What is cognition?

Question 1

What is Cognitive Psychology?

Answer 1

Cognitive Psychology is the scientific study of thought and experience

Question 2

Information Processing Approach

Answer 2

Humans as “stimulus response
machines”
- Information comes in through
the senses
- It is processed by a series of
modules that change the
information in a systematic way
- The output of this processing
modules ultimately cause an
observable response

Question 3

Assumptions of Information Processing Approach

Answer 3

• Serial processing: Only one step
  at a time
• Bottom-up processing: all
  processes are directly triggered
  by the stimulus

STIMULUS => Attention => Perception => Thought processes => Decision => RESPONSE/ACTION

Question 4

Criticism of Information Processing Approach

Answer 4

Does not allow for parallel
processing
- Ignores top-down processing, i.e. influences of an individual’s prior
knowledge, goals, and expectations
- Oversimplification

Question 5

Bottom-up processing: Representation in our heads

Answer 5

• If you can have a thought about it, then ‘it’ exists in your neurons
• Image is represented in your head by the activity of a large number of neurons, although it looks and feels like something meaningful to you]

Question 6

Rate coding

Answer 6

Greater rate of a neuron’s response is used to code/represent info

Question 7

Temporal coding

Answer 7

• Greater synchrony of the responses of several neurons is used to code information
  (e.g. to bind together different aspects of an image, like
  colour, motion, shape, …)