Chapter 1 - Introduction Flashcards
Cognitive Psychology
The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.
Rationalism
The route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis; top-down processes.
Empiricism
The route to knowledge is via empirical evidence, obtained through experience and observation; bottom-down processes.
Structuralism
Seeks to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components (affection, attention, memory, and sensations). Pioneered by Titchener, student of Wundt.
Functionalism
Seeks to understand what people do and why they do it; focuses on processes of thought rather than its contents.
Pragmatism
Knowledge is validated by its usefulness; what we can do with it.
Associationism
Examines how elements of the mind, such as events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning. A synthesis of functionalism and structuralism.
Behaviorism
Focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli.
Gestalt psychology
States that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes. Interested in insight, an unobservable mental event.
Cognitivism
The belief that human behavior explains how people think. Rejects the behavioristic notion that psychologists should avoid studying mental processes because they are unobservable. A synthesis of behaviorism and gestaltism.
Artificial intelligence
Human attempts to construct systems that show intelligence, and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information.
Subtraction method
Estimating the time a cognitive process takes by subtracting the amount of time information processing takes with the process from the time it takes without the process.
