Cognitive Semester 1 Week 1: Overview and History Flashcards
What does it mean that cognition is a black box?
It can’t be measured directly. It is tested through stimulus and response.
What is introspection?
The examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes - used by Wundt
What are some introspective methods?
Anecdotes, stream of consciousness, self tests
An example of an introspective approach
William James
- introspected about the duration of a present moment based on self-examination of mental processes
- decided it was a few hundred milliseconds
Problems with introspectionism
- might be inaccurate, vulnerable to biases
- some mental processes might not be amenable to introspection
What is behaviourism?
- Focus on observable behaviours
- extreme position = There are no internal processes. The mind can be explained in terms of stimulus/response associations alone
Methods of behaviourism
- scientific experimental paradigms
- careful control of stimuli and measurement of behaviour
Example of behaviourism
Skinner’s box
What led to the cognitive revolution/paradigm shift?
Chomsky found that children could form sentences they’d never heard before, suggesting that language could be learned without reinforcement.
What concepts emerged during the cognitive revolution?
- Information processing: Framework that compares the mind to a computer
- Decomposition: Breakdown of complex cognitive processes into simpler, more manageable components
- Representations: Mental models that stand in for real-world objects, events, or concepts
What methods emerged in the cognitive revolution?
- Rigorous empirical studies
- Abstract theories of mental processes
What is thinking?
The processing of mental representations.
- Mental representations = mental states about things in the world
- Processing = how the mind can encode, store and manipulate this information
What is a cognitive experiment like?
- Simplify context
Cause - Manipulate IV
Outcome - Measured DV - Test predictions from theoretical models of cognitive processes
- Can be formalised using mathematical model
What are the advantages of cognitive neuroscience?
- observe activity in the brain whilst doing a task
- objective
What are the disadvantages of cognitive neuroscience?
- crude methods, only get a blurred and low quality view
- often provides limited conceptual insight
What is embodied cognition?
Idea: our body shapes how we sense and act on the world, cognition needs to be understood in this context
Methods: focus on action and behaviourally relevant tasks
What is the scientific method?
A method of gaining knowledge in a field that relies on observations of phenomena and which allows for tests of hypotheses about those phenomena.
What is empiricism?
The principle that the key to understanding new things is through systematic observation.
What is determinism?
The principle that behaviors have underlying causes and that understanding involves identification of what these causes are and how they are related to the behavior of interest .
What is testability?
The principle that theories must be stated in ways that allow them to be evaluated through observation.
What is parsimony?
The principle of preferring simple explanations over more complex ones.
