conditioning.
Skinner’s Rat Experiment
Rewards or punishments to reinforce the desired behavior. Light/shock/tone - no fear associated with the tone alone because no shock was ever given with it.
Tolman Rat Maze
Trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze. The rat turned left for food when based on behaviorist’s theory, it should have turned right. Concluded that there is a cognitive map of the mind - grocery store, campus etc.
Skinner vs Chomsky in language acquisition
Skinner: Argued children learn language through operant conditioning. Children imitate speech they hear and correct speech is rewarded.
Chomsky: Argued language acquisition not dependent solely on imitation and reinforcement. Children say things they have never heard and can not be imitating.
Children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for.
Language must be determined by inborn biological program.. Language acquisition device (LAD)
Chomsky
Donald Broadbent
Proposed the first flow diagram of the mind. Illustrates what happens in a person’s mind when directing attention to a stimulus in the environment.
What are the two types of Cognitive Models?
Structural Models: the brain - Representations of a physical structure
Process Models: how things work - Represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms
