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Cognitive Psychology (PSYC 2700) > Lecture 1: Introduction > Flashcards

Lecture 1: Introduction Flashcards

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1
Q

What is cognitive psychology concerned with?

A
  • Process: flow of information. how do we process info.? How do we move memories from short term to long term? It also includes how we acquire information through our senses. How does info get from out there, into here?
  • Structure: representation of knowledge
  • Limits: Restriction in flow
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2
Q

What is philosophy?

A

logic and argumentation

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3
Q

What is psychology?

A

empirical approach (deeply rooted in philosophy)

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4
Q

What was Plato’s contribution to cognitive psychology?

A
  • Ancient greek philosopher & student of socrates
  • Theory of forms: We do not perceive the real world, but only an image of the real world. Knowledge structures exist in the mind. These structures reflect specific representations from the physical world. Coding and process not considered.
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5
Q

What was Aristotle’s contribution to cognitive psychology?

A
  • More active (process) view of mind
  • Mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa)
  • Experience is important (not innate)
  • Knowledge is based on associations of sensations, images, and ideas
  • Knowledge can transform / influence perceptions and learning
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6
Q

What is empiricism?

A

philosophical position that observation-derived data is the basis for all science

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7
Q

Who were British empiricists and what did they believe?

A
  • John mill, J.S. Mill
  • Followed Aristotle tradition
  • Knowledge as associations. Associations = process (of connecting things) and Stored knowledge = structure
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8
Q

What is structuralism?

A

“study of the structure of consciousness”

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9
Q

Who was Wundt?

A
  • Psychology as the study of “conscious process and immediate experience”
  • Looked at topics like Sensation, perception and attention
  • Established an early version of cog. Psych as it own science
  • Introspection technique (report immediate conscious experiences)
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10
Q

Who was titchner?

A
  • One of the 1st North American labs
  • Followed Wundt’s empirical approach
  • Structuralism: introspect on elements of mind’s structure
  • Tries to avoid “stimulus error” (must describe mental experience not the physical stimulus)
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11
Q

What were the problems with introspection?

A
  • The “boss” validated the results (the boss being Wundt or Titchner)
  • Cannot introspect on many mental processes and structures
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12
Q

What is functionalism?

A

Study the functions of consciousness, not its structure

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13
Q

Who was James?

A
  • Early “experimental” lab in N.A. (Harvard)
  • Engaged in more philosophy (thought) than experimentation. How does mind function, change and adapt?
  • Memory: structure / process. Thought there was two types Immediate (active) memory (STM: aware) and Hidden (passive) memory (LTM). He differentiated between these and talked about how they were functionally different from each other
  • Attentional limits (limits in our abilities to process information)
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14
Q

What is associationism?

A

study of knowledge as learned associations

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15
Q

Who was Ebbinghaus?

A
  • Learn through associations and making connections (like Aristotle)
  • When you have people learn things, if you use words those words are loaded with meaning and those meaning can have an impact on how we learn so he created what he called CVC’s (consonant, vowel, consonant)
  • Nonsense syllables (CVC) ( No meaning, therefore reduce extraneous confounds)
  • Isolated factors affecting learning and memory
    (Learning rates/ curves, Factors that impact forgetting)
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16
Q

What is verbal learning?

A
  • Study of learning of verbal material
  • Grew from associationism and Ebbinghaus
  • Beyond CVCs (How do associated meanings impact learning and memory?)
  • Meanings and associations among stimuli are important
  • Existing memory associations can affect learning (is it easier for us to learn a list like Dog-cat or desk-chair?)
17
Q

What is Behaviourism?

A
  • Study of observable quantifiable behaviour
  • John Watson, B.F. Skinner
  • The dominant movement in NA from 1910-1960
  • Experience viewed as the primary factor in learning knowledge, behaviour
  • No interest in “hidden” internal mental processes or structures
  • S-R approach (stimulus response approach). Observable stimuli and responses. Mental concepts not observable, therefore not to be studied. They brought scientific rigour
18
Q

What is the gestalt approach?

A
  • Study of principles of organization
  • Wertheimer, Kohler
    • Laws of perceptual organization
    • Top down (from the brain to lower structures, something up high having an influence on something down low)influences on perception (i.e., ways in which our mind organizes things that influences or changes the way we perceive the world). What we know can influence what we see
    • Whole is greater than sum of parts
  • we organize based on figure, background, proximity, similarity, closure and continuation
19
Q

What methods were combined during the transition to cognitive psychology?

A
  • Communication theory (flow of information)
  • Computers and computer science (the mind as a computer analogy, computational modelling and AI neural nets)
  • Cognitive Neuroscience (many converging methods of measurement, localization of function in the brain)
20
Q

What are the assumptions of science that make up the cognitive approach?

A
  • Determinism: Lawful, orderly universe (cant study chaos, so we make the assumption that there is some order)
  • Finite causation (the idea that there is a finite cause to something, a response is caused by something that can be isolated. There can be multiple causes but not an infinite number.)
21
Q

What are the assumptions that guide cognitive research?

A
  • Mental processes exist
  • Mental processes can be scientifically studied (Introspection not valid approach)
  • Humans are active information processors
22
Q

What are dependent and independent variables?

A

The IV is manipulated and the DV is impacted (varies or changes as a function of the IV)

23
Q

How are information processes measured?

A
  • Accuracy: correct / incorrect responses (is it a meaningful error or a random error)
  • Reaction time (RT in msec). Important in Cog Psych because were not only interested in structure were interested in processing over time. E.g., simple RT (e.g., pushing a button as quickly as you can when a light comes on) vs. Choice RT (e.g., left light and right light, push the button only when the left light comes on. If you look at the time it takes, its longer than what it was in the simple task)
24
Q

What are some other converging approaches in cognitive psychology?

A
  • Brain function: Damage (e.g., HM) & change (dementia)

Hemispheric lateralization and specialization. Brain imaging techniques

25
Q

Who was H.M.?

A
  • Most studied patient in the history of psychology
  • High school graduate
  • Minor seizures when he was a youth
  • Age 16, more generalized seizures
  • Heavy medication
  • 1953 surgery: Radical, bilateral, medial, temporal lobe resection
  • No obvious personality change IQ = 117
26
Q

What happened to H.M.’s memory?

A
  • Early (pre operation) memory was intact (long term memories)
  • Active short term memory was good (Series of digits, rehearsal)
  • However, HM could not learn new information
  • His Short term memory was good, his long term pre operation memory was good but he couldn’t get things from immediate memory to long term memory
27
Q

What does H.M. evidence suggest?

A
  • More than 1 type of memory
  • STS & LTS (long term store)
  • The hippocampus is really important for forming new memories
28
Q

What is the three store model by Atkinson and Shriffin?

A
  • SM: sensory memory (or sensory registers. At the front end of information processing)
  • STS: short term store
  • LTS: long term store
29
Q

How are the three types of memory/store differentiated?

A
  • Encoding
  • Capacity
  • Duration (memory trace)
  • Type of Code
30
Q

Who was Donald Hebb?

A
  • The organization of behaviour
  • Hebb linked perception (Gestalt), learning (Behaviourism) and physiology into a single conceptual framework
  • Focus on internal mental processes and thought (Attention, imagery, conceptual)
  • Neuropsychological theory
    • Assemblies of neurons formed through associations
    • Assembles represent perception, actions and thoughts
  • The principles which he discovered and mathematically laid out became the core of connectionism or Neural net modelling, which the core of a lot of artificial learning (AI) systems we have now. Basic rules of learning are given to systems that know nothing, but they can learn anything because of these principles.

Cognitive Psychology (PSYC 2700) (4 decks)

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