The rise of cognitive psychology

Question 1

What were the Contributing factors for the rise in cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

· Mathematical & technological advances
· Development of the computer
· Symposium on Information Theory
-New approaches published

Question 2

What was the cognitive movement?

Answer 2

• Different disciplines
• Flourished 1950s-1960s
• Different kind of disciplines, not just psychology (e.g. linguistics)

Question 3

What happened with technology Before and during WWII?

Answer 3

• Goal of technology was information handling
• Need for communication over long distances
• Cracking sophisticated codes
• Programming more flexible machines
• New focus on technology such as radio and TV transmission
• Needed in the war
• Everything planned in code

Question 4

What is Boolean logic (George Boole)?

Answer 4

• Information presented as logical operations
• 0 (false) and 1 (true)
• and (both must be true)
• or (one or the other or both must be true)
• xor (one or the other, but not both must be true)
• not (negation)

Question 5

How can Boolean logic be used when using alarms?

Answer 5

• Two inputs and one output
• Good when designing machines
• E.g. responding when a window is open and alarm goes off
• P = it is daytime; NOT(P) is true when nighttime
• Q = window open
• R (robbery in progress) = NOT(P) AND Q

Question 6

What is a Turing machine ?

Answer 6

• hypothetical machine (accurately describes how computers work)
• More complex machine
• Birth of the digital computer

Question 7

Boolean Operations on the brain

Answer 7

• McCulloch and Pitts (1943) paper
• Human brain performs Boolean operations too
• Model of a neuron – MCP neuron
• Creates neural networks and MCP sends signals
• Threshold = needs to be passed to send the signal
• Needs to be equal to or more than the threshold

Question 8

What did Lashley do?

Answer 8

• S-R associations not enough
• Anticipatory speech errors showed evidence of planning
• How could such errors be explained by S-R association chains?

Question 9

Metaphor to understand the mind and research

Answer 9

• Why don’t computers need a homunculus?
• Information feedback - current state and end-state are compared and discrepancies are used to bring performance closer to the desired end-state
• Behaviour is shaped by goals

Question 10

How does the Turing test work?

Answer 10

• Human interacts with machine; human unaware
• Performance has reached human level
• Goal of artificial intelligence
• Tool to simulate cognitive processes
• If humans believe they are playing against a human – test is passed
• Watson machine example

Question 11

What is Symposium on information theory?

Answer 11

• Behaviourism under pressure
• Turning point: 1956
• Information Theory Symposium – quantification, storage, communication of information

Question 12

What did Miller say about STM?

Answer 12

• Limits of short-term memory

- 7 +/- 2

Question 13

Cognition includes processes where sensory input is:

Answer 13

– Transformed
	– Reduced
	– Elaborated
	– Stored
	– Recovered 
	– Used

Question 14

Who is Neisser?

Answer 14

• Publishes “Cognitive Psychology”
• Cognition
• All processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.
• Even if these processes operate in the absence of relevant stimulation

Question 15

Who are behaviourists?

Answer 15

Conducted research on animal learning. Needed to include cognitive processes into their models

Question 16

Who are Cognitive Psychologists?

Answer 16

Conducted research and included mental representations

Question 17

When did it shift from behaviourism to cognitive psychology/

Answer 17

By mid 1970s, psychologists were largely interested in cognitive psychology, not behaviourism

Question 18

Features of cognitive psychology

Answer 18

• Mental representations – information patterns that represent knowledge and is gained through observations and algorithms are used
• Complex processes: Top-down processes
• Experimental methods: Scientific Method

Question 19

Mental representations-Boxes-and-arrows diagrams

Answer 19

• Every box and arrow must be there, or product would not be good
• How information processing works and how selective attention works
• Describes the functionality

Question 20

Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention

Answer 20

• Filters out information it needs
• Past experiences
• Sensors – short term store – selective filter – limited capacity filter - either long term store or output system (then to effectors)

Question 21

Top down processing

Answer 21

• Boxes-and-arrows diagrams a good start
• Computational models – computer programs that simulate human information processing
• Allows us to create predictions and test theories

Question 22

Challenges with Top down processing ?

Answer 22

• Challenge faced: complexity of information processing
• Automated translation of text
• Syntactic ambiguity: John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope. The cow was found by a stream by a farmer.
• Homonyms – more than one meaning

Question 23

What is Top down process ?

Answer 23

Information from a higher processing stage is fed back to previous processing stages and influences processing at these stages. (direction in both ways)

Question 24

What is bottom-up process?

Answer 24

sense basic feature of stimuli and then integrate them

Question 25

What is the Scientific method?

Answer 25

1. Define a question, or hypothesis
2. Gather information
3. Form an explanatory hypothesis
4. Test the hypothesis
5. Analyze the data
6. Interpret the data
7. Publish
8. Replicate

Question 26

Sperling’s test of Broadbent’s theory

Answer 26

• Storage space where stimuli is kept
• Flash letters = participants could only repeat 3 characters
• Traces of STM fade when naming characters

Question 27

Interdisciplinary Pursuit

Answer 27

• Not just cognitive psychology
• How humans process information
• Cognitive studies: psychology, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, anthropology, education, sociology