Chapter 1: Introduction Flashcards
What is “the mind” responsible for?
creating and controlling mental function such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning
What is a potential definition for the MIND?
a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals
What are the 2 central roles of the mind?
- determining our various mental abilities eg. what the mind creates
- functioning and survival eg. how the mind operates
Define COGNITION
the mental processes, what the mind creates
What is COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY?
the study of mental processes, which includes determining the characteristic properties of the mind and how it operates
What was the state of psychological study during the 1800s?
rooted in the belief that it is not possible to study the mind
the mind cannot study itself, the properties of the mind cannot be measured
Who conducted “one of the first ‘cognitive psychology’” experiments, and what was the focus of the experiment?
Franciscus Donders - How long does it take to make a decision?
What is REACTION TIME?
how long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus
What is SIMPLE REACTION TIME?
reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus
EX: push a button as rapidly as you can when a light flashes
What is CHOICE REACTION TIME?
the time it takes to respond to one of two or more stimuli
EX: push the left button when a red light flashes, or the right button when a green light flashes
How did Donders determine “the length of a decision” at the time?
choice reaction time took 1/10th of a second longer, so he determined that it takes 1/10th of a second to make a decision
What was so conceptually important about Donders’ experiment?
demonstrates that mental responses, though they can’t be measured directly, can be inferred from behaviour
Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology in Germany?
Wilhelm Wundt (1879)
What is STRUCTURALISM, and which theorist is associated with this belief?
our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience (sensations)
Wilhelm Wundt
What is ANALYTIC INTROSPECTION?
a procedure by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
the goal was to have participants able to describe their experience in terms of elemental psychological processes
Though structuralism and analytic introspection were ultimately abandoned, what were the positive contributions by Wundt to the field of psychology?
commitment to studying behaviour and the mind under controlled conditions
trained many PhDs who established psych departments at other universities
What was the research focus of Hermann Ebbinghaus?
the nature of memory and forgetting; how rapidly is learned information lost over time
Describe Ebbinghaus’ concept of SAVINGS.
a measure used to determine the magnitude of memory left from initial learning; higher savings = greater memory
Savings = (Original time to learn) - (Time to relearn after a delay)
How did Ebbinghaus conduct his initial savings experiment?
Learned a list of nonsense syllables, marked how long it took to recite them from memory, created a delay, then measure how long it took to relearn the list
What is the SAVINGS CURVE?
a plot of savings versus time after original learning
Ebbinghaus found that memory drops rapidly for the first ______ days after initial learning, then levels off.
2
Who published the first Principles of Psychology textbook based on observations of his own mind?
William James (1890)
What is BEHAVIOURISM and who was its founder?
states that observable behaviour provides the only valid data for psychology
John Watson
What is a consequence of the behaviourist view that only observable behaviour provides data?
that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study
What elements of analytic introspection was Watson dissatisfied with?
- it produced extremely variable results from person to person
- results were difficult to verify bc they were interpreted in terms of invisible mental processes
What were Watson’s 2 key points in presenting behaviourism as an alternative form of study?
- Rejection of introspection as a method
- Observable behaviour, not consciousness, is the main topic of study
What is CLASSICAL CONDITIONING?
pairing one stimulus with another, previously neutral, stimulus, causing changes in the responses to the neutral stimulus
How did Watson use classical conditioning as support for the study of behaviourism?
argued that behaviour can be analyzed without any reference to the mind
what is going on inside the mind of a dog hearing a bell, or Little Albert hearing a loud noise when a rat is presented, is irrelevant > we only care about how pairing one stimulus with another affects behaviour
What is OPERANT CONDITIONING and who was its founder?
focuses on how behaviour is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcements or removal of negative reinforcements
BF Skinner
Who was Edward Chace Tolman and what was his focus of study?
measured behaviour, but used behaviour to infer mental processes, making him one of the earliest cognitive psychologists
What is a COGNITIVE MAP?
concept developed by Tolman
a mental representation of one’s physical environment
What about the concept of a cognitive map placed Tolman outside of mainstream behaviourism?
the use of the word “cognitive” and the idea that something other than stimulus-response connections might be occurring in an animal’s mind
What position did BF Skinner take about language development in his 1957 book Verbal Behaviour?
argued that children learn speech through operant conditioning, imitating speech they hear, repeating correct speech bc it is rewarded
What were Noam Chomsky’s arguments against Skinner’s language development theories?
