Lecture 1

Question 1

What is cognitive psych?

Answer 1

Doing a series of things at the same time e.g. Understanding (language skills), learning (memory encoding)…

Question 2

What does congesco mean?

Answer 2

I know

Question 3

At what time did they show an interest in mind/language?

Answer 3

1950-1980

Question 4

When did cognitive psychology become a dominant approach?

Answer 4

1970

Question 5

What is the mind-computer metaphor?

Answer 5

Looking at the way humans process information. Looks at internal processes like perception, attention, language, thinking…

Input in environment- mediational process- output behavior

Question 6

What is mediational behavior?

Answer 6

It occurs between stimulus and response: a mental event

Question 7

What are the styles in information processing approach?

Answer 7

Serial: only one process at a time, next one starts after that one finishes
Bottom up: processing is determined by environmental stimuli rather than prior knowledge/expectations

Question 8

What is the order off events processing from perception?

Answer 8

Stimulus, attention, perception, thought processes, decision, response/action

Question 9

Settings for research

Answer 9

Experimental/physical science(cognitive psychology): established cause and effect by testing predictions. Firm grounds for falsification, low ecological validity
Naturalistic: (anthropology) no strong basis for hypothesis needed, string ecological validity, systematic bias? No causation
Quasi-experimental: (forensic) can establish causation via statistical analysis or correlation. Can be applied to the real world, useful to help create hypothesizes, nusiance variables

Question 10

What is experimental cognitive psych?

Answer 10

Experiments in healthy individuals, sheds light on our cognitive processes

Question 11

What is cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 11

Evidence from the brain to understand cognition

Question 12

What is cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 12

Experiments on brain damaged patients

Question 13

What is computational cognitive science?

Answer 13

Developing computational models (experimental findings to explain cognition)

Question 14

What are the two forms of behavior measured?

Answer 14

Reaction. Time between onset of stimulus and motor response

Accchracy (clues about content/capacity)

Question 15

What is donders subtraction method?

Answer 15

Contains 3 tasks:

1) Stimulus discrimination: GO/NGO and look at reaction times. Press orange if stimulus presented, pink if nothing-accuracy
2) response selection
3) response execution

Choice rt takes 800ms, GO/NGO TAKES 500ms and simple rt takes 200ms

Question 16

What did sternberg (1966) say?

Answer 16

Components may not be performed in the same way when new concompentes are added. Came up with addictive factor logic(visual scan for a letter)
Exhaustive search: have to go to end to find the target letter
Self-terminating search: scan stops when find the letter
In a parallel search things that affect search time are age (shortens till late twenties, rapidly increases from 50/60), gender(males respond faster), handidness(left respond faster on both), exercise, diet ( coffee reduces rt)

Question 17

What does reaction times show?

Answer 17

Process living and non living differently, shown in fMRI