Introduction to Cognitive Psychology (1)

Question 1

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

Definition: The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning and decision making. I

n short, cognitive psychology is concerned with the scientific study of the mind and mental processes

Question 2

In our everdaylife what can we use mind for?

Answer 2

1. Memory e.g recalling something
2. Problem solver e.g solving maths problem
3. Mind making decisions or considering possibilities
4. “He is of sound mind and body” or “When he talks about his encounter with aliens, it sounds like he is out of his mind.” (A health mind associated with normal functioning /non-functioning mind with abnormal functioning)
5. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Mind is valuable and something that should be used
6. “He has a brilliant mind.” (Used to describe people who are particularly intelligent or creative)

Question 3

Definition of mind

Answer 3

Definition:System that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking and reasoning.

Question 4

Definition of Cognition

Answer 4

The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning and decision making

Question 5

What is important to remeber about cognition?

Answer 5

Cognition does not only reflect our higher “thinking” functions and that many of the processes involved (basic + complex ones) operate outside conscious control

Question 6

What does the first definition reflect?

Answer 6

Cognition

Question 7

What is cognition?

Answer 7

The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning and decision making.

Question 8

What happened to early 1800s to the ideas about memory and give two reasons why this was?

Answer 8

It was dominated by the belief that it is not possible to study the mind.

1. Not possible for the mind to study itself
2. Properties of mind simply cannot be measured.

Question 9

Who was Franciscus Donders?

Answer 9

• Dutch Physiologist in 1868 (11 years before the founding of the first lab of scientific psychology) did one of the experiments that would today be called as a cognitive psychology experiment.
• Decided to study the mind despite concerns in 1800s

Question 10

When was the cognitive psychology term coined?

Answer 10

Not until 1967

Question 11

What was Donders interested in?

Answer 11

How long it takes for a person to make a decision

Question 12

What is reaction time?

Answer 12

How long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus

This is usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus.

Examples of responses are pushing a button, saying a word, moving the eyes, and the appearance of a particular brain wave.

Question 13

What is simple reaction time?

Answer 13

Definition:Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response).

Question 14

What is choice reaction time?

Answer 14

Definition:Time to respond to one of two or more stimuli.

For example, in the Donders experiment, subjects had to make one response to one stimulus and a different response to another stimulus.

Question 15

What types of reaction time did Donders measure?

Answer 15

1. Simple reaction time
2. Choice reaction time

Question 16

Procedure

Answer 16

• First measured simple reaction time by asking his participants to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw the light go (pressing J key when the light turns on the screen)
• Secondly measured choice reaction time by using two lights and asking his participants to push the left button when they saw the left light go on and the right button when they saw the right light go on.
• (J key - left light , K key - right light)

Question 17

Diagram of the experiment

Answer 17

Question 18

What was Donder’s purpose of the experiment?

Answer 18

Deciding which key to press in the choice reaction time task

Question 19

Explain this figure below

Answer 19

• 1.3a Simple reaction time shows the presenting stimulus (light) causes the mental response (percieveing the light) which leads to a behavioural response (pushing the button)
• The reaction time (dashed line) is the time between the presentation of the stimulus and the behavioural response
• 1.3b is choice reaction time. The task an extra step (mental response) is required, asking participants to determine whether the left or right light was illuminated and then decide which button to push.

Question 20

Findings of Donders 1868 experiment

Answer 20

• Reaction time in the choice task was longer than in the simple task
• Donders reasoned this by saying that the difference in reaction time between these tasks would indicate how long it took participants to make the decision that led to pushing the correct button
• In this example, choice reaction time took around 100ms longer than the simple reaction time, therefore could conclude that decision-making process took around 100ms

Question 21

Contribution of Donder

Answer 21

• First cognitive psychologist experiments
• Significances important element of studying the mind
• Mental responses (percieving light and deciding what button to push) cannot be measured directly but inferred e.g dashed line in figure 1.3 indicate measured reaction time between stimulus and response.
• Inferring behaviour is a major element of cognitive psychology

Question 22

Who is Wundt?

Answer 22

• Father of psychology
• Founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany
• The approach of structuralism dominated psychology (1800s-1900s).

Question 23

When did Wundt conduct his analytic introspection experiment?

Answer 23

1879

Question 24

What is structuralisim?

Answer 24

• Overall experience is determined by combing basic elements of experience which were sensations
• An approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations.