- children say many sentences that are never rewarded by parents
- during language development, children go through a stage of incorrect grammar use which may never have been reinforced
What were the foundations of Chomsky’s theory of language development?
- language develops as determined by an inborn biological program that holds across many cultures
- language is a product of the way the mind is constructed
- language and other complex processes should be understood not only by measurable behaviour but also by what this behaviour tells us about how the mind works
What is the COGNITIVE REVOLUTION?
a shift in psychology, beginning in the 1950s, from the behaviourist approach to one in which the main goal was to explain behaviour in terms of the mind
What was one of the key outcomes of the cognitive revolution?
introduction of the information processing approach to studying the mind
What is a PARADIGM?
a system of ideas that dominates science at a particular time
What is a PARADIGM SHIFT?
a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions
What is a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION?
a shift from one scientific paradigm to another
What were the pros and cons of the behaviourist approach to psychological study?
PROS: included development of psychological “behavioural therapies” which are still in use
CONS: did not allow any consideration for the mind’s role in creating behaviour
How did the introduction of the first digital computers influence the development of information processing theory?
psychologists resonate with the processing flow of a computer, which occurs in stages:
1. Input is received by an “input processor”
2. Then storied in a “memory unit”
3. Processed by an “arithmetic unit” which creates output
What is the INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH?
the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages
Describe Donald Broadbent’s experiment involving filtering information.
one message is presented auditorily through one ear, and a different message is presented through the other ear
it was found that people could hear the sounds of the unattended message, but were unaware of its contents
Describe Broadbent’s flow diagram of the mind regarding attention.
Input is presented > the “filter” of the mind lets through the attended message and filters out the unattended message > the “detector” records the information that gets through the filter
What was so valuable about Broadbent’s experiment for further study?
provided a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of a sequence of processing stages, which could be further tested in other experiments
Where was the term “artificial intelligence” first used, and who was the founder of this event?
The Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence conference in 1956, founded by John McCarthy
What is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
the ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence
Who created the first AI program and what was its function?
Herb Simon and Alan Newell created a program called “logic theorist” that could create proofs for problems in logic using humanlike reasoning processes
George Miller presented the idea that there are limits to a human’s ability to ___________________ ___________________________. How many items can a human typically process at once?
process information; 7 (phone number)
When was the first Cognitive Psychology textbook published, and by whom?
1967 by Ulrich Neisser
What was the main focus of Neisser’s textbook?
Vision and hearing
How is information taken in by vision and held in memory for short periods of time
How do people search for visual information and use it to see simple patterns
What key topics were missing from Neisser’s textbook, and are the central topics in cognitive study now?
- higher mental processes (thinking, problem solving, long term remembering)
- physiology
What are the 3 stages of memory flow according to Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin?
Sensory Memory > incoming information is held for a fraction of a second, then is passed to STM
Short Term Memory > limited capacity, holds info for seconds
Long Term Memory > high capacity where some STM is transferred for a long time, and can be retrieved
What subdivisions did Endel Tulving propose make up long-term memory?
Episodic memory > events in your life
Semantic memory > facts
Procedural memory > physical actions
What is NEUROPSYCHOLOGY?
the study of the behaviour of people with brain damage
What is ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY?
measuring the electrical responses of the nervous system, making it possible to listen to the activity of single neurons
What is BRAIN IMAGING?
techniques such as fMRI that result in images of the brain that represent brain activity; in cognitive psych, activity is measured in response to specific cognitive tasks
When was Positron Emission Tomography (PET) introduced and what were the pros and cons?
1976
makes it possible to see which area of the brain are activated during cognitive activity
it is expensive and involved radioactive tracers injected into the bloodstream
What are some important features of contemporary cognitive psychology?
- flow diagrams are more sophisticated; include more consideration of higher mental processes and physiological research
- research is taken out of the lab; lots of “real word” studies
- humans are not “blank slates” that just accept and store information > experiments demonstrate the important of knowledge for cognition
What did Stephen Palmer demonstrate regarding contextual knowledge?
people used their knowledge of objects that were likely to be found in a given environment to help them perceive images faster than images of items that do not contextually belong
