Overview of Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
What is Cognitve Psychology?
- information-processing approach
- how the mind is organised to produce intelligent thought
- how the human mind is realised in the brain
What is Williams Syndrome?
- Difficulty processing visiospatial information
- however, spacial navigation is not entirely impaired
- response based navigation system is not affected
What knowledge did Nativism provide about cognitive psychology?
- knowledge is innate
- (Plato, Descartes, Kant)
What knowledge did Empiricism provide about cognitive psychology?
Knowledge is acquired through experience
(Aristotle, Bacon, Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Mill)
What is Structuralism?
Analysis of the human mind into primitive componential elements
○ Basic idea: the mind can be broken down into elements (such as sensation and thought) by introspection
(Wundt and Titchener)
What are the two problems with structuralism?
subjective and unreliable
What is Functionalism?
The mind is defined soley by its function - how it responds to various stimuli
- As long as the same functional role is played, it doesn’t matter what components the mind is made of
- Studied by introspection
(William James)
What is the main weakness of Functionalism?
little or no empirical support
What is Behaviourialism?
Only the (directly) observable should be studied
- strictly about stimulus-response relations
- rigorous experimental approach
- Experimental methods
(Watson, Skinner)
What occurred during the Cognitive revolution? (During WWII)
- Human performance research - revealed shortcomings of behaviouralism (not useful for solving practical issues)
- Development in other scientific fields: information theory, linguistics, computer science
- Provided psychologists with tools and models for analysis of intelligent behaviour
What is the Information-Processing approach?
Cognitive psychology = re-defining psychology as the science of human information processing
Input –> Mind (Process) –> Output
What are the decomposing mental processes?
- formulate a theoretical model of how output is made from a given input
- measure time taken for each processing stage
- analyse which variable affects which processing stage
What is a visual search?
A theoretical model allows you to make predictions