Lecture 1 - Intro to cognitive psychology Flashcards
What are the functions of the mind?
Forms and recalls memories, solves problems, considers possibilities, makes decisions.
Responsible for the survival and normal functioning, symbol of creativity and intelligence.
Creates representations of the world so we can act in it.
What is the mind?
A system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals
The mind operates high level (consciously controlled) and low level (automatic) cognitive functions
The mind creates and controls mental functions such as …
What are these known as?
Perception
Attention
Memory
Emotions
Language
Deciding
Thinking
Reasoning
These are known as cognitive domains
What is the problem with studying the mind?
We cannot observe the mind directly
We can only observe behaviour and draw inferences about behaviour and underlying processes and mechanisms
What is the subtraction method?
First cognitive experiment
Donders (dutch psychologist) invented this method in 1868
If you measure 2 variations of the same mental function that only differ in 1 aspect, the observed difference between these two variations can be attributed to that 1 aspect in which they are different
What did Wundt do?
Opened the first psychological lab in 1879 at uni of Leipzig
Investigated nature of consciousness
Assessment of mental activities
Introduced structuralism into the study of the mind
What is structuralism?
An approach that attempts to explain functions of the mind by adding hypothesised elementary units
What are elementary contents of the mind?
Wundt and his students called these sensations
What was Wundts approach to studying the mind?
He was an empiricist
- knowledge rooted in experience
- there are observable and measurable effects that allow inferences about the mind
- method of introspection
- use of technical devices
- create a periodic table of the mind
Method limited to conscious thought
Who was Ebbinghaus and what was his approach?
Psychologist at Uni of Berlin interested in memory and forgetting.
Instead of introspection he used quantitative methods
- counting correct and incorrect responses trying to remember his infamous nonsense syllables
What is Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve?
Curve that as the days increase, retention decreases
Applies to memory for non integrates/meaningless information
Still valid and accurate of a certain type of memory
What did James do?
Published the first psychology textbook - Principles of Psychology
His approach was based on observations and focused on functionality
Why did JB Watson critisize introspection?
- it produced extremely variable results from person to person
- these were difficult to verify
What did JB Watson introduce?
Behaviourism
What was the goal of behaviourism?
The prediction and control of behaviour
Purely objective, experimental branch
What are the two types of conditioning?
Classical (Pavlov’s dogs) - learning through association
Operant (Skinner) - learning through reward and punishments
What are the ethical considerations of Behaviourism?
Emotion and pain only recognised as reaction to environment
Resulted in ethically questionable research practices
- little albert
- animal research
- electroshocks as conditioning
Historical context - part motivated by WW1 and WW2
What did Tolman do?
Discovered cognitive maps
Mice would learn to turn right for food
What was the debate between Skinner and Chomsky?
Skinner - children learn through operant conditioning, imitate speech they hear and its is rewarded
Chomsky - verbal behaviour is innate, children say sentences that have never been said or rewarded by parents (I hate you). They also go through incorrect grammar stages which would not have been reinforced
What was the new way of conceptualising cognition?
- Use of computing
- Breaking down processes into units and subprocesses like flow diagrams
- Memory as a flexible storage system
- Processing limitations
- Working memory as CPU
What were the two key concepts of the cognitive revolution?
Mental representations and transformations of mental representations
What is artificial intelligence?
Originated in idea that computers can mimic human behaviour or carry out intelligent behaviour
Computers were modelled after the logic process that were thought to underlie human cognition
Newell and Simons Logic Theorist
Created proofs of mathematical theorems that involved principles of logic
Was considered a real thinking machine as it did more than process numbers but also solved problems
Does the mind work like a computer?
No
- its a helpful metaphor
- brain and computer operate on completely different basic principles
- computers not as powerful as brains
- computers are extremely fast
