Cognitive Psychology - PSY 302 Flashcards
Discuss 4 significant events that gave credibility for the emergence of cognitive psychology
• WWII
With the development of new warfare technology duringWWII, the need for a greater understanding of human performance came to prominence. Problems such as how to best train soldiers to use new technology and how to deal with matters of attention while under duress became areas of need for military personnel. Behaviorisim, which was the main approach to psychology during the 1920’s to 1950’s offered little or no insights into these matters, so psychologists started to shift into integrating concepts from human performance and information theories, that was the beginning of cognitive research.
• Development of Computers
Cognitive Psychology is a product of American psychologists rejection of behaviorisim and adoption of a model that explains the activities of the mind using illustrations based on how a computer is built. Computers were built for information processing. It receives input in form of symbols and converts the symbols into special codes, stores the information in memory and can also retrieve information from memory when needed. This system was likened to how the human brain functions with provision of step by step flowchart of how stimulus is processed to produce responses. With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, the concept of mental functions patterned in the way that computers handled such things as memory storage and retrieval was further encouraged and this opened important doors for cognitivism
• Developments in the study of language
Noam Chomsky, an American Linguist and cognitive scientist, who criticized behaviorisim, initiated what is known as cognitive revolution. His studies provided the needed benchmark for understanding mental processes. Chomsky argued that our capacity for language acquisition is innate and that specialized cognitive structures are hard wired into the human brain. He wrote books and carried out research that provided great insight an the loopholes in behaviorisim and got people really interested in the cognitive revolution.
• Research into Pattern recorgnition, Object Perception and Sensory Memories Ulric Neisserput the term “cognitive psychology” into common use through his bookCognitive Psychology, published in 1967. This book served as the first objective statement of the strides made by cognitive psychologists in research and it gave the field its name. With this, the first journal of cognitive psychology began in 1970 and cognitive psychology has continued to progress henceforth.
Relevance of Cognitive Psychology
• Personal wellbeing: Cognitive Psychology is a helpful tool in the understanding of thought and thought processes. Thought process guides every action of every individual. A good training in thought process through the understanding of cognitive psychology helps individuals to develop optimistic behavioral variations.
• Business and Marketing: Cognitive Psychology helps in the development of apt advertisements that catch attention of people, defining proper placement and timing for such advertisement. Other areas in business and marketing where Cognitive Psychology is relevant include
- Consumer Preference and decision making
- Work environment and performance
• Medicine and Health: In medicine and health, Cognitive research and techniques helps in providing solutions for illment or problems that have to do with aging, memory loss, memory retrieval etc. Cognitive psychologists work with patients and families to improve Cognitive functioning of the patients.
• Learning and development: Cognitive Psychologists help children who are struggling or have difficulties in developing learning abilities or underdeveloped Cognitive skills. They introduce different study methods and strategies to help such children have a better lifestyle.
• Security and Law Enforcement: Cognitive Psychology has made great contributions to the improvement of eye witness memory.
Principles of Thinking
• Thinking should be based on facts and must have analysable/accessible data.
• Should be organised, systematic and processed to ensure effective judgment
• Thinking is learned. Practice, exchange of information and ideas facilitate good thinking
Challenges of Thinking
• Enculturation: We’re born into cultures, norms, values, morals, languages and behaviors that influence the way we think and the quality of our thinking. One must be able to recognize unfavorable patterns that are products of the culture one is born into and be able to challenge these patterns where necessary.
• Individual Emotional State: This indicates that human emotions can be strong influences on our thinking. One must be able to navigate Emotional tides and not allow it cloud out judgment and decisions.
Problem Solving Stages
•Preparation: This involves identifying the problem, analyzing possibilities, gathering information and conscious work towards a solution.
• Incubation: This is more like a rest period after suitable ideas have been figured out. The person involved may try to cool off by engaging in other activities while actively assimilating and processing the ideas in their mind. In this stage, things look clearer and may inspire even better insights, allowing the individual several options to choose from.
• Illumination: As ideas are narrowed down to fewer possibilities, the solution gets closer at hand, now it us possible for sudden realization of a perfect solution as things have become much more clearer. At this point, the individual may already see the next line of action.
• Verification: Once a solution is figured out, evaluation, development and refinement of the idea would gradually propel into action. The solution is tested, subjected to logical argument and if the idea is eventually unworkable, there is a return to incubation or even preparation stage.
The Process
• Trial and Error: This involves trying different possibilities towards finding the one that works suitably. It is based on behaviorist understanding of learning as a cause and effect relationship. If a Behavior is followed by negative Reinforcement, it is less likely to be repeated. If followed by positive Reinforcement, it most likely would be repeated and continued.
• Algorithms: Algorithms comprise of tests that are designed to isolate the problem by a step by step elimination of things that do not contribute to the problem. Although it is very likely for Algorithms to guarantee an answer to the problem, it is not the best option and not totally practicable for every problem because of its time consuming nature.
• Heuristic: Heuristics are problem-solving techniques that result in a quick and practical solution. They are usually mental shot-cuts that provide rule-of-thumb solutions to short-term goals or solving a problem on the spot. It involves the process of elimination, guesswork, trial and error and analysis based on past experiences.
