Week 1 Flashcards
Why are cognitive structures considered hypothetical or inferred?
We can’t observe cognitive processes directly
We can make inferences on cognition based on our observations
Fill in the blank:
Cognitive psychology is the dominant school of the _________________________
later 20th century / 21st century
When did the cognitive revolution happen?
Middle of the 20th century - present day
How did the cognitive revolution happen?
the different parts of cognitive science grew closer together to form an integrated model of the mind
What are the four parts of cognitive science
- human experimental cognitive psychology
- artificial intelligence
- cognitive neuroscience
- psycholinguistics
What is the main part of cognitive science?
Human experimental cognitive psychology
When did Watson and Rayner conduct the Little Albert Experiment
1920
What did the Little Albert experiment show?
classical conditioning of the fear response in children
How did Watson and Rayner build up on Freud’s Little Hans experiment?
Freud used cognitive processes to analyse Little Hans’ fear of horses
However, Watson and Rayner wanted to show the development of fear without involving cognitive processes
Why was Little Albert scared of other white furry animals?
The conditional fear of the rat was transferred to the other animals
Therefore the fear was generalised
Why would Watson’s Little Albert experiment not be conducted today ?
It doesn’t meet ethical standards set up to protect the subject
What were four problems with Watson’s Little Albert experiment (aside from ethics)
- The animals presented before and after were differently behaved
2.The animals presented before and after were presented in different ways (thrown) - Experimental bias
- Variability / measurement error
Explain the experimental bias in Watson’s Little Albert Experiment
Watson didn’t consider that he may have interpreted Albert’s behaviour wrong
Explain the variability / measurement error in the Little Albert experiment
Just one experiment is not enough to draw a conclusion
What is blind rating
Recording the subject
Observer watches the videos of the subject and determines the states of the subject without knowing whether the condition was control or experimental
What is experimental psychopathology
Study of causes, characteristics, and treatment of psychological dysfunction
What are four ways that the Watson / Rayner Little Albert Experiment could have been improved if it was conducted now
- Using more subjects
- Using proper control groups
- Repeating conditions
- Using Blind Raters
Where / when does modern cognitive psychology originally stem from?
2000 years ago
Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato
What was the ancient Greek understanding about the soul and the mind?
The soul included the mind
What were the two schools of thought in ancient Greek times?
Rationalism
Empiricism
Who represented Rationalism in Ancient Greece?
Plato
Describe Rationalism
- Exploring the mind through thinking and experience
- Using intuition and deduction
- we all have a nature to our core that can’t be changed
What did Rationalists believe about knowledge?
Knowledge is innate and can be acquired through development
A priori
Nature (instead of nurture)
Who represented Empiricism
Aristotle, who was Plato’s student
Describe Empiricism
All knowledge comes from sensation / experience
Knowledge is not innate but learned
Nurture (over nature)
How is the Empiricist attitude towards the unobservable different from that of the Rationalists?
Empiricists were skeptical towards the unobservable while the Rationalists believed in the value of introspection
Empiricists preferred sensory evidence (eg. observations)
Describe the Empiricist / Rationalist sides in the nature vs nurture argument
Rationalist: nature (Plato)
Empiricist: nurture (Aristotle)
Describe the modern scientific attitude towards empiricist / rationalist thought
Modern scientific attitude combines empiricist / rationalist thinking
How long after the Ancient Greek philosophers did Kant live?
2500 years later, in 1724 - 1804
Kant lived in the Age of __________________
Enlightenment
Describe the impact of the scientific revolution on Kant’s philosophy
- Kant lived in the European Age of Enlightenment
- This was the start of the scientific revolution
- This meant that more emphasis was placed on precise measurement / mathematical method / scientific laws
- Kant wanted to see whether psychology could ever be considered an empirical science
What was Kant’s conclusion in the Critique of Pure Reason
Psychology can’t be an empirical science because the mind can’t be amenable to direct study
Why did Kant believe that psychology can’t be an empirical science?
- It has to be based on ONLY introspection
- no general law: everyone’s introspection is different
- reductionism
- introspection alters what it observes
Describe the issue of reductionism and how it challenges validity of introspection
Introspection would involve separating things about the self that can’t be separated
Why was Kant an important figure in psychology?
