history and methods

Question 1

what is psychology?

Answer 1

the science of mental processes and behavior

Question 2

what is cognition?

Answer 2

mental functions pertaining to the action of process of knowing

perception, attention, memeory, knowledge representation, deceision making, language, and problem solving

Question 3

What is cognitive Psych?

Answer 3

the scientific study of how pwoplw perceive learn remeber think about and act on information

Question 4

What wasn’t cognitive psych?

Answer 4

study of emotions and social interactions but this is changing with the advent of “social cognition” and “affective neuroscience”

Question 5

Roots of philosophy

Plato came up with what?

Answer 5

Rationalism

reality lies in the abstract ideas of objects that exist in our minds

the only route to truth is reasoned contemplation

Question 6

Aristotle thought what?

Answer 6

Empiricism

reality lies only in the concereteworld of objects that our bodies sense

the only route to truth is meticulous observation

Question 7

What did descartes think?

Answer 7

Cogito ergo sum
(i think threrfore I am)

Dualism

Mine is immaterial Brain is physical

Question 8

What did Donders think?

Answer 8

Mental chronometry
Measuring how long a cognitive process takes

Reaction-time (RT) experiment
measures interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus

Question 9

What is a Simple RT task?

Answer 9

participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears

Question 10

What is a choice RT task?

Answer 10

participant pushes one button if light is on right side, another is light is on left side

Question 11

What is the Subtraction method?

Answer 11

Choice RT - Simple RT = Time to make a decision

Question 12

What is the assumption of serial stages?

Answer 12

processing stages occur one after another, not in parallel

Question 13

what is the assumption of pure insertion?

Answer 13

adding an additional stage does not change the length of the other stages

Question 14

Donders thoughts on mental responses

Answer 14

mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behavious

Question 15

What was ebbinghaus method?

Answer 15

savings curve method for studying forgetting

ex. DAX, LUH, QEH, ZIF

Question 16

What is the saving method?

Answer 16

saving = [initial reps- relearning reps] / initial reps

Question 17

Wundt established what?

Answer 17

first psychology lab at the university of leipzig Germany

Question 18

What was wundts approach??

Answer 18

structuralism

experience is determined by combidining elements of experience called sensations

Question 19

What was wundts method?

Answer 19

analytical introspection

participants trained to descride experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

Question 20

who had a large emphasis on introspection?

Answer 20

William james

Question 21

Who had a reaction against introspection?

Answer 21

john watson

had problems including the fact that it was extermely variable results from person to person

results difficult to verify

Question 22

What was john watsons explanation?

Answer 22

Behaviorism

eliminates the mind as a topic of study

instead, study directly observable behaviour

Question 23

BF skinner did what?

Answer 23

operant conditioning

shape behaviour by rewards or punishment

behaviour that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated

behaviour that is punished is less likely to be repeated

Question 24

What was skinners opinion?

Answer 24

Radical behaviorism

argued children learn language though operant conditioning

children imitate speech they hear

correct speech is rewarded

Question 25

What did chomsky do?

Answer 25

reviewed of verbal behaviour

argued childern do not learn language through imitation and reinforcement
language must be determined by inborn biological program

Question 26

Tolman did what?

Answer 26

trained rats to find food in a four armed maze

Question 27

What were tolman’s competing interpretations?

Answer 27

1) BEHAVIORISM predicts that the rats learned to “turn right and find food”
2) COGNITIVE MAP of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm

Question 28

What happened when the rats were placed in a different arm of the maze?

Answer 28

the rats navigated to the speciic arm where they had previously found food

supported Tolman’s interpretation

Question 29

What is Computability?

Answer 29

Anything that can be computed is computable by a simple “universal machine”

to an extent that what the mid does is compute, a computer program can duplicate it

Question 30

What is cognitivism?

Answer 30

mental functions can be explained by the use of experiments following the scientific method

congnition consists of internal metal states whose manipulation can be discribed in terms of algorithms