Chp 1 - Intro to Cognition

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

Collection of mental processes and activities used in perceiving, remembering, thinking and understanding, and the act of using those processes

Question 2

Cognitive psychology

Answer 2

The scientific study of
mental processes

Question 3

Empiricism (Aristotle)

Answer 3

A philosophical
position that holds that
observation and observation driven
data is the basis for all
scientific inquiry

Question 4

Who were the key figures for structuralism?

Answer 4

→ Key figures: Wilhelm Wundt & Edward Titchener

Question 5

Structuralism

Answer 5

examining the fundamental structures of the mind is the key to understanding the mind
→ Introspection

Question 6

Introspection (structuralism)

Answer 6

research participants are asked to carefully look inward and report on their inner sensations and experiences.

Question 7

Functionalism

Answer 7

Psychology’s aim should be to discern the functions of the mind

Question 8

Who were the key figures for functionalism?

Answer 8

→ Key figure: William James

Question 9

Who were the key figures for behaviourism?

Answer 9

→ Key figures: John Watson, B. F. Skinner

Question 10

Behaviorism

Answer 10

contends that observable behavior is the
only appropriate material for study, and that human
behavior is largely the result of learned associations
between stimuli and responses

Question 11

Who was responsible for the idea of purposive behaviourism?

Answer 11

Edward Tolman

Question 12

The Cognitive Revolution: Influences

Answer 12

→ Failure of behaviorism to account for complex
behaviors
→ Psychologist involvement in WWII
→ Technological advances (i.e., communications
engineering & computer science)

Question 13

Ecological Validity

Answer 13

When a research resembles the characteristics of situations and task demands of the real world so the results will generalize well to the real world (high EV)

Question 14

Reductionism

Answer 14

Scientific approach that a complex event or behavior is broken down into constituents, and the individual constituents are then studied individually

Question 15

Mental operations (4)

Answer 15

• Rehearsal
• Organization
• Storage
• Retrieval

Question 16

Paired associate learning task

Answer 16

• pairing of two items (usually words)—a stimulus and a response.
• E.g. words such as calendar (stimulus) and shoe (response) may be paired, and when the learner is prompted with the stimulus, he responds with the appropriate word (shoe).

Question 17

Response Time (RT)

Answer 17

• Informative, can be used to study the “speed of mental processes”
• “What accounts for the increase in RT?”

Question 18

Replication

Answer 18

• Finding is only scientifically useful and meaningful if can be replicated
• Issue of replication: increasing reliance on measures of effect size

Question 19

What graph to measure accuracy?

Answer 19

Serial position graph

Question 20

Modal model of memory: The standard model of memory consists of 3 primary components

Answer 20

• The sensory registers
• Short-term store
• Long-term store

Question 21

2 main processes in standard model of memory

Answer 21

• Control processes
• Encoding

Question 22

Standard model of memory (Control processes)

Answer 22

the part of the standard model of memory responsible for the active manipulation of information in STM

Question 23

Standard model of memory (encoding)

Answer 23

the act of taking in information and converting it to a usable mental form
i.e., encode auditory info into sensory memory, if the info is transferred to STM then it said to have been encoded to STM

Question 24

Embodiment

Answer 24

The idea that cognition is grounded in our actions and interactions with the world.

• What aspects of how people report memories to another person (like an experimenter) make signal detection theory’s classification of responses useful?
• How does this approach help us get at whether something is actually remembered or not, as opposed to a guess?

Question 25

The cocktail-party effect

Answer 25

refers to the ability to focus one’s attention a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli (i.e., noise)

Question 26

Operation Span Task Procedure

Answer 26

Each display contained a mathematical operation and an unrelated word, (e.g., IS (6+4)/2 5 ? DOG).

The subject’s task for each display was to say the equation aloud, answer “yes” or “no” as to whether the equation was true, and then say each word.

ended, the task was to write all of the words on a response sheet.

Question 27

Selective Listening Procedure

Answer 27

Each subject’s first name was inserted into the irrelevant message.

Subjects were instructed to listen to the message presented to the right ear and to repeat (shadow) each word as soon as it was presented, making as few errors as possible and to ignore the distractions coming to the left ear.

Question 28

what does the operation span task test for?

Answer 28

divided attention

Question 29

What does the dichotic listening task test for?

Answer 29

selective attention

Question 30

Computer Analogy

Answer 30

Channel capacity
- One wire can carry only a limited capacity, and loses info if capacity is exceeded
- Humans have a limit on how many things you can do/think at a time

Computer Analogy
- Human info process might be similar to flow of input to output, steps and operations