unit 1: intro to cog. psychology Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
A subdiscipline of psychology that focuses on studying mental processes
What is cognitive science?
An interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind
Who is cognitive science studied by?
Cognitive Psychologists
Neuroscientists
Linguists
Artificial Intelligence
Anthropologists
What are the important roots of cognitive psychology (and of psychology in general)?
Philosophy: mental processes are lawful and predictable
- Rationalism: knowledge through reasoning
Physiology: the body is a machine and the inner workings can be studied scientifically
- Empiricism: knowledge through observation
Psychophysics
Studying the relationship between physical properties of a stimulus and the subjective experience of it
Structuralism
Studying how people consciously experience the world; breaking down to its “basic elements” (sensations, images, feelings) via introspection
Functionalism
Trying to determine the functions/purposes of the mind
Gestalt Psychology
-Importance of organizational processes in perception & problem solving
-“Gestalt” → “configuration” “shape”
-The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
-Importance of examining cognitive processes
Behaviorism
-Studied observable responses and their relation to observable stimuli
-“Consciousness” should not be studied at all
-Rejected the idea that consciousness could be scientifically studied
-Focused on stimulus-response connections; the “black box” in the middle (mental processes, consciousness) can’t be usefully studied.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
-He meticulously studied his own memory, using lists of nonsense syllables (CVC trigrams): BUP, ZAS, PID, etc.
-Difficulty increases as list length increases
-More repetitions = better memory
Savings with relearning
Difference in number of trials required to learn something compared to the time or number of trials required to learn it originally
Forgetting curve
Recall is dependent on the frequency of retention intervals
Sir Frederick Bartlett
Studied meaningful material like stories and folktales because…
he objected to tightly controlled lab procedures → doesn’t generalize to memory functioning in real life
Memory is reconstructive
Memory is reconstructive, not reproductive (what people recall is not like a video)
Memory is schema-based
-General knowledge structures about how events/situations typically unfold
-Based on prior experience
Premises of Behaviorism
- Learning occurs by responding
- Responses are elicited by stimuli
- S-R associations are strengthened by reinforcement
Rat maze
-If reinforcement (cheese) occurs after response (running through the maze), this association will become stronger with more trials (“learning”)
-Rat runs to cheese faster and faster
-responding and reinforcing is crucial to learning
Learning without reinforcement
Latent learning - even without cheese until the 11th day, the rats still had a drastic improvement on the 12th day in finding the cheese
Learning without responding
A child observing their parents’ actions, but may only demonstrate the act at a later time when it is needed
Complex, skilled behavior (like playing a piano)
Karl Lashley - skilled behavior is too complex for a S-R account
The creativity and productivity of linguistic expression
Noam Chomsky - Linguistic expression is too creative and productive for an S-R account
Information Processing Metaphors
-Computer: Input, processing, storage, output
-humans are symbol manipulators
-human thought as active, interpretive
-processing is step-by-step; stages can be isolated
-Brain: nodes, networks, activation, strengthening of connections
-cognitive processes occur in parallel-like networks of neurons distributed throughout the brain
Common Dependent Variables in Cog. Psychology
-Speed
Reaction time (RT): time elapsed between some stimulus and a response to the stimulus (measured in milliseconds)
-Accuracy
-Physiological measures
Speed-Accuracy Takeoff
-inverse relationship between speed and accuracy
faster speed, less accuracy
slower speed, better accuracy