He defined the mind as a set of functions that word together as a whole to produce our experience, knowledge and understanding
Kant came up with the idea of cognitive architecture. Describe the idea of cognitive architecture
Knowledge begins with senses, then passes to understanding and finally to reason
Senses (perception) –> understanding –> reason
Describe the transcendental method
inferring the conditions that have to be present to explain our conscious experience
Wilhelm Wundt lived in __________ and was considered the father of ___________________
1832 - 1920
Experimental Psychology
Who developed the school of thought of ‘Voluntarism’
Wilhelm Wundt
____________ set up one of the first experimental psychology laboratories in Leipzig in 1879
Wilhelm Wundt
Order the following : Wilhelm Wundt, Plato, Aristotle, Watson, Freud, Kant
Plato : 427 -348 BCE
Aristotle : 348 - 322 BCE
Kant: 1724 - 1804
Wundt : 1832 - 1920
Freud : 1856 - 1939
Watson : 1878- 1958
How did Wundt attempt to make introspection an empirical tool?
he presented stimuli to the subjects and asked them to describe their experiences without interpretation
How did Wilhelm Wundt limit interference during his experiments so as not to influence the subjects?
He showed the pictures in a dark and quiet room
How did Wilhelm Wundt and Kant differ in their attitude towards Introspection?
Kant believed that Psychology couldn’t be studied on an empirical level because proper introspection couldn’t be achieved without changing what is being observed.
Wundt believed that thorough introspection was the answer to studying the conscious mind empirically
Describe Wundt’s concept of apperception
- mental process that a person uses to makes sense of an idea
- they assimilate the idea to the ideas that they already have
- ie. the new idea becomes integrated into their old ideas
Where did Wundt’s idea of Voluntarism come from?
Wundt believed that apperception was an active / voluntary action
ie. the integration of new ideas into old ideas and the way it happens is not a passive act, but an active one
Describe Wundt’s understanding of the relationship between automatic / controlled cognitive processes
Wundt believed that the automatic / controlled cognitive processes are distinct
Automatic: association between two stimuli
Controlled: apperception
What is the difference /similarity between Wundt’s understanding of apperception and the modern understanding of apperception?
Difference: modern school of thought doesn’t see controlled cognitive processes as superior to automatic associations, whereas Wundt believed that controlled cognitive processes are superior
Similarity: both Wundt and the modern school of thought sees automatic processes and controlled cognitive processes as distinct
Describe how Wundt sees the structure of a conscious awareness of a stimulus eg. an apple
First reaction: BEFORE conscious awareness happens, we think about the automatic associations we built up with an apples (eg. crisp, red)
Second reaction: CONTROLLED, voluntary cognitive processing comparing the stimulus to our original pool of ideas about it
Describe Wundt’s idea of structuralism
- Wundt believed that our ideas have structure
- this is because of the order of the automatic association followed by the controlled cognitive analysis
Describe Wundt’s study of mental chronometry
- wanted to measure processes through electromechanical devices to record reaction times
- wanted to see how long it took for apperception to occur
Describe Wundt’s distinction between attention and apperception
attention: registering the stimulus
apperception: forming the image of the stimulus
What was Wundt’s estimation for apperception to occur?
1/10th of a second
Why didn’t Wundt study things like learning, memory and language
He thought he wouldn’t be able to study these aspects with his methods of introspection
Who was Edward Titchener
Wundt’s student in Leipzig
He moved to Cornell
How was Titchener similar to Wundt?
He used experimental introspection
How was Titchener different to Wundt?
Titchener wanted to find the individual components of the conscious experience by breaking them down
Wundt was only interested in the holistic aspect of the conscious experience
True or false: Titchener’s approach was also structuralist (like Wundt’s)
True
Where did Titchener think cognition came from?
Sensations (like Kant)
Why did Titchener want to understand sensations?
Titchener wanted to understand sensations to understand cognition
Titchener believed that there were four independent properties of sensations. What were they?
- intensity (bright/weak)
- quality (pale, blue)
- temporal duration (long, short)
- spatial extent (small, large)
What is reductionist classification
Titchener’s suggested 40,000 elemental qualities that could be studied
This was an extension of his four main independent properties of sensation
Why did Titchener want to focus on sensation?
Sensation led to cognition so understanding sensations would help us understand the mind
What is feature analysis?
identifying key sensory features that would help differentiate between the object in question and other similar objects
Describe Titchener’s view of structuralism and how it differed from Wundt’s.
