History, Methods, & Paradigms Flashcards
Cognitive Psychology
How sensory input is acquired, transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used
Mental life
Attention, perception, pattern recognition, memory
Empiricism
Locke, Hume, Stuart Mill
Knowledge comes from an individual’s own experiences/learning
Mental association
Nativism
Plato, Descartes, Kant
Emphasizes role of that which is innate
Certain functions of the minds are attributed to innate structures and are present in rudimentary forms at birth (e.g. short term memory)
Mental Association
Component of Empiricism
Two distinct ideas or experiences can be joined in the mind if they are presented at the same time
Structuralism
Baldwin & Wundt
Establish science of mind to explain conscious experience (elements of mind)
Every conscious experience could be broken down into 4 elements: mode (auditory, visual), quality (colour, shape, texture), intensity, duration
Method: introspection
Want to study mental phenomena in the lab
Functionalism
William James
Wanted to know why the mind worked in certain ways
Method: introspection in natural settings
Draw from Darwinian concepts of evolution
Introspection
Not internal perception but experimental self observation
Must be done in laboratory under controlled conditions
Report on the basic elements of consciousness
Present highly trained observers with stimuli and ask them to describe their experience
Behaviourism
Watson & Skinner & Tolman
Prediction and control of behaviour
Inspired by problems with functionalism
Classical & instrumental conditioning
Emphasis on learning (relation between input and output)
Edward Tolman & Behaviourism
Even rats have goals and expectations
Rats learning mazes have the goal of food and have internal representation of maze
Gestalt Psychology
Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler
Focus on the holistic aspects of conscious experience (wholes not parts)
How do people impose structure and order on their experiences
Psychological phenomena can not be reduced to the simple elements but have to studied in their entirety
Mainly study perception and problem solving
Rejected structuralism, functionalism, and behaviourism
Method: introspection
Individual Differences
Galton
Intelligence, morals, and personality were innate (nativism)
Measured individual differences in cognitive faculties
Compared individual differences of mental images
Can intellectual talents be inherited (drew on Darwin’s evolution)
Cognitive Revolution
Human factors engineering presented new problems
Limited capacity processors
Behaviourism failed to adequately explain language
Localization of function in the brain forced discussion of mind
Development of computers and artificial intelligence gave a dominant metaphor
Human Factors Engineering (cognitive revolution)
During war time: equipment design required knowledge of human cognition
Focus: what is the optimal way to design a machine for human use
Person-machine system: machinery operated by a person must be designed to interact with the operators’ physical, cognitive, and motivational capacities
E.g. with planes that had handles for brakes and landing gear too close together
Limited Capacity Processors (cognitive revolution)
Humans share similarities with other inanimate communication channels
Can only do so many things at once
Behaviourism’s Failure to Explain Language (cognitive revolution)
Skinner (1957): children learn language by imitation and reinforcement (behaviourism)
Chomsky (linguistics, 1959): questioned operant conditioning explanation of language
Children say sentences they never heard before
Children use incorrect grammar even though it is not reinforced
Because parents respond to content and not form of language utterances in children
Generative grammar
Localization of Function (cognitive revolution)
Localization of function (Descartes): neural structures supporting a function reside in a certain brain area
Donald Hebb: some functions (ex. perception) are based on cell assemblies
Computers & AI as a Metaphor (cognitive revolution)
Computer metaphor: comparison of people’s cognitive activities to a computer
Both have to acquire information, store info using different structures and processes, recode info, manipulate info, etc.
Generative Grammar
Underlying implicit system of rules
Not all rules of language are consciously accessible to speakers, rules operate implicitly
Hubel & Wiesel (localization of function)
Demonstrated importance of early experience on development of nervous system
Discovered specific cells in the visual cortex of cats specialized to respond to specific kinds of stimuli (orientation of lines, particular shapes)
Kittens experimentally restricted to environment with only horizontal lines would fail to develop ability to perceive vertical lines
Cognitive Neuropsychology
Study cognitive deficits in certain brain damaged individuals
Patient DF
Could make visually guided motor movements but impaired in spatial vision
Vision for action and vision for perception are different
Patient PH
Normal language abilities and short and long term memory
But couldn’t recognize faces (prosopagnosic)
Naturalistic Observation
Observer watching people in everyday contexts
Remain unobtrusive to ensure people being observed are comfortable and not performing
Ecological Validity
How well the things studied apply in the real world
High in naturalistic observation
Experimental Control
Ability to isolate the causes of different behaviours
Low in naturalistic observation
Experiment
Experimenter manipulates independent variable(s) and observes how recorded measures (dependent) change
Between Subjects Design
Different experimental participants assigned to different experimental conditions and researcher looks at differences between groups
Within Subjects Design
Same participants exposed to more than one condition
Quasi Experiment
Appear to be experiments but have one or more factors as independent variables (e.g. independent variables that cannot be randomly assigned like age)
Paradigm
Body of knowledge structured according to what its proponents consider important
Include assumptions made by investigators
Specify what kinds of experimental methods and measures are appropriate
Serial Processing
Cognition assumed to occur in discrete stages
Information Processing
Serial processing
Analogy between human cognition and computerized processing of info
Cognition can be thought of as information passing through a system, flow of information through the organism
Info stored symbolically
Rooted in structuralism
Connectionist Approach
Items (e.g. a letter, word, meaning) are represented by a pattern of activation
Most connectionist models assume cognition occurs in parallel (many at the same time)
No central processor to direct the flow of information
Draws from structuralism
Connectionism
Cognition as a network of connections among simple processing units
Sometimes called neural networks
Units are connected by weights that are modifiable by learning
Each unit has a level of activation at any moment, level of activation depends on input
Positively weighted connection causes one unit to excite and negative weighted connection does the opposite
Evolutionary Approach
Humans have specialized areas of competence due to evolution
Cognition is based on a biological system that has evolved over many generations
Mental processes are subject to natural selection
Ecological Approach
Jean Lave
Cognitive activities are shaped by culture, context, situation
Eye gaze, head position, body position, and situational context are important cues used to understand scenes and intentional states of others
Influenced by gestalt and functionalist schools
