Chapter One: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
Cognition
The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making
Simple Reaction Time Task
the time required for a subject to initiate a prearranged response to a defined stimulus
-Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response
Structuralism
Experience is determined by combining elements of experience called sensations
-an approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations
Behavioral Approach
Measures relationship between stimuli and behavior
-Usually based on reaction time necessary to complete a task
Behaviorism
The approach to psychology, founded by John B. Watson, which states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology.
A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists
Cognitive Revolution
A shift in psychology, beginning in the 1950s, from the behaviorist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in term of the mind.
One of the outcomes of the cognitive revolution was the introduction of the information-processing approach to studying the mind
Structural Model
- Representations of physical structure
- Mimic the form or appearance of a given object
- An example is a model of the brain of structures within the brain and their connections
Mental Chronometry
Determining the amount of time needed to carry out a cognitive task
Choice Reaction Time Task
Time to respond to one of two or more stimuli
***For example, in the Donders experiment, subjects had to make one response to one stimulus and a different response to another stimulus
Analytic Introspection
A procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
**Participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
Physiological Approach
Measures relationship between physiology and behavior
-Measures brain activity while a task is performed
Cognitive Psychology
- The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind
- Cognition refers to the mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, that we are what the mind does
Savings Curve
Plot of savings versus time after original learning
Process Model
A model that represents the processes involved in cognition
- **An example is the flow diagram for Broadbent’s filter model of attention
- **Represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes
Reaction Time
The time it takes to react to a stimulus
This is usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus
**Examples of responses are pushing a button, saying a word, moving the eyes, and the appearance of a particular brain wave
**Measures interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus
Donders (1868)
Information Processing Approach
The approach to psychology, developed beginning in the 1950s, in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages
A way to study the mind created from insights associated with the digital computer
Cognitive Perspective
- Cognitive psychologists examine human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events
- Cognitive psychologists believe that the rules or methods we use to view the world are important to understanding why we think and behave the way we do
Behavioral Perspective
- Behaviorists explain human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning (learning)
- Behaviorists look strictly at observable behaviors and what reaction organisms get in response to specific behaviors
- Dominant school of thought in psychology from the 1920s through the 1960s
Donders (1968)
- Reaction time experiments, interested in the time course of decision-making
- Interested in studying mental chronometry
- **measuring how long a cognitive process takes
Wundt (1877)
- Basic elements of mental experience, wanted to provide a structure for the mind similar to chemistry and the periodic table
- Set up the first psychology laboratory in an apartment near the university of Leipzig, Germany
- Trained subjects in introspection. Subjects were asked to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli
- **Structuralism
- **Analytic Introspection
Ebbinghaus (1885/1913)
-Measured learning over time and established the time course of forgetting
What are two ways of defining the mind?
- The mind creates and control mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning
- The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals
Why could we say that Donders was a cognitive psychologist, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology?
- Donder’s experiment was one of the first cognitive psychology experiments and because it illustrates something significant about studying the mind: mental response cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior
- First cognitive psychology experiment
Describe Donder’s experiment and the rationale behind it?
-Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision, he determined this by measuring reaction time
-Used two measures of reaction time: simple reaction time and choice reaction time
THE EXPERIMENT:
-Present the stimulus (the light) this causes a mental response (perceiving the light), which leads to a behavioral response (pushing the button).
-The reaction time (dashed line) is the time between the presentation of the stimulus and the behavioral response
Describe Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments
- Ebbinghaus used a quantitative method for measuring memory
- Using himself as the subject, he repeated lists of 13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUH, and ZIF to himself one at a time at a constant rate (he used nonsense syllables so that his memory would not be influenced by the meaning of a particular word)
- Ebbinghaus determine how long it took to learn a list for the first time
- He then waited for a specific amount of time (the delay) and then determined how long it took to relearn the list (because forgetting had occurred during the delay)
- Ebbinghaus made errors he first tried to remember the list
- But because he retained something from his original learning, he relearned the list more rapidly than when he had learned it for the first time
What do Donder’s and Ebbinghaus’s experiments have in common?
Although Ebbinghaus’s savings method was very different from Donder’s reaction time method, both measured behavior to determine a property of the mind
Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology?
Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany
Describe the method of analytic introspection that was used in the first laboratory of scientific psychology
- Analytic introspection: a technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
- Wundt asked participants to describe their experience of hearing a five-note chord played on the piano
- One of the questions Wundt hoped to answer was whether his subjects were able to hear each of the individuals notes that made up the chord
What method did William James use to study the mind?
Observation
-James’s observations were not based on the results of experiments but on observations about the operation of his own mind
-Gave descriptions of a wide range of experiences
Contribution:
-First psychology textbook; some of his observations are still valid today
Describe the rise of behaviorism.
- John Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism-
- Watson and Rayner (1920) – “Little Albert” experiment
- B.F. Skinner (1940s through 1960s)
Describe the influence of Watson in the rise of behaviorism
Watson became satisfied with the method of analytic introspection. His problems with this method were 1) it produced extremely variable results from person to person, and 2)these results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes. In response to what he perceived to be deficiencies in analytic introspection, Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism.
John Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism
-Eliminate the mind as a topic of study
-Instead, study directly observable behavior
Watson and Rayner (1920) – “Little Albert” experiment
-Classical conditioning of fear
-9-month-old became frightened by a rat after a loud noise was paired with every presentation of the rat
Describe the influence of Skinner in the rise of behaviorism
-1938 Skinner introduced operant conditioning, which focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval
How did behaviorism affect research on the mind?
- The idea that behavior can be understood by studying stimulus-response relationships influenced an entire generation of psychologists and dominated psychology in the United States from the 1940s through the 1960s
- Psychologists applied the techniques of classical and operant conditioning to classroom teaching, treating psychological disorders, and the testing of drugs on animals
Describe the events that helped lead to the decline in importance of behaviorism in psychology and the events that led to the “cognitive revolution.”
A controversy over language acquisition
Skinner (1957) – Verbal Behavior
-Argued children learn language through operant conditioning
-Children imitate speech they hear
-Correct speech is rewarded
Chomsky (1959)
-Argued children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement
-Children say things they have never heard and can not be imitating
-Children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for
-Language must be determined by inborn biological program
Why are models important in cognitive psychology?
Models are representations of structures or processes that help us to visualize or explain the structure or process
Do the boxes in process models correspond to structures in the brain?
Process models represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes
Why could we say that Ebbinghaus was a cognitive psychologist, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology?
- Ebbinghaus was interested in determining the nature of memory and forgetting-specifically, how rapidly information that is learned that is learned is lost over time
- Ebbinghaus use a quantitative method for measuring memory
- Savings method measured behavior to determine a property of the mind
Savings
Measure used by Ebbinghaus to determine the magnitude of memory left from initial learning.
Higher savings indicate greater memory
Savings=(original time to learn the list)-(time to relearn list after the delay)
Tolman’s contribution to the cognitive revolution
Tolman a behaviorist whose focus was on measuring behavior; but in reality he was one of the early cognitive psychologists, because he used behavior to infer mental processes. Tolman (1938) trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze
Two competing interpretations:
-Behaviorism predicts that the rats learned to “turn right to find food”
-Tolman believed that the rats had created a cognitive map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm
What happens when the rats are placed in a different arm of the maze?
The rats navigated to the specific arm where they previously found food
-Supported Tolman’s interpretation
-Did not support behaviorism interpretation
The models in cognitive psychology
- Structural models
- Process models
