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Intro to Cognitive Psychology > Origins of Cognitive Psychology > Flashcards

Origins of Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

What is cognition?

A

Describes the acquisition, storage, transformation and use of knowledge

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2
Q

Acquisition

A

How we perceive and learn from our experiences

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3
Q

Storage

A

How we represent and maintain knowledge gained from experience

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4
Q

Transformation

A

How we flexibly retrieve and use knowledge to guide actions

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5
Q

What is cognitive psychology?

A

The scientific study of how people (and occasionally animals) achieve cognition

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6
Q

Individual differences

A

Cognitive psychology is NOT the study of
individual differences - we make an assumption that everyone is the same and like to focus on what makes us all the same (general principles)

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7
Q

What do cognitive DO use individual differences for?

A

Sometimes extreme differences are used to test theories about how cognition works in the healthy brain

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8
Q

History of psychology as a science

A

Early philosophers asked questions about the origins of human thought and knowledge; in the early 1800s, the principles of scientific inquiry were applied to these questions

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9
Q

Principles of scientific inquiry

A
  1. Explanatory & falsifiable theories
  2. Experiments
  3. Public observations - replicable
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10
Q

Structuralism/introspectionalism

A

Founded by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) in Germany and trained students to introspect on and analyze the
elements of their thought .

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11
Q

What was structuralism inspired by?

A

Inspired by the periodic table in chemistry, wanted to

identify the elements of thought.

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12
Q

Problem 1 with structuralism

A

Not all cognitive processes are conscious - you don’t know how information is stored, that’s not consciously accessible, but it’s still important (e.g. depth perception; took a long time to figure out how it works)

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13
Q

Problem 2 with structuralism

A

Observations are not public - data must be objective and it’s difficult to make conclusions about a phenomenon if two people report different sensations (e.g. is someone lying? do they truly have different experiences?)

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14
Q

Donders’ contribution to psychology

A

First cognitive psychology experiment

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15
Q

Wundt’s contribution to psychology

A

Established the first lab of scientific psychology

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16
Q

Ebbinghaus’s contribution to psychology

A

Quantitative measurements of mental processes

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17
Q

Donders

A

Developed an approach to study mental chronometry (the timing of cognitive processes) - the reaction time task

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18
Q

Choice RT task

A

Participants push different buttons depending on which side the light is on

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19
Q

Simple RT task

A

Participants pushed a button as soon as they perceive a light

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20
Q

Decision time

A

Choice RT - Simple RT (Takes the “pushing the button” part out of the decision time)

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21
Q

Ebbinghaus

A

Developed an approach to study forgetting and

memory

22
Q

Savings in relearning task

A
  • Read nonsense syllables aloud and recorded how
    many repetitions were required to learn them
  • Repeated process with the same syllables after a
    delay (19 min - 31 days)
23
Q

How did Ebbinghaus calculate savings?

A

((initial repetitions - relearning repetitions)/initial repetitions) x 100

24
Q

What did Donders and Ebbinghaus have in common?

A

Both measured behaviour to study the mind

25
Q

Benefits of classic conditioning

A

Allowed for the scientific study of how behaviour is modified by the environment — no need to evoke mental states

26
Q

Classical conditioning

A
  • Developed by Pavlov
  • Paired an unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food)
    with a neutral/conditioned stimulus (e.g. bell)
  • The once neutral stimulus reliably acquired the
    same response as the unconditioned stimulus
27
Q

Behaviourism

A

Proposes that psychology should not study
mental states because they can not be directly observed - took the radical stance that mental states, as we view them, don’t exist

28
Q

What was behaviourism a reaction to?

A

Reaction to introspective approaches used by the structuralist school

29
Q

4 principles of behaviourism

A
  1. focus on observable events
  2. explain behaviour not consciousness (so nothing subjective like emotions)
  3. theories should be simple
  4. break behaviour down into simple units
30
Q

Results of Ebbinghaus’s experiment

A
  • You don’t forget information at a steady rate

- Forgetting occurs rapidly in the first 1 to 2 days after original learning, then levels off

31
Q

Results of Donders’ experiment

A

Choice reaction time takes 1/10 seconds longer, so decision making takes 1/10th a second

32
Q

Results of Wundt’s analytic introspection

A

No reliable results

33
Q

Watson’s little Albert experiment

A
  • Watson believed that the basic principles of learning which had been studied in animals also applied to humans
  • He tested this theory by conditioning an baby (little
    Albert) to fear white rats
34
Q

BF Skinner

A
  • Studied how animals and people act to obtain rewards and avoid punishments (instrumental/operant
    conditioning)
  • Manipulated the rewards and punishments and measured behaviour - no need for mental states in theories
35
Q

Critiques of behaviorism

A
  • Not all knowledge is evident in behaviour

- Not all behaviours can be explained by basic learning principles

36
Q

“Not all knowledge is evident in behaviour”

A

Tolman demonstrated that rats could learn routes in mazes that were not previously reinforced - they just don’t demonstrate the learning until they need to!

37
Q

“Not all behaviours can be explained by basic learning principles”

A
  • BF Skinner tried to account for language acquisition with basic learning - e.g. a child says “can I have a cookie” and gets reinforced
  • Noam Chomsky wrote a influential critique of this work in 1959. Argued that children say unreinforced things all the time: “I hate you, mommy”; “the boy hitted the ball”
38
Q

Cognitive revolution

A
  • The transition between behaviorism to cognitive
    psychology in America (1950-1970)
  • Questions shifted from control of behaviour to
    theories of how information is processed by the
    mind
  • Unobservable cognitive processes are inferred
    from behaviour
39
Q

How does the cognitive approach differ from structuralism?

A

Behaviour is publicly observable so the results of
cognitive psychology experiments can be publicly
replicated, unlike Structuralism

40
Q

Savings curve

A

Plot of savings versus time after original learning.

41
Q

James’s contribution to psychology

A

First psychology textbook; some of his observations are still valid today

42
Q

What did James do?

A

No experiments; reported observations of his own experience

43
Q

James’s results

A

Descriptions of a wide range of experiences

44
Q

Why did Watson reject analytic introspection?

A
  1. it produced extremely variable results from person to person, and
  2. these results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes.
45
Q

Artificial intelligence

A

The ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence.

46
Q

Logic theorist program

A

First artificial intelligence program; was able to use humanlike reasoning to solve problems

47
Q

Neisser

A

Wrote the first Cognitive Psychology textbook

48
Q

“Cognitive Psychology” (Neisser)

A

Mainly covered vision and hearing (i.e. how they processed such information related to vision and hearing and how it was related to memory), but didn’t contain much information on higher mental processes (which there was limited knowledge about) and the physiology of mental processes

49
Q

Neuropsychology

A

The study of the behavioral effects of brain damage in humans.

50
Q

Electrophysiology

A

Techniques used to measure electrical responses of the nervous system.

51
Q

Events that led to cognitive revolution

A
  1. Noam Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour
  2. The introduction of the digital computer and the idea that the mind processes information in stages, like a computer
  3. Cherry’s attention experiments and Broadbent’s introduction of flow diagrams to depict the processes involved in attention
  4. Interdisciplinary conferences at Dartmouth and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
52
Q

Developments in cognitive psychology post-Neisser

A
  1. Development of more sophisticated models
  2. Research on physiological basis of cognition
  3. Concern with cognition in the real world
  4. Role of knowledge in cognition

Intro to Cognitive Psychology (7 decks)

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