MODULE 1 Flashcards
Definition of cognitive psychology:
The scientific study of the mind. The study of the functions and processes of the mind that take in, transform, and use information to perceive, think, feel, remember and understand.
The challenge of cognitive psychology:
It is impossible to look into the mind, therefore, we are limited to observing the inputs and the minds outputs. The mind is unobservable. All we can observe are
outputs of these internal processes.
Structuralism
The goal of psychology is to discover the nature of the elementary conscious experiences
2 famous structuralists:
Wilhelm Wundt
Edward Titchener
Wilhelm Wundt goals
to understand the psychological processes by which we experience the world.
how did wundt studied consciousness?
Analytical introspection: Observe some simple event – one measurable as to size, intensity, duration and quality. Record one’s res
Analytic introspection problems:
Required extensive training because it is difficult to describe an experience in terms of essential, fundamental elements.
Individual
Private
End processes.
Apperception:
The mind had the power to organize mental elements voluntarily
Construct from elementals
Edward Titchener
wanted to analyze the complex conscious experience into its parts. Deconstruct to elemental sensations- nervous system. (Titchener) wanted to create a periodic table of the mind – which would include all of the basic sensations
Titchener’s elements:
Create a periodic table of elementary sensations/inputs
1. To reduce consciousness to simplest components/structures (sensations, feelings + images)
2. To connect the elements with their physiological conditions (the nervous system)
3. To determine laws by which these elements of consciousness were associated
ticheners limitations
Reductionist
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Focus most on sensation and perception
Limitations of analytic introspection
structuralism contributions
Can study the ‘science’ of the mind
Systematic data collection on topics of consciousness
Separation of sensation from perception
Linked methodology from physiology with questions deriving from philosophy
Functionalism
The goal of psychology is not the discovery of the elements of experience, but rather the study of living people as they adapt to their environment. The function of consciousness is to guide us to those ends required for survival.
General principles of functionalist approach
studies mental operations, not mental elements
seeks to identify fundamental utilities of consciousness – the way in which the consciousness helps the organism to adapt to the environment
is a psychophysical psychology – acknowledging the significance of the mind-body relationships.
functionalism weaknesses
Theories – no one theorist, ill-defined, difficult to measure, service to other, more reactionary than a school of thought
Methods – not rigorous or systematic, not scrtictly scientific
contributors functionalism
Darwin – natural selection, consciousness evolved to serve a purpose
Galton – evolution to the study of the mind, focus on individual differences
William James – focus on the function of consciousness and its applications
Behaviorism
The call for a scientific psychology that dealt only with observable behavioral acts that could be described objectively in terms such as stimulus and response
classical conditioning- pavlovs
Unconditioned stimulus
Neutral stimulus
No conditioned response
Conditioned stimulus
Conditioned response
Reactions that are innate behaviors. - Pair a stimulus with no meaning to a behavior to see how it changed, and the neutral stimulus becomes conditioned.
Watson: classical - father of behaviorism
(i) reject introspection as a method
(ii) observable behavior and not consciousness (i.e., not unobservable processes such as thinking, emotions and reasoning).
Skinner: operant conditioning
Operant conditioning = instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning that uses reinforcement and punishment to increase or decrease a particular behavior.
Behavior that is reinforced is likely to be repeated
Behavior that is punished is reduced
Problems with behaviorism:
Evidence of generative behaviors.
Not all behavior is observable
Same input = different behaviors - depending on the person.
Not all behavior is due to reinforcement.
Evidence against behaviroism:
Chomsky’s refutation of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior - language sometimes is not reifnroced.
Tolman’s maze rats- Behavior is not always due to reinforcement and that ther is something happening in the brain.
according to behavirosim the rats learned tha pattern and could smelled the cheese.
Cognitivism:
Cognitivism figured out the unobservable mental processes by carefully manipulating the input and measuring the impact of this manipulation on behavior. It is possible to make an inference about what is occurring inside the box, or what are the mental processes, however, you can never measure the mental processes directly.
Ruling Out Alternatives
Example Study (Huppert and Piercy):
Looking at patients with amnesia
The patients were presented with 20 pictures, each picture was presented for one second. 20 minutes later, they were presented with a recognition test, where they had to say if the image was presented before or not.
The results were that control subjects, which did not have amnesia, correctly recognized 93% of the pictures, and amnesiacs correctly recognized 75% of the pictures.
There are three different parts for the formation of a memory: encoding, storage, and retrieve. If the problem was in encoding, amnesiacs would not learn the information. If the problem was with storing and retrieving, amnesiacs would forget the information.
They conducted a second study in order to find out what was the true cause was. They designed a test to rule out the issue of there being a problem with encoding.
In this case, they gave amnesiacs extra time to study. They gave them 8x more time than the control group to study the images.
As a result, when encoding is controlled, the controls and the amnesiacs have similar rates of recall across the two different delays. This suggests that the problem in memory in this population of amnesiacs is due to a problem with encoding the information.
Donders (1868) Subtractive Method:
Donders believed that the mind processes information in stages: each stage transforms input from the previous stage and passes it forward until a response is produced.
He proposed that reaction times reveal the duration of specific stages, which can be used to figure out the time course of a particular mental process. These experiments compare tasks with and without additional stages to isolate and measure those stages.
Example experiment:
Task 1: Raise your hand for any light (red/green).
Task 2: Raise your left hand for green, right hand for red. Comparing reaction times identifies the duration of the extra decision-making stage.
Problems with Donder’s Subtractive Method
Requires knowing all the processing stages in advance, which may not always be accurate.
Assumption of Additivity: Assumes stages operate sequentially and independently. In reality, stages may overlap or work in parallel, leading to an underestimation of the actual decision time.
Assumption of Pure Insertion: Assumes adding a new stage doesn’t affect the duration of other stages. Adding a stage (e.g., a decision stage) can alter the timing of previous stages, causing overestimation or underestimation of the decision time.
universal theory of emotions
certain emotions are experienced and expressed in similar ways by people across all cultures around the world.