Titchener focused on the process of identifying the key sensory features used to identify an object
Wundt focused more on the controlled cognition of the object (voluntarism)
_____________ wrote The Principles of Psychology in 1891
William James
What was the difference between William James’ method and Wundt and Titchener?
- William James didn’t like the experimental method whereas Wundt and Titchener both tried to apply the experimental method to introspection
- William James had a functional approach whereas Wundt and Titchener had a structuralist approach
James used the ___________ approach whereas Wundt and Titchener used a ________ approach
functional
structuralist
Titchener, Wundt, and James all relied on ___________ to inform their theories
introspection
What did James discuss that Titchener and Wundt? Why?
James talked about things that were not observable, such as will and consciousness.
Titchener and Wundt used the experimental method so their discussions were limited to the observable
Given an example to show the difference between functionalism and structuralism
Functionalism: how do the different parts of the piano work together to create sound
Structuralism: How does each individual part of the piano work
Show how James demonstrated a functionalist approach rather than a structuralist one
Used Darwin’s evolutionary theory to explain HOW the mind adapts to meet the needs of the organism
This shows a focus on the ‘how’ more than just the ‘what’
Use the example of the will to show how James showed a functionalist approach rather than a structuralist one
James wanted to see the mental processes / purpose behind the will rather than examining its individual parts
Who (and when) was the pioneer of Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
How did Ebbinghaus differ from Wundt and Titchener?
- believed we can study memory using scientific experimentation
- didn’t use introspective method
Describe main idea of Ebbinghaus’ 1885 paper
- Ebbinghaus showed the time curve over which we forget information
How did Ebbinghaus’ paper change the perspective on experimental psychology
- described need for statistical approaches to estimate full effect from the experimental results
- tried to identify anomalies in the data
What was Ebbinghaus’ explanation for some memories staying with us longer than others?
Some things are better remembered if they are associated with something
How did Ebbinghaus make sure that associations wouldn’t help him remember some words better than others?
He used nonsense syllables
What was Ebbinghaus’ ‘saving score’?
the difference between the time taken to learn the list originally and the time taken to learn the list again after forgetting
How did Ebbinghaus measure memory retention?
He saw how many repetitions were necessary to learn the whole list with 100% accuracy
What did Ebbinghaus’ memory curve show?
Most forgetting happens really quickly
Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve shows that very little forgetting happens after _____________
4 days
Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve shows that most forgetting happens __________________
in the first few minutes
Before the late 19th century, all psychology was _______________
cognitive psychology
Name three criticisms of introspection
- unreliable:
- unrepresentative
- limited in use
- limited in areas of psychology
Why was animal psychology ignored in the late19th century?
there was a fear that humans would apply human constructs to other animals even though they couldn’t confirm their existence
What is Morgans Canon
animal activity should not be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be interpreted in terms of simpler processes
Name other laws that follow the basic principles of Morgan’s Canon
Occam’s Razor
Leibniz’s Law
Reductio Ad Absurdum
Parsimony
Describe parsimony
when there are two explanations for the same observation, the simplest should be selected
What two combined causes led to behaviourism?
Parsimony
Dissatisfaction with introspection
Watson timeline
1878 - 1958
Why did Watson criticise structuralist and functionalist approaches to psychology
He believed that the study of mental states is not scientific since it can’t be quantified
Did Watson see psychology as a natural science?
no
Instead of studying consciousness, Watson believed that we should study ________
Association
Behaviourism
What is the modern name for Behaviourism
Learning Theory
Describe the difference between public and private events
Public events: observable processes
Private events: cognitive processes
Did Watson reject the existence of private events?
No
How does behaviourism adhere to Morgan’s Canon
Behaviourism avoids psychological explanations that go beyond inputs and outputs
Describe inputs and outputs in terms of behaviourism
Input: environmental events before observed event
Output: observable behaviour
How were later behaviourists different from Watson
Later behaviourists didn’t limit the study to only that which could be observed
What was Skinner’s opinion on inner states in terms of behaviourism
Skinner believed that inner states exist but are not relevant in functional analysis
Watson elaborated on ideas from ______ and _________
Pavlov
Thorndike
Pavlov wanted to study physiological reflexes. Describe what physiological reflexes are.
Automatic behaviours (not learned)
eg. blinking if object comes close
Describe the difference between the natural and neutral stimulus in Pavlov’s experiment
natural stimulus: food
neutral stimulus: bell
