Cognitivism Flashcards
What are the key assumptions of the cognitive approach?
Approached is used to study the way humans process information.
Came about around 1950s.
Laboratory experiments were used to test human information processing.
Formed from psychologists that were dissatisfied with behaviourism.
Compares humans to computers.
Supports a scientific approach to enquiry and testing.
They favour the use of models (representations) of a particular behaviour.
What do figure-ground ambiguities show?
Show that we use our brains as well as our eyes to see.
We automatically sort things we see into figure (main image) and ground (background).
What is bottom-up processing?
Processing of information as it ‘comes in’.
Using prior knowledge and experience to help you make sense of what you can see.
Eyes detect features, brain pieces them together.
What is top-down processing?
When you know what you are looking for.
Previous knowledge and experience guide the senses for a specific stimulus.
Why does the brain use bottom-up and top-down processing?
In order to process stimuli that is relevant from a very complex world, the brain has to decide what to attended to and what may be useful in understanding our experiences and contexts.
Who founded the first cognitive movement? When? What did this signal?
Ulric Neisser founded the first cognitive psychology movement in 1959.
This signalled the start of a major force in Psychology.
What do cognitive psychologists believe?
Believe that we have to refer to thought processes in order to explain human behaviour.
How are cognitive and behavioural psychologists different? How are they the same?
Previously Behaviourists had ignored the importance of the ‘black box’, but now this is deemed a main key focus.
However, cognitivism does believe that thought processes must be studied scientifically.
(Cognitive Psychologists respect the behaviourist approach but believe it only to be valid if thought processes that occur in between are acknowledged and valued)
Cognitivism believes that the mind works like a computer. Explain.
Cognitivism believes that the mind works like a computer in that it inputs data from our senses and then processes and produces an output e.g. language or behavioural responses.
What was the aim of Simons and Chabris’ study from 1999?
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
Designed to see how much individuals could be unaware of in their visual field.
It seems that focused attention on a particular task could mean that information could be missed.
This experiment tested what is missed in dynamic scenes.
How many PPs took part?
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
228.
Outline the procedure.
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
Observers watched films.
The films showed two teams of 3 basketball players - one wearing white T-shirts and the other wearing black.
An orange basketball was passed between the players and observers were asked to keep a tally of the number of passes.
In one condition, the easy one, they were asked to keep a mental score of the number of passes.
In the difficult condition they were asked to tally the number of throws and the number of bounces from player to player.
There were two types of video, transparent (where the film of the players was altered to be partly see-through) and opaque, where no such effect was used.
Half the observers watched films where a woman holding an umbrella walked in amongst the basketball players whilst they were playing.
The other half watched a man in a black gorilla suit walking amongst the players.
Observers were then asked to immediately write their values on paper and were also asked several questions, one of which was, ‘while you were doing the counting, did you notice anything unusual on the video?’.
Some results were discounted if the counting was inaccurate or the observer was aware of what the experimenters were testing.
192 results were included in the final analysis.
What was found?
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
Only 54% of the observers noticed the gorilla or the umbrella-carrying woman (unexpected event).
More observers noticed the unexpected event in the opaque condition.
When the task was harder (transparent) slightly less of the observers noticed the unexpected event.
What was concluded?
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
We miss much of what we see in our visual field due to inattention.
Evaluate the study.
(Simons and Chabris, 1999)
The results are robust as the experiment has been modified and rerun on many occasions and similar results have been found.
The experiment could be criticised for its lack of mundane realism.
The task is not an everyday scenario and the setting means it lacks ecological validity.
