Lecture 1

Question 1

Discuss biological vs cognitive vs cognivitist psychology

Answer 1

Biological = the structure and chemistry of body functioning. Cognitive = the content. Cognitivist = an approach to studying behaviour

Question 2

Discuss the nature of cognitive psychology

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is referred to as Dualism

Answer 3

The physical VS. mental distinction

Question 4

Discuss Descartes interpretation of Dualism

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Is psychology a science if it is concerned with the mental rather than the physical

Answer 5

Yes. We can use the scientific methods developed to study the physical world to study the mental world

Question 6

What is behaviourism

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Discuss behaviourist theories

Answer 7

Only contain statements about observable things - accordingly, unobservable things like the mind aren’t proper subjects for scientific study

Question 8

What is wrong with the view that only observable things are scientific

Answer 8

Other sciences studies the unobservable and abstract and made testable predictions. E.G. Gregor Mendel published work on genetic inheritance before DNA was discovered

Question 9

Can we scientifically study things we can’t directly see

Answer 9

As long as the validity of our predications are open to empirical testing - then we can test as many abstract things as we want

Question 10

What is the issue with simplicity

Answer 10

There is a danger of deriving very complex accounts of even the simplest behaviours. Occams razor

Question 11

What is Occam’s razor

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Discuss simplicity and the thermostat

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Discuss simplicity and the mind

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Discuss cognitive psychologists and function

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Discuss function and functional role

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Discuss functions

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Discuss how we can describe the mind in terms of flow charts

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Discuss reductionism in terms of understanding the mind as information processors

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Discuss the black box method approach to studying the mind

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Discuss the mind as a computer

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Critique the mind as a computer analogy

Answer 21

Symbol grounding problem - symbolic representation.

Question 22

What is symbolic representation

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Discuss the symbol grounding problem

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Discuss the chinese room experiment

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

Discuss the neuroscience approach

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Discuss cognitive neuroscience

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Discuss the fMRI techniques

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

Discuss whether metabolic/hemodynamic activity equal cognitive activity

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Discuss the multiple statistical comparisons

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What are the alternatives

Answer 30

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.