Chapter One: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making

Question 2

Simple Reaction Time Task

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Structuralism

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Behavioral Approach

Answer 4

Measures relationship between stimuli and behavior

-Usually based on reaction time necessary to complete a task

Question 5

Behaviorism

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Cognitive Revolution

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Structural Model

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

Mental Chronometry

Answer 8

Determining the amount of time needed to carry out a cognitive task

Question 9

Choice Reaction Time Task

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Analytic Introspection

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Physiological Approach

Answer 11

Measures relationship between physiology and behavior

-Measures brain activity while a task is performed

Question 12

Cognitive Psychology

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Savings Curve

Answer 13

Plot of savings versus time after original learning

Question 14

Process Model

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Reaction Time

Answer 15

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)

Question 16

Information Processing Approach

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Cognitive Perspective

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

Behavioral Perspective

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Donders (1968)

Answer 19

• Reaction time experiments, interested in the time course of decision-making
• Interested in studying mental chronometry
• **measuring how long a cognitive process takes

Question 20

Wundt (1877)

Answer 20

• 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

Question 21

Ebbinghaus (1885/1913)

Answer 21

-Measured learning over time and established the time course of forgetting

Question 22

What are two ways of defining the mind?

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

Why could we say that Donders was a cognitive psychologist, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology?

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

Describe Donder’s experiment and the rationale behind it?

Answer 24

-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

Question 25

Describe Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

What do Donder’s and Ebbinghaus’s experiments have in common?

Answer 26

Although Ebbinghaus’s savings method was very different from Donder’s reaction time method, both measured behavior to determine a property of the mind

Question 27

Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology?

Answer 27

Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany

Question 28

Describe the method of analytic introspection that was used in the first laboratory of scientific psychology

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

What method did William James use to study the mind?

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Describe the rise of behaviorism.

Answer 30

• John Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism-
• Watson and Rayner (1920) – “Little Albert” experiment
• B.F. Skinner (1940s through 1960s)

Question 31

Describe the influence of Watson in the rise of behaviorism

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Describe the influence of Skinner in the rise of behaviorism

Answer 32

-1938 Skinner introduced operant conditioning, which focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval

Question 33

How did behaviorism affect research on the mind?

Answer 33

• 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

Question 34

Describe the events that helped lead to the decline in importance of behaviorism in psychology and the events that led to the “cognitive revolution.”

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Why are models important in cognitive psychology?

Answer 35

Models are representations of structures or processes that help us to visualize or explain the structure or process

Question 36

Do the boxes in process models correspond to structures in the brain?

Answer 36

Process models represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes

Question 37

Why could we say that Ebbinghaus was a cognitive psychologist, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology?

Answer 37

• 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

Question 38

Savings

Answer 38

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)

Question 39

Tolman’s contribution to the cognitive revolution

Answer 39

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

Question 40

The models in cognitive psychology

Answer 40

• Structural models

- Process models