Plato to Pavlov Flashcards
Cognition
All forms of mental activities
(conscious and unconscious, deliberate and automatic)
Covers processes involved in large range of domains/functions. Perception, memory, understanding language, object identification, forming and use concepts, interpret events, describe meaning, judgement and decision making, problem solving, planning etc.
Cognitive psychology
Define
- term
- aim
- what does it do?
- what is the nature of the cognitive psychology constructs?
Scientific study of mental processes (cognitions)
Understanding internal REPRESENTATIONS STRUCTURES that underlie our conscious and unconscious cognitions.
Builds THEORETICAL DESCRIPTIONS or MODELS of cognitive structures and processes. (‘Description of the mind, Matsumoto 2009)
HYPOTHETICAL constructs, because they cannot be observed directly. Formed by the use of TESTABLE THEORY and EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
Explain difference between cognitive science and cognitive psychology
Human experimental (cognitive) psychology is part of cognitive sciences. Other parts (since cognitive revolution in mid 20th century —>)
- cognitive neuroscience
- artificial intelligence and computer science
- psycholinguistics
[and more, like embodied cognitive psychology, this is the criticism of cognitive science that it is including so many forms]
Origin of word ‘psychology’?
Ancient Greek philosophers were interested in the functioning of the mind.
‘Psyche’ - soul (not the body) in our language mind [body and mind]
Two schools of philosophy (psychology)?
Which guys with beards present these views?
Rationalism (Plato)
Empiricism (Aristotle)
Explain rationalism
Mind (and other abstract ideas) can be explored through a process of THINKING itself, by examining personal experience and through that mental processes. Intuition and deduction plays a role.
Knowledge in innate
Nature (vs nurture)
Explain empiricism
Knowledge comes from experience (not from sitting and thinking)
We are shaped by what happens to us - nurture
Humans can be controlled and manipulated
Who said;
“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding and ends with reason”?
What was his view on psychology?
Why?
Immanuel Kant
Critique of Pure Reason 1781
Psychology cannot be an empirical science.
Because the mind can be studied by introspection only. Therefore there’s no general law (my mind different to yours). Introspection alters what it observes.
Who is seen as the ‘father’ of experimental psychology?
Why?
What experiment?
William Wundt (1832-1920)
Experimental psychology laboratory 1879
From images to associations - apperception
—> voluntarism
Is cognitive psychology a new invention? What is its relation to behaviourism?
All early psychology [from Plato to until PavlovWundt, James, Ebbinghauser etc.] is basically cognitive psychology!!
Behaviourism came in the middle and had it’s moment in early 20th century.
Tell about ‘behaviourist manifesto’
In 1913 psychologists JB Watson gave a lecture in Columbia University in NY called “Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It”
Study of mental states is fundamentally unscientific. Both structuralist and functionalist. Introspection rubbish and there’s no need to invoke (bring to existence) faculties such as consciousness, volition, imagery and perception.
Student of Wundt, also seen as the founder of structuralism.
Difference in view to Wundt?
Edward B Titchener (1867-1927)
Also used introspection but not to find the whole experience but map thé elemental parts of a conscious experience
At the same as Wund and Titchiner used structuralist methods to study the mind in Europe who developed functional view in US?
His work landmarks?
What was the method of functionalism?
William James (1842-1910)
Offered first ever university course in psychology
Spend 12 years to write “The Principles of Psychology”
Introspection, interest in mental processes rather than structures.
(Driving a car rather than taking it into parts)
Who wrote the landmark paper “Memory: a contribution to experimental psychology” in 1885?
What else can you remember related to this guy?
Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
Ebbinghaus forgetting curve
- most forgetting happens in first 20 minutes
- after 9 hours can last for days and longer
(Used nonsense syllables)
Learning a list (by repetition) = criterium (100% performance)
‘Saving score’ = after some time learned the list again, how many repetitions it took to reach criterium (100%). The difference between first and second time learning a saving score. The better the attention (less forgetting) lower the saving score.
What function is the behaviourism based on?
Association
Linking two together (stimulus - stimulus, stimulus -response, response- outcome)
In other words learning
