Chapter 1- Cognitive psychology Flashcards
What is the mind?
The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning. Also, the mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.
Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes- includes determining the characteristics and properties of the mind and how it operates. Scientific study of human memory and mental processes, including: perceiving, remembering, using
language, reasoning and solving problems
Franciscus Donders
Did one of the first cognitive psychology experiments, studied reaction time. He was the “father of mental chronometry”. Analyzed the mind by breaking it down into separate discrete processes/stages
Donders experiment
He measured simple reaction time by asking participants to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light go on, and choice reaction time by asking them to press a button corresponding to which light went on. The reaction time was the time between the stimulus and the behavior (pushing the button). His experiment indicates that mental responses can’t be measured directly and have to be inferred from behavior. This is true for all cognitive psychology research.
Reaction time
How long it takes to respond to the presentation of a stimulus.
Wilhelm Wundt
Founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology in 1879. He was a structuralist and used analytic introspection. Focused on “conscious processes and immediate
experience.”
Structuralism
States that our overall experience is determined by combining elements of experience called sensations. Wundt wanted to create a periodic table of the mind that showed all of the sensations contributing to experience.
Analytic introspection
Structuralist technique where participants described their experiences and thoughts in response to a stimulus. This required extensive training so that the participants could describe their experience in terms of the elements of sensation. This technique was not helpful and was abandoned in the 1900s. Think aloud protocols are modern variants of this.
Wundt’s contributions
Studied the mind and behavior under controlled conditions. Trained many PhDs who established psychology departments at other universities (including some in the US).
Ebbinghaus experiment
Studied how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time. Used a quantitative method for measuring memory- he used himself as a participant. Ebbinghaus repeated lists of 13 nonsense syllables to himself (this was so his memory wouldn’t be influenced by the meaning of a particular word). He determined how long it took to learn the list, then delayed for a specific amount of time before he began learning the list again. Forgetting occurred during the delay, but he was able to learn the list more quickly this time since he had already learned it. Used a measure called savings to determine how much was forgotten after a particular delay.
Savings
Ebbinghaus used a measure called savings to determine how much was forgotten after a particular delay. Longer delays result in smaller savings- this means that longer delays cause more forgetting. Calculation- Savings= (original time to learn the list)-(time to relearn the list after the delay).
Savings curve
The plot of percent savings versus time. Memory (percent savings) drops rapidly for the first 2 days after learning and then levels off.
Importance of the Ebbinghaus experiment
This experiment demonstrated that memory could be quantified and functions such as the savings curve could be used to describe a property of the mind (the ability to retain information).
William James
A contemporary of Wundt, Titchener, and Ebbinghaus who was influenced by Darwin. Taught Harvard’s first psychology course and made observations about the operation of his own mind, did not conduct experiments. He considered a wide range of cognitive topics, including thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, and others. He made an observation about attention, stating that paying attention to one thing means withdrawing from other things. This has been the basis of many modern studies concerning attention. Believed in functionalism
What were Watson’s problems with analytic introspection? (2)
- It produced extremely variable results from person to person
- These results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes
Behaviorism
Watson wanted to restrict psychology to behavioral data, and did not want to go beyond the data to make conclusions about unobservable events in the mind. Observable behavior would be the main topic of study, not consciousness. During this time, psychologists began asking “What is the relation between stimuli in the environment and behavior?” rather than asking what behavior indicated about the mind.
Little Albert experiment
Watson subjected a baby to a loud noise every time a rat came close to him (which he originally liked). Eventually, the baby started crawling away from the rat even before the loud noise. This is an example of classical conditioning
Classical conditioning
The Little Albert experiment is an example. It paired one stimulus (the loud noise) with a neutral stimulus (the rat) which causes changes in response to the neutral stimulus. Watson used classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed without reference to the mind. He was able to pair a stimulus with another affected behavior- what was going on inside Albert’s head was irrelevant.
Operant conditioning
Focuses on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers (food, social approval) or the withdrawal of negative reinforcers (shock, social rejection). Example- reinforcing a rat with food for pressing a bar maintained or increased the rat’s rate of bar pressing.
BF Skinner
Studied operant conditioning. Skinner also was not interested in what was happening in the mind- just evaluated how behavior was controlled by stimuli.
When did behaviorism dominate the field of psychology?
The idea that behavior can be understood by studying stimulus-response relationships dominated psychology in the US from the 1940s-1960s.
Edward Tolman
Called himself a behaviorist, but really he was one of the early cognitive psychologists. He used behavior to infer mental processes.
Tolman experiment
Tolman put a rat in a maze at point A with food at point B. The rat would learn to turn right at the intersection of the maze to obtain the food. This is what behaviorists would predict, as turning right was rewarded (reinforced) with food. However, when the rat was placed at point C, it would turn left at the intersection to reach the food at point B. Tolman’s explanation was that the rat was developing a cognitive map. The idea that something other than stimulus-response connections would be occurring in the rat’s mind put Tolman outside of the mainstream of behaviorism.
Cognitive map
Tolman’s explanation for his experiment’s results- a conception within the rat’s mind of the maze’s layout.
Verbal behavior
Book published by BF Skinner. In the book, he argued that children learn language through operant conditioning- this would mean that children imitate speech that they hear, and repeat correct speech because it’s rewarded.
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky was the researcher that disagreed with Skinner’s ideas on how children learn language. He argued that children tend to say sentences that were never rewarded by parents and that they will go through a stage of using incorrect grammar (so they aren’t imitating anyone). Chomsky thought that language development was determined by an inherent biological program that holds across cultures- it is a product of the way the mind is constructed, not reinforcement.
