Lecture 1 Flashcards
Wihelm Wundt & Structuralism
Used rigorous introspection to study throught. Decomposed thought into simpler components: emotion, perception and sensation.
First attempt to study thought scientifically, but problems with replication, generality of findings and complex cognitions. `
Watson, Skinner & Behaviourism
Reaction to limits of introspection. Focus only on the observable causes of behaviour associations between stimuli and response.
Interested in applying pschology.
Koffka, Kohler & the Gestalt approach
Reaction to limits of introspection. Focus only on the observable causes of behaviour, associations between stimuli and responses.
Interested in applying psychology.
Freud, Adler, Jung, & the Psychodynamic approach.
Reaction to behaviourist approach - focus on the unconscious motivations as causes of behaviour.
Cognitive psychology- information processing approach
Rekingled scientific interest in unobservable mental processes (attention, signal and detection).
Behaviourism inadequate to address these issues. New paradigm developed, people seen as active information processors, cognition conceptualised as a series of information processing stages
What is the mind/body problem?
Refers to the idea that two people can have the same thought but may have different patterns of neural activity
Type identity theory
A mental state is equivalent to a specific pattern of neural events
Token identity theory
A mental state maps onto a variety of different neural events
Functionalism
Draws a distinction between:
structure of mental state (neural activity)
Function of a mental state (the consequences of a mental state)
What is the essence of cognitive psychology?
About developing a functional explanation of mental processes
Use the eye as an example of how brains are like computer hardware and cognition is software.
Image viewed by eye
Cognitive system processes the information
Output through actions
Sensory information is transformed into internal representation:
Cognition refers to the processing of internal representations
Cognitive psychology is concerned with understanding the processes (Software)
Describe the computational metaphor
The mind contains symbolic representations:
something that stands for or represents something else e.g. in computers binary numbers represent specific pieces of information
There is a limited and well-defined set of symbols
These symbolic representations are stored in memory
How is cognition the product of operations?
Internal processes that act on symbolic representations
In computers these are functions (copy, insert)
Operations are deployed according to rules that are also stored in memory
What are the three levels of description?
Computational theory
Representation and algorithm level
Hardware level
Computational theory level
Functions of cognition and what cognition is for
Representation and algorithm level
We create a memory which is an internal representation that can be modified using algorithms
Hardware level
Attention (mental process of selecting one out of several possible inputs)
Marr & modularity
human cognition is composed of multiple sub-components or modules. Each module has a specific function and process. Cognitive activity is comprised of activation of several independent modules e.g. naming a face may draw on a visual module, memory module and a linguistic module Damage to one module may not necessarily effect processing in other modules Modules are similar across all humans
Fodor and modularity
Distinction between input systems and central processors.
Input/output systems:
Process incoming sensory information
Transfer information to central processors
Domain specific (only process a particular class of information)
Central processor:
makes decisions
plans actions
not modular
Methods for identifying modules
Dissociation- a manipulation that affects one cognitive task e.g. articulatory suppression disrupts verbal but not spatial memory Making saccades (eye-movements) disrupts spatial but not verbal memory
Double dissociation:
articulatory suppression disrupts verbal but not spatial memory
Making saccades (eye movements) disrupts spatial but not verbal memory
What can brain damage tell us about normal cognition?
Reverse engineering cognition
Localisation of functions less important
Investigate single cases
Patient HM
Neurosurgery to cure epilepsy
Severe anterograde amnesia so couldnt form new memories
Short term memory was fine and could learn new skills
This means long term memory and short term memory must be in different systems
