Intro to Cog Psych Flashcards
What is cognition?
-All aspects of knowing: sensation, learning, remembering, perception, thinking, reason
- cog psyc = study of mental life, representations + processes, functional accounts of intellectual processes
American Behaviourist Tradition - James
-William James
- first intro of cog psych
- understanding beh
-all info we have is through learning
- Newbern’s mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate)
- foundations of Empirical tradition
- Alternative view = genetic predisposition
Empirical Tradition- Associationism
. To learn things we need to make associations
- Laws on association:
-Learning on basic of contiguity = co-occurance of things in space + time
- Learning on basic of frequency -> How often they occur
- Assocs allow us to predict + control beh
American Behaviourist Tradition - Thorndike - Law of effect
- mechanical explanation for adaptability of beh
- Law of effect= basic principle of learning
- Animals learn responses to things when rewarded create associations
- drop responses when punished
- classical VS operant conditioning
- operant = animal has to du something to receive reward
- strengthening + weakening of stimulus -response (S-R) bonds
J. B. Watson
- All aspects of mental functioning yield to beh analysis
- psychology should limit itself to discussions of Stimuli, responses + data
-ensures only deal with observable measurable events
Law overview
-Laws of association-> contiguity, frequency
-Laws Of learning -> law of effect, exercise + Rote learning
B.F. skinner
- explanations of beh are env history descriptions
- operant conditioning shaping beh
-wait for response then reinforce if appropriate
-we are a deterministic system
-Anything can be tested if its testable hypothesis - Alternative View = constructivism- construct own understanding through experiences
Edward Tolman
- explaining animal beh in terms of mental states + processes
- focus on goal-directed beh
-emphasis achievements rather than movements
-learning doesn’t depend on S-R bonds - reinforcement isn’t necessary - Latent learning
Tolman - Mazes + Latent Learning
- no reinforcement early in training but they still know the spatial layout of maze
- just by wandering round acquired structure of maze + formed cog maps
- Latent Learning
Tolman + Cog Maps
- classic study
- Train rat to turn Left in T-maze for food
- when presented with shortcut, rat uses it
- when path 1+2 are blocked (shortest), use path 3
- because they draw an inference on basis of knowledge of maze spatial layout
- consulted cog map of Maze during training
- Testable predictions can be made even though cog maps aren’t directly observable (against beh view)
Behaviourism VS cog Psychology
- B eh = causes -> outcomes
- cog= Bio+ env condition -> psych States + traits -> Beh manifestation
Natural lang
- lang existing in world naturally
- syntax-> structure of words to make sentences
- semantic -> meaning
Chomsky + lang
- poverty of stimuli argument
- when exposed to lang its perfect, make errors
- Lang is finite
- Not exposed to enough lang + its not perfect enough to understand world
Chomsky - simple phrase structure grammar
- set of phrase structure rules
-generative grammar = with the rules can generate any sentence
-Abstract rules part Of genetic code
Emergence of cog psych
- Miller -> STM capacity of magic 7 +/- 2
- Newell + Simon-> computers general problem solver helps understand humans
- Broadbent -> Info processing theory - explain cog processes through sub-processes
- Neisser- first textbook on cog psych: when we look at words goes into iconic memory > visual + name code
- stage models of cog-> sub-systems -breakdown = lesions to arrows + boxes
Thorndike + Miller- Law of exercise- association
- more a given situation is followed by a particular response the stronger the association bond
Occam’s Razor
- aspire to generate simple over complex theories
- However thinking of human beh as simple is misleading
- mind is an abstract entity
function + functional role
- To attain full understanding need:
1) Description of structure of components
2) specification of how they are interconnected
3) Description of components functional role - flow charts/arrow-boxes diagram all functional role viewed without commitment to a physical component
Functionalism
- 2 different brain states May underlie same mental states as long as they serve same functional role
- defined in terms of causation + consequences
Information Theory intro
- Shannon + Weaver
- mathematical account of operations of communication systems
- quantify communication systems efficacy in terms of: channel capacity, transmission rate, redundancy of encoding + noise
-insight into now to define abstract entity in measurable way
Redundancy
- extent a message can be predicted from other parts of the message
- High redundancy = high predictability
-Shannon + Weaver quantified frequency of co-occurance - If y invariably follows x, hearing x implies hearing y next, y is fully redundant with respect to x
Info Theory + Human processing
- Humans consist of many sensory systems operating as receivers of external input
- encode input via sensory encoding
-encoded info passed on by channels to More central systems - central systems allow appropriate responses
- concerned with internal events between S+ r
