Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - 1.3

Question 1

When was the beginning of the cognitive revolution?

Answer 1

Decade of the 1950s

Question 2

What was the cognitive revolution?

Answer 2

• A shift in psychology, beginning in the 1950s, from the behaviourist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behaviour in terms of the mind.
• One of the outcomes of the cognitive revolution was the introduction of the information-processing approach to studying the mind.

Question 3

Computer timeline

Answer 3

Late 1940s

Huge machine took buildings

1945 IBM introduced computer to the public

Computers large but useful in lab to analyse data and suggest new way of thinking about the mind

Question 4

Flow Diagram for Computers

Answer 4

• In this diagram information is first recieved by an input processor then stored in memory unit before processed in arithmetic unit
• This creates the computer otuput
• Using this stage, psychologists proposed as their inspiration and proposed the information - informationprocessing approach to study the mind

Question 5

What is the information processing approach?

Answer 5

The approach to psychology, developed beginning in the 1950s, in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages involved in cognition

Question 6

Applying the information -processing approach led experiment and psychologists new questions and frame their answer in many ways

What was one of the first exp inspired by info processing approach

Answer 6

Abou the mind involved studying how well people are able to focus their attention on some information when other information is being presented at the same time,

Question 7

What was Cherry’s experiment influenced by?

Answer 7

Jame’s observation of attention that when we decide to attend one thing we withdraw attention from other things

Question 8

Procedure of Cherry 1953

Answer 8

Presented participants with two auditory messages, one to the left ear and one to the right ear

Told them to focus their attention on one of the message (attended message) and ignore the other one (the unattended message)

Question 9

Example of Cherry 1953 procedure

Answer 9

• Participant might be told to attend the left ear message that began “As Susan drove down the road in her new car …” while simultaneously receiving, but not attending to, the right-ear message “Cognitive psychology, which is the study of mental processes …”

Question 10

What is results of Cherry’s experiment?

dichotic listening

Answer 10

when people focused on the attended message, they could hear the sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message.

Question 11

What did Donald Broadbent propose after Cherry’s experiment (dichotic listening)?

(1958)

Answer 11

• Figure 1.,10b
• Propose first flow diagram of mind
• Diagram represents what supposedly happens in mind when selectively directing attention to one stimulus in environment
• This is applied to the dichotic listening experiment
• Input would be the sounds of both the attended and unattended message
• Fitler lets through attended message and fitlers out unattended message
• Dector record information that gets through filter

Question 12

What is Cherry’s experiment called and what does it mean?

Answer 12

dichotic listening - The procedure of presenting on message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear

Question 13

John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence

How did he define this as?

Answer 13

• Defined as “making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving”
• The ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence.
• (McCarthy, Minsky, & Shannon, 1955)

Question 14

What does logic theorist mean?

Answer 14

Computer program devised by Alan Newell and Herbert Simon that was able to solve logic problems

Question 15

After the aim of artifical intellgience in mind what programme did Newell and Smon create in their first conference in 1956?

Answer 15

Programme called logic theorist

Was considered a real thinking machine as it did more than process numbers

Question 16

What did Geroge Miller disclose limitation to processing capacity of the human mind?

Answer 16

• Experiments shown that people can hold only about seven items simultaneous in their mind /immediate memory 7 ± 2
• Focused on perceputal judgements can present just a few bits
• Reasoned this to enable further processing, memory processes must actively recode the information that is carried in complex stimuli into smaller units
• (Memory is not passive store of sensory information),

Question 17

Cognitive revolution timeline

Answer 17

• Neisser released a texbook on Cognitive Psychology

Question 18

1.3d Looking ahead Neisser textbook mainly

Answer 18

• Neisser textbook on cognitive psychology emphaised information-processing approach to study the mind
• Since 1967 many textbooks , experiments and new techniques developed to explain different aspects of the human behaviour
• Cognitive psychology became dominate approach
• Compared to behaviourism cognitive psych accepts the existence of unobserved cognitive process that can be scientifically studied via creation + eval of mental methods

Question 19

Which approach to cognitive psychology analyzes the operation of the mind in terms of a sequence of stages?

Answer 19

Information processing

Taking inspiration from the flow diagrams of computer programming, some psychologists proposed the information-processing approach to studying the mind, an approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition.

Question 20

Patrick has developed a computer system that scans mammograms, looking for abnormalities that might be indicative of cancer in the same way that radiologists review the images. Patrick’s work is best described as being in the field of

Answer 20

artifical intellgience’

McCarthy defined the artificial intelligence approach as “making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving.”

Question 21

In his paper “The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two,” George Miller argued that there were limits to the

Answer 21

information processing capacity of humans

Miller presented the idea that there are limits to the human’s ability to process information – that the information processing of the human mind is limited to about seven items.

Question 22

What is dichotic listening?

Answer 22

Definition:The procedure of presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear

Question 23

What is artificial intelligence?

Answer 23

Definition:The ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence.