Evolution of Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
cognition
mental processes involved in perception, attention, reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, language, emotions
cognitive psychology
study of mental processes involved in perception, attention, reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, language, emotions
reaction time
how long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus
simple reaction time
time it takes to respond to a single stimulus
choice reaction time
time it takes to respond to one of two or more stimuli
structuralism
idea that our experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience (sensations)
analytic introspection
trained participants describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
savings curve
plot of savings versus time after initial learning
cortical equipotentiality
idea that the brain operates as an indivisible whole
william james
1890
first psychology textbook
observations based on his own mind
hermann ebbinghaus
1885
quantitative measurement of mental processes
memorising random letters
nature of forgetting
wilhelm wundt
1879
founded first lab of scientific psychology
structuralism - analytic introspection
franciscus donders
1868
1st scientific cognitive experiment
interested in how long it takes to make a decision - simple and choice reaction time
what is cognitive neuroscience, and why is it necessary?
- Study of the neural (physiological) basis of cognition
- Shows the relationship between sensation and the different nerve impulses - different qualities of nerve impulses, and activating different areas in the brain
How did behaviorism affect research on the mind?
There was a move to understanding that mental responses cannot be measured but must be inferred from behaviour
What method did William James use to study the mind?
- Observations of the operation of his own mind
- First psychology textbook 1890
What do Donders’s and Ebbinghaus’s experiments have in common?
both measured behaviour to determine a property of the mind
Why could we say that Donders and Ebbinghaus were cognitive psychologists, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology?
- because they were both interested in the scientific study of mental processes of the mind
- their experiments indicate that mental responses cannot be directly measured but must be inferred from behaviour
What are two ways of defining the mind?
- Where it creates a representation of the world so we can achieve our goals
- system that processes mental functions including perception, attention, reasoning, problem solving, language, emotion, decision making
Distributed representation
looking at something activates many areas of the brain - looking, remembering, thinking, emotion, sound, smell etc
brain imaging 1977
PET and fMRI
Double dissociation
damage to one area of brain causes function A to be absent/function B present → damage to another area causes function B to be absent/function A present
Prosopagnosia
inability to recognise faces
what is Wernicke’s area (Carl Wernicke 1879)
damage to temporal lobe - produce fluent and grammatically correct speech but incoherent
what is Broca’s area (Paul Broca 1861)
in frontal lobe shown to be responsible for language production
Localization of function
Specific areas of the brain serve different functions
Early evidence of localization came from the study of behaviour of people with brain damage → Broca’s area
Contemporary cognitive psychology involves
- sophisticated flow diagrams of the mind
- consideration of higher mental processes
- large amount of physiological processes
- increasing amount of research on cognition in real-world situations
Neuropsychology
study of people with brain damage
Electrophysiology
measuring electrical responses of the nervous system
Episodic memory
for events in your life
Semantic memory
for facts
Procedural memory
for physical actions
Model of memory
1968
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin
Sensory memory > short term > long term
Ulrich Neisser
1967
First cognitive psychology textbook
- highlights the central topics in modern cognitive psychology (gaps in his book)
- study of higher mental processes
- study of physiology of mental processes
Ulrich Neisser
1967
First cognitive psychology textbook
- highlights the central topics in modern cognitive psychology (gaps in his book)
- study of higher mental processes
- study of physiology of mental processes
