Chapter 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

Define cognition.

Answer 1

The acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. A person’s cognitive abilities operate together to create their conscious experience.

Question 2

Why is cognitive psychology important?

Answer 2

1. widespread influence over other areas of psyc
2. occupies major portion of individuals’ daily lives
3. beneficial to understand the cognitive abilities that provide you with the experience of a rich internal mental life

Question 3

What are Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions to cognitive psychology?

Answer 3

1. founder of experimental psychology
2. said that psychology should study mental processes
3. used the method called introspection where trained observers systematically analyze and objectively report their own internal sensations and reactions

Question 4

What are Hermann Ebbinghaus’ contributions to cognitive psychology?

Answer 4

1. studied memory and factors that influence performance on memory tasks
2. invented protocol of using nonsense words to reduce the confounding effects of previous language experience on performance in memory tasks

Question 5

What are Mary Calkins’ contributions to cognitive psychology?

Answer 5

1. the recency effect
2. studying cognitive processes in the real world versus artificial laboratory tasks
3. first woman president of the APA

Question 6

What are William James’ contributions to cognitive psychology?

Answer 6

1. author of Principles of Psychology textbook

2. emphasizes human mind as active and inquiring

Question 7

What are Frederick Bartlett’s contributions to cognitive psychology?

Answer 7

1. studied human memory
2. proposed that memory is an active and constructive process where people interpret information, transform information, search for meaning, and try to integrate the new information to be consistent with our existing experiences (a schema-based approach)

Question 8

What is behaviourism?

Answer 8

Behaviourism focuses on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the environment and does not theorize about the unobservable components of mental life such as storing information in memory.

Question 9

What is the Gestalt approach?

Answer 9

Gestalt psychology emphasizes that humans have basic tendencies to organize what we see and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Something that has gestalt has an overall quality that transcends the individual elements.

Question 10

Define cognitive science.

Answer 10

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field that tries to answer questions about the mind, and includes contributions from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, and linguistics.

Question 11

What is artificial intelligence?

Answer 11

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that uses computer models to explore human cognitive processes and accomplish the same tasks that humans do. Pure artificial intelligence refers to designing a program to complete a cognitive task as efficiently as possible, even if the processes are different from those a human would use.

Question 12

What is computer modelling?

Answer 12

Computer modelling tries to complete cognitive tasks the same way a human would, including making the types of errors humans would typically perform and at the same rate.

Question 13

Describe the information processing approach.

Answer 13

1. human mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer
2. information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time (serial processing)
3. stimuli from the environment are processed by sensory receptors and input as information
4. the information is processed and deconded from the brain over the course of multiple processing stages
5. eventually the stimulus is processed enough to be identified and interpreted and for a decision to be made about how to respond
6. if the decision is made to respond the motor command is sent to the appropriate system to initiate the action

Question 14

Describe the connectionist/parallel distributed processing approach.

Answer 14

1. cognitive processing can be understood in terms of networks linking together neuron-like processing units
2. many operations can happen simultaneously, rather than being step-wise
3. numerous interconnections between units
4. neural activity is distributed throughout the brain

Question 15

Identify and describe the five themes of the textbook.

Answer 15

Theme 1: Cognitive processes are active, rather than passive. People continuously seek out, process, and synthesize information, rather than passively waiting for it and absorbing it from our environment.

Theme 2: Cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate.

Theme 3: Cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information. Cognitive processes are designed to handle what is rather than what is not, affirmative rather than negative wording, and pleasant versus unpleasant information.

Theme 4: Cognitive processes are interrelated with another; they do not operate in isolation.

Theme 5: Many cognitive processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processing. Both processes work simultaneously and are typically fast and accurate.