Chapter 1 - History of Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

cognitive psychology

Answer 1

the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind

Question 2

mind

Answer 2

system that creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning, and that creates mental representations of the world

Question 3

cognition

Answer 3

the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and making decisions

Question 4

reaction time

Answer 4

the time it takes to react to a stimulus; usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus

Question 5

simple reaction time

Answer 5

reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response)

Question 6

choice reaction time

Answer 6

reacting to one of two or more stimuli - Donders’

Question 7

savings method

Answer 7

method used to measure retention in Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments

Question 8

structuralism

Answer 8

an approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations

Question 9

analytic introspection

Answer 9

a procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes elicited by stimuli presented under controlled conditions

Question 10

behaviorism

Answer 10

the approach to psychology, founded by John B. Watson, which states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this ides is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists

Question 11

classical conditioning

Answer 11

a procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response

Question 12

operant conditioning

Answer 12

type of conditioning championed by B. F. Skinner, 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 13

cognitive map

Answer 13

mental conception of a spatial layout

Question 14

cognitive revolution

Answer 14

a shift in psychology, beginning in the 1950s, from the behaviorist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in therms of the mind. One of the outcomes of the cognitive revolution was the introduction of the information-processing approach to studying the mind

Question 15

information-processing approach

Answer 15

the approach to psychology, developed beginning in the 1950s, in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages

Question 16

artificial intelligence

Answer 16

the ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence

Question 17

logic theorist

Answer 17

computer program devised by Alan Newell and Herbert Simon that was able to solve logic problems

Question 18

behavioral approach

Answer 18

studying the mind by measuring a persons behavior and explaining this behavior in behavioral terms

Question 19

physiological approach

Answer 19

studying the mind by measuring physiological and behavioral responses, and explaining behavior in physiological terms

Question 20

memory consolidation

Answer 20

process by which experiences or information that has entered the memory system becomes strengthened so it is resistant to interference caused by trauma or other events

Question 21

cognitive models

Answer 21

representations of structures or processes involved in cognition

Question 22

cognitive neuroscience

Answer 22

field involved in studying the neural basis of cognition

Question 23

cognitive science

Answer 23

psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy

Question 24

comparative psychology

Answer 24

the scientific study of the minds of non-human animals

Question 25

diffusion model

Answer 25

a model of how decisions are made for two-choice reaction time tasks

Question 26

mental chronometry

Answer 26

inferring the timing of a cognitive process by measuring the time taken to perform a task

Question 27

subtractive method

Answer 27

the technique used in brain imaging in which baseline activity is subtracted from the activity generated by a specific task; the result is the activity due only to the task that is being studied