There are three types of Heuristics:
- Judgement: This involves making decisions with little information about the situation based on suggestive but inconclusive evidence. One very common example is fast food advertisements. These advertisements are made in such a way that they are attractive and elicit positive emotional response towards them. People will naturally not critically analyze such advertisement to decide whether to buy or not. It’s easy to make such decisions based on what looks more attractive and appetizing. So Judgement Heuristics typically involves quick reactionary feelings towards a problem.
- Availability: Availability heuristics are judgments people make regarding the likelihood of an event based on information that comes to mind quickly. When people make decisions, they typically rely on prior knowledge of an event.
- Analogical: This happens when people evaluate the probability of an event based on its similarity to another event.
• Insight: This may be the quickest problem solving process as it only requires quick and sudden understanding of complex situation or recorgnition of a new idea, a typical “Aha moment “
Problem Solving Techniques
• Analogy: Using Analogy in problem solving means comparing and relating events to find similarities thereby creating an avenue to use solutions used in similar events to solve novel problems.
• Brainstorming: Brainstorming is a group problem-solving method that involves the spontaneous contribution of creative ideas and solutions. It involves active participation in sharing of ideas, discussing and analyzing issues to generate as many ideas as possible based on diverse knowledge.
• Divide and Conquer: A problem solving technique that requires breaking big problems into smaller sub-problems, solving the sub problems, and then combining the sub-problems to get a final solution.
• Lateral Thinking: Lateral thinkingforegoes the usual step-by-step approach to problem-solving and instead uses indirect and creative approaches to come up with solutions that aren’t immediately obvious.
• Abstraction: Abstraction isthe process of filtering out - ignoring - the characteristics of problems that are not needed in order to concentrate on those that are needed. It involves looking at a problem in general, rather than specific terms. To solve a problem with this technique, it is useful to give yourself some distance from that problem. The idea behind this technique is that when you are too close to something, you can get mired in the details and have difficulty focusing on the way those details fit together into a big picture.
Obstacles to Problem Solving
• Functional Fixedness: Functional fixedness is a type ofcognitive biasthat involves a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. In this case, people will refuse to see other possibilities and methods that could solve their problems, but stick to the same ideas they already have which may no longer be efficient.
• Mental Set: Has to do with the tendency to rely on patterns of thinking that worked in the past, making it difficult to redirect thinking patterns, hence hindering problem solving. Mental set nurtures rigidity and stifles creative thinking.
• Belief System: People are prone to cling to belief systems even when these systems no longer apply to reality or have been discredited. In these cases, novel solutions to problems may be viewed as foreign or mysterious. This kind of obstacle to problem solving can be seen especially when it applies to cultures or social customs that have thrived over time. It is usually difficult to break such belief systems.
• Confirmation Bias: This describes how people naturally favor information that confirms their previously existing beliefs. People would rather avoid information that may counter their notion of reality.
Irrelevant Information: This basically means distraction. Focusing on information that us not related or important within a problem may hinder the process of finding solutions.
Improving problem solving
• Work on identifying the problem
• Define the elements of the problem, break the problem into smaller pieces
• Examine possible solutions, introspect, analyse, connect dots, strategise and restrategise etc.
• Act on resolving the problem. Don’t just sit looking for the best option, go ahead and try things out, develop a plan and act on it.
• Takr notes of mistakes and learn lessons where necessary.
Role of Personality and Intelligence on Creativity
• Personality
Personality traits or dispositions either influence creative positively or negatively. Creative persons usually have characteristics like; strong motivation, endurance, intellectual curiosity, independence in thought and action, strong sense of self/ self confidence, openess, high sensitivity, highly committed etc. However, the bases on which these characteristics are measured are most times narrow, contradictory or superficial because it lacks definition, as creativity can vary from person to person.
• Intelligence/Cognition
Theories in Cognitive Psychology
• Information Processing Theory
This theory is based on the assumption that individuals process the information they recieve, rather than responding to it directly. Information is first filtered through analysis and evaluation before there is a response. Also, any response given is influenced by content of the brain, environmental factors and/or biological factors. Basically, the theory relates the human mind to the mechanism of a computer. However, this limits the capacity and complexity of the human mind/brain, therefore, other models of this theory began to emerge
- Lockhart (1986) developed the “Level of Processing” model to futher explain how information is expanded upon in various other ways including perception, attention, labelling and meaning which inherently influences information processing.
Criticisms
- The comparison of the human brain to a computer is off-putting
- The theory makes information processing look too simple, when infact, it is quite complex.
- Does not account for fundamental developmental changes of the brain.
• Piaget Cognitive Development Theory
The theory combines biological maturation and environmental experience to be the bases of how people understand the world around them. The theory believes that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and new discoveries, then adjust in stages as they grow.
- Schemas: The basic building block of intelligent behavior, a way of recognizing knowledge.. I’m other words, schemas are units of knowledge.
- Adaptation: A process that enables the transition from one stage to another.
- Cognitive Development
> sensory stage (birth to 2)
> Pre-operational stage (2-7)
> Concrete Operational Stage (7-11)
> Formal Operational Stage (11- adolescent and adulthood)
What is Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology is the study of the human mind as an information processor. It explores the operation of mental processes related to perceiving, attending, thinking, language, and memory, mainly through inferences from behavior. It looks at how we process information we receive and how the treatment of this information leads to our responses. Basically, it studys the link between stimulus input and response output.
