Chapter 1-introduction To Cognitive Psych Flashcards
Cognition Involves
- perception
- paying attention
- remembering
- distinguishing items in a category
- visualizing
- understanding and production of language
- problem solving
- reasoning and decision making
What is cognitive psychology
Scientific study if the mind concerned with attention, perception and attention
Donders
- 1868
- measured how long it takes a person to make a decision
- reaction time (RT) experiment
Reaction Time (RT) experiment
- Donders
- measures interval between stimulus presentation and persons response time
- involves simple RT task and choice RT task
- stimulus->mental process->behavioural response
Time to make a decision?
=choice RT-simple RT
-choice RT is 1/10 sec longer than simple RT
Ebbinghaus
-1885
-read a list of nonsense syllabus aloud to
determine the number of repetitions necessary to repeat a list without errors
-after taking a break (retention interval) he relearned the list
“Savings” in ebbinghaus experiment
Savings=(Original time to learn list)-(Time to relearn list after delay)
Savings curve
Shows savings as a function of retention interval (time between initial learning and testing)
Forgetting occurs rapidly over the first two days and then occurs more slowly after that
Wundt
- Structuralism
- 1879
- established first psych lab
- overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience called sensations
- analytic introspection
Analytic introspection
-participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
William James
- 1890
- taught first psych course
- observations based on the function of his own mind, not experiments
John Watson (& Rainer)
- behaviourism: Which eliminates the study of the mind and studies only directly observable behaviour
- “little Albert” (1920)
- examined how pairing one stimulus with another affected behaviour (classical conditioning)
Watson’s two problems with analytic introspection
- Extremely variable results per person
2. Results are difficult to verify due to focus on invisible inner mental processes
Classical Conditioning
- pair neutral stimulus with an event that naturally produces some outcome
- after many pairings the “neutral” event now also produces the outcome
- Pavlov and Watson
Skinner
-1938
interested in determining relationship between
stimuli and response
-operant conditioning
Operant conditioning
-behaviour can be shaped by rewards or punishments
When was behaviourism approach dominant
1940s-1960s
Tolman
- 1938
- rat/maze experiment
- rats created a cognitive map of the maze in their minds
- rejected behaviourist perspective
What started the decline in behaviourism
-a controversy proposed by Chomsky over language acquisition (Skinner 1957 argued children learn language through operant conditioning: imitation and repetition through reward)
Chomsky
- 1959
- argued that children don’t only learn language through repetition and reinforcement
- children say things they have never heard and cannot be imitating
- children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for
Therefore language must be determined by inborn biological program
How to understand complex cognitive behaviour
- measure observable behaviour
- make inference about underlying cognitive activity
- consider what this behaviour says about how the mind works
Cognitive Revolution
- 1950s and 1960s
- shift from behaviourist focus on stimulus-response associations to an approach that tries to explain behaviour in terms of the mind
- Information processing approach
Kuhn
- 1962
- defined a scientific revolution as a shift from one paradigm to another
A scientific revolution involves a
Paradigm shift
Information-processing approach
- apart of cognitive revolution
- way to study the mind based in insights associated with the computer
- states that operation of the mind occur in stages
Cherry
- 1953
- built on James idea of attention
- “dichotic” listening
- participants were able to focus only on the message they were shadowing
Broadbent
- 1958
- developed flow diagram to show what occurs as a person directs attention to one stimulus
- unattended info does not pass through the filter
Input->filter->detector->memory
Artificial intelligence
Making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were behaving that way
Simon and Newell
- created the logic theorist program
- could create proofs of mathematical theorems involving logic principles
Evolution of cognitive psychology
Since the cognitive revolution the field of cognitive psych continued to evolve
- From perception to higher level cognition
- Study of the physiology of mental processes
Arkinson and Shiffrin
- 1968
- developed a three stage model of memory:
1. Sensory memory (less than one second)
2. short term memory (few seconds, limited capacity)
3. long term memory (long duration, high capacity)
Tulving
-divides long term memory into three components:
- Episodic (life events)
- Semantic (facts)
- Procedural (physical actions)
Physiology of cognition involves
- neuropsychology
- electrophysiology
- brain imaging
Neuropsychology
Studies the behaviours of people with brain damage
Electrophysiology
Studies electrical responses of the nervous system including brain neurons
Brain imaging
PET (positron emission tomography)
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
Show which brain areas are active during specific episodes of cognition
