Chapter 2 - History + How to Study Cognition Flashcards
1- Explain the philosophical foundations from Ancient Greece of cognition.
- Ancient Greek philosophers thought about the locus of the mind (sensations, memory) and basis of human personality
- Many took an analytic approach to understanding the human mind by breaking it down into ‘parts’ to study
- Epistemology is the philosophical study of human knowledge
- Aristotle, Plato
2- Explain Plato’s ideas of cognition.
- Knowledge involves experience and reason (prior knowledge)
- Deductive reasoning
1. The world is a ‘reflection of our reality’
2. External (bottom-up) and Internal (top-down) processing interact ** - Rationalism and the importance of a-priori knowledge
-There is an innate aspect to our mental processes and
reasoning
-Observation does not always lead to certainty
3- Explain Aristotle’s ideas of cognition.
- Emphasized empiricism
-Inductive observational reasoning
-Unlike rationalism, suggests to learn from what your see
-Foundation for the importance of observation - Foundational for cognitive theories that emphasize
associations (e.g., memory theories)
-Thought arise from forming associations among
observations
4- What is nature vs. nurture?
Nature= innate
Nurture=environment/acquired
5- Early days of experimental psychology:
Explain Structuralism
*Structuralism
-Identify the basic elements of thought
-Learn how basic elements combine to form
complex thoughts
*Relied on introspection and self report
-People report their thoughts or observations
-What might be a problem with self report?
Wilhelm Wundt
* Began lab in 1879 and practiced Structuralism
* “Well, Wundt you know!”
* Wanted to identify the simplest units of the mind that he thought followed certain laws to create complex thoughts
* Wanted to establish a ‘mental’ periodic table of elements
* Used empirical introspection
* Psychophysics: study basic cognitive phenomenon by
linking sensory experiences to physical changes
-E.g., measuring the threshold for feeling the touch from a feather; the smallest amount of change in
pigment to notice a difference between two colors
Wundt’s empirical introspection
*Experimental self-observation
*Often used mental
chronometry: Estimating time for a participant to perceive
something (“I see it”; “I hear it”)
* Created the ‘thought meter’
SUMMARY:
* Systematic observation of the elements of the mind
-Premise: Understanding these elements will help understand
more complex cognitive processes, like perception, memory
and learning
* Criticisms:
-Experimental methods were considered too subjective,
relying on self report
-Approaches were too simplistic (focusing on simple sensory
processes)
6- Early days of experimental psychology:
Explain Functionalism.
*Functionalism
-Asks why the mind works
-Not interested in breaking down mental states to basic
elements
-Cognition is about serving a function and so must adapt
to current goals
William James and pragmatism:
* Pragmatic or opposed searching for basic mental elements
* Believed that consciousness is personal and cannot be broken down into parts
as it is constantly changing
* Emphasized an eclectic methodological
approach to study the usefulness and
variability of accessing knowledge in
the real world
- Focuses on why the mind works and the ‘usefulness of
knowledge’ - Contributed an emphasis on the adaptive functions of our mind and how we use cognitive processes based on our settings
- Context matters!
- A criticism is that it is difficult to study some of these ideas (consciousness, imagery), especially if cognition is always
changing!
7- Explain Behaviorism.
- 1900s: Psychology is struggling to be taken seriously as a
science - This resulted in a shift from studying the mind to
behavior
-Focused on what can be observed (input, output)
(Behaviorism did not consider mental processes)
-Focused on animal research because there it is highly controlled
(Assumes all species obey the same laws of behaviour)
Notable contributions (a review):
* Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)
-Learning by making associations between cue, a stimuli and the
natural response
* Instrumental Learning (Thorndike) and Operant
Conditioning (Skinner)
-Behavior is contingent on a schedule of reinforcements, rewards and punishments
-Rewards encourage behaviors
-Punishment reduce behaviors
Problems with Behaviorism:
* Overestimated the scope of their explanations
* Cannot account for complex human behavior
* The assumption that learning was the same for all individuals and across species is false
Ex of limitation:
-Language: * Behaviorism view is that language is learned through
conditioning
* Latent learning: learning in the absence of any conditioning
* see Tolman experiments in textbook for more information if needed
* Children learn to apply language rules to new situations
* Children will pluralize objects by adding an ‘s’ even if they have never
seen/hear the word (mices)
* We need to refer to mental processes to explain this behavior!
Another ex of limitation:
-Memorizing a list of words:
If people can use ‘mental’ strategies when thinking, then we need to study the mental processes!
8- Explain the Cognitive revolution that started in the 1950s.
- Accepted that there are internal mental states, unlike Behaviorism but like Structuralism
- Accepted the scientific method to study these states, like Behaviorism and other fields (e.g., math, biology)
- Came with the rise in technology and the computer that supported the view of the mind as a processor of information
The view: Information processing
* The mind and brain can be understood as a sort of computer that processes information in the world
* Cognitive research focuses on describing the processes that manipulate information input from the external world to output (produce) behavior
* Often use flow charts (box and arrows) to describe these computations at specific processing stages: ex: * Waugh & Norman’s model of memory (see in slide)
9- Explain information processing and decision fatigue.
Why do we process information?
* We process information to reduce uncertainty
* Since processing information takes time, the more uncertain
something is, the longer it will take it
* The amount of information processed is inversely related to how much we expect that information to occur. In other words, if we don’t know what to expect, we must process more
-example: William Hick light experiment
* Hick’s Law: A mathematical equation to show that the more information contained in a signal, the longer it takes to make a response to this signal
* The greater the number of choices (or uncertainty of choice) requires more information to process, and thus it takes longer to make a decision
Decision fatigue
* Making decisions taxes cognitive processing and we have a limited amount of cognitive processing
* Important: Reaching decision fatigue early in the day has consequences on our ability to make later decisions
-why people like Bill Gates wore the same outfit every day
Information processing has limits:
Webster and Thompson (1953)
* Participants were air traffic
controllers (the people who work here)
* They listened to two simultaneous messages: Each message had a call signal (familiar to the participants) and unrelated words (unfamiliar to
participants)
* Participants were to memorize and repeat back as much of these messages as they could remember
Webster and Thompson (1953)
* The air traffic controller participants could remember both call signals, but
only one of the unrelated word messages for the simultaneous messages
* This is because the familiar call signals contain ‘less information’
* The unfamiliar unrelated word messages contain ‘more information’
* Cognitive processing capacity is limited,
so we can only process some of the information input by our senses, partly determined by familiarity/certainty
10- What are the assumptions of cognitive research?
- Mental processes exist
- Mental processes can be studied scientifically
* Need to use rigorous experimentation - We are active information processors
* We are active agents that manipulate incoming information to produce behaviors
* We do not only passively respond to information (Behaviorism) - The basis of mental processes is the brain
11- Mind-body problem: explain Dualism.
- How are mental events
related to or caused by
physical mechanisms in
the body (brain)? - Dualism: the mind and
brain are separate entities
that are equally important
Dualism: Interactionism
* The mind and brain interact to induce events in each other
* Mind can affect body (e.g., thinking alters brain activity)
* Body can affect mind (e.g., hormones affect cognition)
* Subscribes to the idea we have a ‘soul’
* Rene Descartes (early 1600’s) suggested the pineal
gland is this “principal seat of the soul”, full of animal spirits, and where the interaction between
entitles occurs
Dualism: Epiphenomenalism
* Mental thoughts (mind) are caused by physical events (brain), but thoughts do not
affect physical events
* One way interaction
* Mental events are like steam coming off a train (Thomas Huxley)
* The steam (mind) does not affect how the train (brain) works, even if it is a separate
entity
-Grab a hot pot handle (I feel pain!)…Physical response/brain response (I need to get my hand off this pot)… Pull hand away
12- Mind-body problem:
Explain Monism.
- Monism: the
mind and brain are the same;
Only one entity exists - There is one basic entity that manifests as both mental and physical
responses; everything can be explained by one concept
-Idealism: all reality is a mental construct, both physical and mental
-Neutral Monism: the underlying nature is not mental or physical but something else, something neutral
-Materialism: all reality is the result of physical processes
(SEE LIZZO EXAMPLES)
13- Name the methods to study the brain-behavior link.
- Behavioral measures
-Behavioral Experiments (voluntary responses)
-Demonstrated with early information processing experiments
-Psychophysiological measurements (involuntary responses) - Behavioral neuroscience methods (Psyc 211)
-Animal models - Cognitive neuroscience methods
-Patient cases
-Neuroimaging tools
14- Explain behavioral measures that use psychophysiological measurements.
- Measure activity in the peripheral nervous system (i.e., not the brain) in
response to things that humans perceive or imagine - Some examples :
-Eye movements (covered in attention and language lectures)
-Skin conductance
Skin conductance:
* Skin conducts electricity when it sweats
* Detect this electrical conduction to
estimate an emotional arousal response
* Test how emotional arousal impacts
cognitive tasks, like attention and memory
Ex: * Higher skin conductance in people with PTSD when hearing combat sounds
15- Explain behavioral neuroscience models: Animal models.
- Researchers will use animals to conduct behavioral experiments, lesioning the brain or collecting physiological brain measures (Psyc 211)
- Strength
-Provides a causal link between brain and behavior
-Foundational discoveries about how the mind works
E.g., the prefrontal cortex is critical for short-term memory - Weakness
-Differences in brain structure and function across species puts limits on the
generalization of these findings
E.g., cannot provide a full understanding of human brain
