Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett
wrote remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology
memory degrades over time
details become unconsciously reconstructed to preserve overall meaning and coherence
information is encoded, stored, and recalled (individual attitude and perception plays a role)
Jean Piaget
studied children
interactions with the environment become more complex and adaptive as schemata Sensory motor reflexes in children) become more intelligent over time
rationalist over empiricist (he understands that he’s conceptual capacities that we have are innate)
stressed schemata, and how they determine what type of interactions with the environment are possible and determines a person’s reality
piaget’s stages
sensorimotor: birth to two years old, developing an association between sensations and actions
preoperational: 2 to 7 years; begins to understand how the world works and is organized; how to operate with language and behavior
concrete operational: 7 to 11 or 12: develop problem-solving skills related to tangible objects
formal operations = problem-solving skills with abstract ideas
to measure preoperational and concrete stages: conservation of volume and liquid
water in different height cups tests children’ ability to tell whether or not volume stays consistent across different configurations of those volumes
cybernetics - norbert wiener
the study of the structure and function of information processing systems. Of particular interest to Wiener was how mechanical or biological systems can achieve a goal or maintain a balance by automatically utilizing feedback from their activities.
information theory: interested in the various transformations that information undergoes from the time it is received until the time it is acted upon
information can be separated from the physical thing that runs it. A video game can be played on the TV, console, and phone, all using the same information, but on a different thing.
language and information
noam chomsky
human brain is genetically programmed to generate language; every child is born with brain structures which make it easier to learn rules of language - argues against Skinner’s reinforcement and association
george armitage miller: single most effect leader in the emergence of cognitive psychology (magical number 7 plus or minus 2)
Jerome Bruner:
a study of thinking - concept learning: active utilization and cognitive strategies
Physiological and Gestalt Influences
Karl Lashley (1948): predicted the formation of cognitive neuroscience and claimed that the explanation of behavior by learning is insufficient
Harry Harlow: the formation of learning sets - provided evidence that monkeys could employ mental strategies in their abilities to respond to different stimuli in operant and classical conditioning
soloman asch: work on impression formation and person perception (conformity experiment with differing lengths of lines)
Festinger: cogntiive dissonance
the cognitive revolution
1960: Miller, Eugene, and others wrote Plans and the Structures of Behavior
argues that cybernetic concepts (such as information feedback) explain human goal-directed behavior better than S-R concepts do, and at least as objectively
First textbook was Neisser’s “Cognitive Psychology” - Neisser defined the term cognition as “all the processes by which sensory input is transformed reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used”
in the 1970’s, cognitive psychology had its emphasis on organization, structure, relations, the active role of the subject, an the important part played by perception in learning and memory
donald Hebb (the APA president) said that behaviorism was fading and cognitive psychology was the new power - he wanted to take the research methods from behaviorism to study cognitive processes
artificial intelligence
alan turing - founded the field of artificial intelligence in an article titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in which he raised the question: can machine’s think? because the term think is so ambiguous, Turing proposed an objective way of answering his own question
A branch of computer science that investigates the extent to which machines can simulate or duplicate the intelligent behavior of living organisms
weak AI: the contention that machines can simulate human cognitive processes but not duplicating them
strong AI: the contention that machines can duplicate human cognitive processes
strong AI
human minds are computers (albeit biological) programs, and therefore, there is no reason they cannot be duplicated by other, nonbiological, computer program
materialists claim that humans are nothing but physical systems, there’s is no “ghost in the machine” so there is no reason to wonder whether a nonhuman machine can be conscious or not. neither nonhuman machines nor humans have an immaterial “mind”. minds simply cannot exist if they are nonphysical in nature; only physical things exist.
Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment
the point of this experiment is if I do no understand Chinese solely on the basis of running a computer program for understanding Chinese, then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis. Digital computers merely manipulate formal symbols according to rules in the program.
cognitive science
rise of cognitive science and information processing psychology
information processing psychology: the approach to studying cognition that allows in the traditionally of faculty psychology and methodological behaviors and typically employees the computer as a model for human information processing
Miller and Broadbent already used the compute metaphor, but it as agreed that that Newell, Shaw, and Simon importantly shaped information processing psych
connectionism
the most recent type of AI that utilizes AI systems of neurons called neural networks
derived fro Hebbs speculations concerning how cell assemblies and phase sequences develop
Hebb’s rule: if neurons are successively active, the strength of the connections among them increases. ironically, it was not original with Hebb.
seen in the works of Aristotle, David Hartley, William James, Pavlov, and Hull.
Hebb and connectionism
cognitive psychology
developed from dissatisfaction with behaviorist explanations of things
how do people acquire, store, and evaluate information?
includes these topics:
memory concept formation attention reasoning language judgement problem solving
prior to 1950…
behaviorism is dominant
gestaltists were keeping cognition alive
fredrick barlett developed the schema
jean piaget emphasized cognitive structures in development
