Chapter One - Introduction Flashcards
What is cognitive science?
-study of relationships among integration of cog. psychology, biology, anthropology, comp sci, linguistics, philosphy
What are 8 critical areas of research for cog science?
- consciousness
- intelligence
- thinking
- language
- knowledge of representation
- memory
- learning
- perception
What is cognitive psychology?
- branch of psychology
- scientific study of the mind
Cognition involves… (8)
- perception
- paying attention
- remembering
- distinguishing items in a category
- visualizing
- language
- problem solving
- reasoning + decision making
Why was it not possible to study the mind in the 1800s? (3)
- philosophers thought the mind couldn’t study itself
- people did not associate cog. abilities with mind
- thought mind couldn’t be measured
Who did one of first cognitive psych experiments in 1868 ?
Franciscus Donders
What was Donder’s experiment?
-reaction time (RT) experiment
What is the RT experiment?
-measures interval between stimulus presentation + one’s response to stimulus
What is the difference between the simple RT and the choice RT?
simple: response to stimulus
choice: choose whether stimulus is on right or left side
How did they infer decision time?
RT(choice)-RT(simple)
According to Donder’s, can mental responses be measured directly?
- no, they can be inferred from behavior
- holds true for all research in cog. psych
Who founded the first psych laboratory?
Willhelm Wundt
What approach did Wilhelm Wundt use?
structuralism
What is structuralism?
-experience is determined by combining elements of experience called sensations
“periodic table of the mind”
What method did Wilhelm Wundt use?
analytic introspection
What is analytic introspection?
-participants trained to describe experiences + thought processes in response to stimuli
What are some problems with analytic introspection?
- creates a binary
- no way to verify
- vocabulary means different things to different people
Who investigated the time course of forgetting?
Ebbinghaus
What kind of method did Ebbinghaus use?
quantitative
What was Ebbinghaus’s experiment?
- read list of nonsense syllables aloud
- determine how many repetitions necessary to repeat list without errors
What was the result from Ebbinghaus’s experiment?
-short intervals = fewer repetitions to relearn
What are some problems with Ebbinghaus’s experiment?
- subject of his own experiment
- could become better with practice
- may not be related to memory on a general sense
What is the Ebbinghaus curve?
- Savings curve
- function of percent savings v. time
- high percent of savings during early hours because less time to forget
Who taught the first psychology course at Harvard?
William James
What were James’ observations based on?
his own mind, not experiments
functionalism
Who found problems with analytic introspection?
John Watson
What were the 2 problems John Watson found with analytic introspection?
- extremely variable results
2. results difficult to verify
What was the new approach proposed by Watson?
behaviorism
What is behaviorism?
- eliminate mind as topic of study
- study directly observable behavior
What experiment did Watson and Rayner conduct?
“Little Albert” experiment
What was the Little Albert Experiment?
- classical condition of fear
- conditioning 9 month old to be afraid
Who was inspiration for Watson’s work?
Ivan Pavlov
What did Ivan Pavlov do?
- pavlov’s dogs
- pari neutral event with even that naturally produces some outcome
Who studied operant conditioning?
BF Skinner
What is Operant conditioning?
- behavior shaped by rewards or punishments
- rewarded behavior more likely to be repeated, punished behavior less likely
Who were the first 6 psychologists that lead to the rise of behaviorism?
- Donders
- Wundt
- Ebbinghaus
- William James
- Watson
- Skinner
Who trained rats in a maze?
Tolman
What was Tolman’s maze?
- rats initially explored maze
- rat placed in A, food placed in B
- rat learned quickly to turn right to get food
What was the new discovery from Tolman’s maze?
- when food placed in C rat turned left to get food
- formation of a cognitive map
According to behaviorists, what would happen when the food was placed in C
rat would turn right because that’s what it learned
How did the decline of behaviorism happen?
-controversy over language acquisition
What did Skinner argue in Verbal Behavior (1957)?
-children learn language through operant conditioning
Who argued against Skinner’s Verbal Behavior?
Noam Chomsky
What did Chomsky argue about language?
- children do not only learn language through imitation + reinforcement
- children say things they never heard
- determined by inborn biological program
What is the 1950s cognitive revolution?
- shift from behaviorists stimulus-response relationships
- new goal to understand operations of mind
How did computers process information?
- in stages
- input, input processor, memory unit, arithmetic unit, output
What is the information-processing approach?
- way to study mind like it is a computer
- separate stages
What was Cherrys’ experiment?
-“dichotic” listening
What is dichotic listening
- present different messages in R/L ear
- shadow one message
- participants able to focus only on message they were shadowing
What did Broadbent contribute?
-flow diagram representing what happens as a person directs attention to one stimulus
What are the 3 stages of Broadbent’s flow diagram?
- input
- filter
- detector
- to memory
Who was John McCarthy?
- asked whether it would be possible to program computers to mimic operation of human mind
- organized summer conference in 1956 on AI
What did Newell and Simon create?
- logic theorist program
- could apply rudimentary logic to creating mathematical theorems
- more than crunch numbers
What are the 5 steps of research as it progresses question to question?
- start with what is known
- ask questions
- design experiments
- obtain and interpret results
- Go to 1
What are models in cognitive psychology?
- representations of structures or process
- help visualize/explain structure/process
What are the 2 types of models?
- structural models: represent strucutres in brain that are involved in spec. functions
- process models: illustrate how a process operates
Are models identical replicas of real thing?
-no, simplifications
