Lecture 1 Flashcards
cognitive psychology
- The study of intelligent behaviour
We have to observe behaviour to infer thought because much of cognition is unconscious and more complex than it seems
wilhelm wundt
- structuralism
○ The ‘first’ psychologist
Investigated the elements of immediate experience via analytic introspection
○ Developed some of the first ideas about
§ Experimentation
§ Attention
§ Memory
Language
titchener
Titchener brought Wundt’s ideas to America in the form of structuralism and controversy of Wundt’s techniques
analytic introspection
The process whereby people are trained to describe their inner feelings, thoughts, sensations and experiences in response to some kind of external stimuli
william james
- functionalism
○ Father of American psychology
○ Concerned with prediction and control through direct observation
Wrote “the principles of psychology”
scientific method key principles
§ Empiricism: have to be able experience it
§ Determinism: the assumption that whatever you’re observing has a cause
§ Testability: have to be able to test the theory
Parsimony: pick the simplest explanation
behaviourism
Behaviourism offered a way to study publicly observable functions of the mind
pavlovian conditioning - salivating dogs
○ Presenting an unconditioned stimulus (meat) = unconditioned response (salivating)
○ Pairing the unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus (bell) = unconditioned response (salivating)
Pairing the unconditioned stimulus with the neutral stimulus enough times = conditioned response (salivating) to just the neutral stimulus
john watson
○ Was concerned with behaviour as a series of stimuli and responses
○ Brain processes are unimportant (“mystery box”- you don’t need to understand what’s going on in the mind)
Animals can be a good substitute to study human behaviour
e.c tolman
○ Believed behaviour is not just a result of cause and effect
§ Disproved behaviourism by doing an experiment with rats in a maze
Learning can be latent (no reward or punishment)
b.f skinner
○ Developed operant conditioning
Behaviour modification frequently used today (shaping)
noam chomsky
○ Did not believe language could be simply a result of stimulus and response
His poverty of stimulus argument is impossible for behaviourists to explain
WW2 for computers and cognitivism
○ A changing point for psychology because research was needed that had practical applications in the field
○ Problem solving and decision making were of high interest
Computers were being developed that could perform tasks to replace human performance to unobservable computations were knowable
turing machine
- first proposed by alan turing
§ Essentially a computer program that could mathematically provide an output in the way a human could
Goal was to carry out what the human mind can do
newell and simon
○ Among the first to design a “non-war” computer program
“Logic theorist” was the first ‘thinking machine’
representationalism
○ Cognition may be caused by the brain but that’s not what its about
○ Perceptions are about the physical world, they represent objects in the physical world
○ Thoughts are about possible real situations, they represent possible real situations
neisser
○ Coined the term cognitive psychology
Believed human thought was equivalent to computer processing
aboutness
§ The conscious experience we have about the world
representationalism in short
Describes how the unobservable mind can act on the real world
computation and marr
if computers process information and information processing is what characterizes minds, then maybe the mind is computational
computation in short
assumes the mind is an information processor
computation
§ Input -> store -> manipulate -> output
§ Symbol systems are representational and computational (they are about something and can be manipulated according to rules)
Newell and Simon were the first to suggest this
representations and computations
Modern cognitive psych is all based on the assumptions that the mind operates by manipulating symbols that represent thoughts
embodied cognition
○ To get meaning, you need to ground your symbol with something real in the world
Believes information is given by perceptual, motor and emotional activity by the body in the real world (and maybe eliminating the need for representations)
- symbol systems face the grounding problem
grounding problem
○ Symbol systems face the grounding problem
Ex. what is an apple? What is a fruit? What does it mean to eat? …
the biological perspective
believes information is represented as patterns of activity between interconnected neurons in a way similar to the brain
Based in medicine and physiology
confounding variables
- Researchers try to avoid confounding variables
○ Variables that affect the DV but are not the IV
embodied cognition in short
the study of cognition as we interact with the world
research methods
- IV is manipulated by the experimenter, DV is measured and changes depending on the IV
○ Cognitive psychologists normally only use accuracy and reaction time for the DV, while the choice for the IV is endless- Researchers create/test hypotheses that the IV will cause a change in the DV
quasi-experiments
Where random assignment of the IV is not possible (ex. male & female)
structuralism
sought to analyze the adult mind (defined as the sum total of experience from birth to the present) in terms of the simplest definable components and then to find the way in which these components fit together in complex forms.
functionalism
Functionalists were interested in studying the purpose of thought rather than it’s elements
