Introduction Flashcards
Cognition - Definition
The mental processes and activities used in perceiving, remembering, thinking and understanding
The act of using these processes
- Often in terms of information processing
How can mental process happen?
Both active, deliberate processes and with little awareness (automatic)
- The processes can be quick but also very complex
What is cognitive psychologist interested in?
Studying in everyday ordinary mental processes
Ecological Validity
Generalization to real world situations where people think and act
- Critique against cognitive psychology
- Simple tasks is only the beginning to understand
Reductionism Approach
- Starting simple and then going more complex
“Keep it simple stupid”
Whats the history of cognitive psychology?
- Establishment of psychology laboratories
- Behaviourism
- Cognitive revolution
- Interdisciplinary cognitive sciences
- Rise of the cognitive neurosciences
(6. Computer AI)
Establishment of Psychology Laboratories
- Wundt 1879
- Titchener
- Ebbinghaus
- James
Introperspective
Participant need to describe a subjective experience in a structural way
Who was Wundt?
- He started studying psychology of the mind
- Had a late focus on language
Conscious processes and immediate experience
Who was Titchener
- Focused on getting knowledge through introspection
Training, right or wrong attitude - Very unscientific in the end
Who was Ebbinghaus?
- First on to study learning and forgetting
Using nonsense words, no preexisting association - Influenced by verbal learning
Who was James?
- Focused much on functions
- Proposed that memory consists of 2 parts
1. Immediate memory - awareness
2. Larger hidden memory
What was the critique against introspection?
Often insufficient to track down the essence of conscious experiences
Research on mental processes, only observed was “allowed”
Behaviourism
- Dominant for awhile
Focus on methods still apply today - Focus on what could only be observed
Rewards and punishment
Challenges towards behaviourism
- Skinner claimed that theories wasnt necessary
- Stimulus - response analysis wasnt enough to answer higher order cognition (During WW2)
- Language isnt simply reinforced behaviour (Chomsky)
- Difficulties explaining non-learned behaviours (like instinctive drifts)
Lead to “cognitive revolution”
What are the assumptions in cognitive psychology?
- Mentalistic concepts to explain behavioural data
Mental processes exists - Mental processes can be studied scientifically
- We are active information processors
Actively process stimuli around us and in us
Where does “cognition seen as information processing” come from?
- The development of technology
- A great analogy
Processes in computers can happen even when its not directly observable - It was a good starting point for cognitive psychology
The modal model - Atkinson & Shiffrin
- Basic model of information procession
Different kind of memory storages - Based on 3 types of memories
Sensory memory
Short term memory - Have to keep the information active
Long term memory - Keeping the information over a longer duration of time - It shows how the information flow from one point to another
Several steps to it - Involves encoding
What are the assumptions to the modal model?
- Sequential stages of processing
- Independent and overlapping
Encoding
The act of taking in info and converting it to a usable mental form
Process model
Hypothesis about the specific mental processes that take place when a task is performed
What are the criticism against the modal model?
- Evidence of mental processes works in parallel
- Context matters
Lexal ambiguity
Priming effect - People are not serial processors
Revised version of the modal model
- A triangle of boxes
- Bidirectional arrows
Context affects and different memory types affects other types - Not as narrow view of memory
Verbal protocol
Verbalize one’s thoughts while solving a problem or reading a text
- Used in research of problem solving and memory(for example)
What does it mean that cognitive science is interdisciplinary?
- More than one area of science trying to contribute to the understanding of cognition