Question 25

What is Wundt periodic table of mind

Answer 25

Include all basic sensations involved in creating complex experiences

Question 26

What is analytic introspection?

Answer 26

• a technique in which trained participants described their sensations, feelings and thought processes in response to stimuli.
• A procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

Question 27

Why did analytic introspection require extensive training?

Answer 27

• difficult to describe an experience in terms of basic, fundamental elements, such as the sensations of “redness,” “sweetness” and “crispiness” when viewing an apple.
• He trained psychology students to make observations that were biased by personal interpretation or previous experience

Question 28

Example of one of Wundt’s experiments

Answer 28

• One of the questions he then hoped to answer was whether his participants were able to hear each of the individual notes that made up the chord. As we will see when we consider perception later on

Question 29

Why was structuralism abandoned in early 1900s?

+

Wundt’s contributions

Answer 29

Not accurate approach

However Wundt made a contribution to study the mind under controlled conditions

Shift of psychology from rational to empricist approach

Question 30

What is empiricist approach?

Answer 30

Emphasising the pivotal role of experiments in gaining knowledge

Approach that emphasizes the role of experiments in gaining knowledge

Question 31

When did Ebbinghaus conduct his memory experiment?

Answer 31

1885

Question 32

What was Ebbinghaus interested in?

Answer 32

Determining the nature of memory and forgetting - specifically, how rapidly information is learned is lost over time

Question 33

Ebbinghaus procedure (1885)

Answer 33

• Quantiative method
• Used himself as a participant and repeated lists of 13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUF and ZIF to himself one at a time at a constant rate
• He determined how long it took him to learn the first time (i.e. recall correctly) then waited a specific amount of time (delay) then determined how long it took him to re-learn the list for the second time
• He took him time because forgetting had occurred during the delay.
• After few attempts he was able to achieve correct recall after fewer attempts (re-learned list quicker than first time )
• Thus, something from the original learning period must have been saved in memory to achieve this quicker learning.

Question 34

Procedure Ebbinghaus (1885)

Savings

Answer 34

• To determine how much information was retained after a particular delay
• Ebbinghaus created an measure for savings
• savings = (original time to learn the list )- (Time to re-learn the list after the delay)

Question 35

What does this figure show?

Answer 35

• Shows his experiment in different delay periods
• Longer the delay result in the smaller savings

Question 36

Explain this figure below:

Answer 36

• Reduction in savings provided a measure of forgetting with smaller savings meaning more forgetting
• The saving curve shows memory drops rapidly after two days after initial learning and levels off
• Memory is quantified and saving curve used to describe property of mind (able to retain information)

Question 37

How was Ebbinghaus and Donder’s method similar in terms of measurement?

Answer 37

Both measured behaviour to determine a property of the mind

Question 38

When did William Jame’s Principle of Psychology describe a significant observation about the mind in his famous textbook(Principle of Psychology)?

Answer 38

1890

First psychology book

Question 39

What was Jame’s observations based on?

Answer 39

Not on results of experiment but the observations of his own mind

Question 40

What did William Jame’s passage about attention summarise?

Answer 40

• This passage relates to how attention works today
• Accurate passage and his work included thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagination and reasoning

Question 41

What methods were quantitative?

Answer 41

Ebbinghaus

Question 42

Table of Early Pioneers in Cognitive Psychology

Answer 42

Question 43

Which statement about the mind focuses on its role in cognitive process, that is, what the mind does?

Answer 43

I haven’t made up my mind about what movie to go to (decision making)

Question 44

Restarurant reviewiers often describe their meals in terms of sensory experiences - glistening of the melted sugar on top of creme brulee, the crack as it is broken, smooth, warm custard

This is described as;

Answer 44

Structuralists

Focus on various sensation is consistent

Question 45

What did Ebbinghaus use to study the mind?

Answer 45

Nonsense syllables

Question 46

Contributions of psychologists

Answer 46

1. Donders: First cognitive experiment
2. Wundt: Established scientific psychology lab
3. Ebbinghaus : Quantitative measure of mental process
4. James: First psychology textbook

Question 47

What is savings?

Answer 47

Definition:Measure used by Ebbinghaus to determine the magnitude of memory left from initial learning. Higher savings indicate greater memory.

Question 48

What is savings curve?

Answer 48

Definition:Plot of savings versus time after original learning.