Week 1: The Cognitive (R)evolution Flashcards
Edward Tolman
One of the most influential and important neo-behaviorists was this American psychologist.
Maze
The animal, typically the rat, had to explore or learn to navigate to find a reward.
The important thing about them is that the animal has choices to make, such as turning left or right or sometimes continuing straight ahead.
Latent
Means learning that is dormant or concealed.
Latent Learning
Learning that seems to occur through exposure to environmental stimuli without any reinforcement.
Cognitive Maps (mental maps)
Tolman proposed that animals form internal representations of their environment, allowing them to adapt to new situations.
Detour Mazes
Introduced obstacles or blocked paths, forcing the animal to find alternative routes to the goal.
Hippocampus
A brain region also involved in navigation in rats and other species.
Goes through structural changes within 45 minutes of learning a new route.
Neuroplasticity
The brain changes as we learn. And the information is stored and available for later use.
Latent Learning
Learning without reinforcement presented a major challenge for strict operant conditioning models.
Latent Learning
Seen as the stablishment of stimulus-stimulus, rather than stimulus-response associations, through a process of exploration.
Reinforcement (Tolman)
It drove the animal to behave in a way when it was productive for it to do so, that is, when it was motivated by the prospect of reward.
Operant Conditioning VS Latent Learning
Operant conditioning is an example of response learning, while latent learning is an example of place learning.
Operant conditioning: Reinforcement is the cause of the behavior.
Latent learning: Reinforcement is the trigger for demonstrating the learned behavior.
OC: Intervening variables are ignored
LL: Intervening variables are central
Intervening Variables (Mediating Internal Representations)
1) Processing of the stimulus or environment
2) Transformation of that information into a stored, spatial representation or map
3) Access to specific information to plan and execute an adaptive behavioural response, motivated by reward
Surplus Meaning
This ability in cognitive psychology to make testable predictions of its hypothetical constructs.
It’s the power of a theory to stimulate further research and discovery.
Induction
Researchers observe behavior and patterns, leading to the development of hypothetical constructs.
Deduction
Based on hypothetical constructs, researchers generate specific hypotheses that can be tested through experiments.
Cognitive Structures
Structures here refers to conceptually coherent, modular units that serve a particular function within one or more domains of cognition.
A structure typically refers to an internal form or representation of information.
Mental Image
The internal structure or visual representation of an object or a scene, although images can also involve
other senses, auditory, olfactory, and tactile
Symbols
More abstract than the seemingly sensory-like properties of an image (i.e., sounds attached to written letters or the meaning attached to whole words).
Concepts
Mental categories for organizing information such as size or attractiveness
Rules and Heuristics
Both conscious and unconscious, which govern relationships between knowledge and guide our behaviour.
Beliefs and Interpretations
Personal convictions or meaning of the world.
Cognitive Processes
Operations that can be applied to the information and often transform it.
Cognitive Domains
The scope of cognitive psychology for which theories are developed and tested.
Building Blocks of Cognitive Psychology
1) Cognitive Domains (scope or function)
2) Cognitive Structures (forms & representations)
3) Cognitive Processes (operations & transformation)
Cognitive Neuroscience
It is one of the fastest-growing areas and is an important strand of cognitive science today.
Immediate Memory Span
The limit to accurately repeating back sequences of up to six items readily held in our memory for a short period of time.
Reaction Time
The time taken to make a response towards a stimulus.
Serial Search
A sequential search process where each item in a memory set is compared to the target item one at a time.
Parallel Search
A simultaneous comparison of a target item with all items in a memory set.
Self-terminating Search
The search stops as soon as the item is detected.
Exhaustive Search
The search continues to the end, even if a match is found early in the process.
Mental Rotation
Is the process of mentally manipulating an object’s orientation in space.
Shepard and Metzler’s experiment demonstrated that this process takes time, suggesting that people simulate the physical rotation of objects in their minds.
Serial Process
Involves handling tasks one at a time, in a sequential order.
Parallel Process
Involves handling multiple tasks simultaneously.
Depth of Processing
The more we think about and elaborate in our minds a piece of information, the more likely it is that it will be accessible later for recall.
Memory Bias
Negative memories tend to be stronger in people with depression and anxiety with important implications for the maintenance of their problems.
Memory Encoding
The way information is processed during learning significantly impacts subsequent retrieval.
Schema (Kant, Piaget, and Neisser)
An organized abstract representation of knowledge about a particular situation or thing.
Schema (Kant, Piaget, and Neisser)
Provides a stored template onto which observed
evidence can be automatically compared to permit correct classification.
Schema (Kant, Piaget, and Neisser)
Most are assumed to be built up over our lives based on a combination of direct, personal experience and indirect knowledge through communications with others and other media.
Schema (Kant, Piaget, and Neisser)
Allow us to quickly pattern match an object or a situation with something similar that we have experienced before.
Schema (Kant, Piaget, and Neisser)
Allows us to use past experience of a similar
object or situation to know what to expect, and particularly how to behave without the need for
careful analysis and planning
Cognitive Dissonance
Where these schema are opposing or contradictory, we tend to find the situation uncomfortable.
Typically, we tend to adjust our perceptions or interpretations to allow us to fix on one of the two alternative schemas, or combine them to form a new one.
Cognitive Dissonance
Where these schema are opposing or contradictory, we tend to find the situation uncomfortable.
Typically, we tend to adjust our perceptions or interpretations to allow us to fix on one of the two alternative schemas, or combine them to form a new one.
Neisser’s Process of Perception
Cyclical Process: Feature Analysis > Schema Activation > Perceptual Exploration > Sensory Cues
Feature Analysis
The identification of different component features that
made up the object
Active Perceptual Exploration
Actively and consciously collecting
more information.
This may also include other information from the environment that provides data
to help identify the object.
This, in turn, could bring into play new feature analysis and so on, until stable perception is achieved.
Schema & Perception (Constructive Process)
Conscious top-down feedback
Automatic bottom-up feed-forward
Event Schema
The general set of behaviours that we adopt when we
find ourselves in a particular situation or context.
Script Schema
Is stored and automatically accessed to guide our behaviour.
Self Schema
Just as we tend to fit people that we meet into categories based on what we see or know about them, we also have one or more schemas about ourselves.
Reflect the perceptions we have of ourselves and also how we act in different situations, both consciously and
unconsciously.
Negative Self Schema
Are proposed to have an important role in increasing a person’s vulnerability to mental health problems and to serve to maintain them when they occur.
Identification and modification of such unhelpful or maladaptive schema is a common goal of psychological therapy.
