Cognition

Question 1

define cognition

Answer 1

Ability to process and understand, store and retrieve information, make decisions and produce appropriate responses

Question 1

What did William James believe about psychology

Answer 1

• empiricism
• tabula rasa
• learning theories

Question 2

Describe the two laws of associationism

Answer 2

• law of contiguity: co-occurence of things in space and time
• law of frequency: how often things occur together

Question 3

what do associations allow us to do

Answer 3

predict and control behaviour

Question 4

What are the two dimensions of behaviourism

Answer 4

• physical observations: create laws of behaviour and laws of learning
• the mind: too abstract so cannot be studied directly (some denied the existence of the mind all together)

Question 5

What two laws did Thorndike come up with

Answer 5

• Law of effect: basic behaviourist principle of learning
• animals learn responses to things which are rewarded
• animals drop responses to things that are punishing
• Law of exercise: the more often a given situation is followed by a particular response the stronger will be the associated bond between them (such as script learning)

Question 6

What did Watson believe about psychology

Answer 6

• radical behaviourism
• psychology should be the study of correlations between stimuli and responses

Question 7

What did Skinner believe about psychology

Answer 7

all explanations of behaviour are descriptions of environmental histories
- operant conditioning shapes behaviour

Question 8

How did Tolman revolutionise psychology in terms of behaviourism

Answer 8

the emergence of animal cognition - explaining animal behaviour in terms of mental states and processes
- goal directed behaviour

Question 9

What does latent learning refer to

Answer 9

exposure is enough to learn we don’t need reinforcement - relates to the maze experiments of rats where with each day the number of errors they made lowered

Question 10

what is the concept of experimental psychology?

Answer 10

independent variables -> intervening variables -> dependent variables

Question 11

what is the concept of behaviourism

Answer 11

causes -> outcomes

Question 12

cognitive psychology

Answer 12

biological and environmental conditions -> psychological states and traits -> behavioural manifestations

Question 13

what are some arguments against language learning?

Answer 13

• grammar is a system of rules for producing sentences
• assumption of a language acquisition device
• predisposed to acquire any natural language when we are born - not through learning or teaching

Question 14

describe the stage models of cognition

Answer 14

these models assume that human cognition is based on modular sub systems
- breakdown in intellectual abilities has been interpreted as lesions to arrows and damage to boxes in arrows and boxes flow diagrams