intro Flashcards
cognitive psychology
scientific study of mental functions such as perception, attention etc.
‘concerned with the internal processes involved in making sense of the environment and deciding what actions might be appropriate’ - eysencka nd keane 2010
1868 - Donders pioneering experiment
Early work
how long does it take to make a decision
- simple reaction time = press a button quickly when light goes off
- choice reaction time = press left button if left light goes off..
difference in reaction times indicates how long it took mto make a decision
1979 - Wundt’s Psychologe laboratory
Early work
adopted procedure called analytic introspection
- trained ppts would describe their sensations, feelings and thought processes in response to stimuli
- he believed our experiences are determined by combining basic elements of experience (= structuralism)
1885 - Ebbinghaus’ memory experiment
Early work
what is the time course of forgetting?
- developed quantitative method for measuring memory using repeated lists of nonsense syllables (e.g. DAX,LUH)
- how long it took to learn the list a second time.
- the amount of info remembered was quantified by the difference between initial learning and re learning times (savings)
1890 - William James’ principles of psychology
Early work
significant observations about mental processes e.g. on nature of attention, perception
1913 - Watson founds behaviourism
Abandoning study of mental processes
He criticised the method of analytic introspection
- variable results from person to person to difficult to verify
- in response he founded a new approach = behaviourism
- restrict psychology to observable behavioural data
- reject idea of going beyond those data to draw conclusions about unobservable mental processes
1938 - skinners operant conditioning
Abandoning study of mental processes
focuses on how behaviour is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers e.g. food and withdrawal of negative reinforcers e.g. electric shock
1948 - Tolmans cognitive map
not all researchers rejected the notion of mental processes
- tolman found that rats learned the spatial layout of mazes and proposed that rats developed a ‘cognitive map’ - a mental conception of mazes layout
the cognitive revolution
beginning in the 1950s a number of events occurred which signalled a shift away from behaviourism
Broadbent 1958 first flow diagram
sensory memory -> filter (attended messages) -> detector
-> memory
similar charactiersitcs to a computer process
Chomsky’s critique of ‘verbal behaviour’ by B.F. skinner
- in 1959 Skinner claimed children learning language through operant conditioning
- Chomsksy argued that language is a product of innate mental structures that are universal across cultures
- the shift from behaviourism to cognitive psychology occurred over a period of time
Neisser 1967 - first cognitive psychology book
term ‘cognitive psychology’ first used
- brought together research on perception, attention, problem solving etc.
- emphasised the info processing approach to studying the mind which still dominates today
information processing approach
- views the mind as analogous to a computer
- info from the environment is processed by a series of processing systems e.g. perception attention
how do we study cognition?
behavioural experiments
neuroscientific approaches
computational modelling
- mental processes are not directly observable but can be inferred via observable events
behavioural experiments
- employ scientific method
- subjective report
- objective performance
popular measure include: - reaction times
- eye movements
- facial expressions
