Week 1 Flashcards
Behaviourism
dominated early 20th century theory and research
Cognitive psychology
relatively recent discipline
Cognitive science interdisciplinary
explores systems (e.g.,
memory) across multiple fields of psychology (e.g.,
developmental, vision) as cognitive processes contribute to
all fields (i.e., memory is involved in many fields)
Cognitive neuroscience
is a more recent development
where researchers explore how we process information in
our brains (e.g., MRI and PET studies)
Introspection
Set up a lab to do experiments
* Studied conscious thought via self-report
* Highly trained participants/observers would report their
experiences and thoughts towards / in response to stimuli
Problems with introspection (4)
Replication problems
* Same people gave different responses on different trials
* Different labs got different results
* Required language ability
* Subjective, low validity, low reliability
What is behaviourism? (2)
1)The scientific study of observable behaviour
2)The goal of psychology is “the prediction and control of behaviour”
Watson (1913)
Behaviourism theories (6)
1) Idea that humans are born as ‘tabula rasa’ (blank slates)
2)Our experience determines our behaviour
3)Strong believer in nurture (experience) over nature (genes/evolution)
4)Focuses on how stimuli (inputs) affect our responses (behaviour)
5) Not interested in what happens in between and does not believe
it is necessary to study mental processes
6) Things that are not directly observable are not open to scientific study
Classical conditioning:
1)Behaviour emerges as a result of repeated
pairing between a stimulus and a response
2)Think Pavlov (1927) and his dogs
Operant conditioning
1)Behaviour emerges as a results of
reinforcement
2)Behaviours that get a desired outcome are
more likely to be repeated
3) Think Skinner (1959) and his boxes
Behaviourism limitations
1)Doesn’t always generalise to human behaviour
* e.g., doesn’t explain complex human behaviour such as language acquisition,
memory formation, problem solving ….
* e.g., doesn’t account for social learning (Bandura, 1977)
– we learn from observation, not just experience
- Research findings with humans did not often ‘fit’ behaviourists’
theories
* It ignores thinking…. Which we know we do a lot!
* Not useful in explaining real world problems/observations
The advances in technology (3)
1)We started to make our own ‘black boxes’
2)Computers are ‘information processors’ – they take in
information (stimuli) and produce an outcome
(behaviour)
3) Similar to behaviourism, except computers take in
information, ‘do something with it’ and interpret it
according to the rules specified by the
programming/code
* We can study this internal processing Computers:
* Encode information
* Store information
* Retrieve information
(A computer in the 1950s)
Definition of cognitive psychology. Neisser 1967
…all of the processes by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered,
and used…”
(Neisser, 1967 - In the first cognitive psychology book)
Neisser and behaviourism
Neisser disagreed with behaviourism and argued that research
should be designed to explore how people perceive, think, and
remember
Process of cognitive psychology
1)inputs
2) mental processes
3) Outputs
