intro to cognitive psych/ cognition 1 Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
- investigates mental proceses
- the science of the mind
-how are mental proccesses organised and coordinated - focuses on thinking and knowledge
-mental representational (internal) - motor tasks
What is cognition?
-acquisition
-storage
-transformation and use of knowlegde
-occurs across species but we will consider human cognition
- thinking
- recognising
-interpreting the environment
-reacting to stimuli
What is used when we access our own memory?
creating a strong internal representation
-subject matter
-language used
-auditory input
-visual input
linking to stimuli we already know
in order to remember
-must store info
-access what is recalled
-convert to linguistic code
-
What proccesses are involved in accessing memory?
- acquire
-store
-transform and use knowledge from experience
What are practical applications of cognitive research?
- law= eyewitness testimony
-design of computer systems - instruction= classroom practice
clinical psychology - understanding brain disorders- schizophrenia, amnesia
study skills
clinical science- social psychology- economics
Who is Wilhelm Wundt?
- father of experimental psychology
- founded first formal lab for physiological research at leipzig- 1879
- established psych as a seperate science
- formed first journal for physiological realism in 1881
What is structuralism?
- developed by wundt
- defines pych as a science of immediate experience
- identifies structure of mind built from elements of consciousness such as ideas and sensations
- uses introspection as a method= limited in telling us experience- stimulus error- eating an apple describing object rather than experience itself
Who was William James?
-pioneering american psychologist and philosopher
-twice president of APA
- published ‘principles of psychology’ in 1890
- instisted on psych as a “functional” science = indvidual is an active being within an environment
- introduced ‘stream of consciousness’ concept
- james lange theory of emotion Emotions are feelings which come about as a result of physiological changes,
rather than being their cause.
-event –> arousal–>interpretation –> emotion
What is functionalism?
-inspired by Darwin’s theory
-inerested function of conscious activity rather than structure of consciousness
- emphasis on biological significance of beh
What are the 3 basic principles of functionalism?
- functional psych= not study of mental operations, not mental structures
-mental processes= not studied as isolated and independant events but as part of biological activity of the organism
-no meaningful distinction between mind and body- they are part of the same entity
Who is John B Watson?
- father of behaviourism
-‘psychology as the behaviourist views it’ = article
What is behaviourism?
- Subject matter of psychology is observable behaviour.
-Mental events cannot be directly observed therefore they should not be the subject of psychology.
-Most research is focused on the process of learning as it translates to observable behaviour. - First defined by John Watson. Notable proponents:
Thorndike, Skinner.
What is operant conditioning?
- B.F Skinner
- rewards and consequences
- reinforcement of behaviour
- encourage/ discourage beh
- association of beh and a consequence of beh
What is the cognition revolution?
- research against behaviourism- greater interdisciplinary comunication and research in 1950’s
- number of disciplines (ai, linguistics, neuroscience, education, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, computer science- allows testable inferences about human mental proceses)
What are scientific methods in psychology?
experimentation (predict/hypothesis/design/conduct/evaluate hypothesis/communicate results- involves experiments on healthy individuals under controlled lab conditions)
observation (structured/ coding systems/ unstructured)
case studies (often used in neuropsychology/ single+ double dissociation)
What are the steps in experimentation?
- Step 1: Identify the problem and formulate a testable
hypothesis - Predict the results that would confirm the hypothesis as well as
those that would disconfirm it. - Step 2: Design the experiment
- Step 3: Conduct the experiment
- Collect multiple observations rigorously and systematically
- Step 4: Evaluate the hypothesis by examining the data
- Step 5: Communicate the results
What are limitations in experimental psychology?
ecological validity, lab may differ from everyday life
What are observations?
- involves observing p’s in their natural habitats
- used when experiments are impossible or inppropriate for ethical reasons
- researcher observes key factors rather than manipulating them directly
it can be
overt = aware they are being observed
covert= unwaware they are being observed
highly controlled#
ecological validity
natural habitat
What is structured observation?
*Researchers design a type of coding scheme to record the participants’ behaviour.
*Structured observations provide quantitative data. Coding schemes are ways of categorising
behaviour in terms of how often a type of behaviour appears.
*Advantage: Simple to carry out and provide quantitative data which can be analysed statistically.
*Weakness: It gives a very restricted view of what is actually happening. The researcher may miss
important behaviour.
e.g. coding scheme
What is unstructured observation?
- Researchers record all of the
behaviour they can see (usually
using recording equipment such as
a video camera). - Difficult to analyse but does
provide rich qualitative data. - Tendency to record the most eye-
catching or noticeable behaviours
which might not be the most
relevant or important
What are case studies?
- often used in cognitive neuropsychology
- aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psycholgical procceses
-studies patterns of cognitive performance shown by brain- damaged patients - tries to build a theory about normal cogition from a study of abnormal cognition
- single or small group
- focus on dissociations as the building blocks of theories
What are the two types of dissociations?
single = test a patient on a set of tasks- f he/she performs poorly on one, but normally on another task, then one can make inferences about differing underlying processing modules
double = test two patients on two sets of tasks- f one patient is impaired at one task but normal on the other, while the other
patient is normal on the first task and impaired on the other that is even stronger evidence about differing underlying processing modules
What is cognitive neuroscience?
- study of neural substrates of mental proccesses
-Electrical brain activity recordings on surface of scalp
-Uses brain-imaging techniques to study aspects of brain
functioning and structures relevant to human cognition
-Tries to find out where and when cognitive processes occur
-Multidisciplinary academic field: relies upon theories
in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neuropsychology, and computational modelling. - Some of the techniques for study of brain functioning
- Event-related potentials (ERPs)
– Recordings of electrical brain activity on the surface of the scalp - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; fMRI)
– fMRI can detect the functionally induced changes in blood oxygenation
in the human brain
