Lecture 1 Flashcards
Discuss biological vs cognitive vs cognivitist psychology
Biological = the structure and chemistry of body functioning. Cognitive = the content. Cognitivist = an approach to studying behaviour
Discuss the nature of cognitive psychology
It is mostly abstract - defined without reference to the physical world. Thus thoughts ideas and attitudes are about physical world they are not physical entities.
What is referred to as Dualism
The physical VS. mental distinction
Discuss Descartes interpretation of Dualism
The world is made up of two incompatible substances - the mental and the physical. How does the mental (feeling bored) lead to physical (writing a lecture) or how does the mental cause the physical if the two substances are incompatible.
Is psychology a science if it is concerned with the mental rather than the physical
Yes. We can use the scientific methods developed to study the physical world to study the mental world
What is behaviourism
Argues that a true science of psychology strives for laws of behaviour couched in terms of physical events and physical processes. These laws will contain statements only about things that are observable and can be measured. If we can find these laws then we should be able to predict and control. E.G. classical conditioning - see food and see salivating dog
Discuss behaviourist theories
Only contain statements about observable things - accordingly, unobservable things like the mind aren’t proper subjects for scientific study
What is wrong with the view that only observable things are scientific
Other sciences studies the unobservable and abstract and made testable predictions. E.G. Gregor Mendel published work on genetic inheritance before DNA was discovered
Can we scientifically study things we can’t directly see
As long as the validity of our predications are open to empirical testing - then we can test as many abstract things as we want
What is the issue with simplicity
There is a danger of deriving very complex accounts of even the simplest behaviours. Occams razor
What is Occam’s razor
Entities must not be multiplied unnecessarily - keep things as simple as possible. When you have two competing theories, which make exactly the same predictions - the one which is simpler is better
Discuss simplicity and the thermostat
It is easy to suggest that a thermostat has beliefs about room temperature, but do we need to invoke such beliefs in order to understand how a thermostat works? NO - we can fully account for the operation of the thermostat from understanding its internal components - Occam’s razor
Discuss simplicity and the mind
When is an account based on abstract mental entities appropriate? If we are reluctant to ascribe mental processes to devices then why do we want to ascribe them to humans? Even if we understood all possible patterns of neural firing in a brain, this would not be the same across all brains
Discuss cognitive psychologists and function
If we accept that mental events correspond with neurological events AND that different patterns of nerve cells can correspond with the same thought in different brains. We can start to think about what it is about these patterns of firing that gives rise to a particular thought - in other words we need to consider the FUNCTION
Discuss function and functional role
E.G. you can produce a flow chart on various parts of a car engine - but it doesn’t tell you what each part actually does! You don’t need to say anything about the physical location of the components - only their sequence and what they are required to do
Discuss functions
Functional flow charts get around the problem of different brains because as long as the mental state is described purely in terms of its function, rather than its physical place in the brain then we do not need to understand the specific neurological layout of a particular individuals brain in order to study mental states
Discuss how we can describe the mind in terms of flow charts
Imagine the mind as a program running on a computer - the mind (software) runs on the brain (the hardware). Encoding - storage - retrieval. The operation of a computer is governed by the programs that run on it
Discuss reductionism in terms of understanding the mind as information processors
Understanding the mind reduces to understanding the basic electro-chemical states and processes that characterise the behaviour of neurons. The mind can not simply be reduced to the level of neurons firing because it is just one explanation.
Discuss the black box method approach to studying the mind
Input - black box - Output. One of the most complex things in the known universe. We cannot open it up and have a look so we have to figure out what is going on through observations. The mind as a computer. Naive observer attempts to vary the input to the device to figure out a flow chart of hypothesised process - if the computer can be programmed to behave in the same way as a human then we might be able to say something about the mental processes of humans
Discuss the mind as a computer
The information processing led to the widely held belief that mental states and processes can be understood by analogy with those that characterise the operation of a digital computer
Critique the mind as a computer analogy
Symbol grounding problem - symbolic representation.
What is symbolic representation
Information input to a computer is converted to a series of 0’s and 1’s. This is how the input is represented by the computer. Would a computer that prints out your gas bill know what the bill means? No. They have no concept or knowledge - this same logical applies to the brain and cognition
Discuss the symbol grounding problem
To have meaning representations need to be grounded in something beyond themselves. E.G - 0’s and 1’s mean nothing to a computer. And symbols can’t mean anything to the brain - they are just a way of expressing the flow of information.
Discuss the chinese room experiment
Can the person in the room following the rules said to understand Chinese? No. By extension can a computer running a program be said to think in the same way as a human? No, because it does not understand what the symbols it is manipulating mean.
Discuss the neuroscience approach
Try and measure the inner workings of the brain that the program is running on. But the mind is not as easy to work on as a computer, so we can measure changes in the electric field that happened whilst the computer was running the program
Discuss cognitive neuroscience
Psychologists sometimes use very expensive magnets to see what happens inside the head. These are attempts to see where in the brain specific cognitive functions occur
Discuss the fMRI techniques
Is based on hemodynamic activity. Neural processing consumes energy that is carried by the blood to parts of our bodies. Assumption - if this consumption can be measured at particular regions of the brain then we can infer that neural activity is occurring there.
Discuss whether metabolic/hemodynamic activity equal cognitive activity
fMRI scans measure metabolic/hemodynamic activity - that is, the uptake of glucose or oxygen by the various parts of the brain. Could the area identified by inhibiting another area responsible for the cognitive process
Discuss the multiple statistical comparisons
One mature Atlantic Salmon participated in the fMRI study - it was NOT alive. Several active voxels were discovered in a cluster located within the salmons brain cavity. Due to the coarse resolution of the echo-planar image acquisition and the relatively small size of the salmon brain further discriminated between brain regions could not be completed
What are the alternatives
Embodied cognition - e.g. how people organize their shopping lists. Retrieval of interest in neglected ideas from computer science. Qualitative approaches that see things like memory as a process that you can see by examining what they say.
