Chapter 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
Mind
creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, and reasoning; memory, problem solving and decision making
Cognitive Psychology
the study of mental processes, which includes determining the characteristics and properties of the mind and how it operates
Franciscus Donders
was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision by measuring reaction time
Mental Chronometry
measuring how long a cognitive process takes
Reaction Time (RT)
how long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus
Simple RT Task
asking his participants to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light go on
Choice RT Task
using two lights and asking his participants to push the left button when they saw the left light go on and the right button when they saw the right light go on
William Wundt
founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology, which dominated psychology
Structuralism
our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience the called sensations; ‘periodic element of the mind’
Analytic Introspection
a technique in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
Hermann Ebbinghaus
was interested in determining the nature of memory and forgetting—specifically, how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time using nonsense syllables
Saving
measurement calculated to determine how much was forgotten after a particular delay; savings = (original time to learn the list) - (time to relearn the list), longer delays result in smaller savings
John Watson
ignored study of the mind and founded an approach to psychology called behaviorism
Behaviourism
the study of directly observable behaviour and eliminating the mind as a topic of study
Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)
how pairing one stimulus (such as the loud noise presented to Albert) with another, previously neutral stimulus (such as the rat) causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus
Little Albert Experiment
shows that behaviour can be analyzed, predicted and understood without any reference to the mind; measure responses
and control stimuli
B.F. Skinner
expanded behaviourist research by investigating operant conditioning
Operant Conditioning
focused on how behavior is strengthened
by the presentation of positive reinforcers and consequences
Edward C. Tolman
one of the early cognitive psychologists, because he used behavior to infer mental processes
Rat Maze Experiment
rats had created a cognitive map of
the maze and were navigating to a specific area; unlock of cognitive (mental processing)
Cognitive Map
a mental representation; a conception within the rat’s mind of the maze’s layout
Noam Chomsky
saw language development as being determined not by imitation or rein- forcement, but by an inborn biological program that holds across cultures
Breland & Breland
found that animals drift towards their biologically predisposed instinctive behaviours
Cognitive Revolution
a shift in psychology from the behaviourist’s focus on stimulus to the combination of behaviour and mental processing (Return of the Mind)
Paradigm
a set of accepted concepts and perspectives that guide research and theory (behaviourism to cognitive psychology)
Scientific Revolution
a significant shift in the dominant theoretical framework within the field, where a new paradigm emerges that drastically changes how psychologists understand and study human behavior (Paradigm shift)
Information
any type of pattern (interconnections
between neurons, state of transistors in a microchip) that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns
Information Processing Approach
refers to a cognitive theory that views the human mind as a system that actively receives, processes, stores, and retrieves information, similar to how a computer operates
Process Models (functional models)
models that provide explanations in terms of
theoretical processes, they don’t specify how these processes are implemented in the brain
Flow diagrams
demonstrates what happens in a person’s mind durning mental processes (diagrams describing computer designs)
Diatonic Listening (Cherry)
ability to attend and shadow (repeat) one
message out of two different messages being heard on each ear at the same time
Donald Broadbent’s Filter Model
Early theory that attempted to explain Cherry’s data using flow diagram (unattended information does not pass through the filter)
Structural Models
Representation of the physical structure of the brain, different structures are associated with different components of the function
Artificial Intelligence
making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving (John McCarthy)
