What is Cognitive Psychology? Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
The scientific study of mental processes - a.k.a, “Information Processing Approach”
Based on the analogy of the mind as a computer
Von Neumann (1958); Marr (1982)
Anologies of cogntitive psychology
- Hardware = Physical system (nervous system)
- Software = Mental processes (memory, attention, etc.)
Weakness of cognitive psychology
Reductionist
Often oversimplifies mental processes and the explanations often ignore other potential factors
Mental Representation
Cognitive science assumes that information is “represented” in your nervous system
Representational Account
Internal representation of external objects
Types of representational accounts
- Propositional representations
- Indirect realism (representational)
What are propositional representations?
‘Token’ mental representations with semantic properties (tokens with meaning)
What is indirect realism?
We access external reality through representation
Issue with representational accounts
Not every cognitive psychologist supports the them
What is information (broadly)?
The amount of entropy (disorder) in a system
- Shannon & Weaver (1949)
I.e. information is the amount of surprise
What do cognitive processes do?
Aim to process the ‘surprise’ and filter out any noise
Environmental information
This is processed by a variety of different processing systems (this is known as modularity)
E.g. visual processes, memory, attention, etc.
What do processing systems do?
These discrete systems transform and osrt the info collected from the environment
Structuralist Approach
The start of cognitive psychology’s history
Introspection (Wundt, 1873)
Limitations of Structuralist Approach
- Can’t be verified
- Different reports
- Can alter thought processes
- Assumes mental events are conscious
Behaviourism
Second stage in cognitive psychology’s history
The study of observable, measureable events
The basis is that all human behaviour can be explained in terms of the learned relationship between stimulus and response
Argues that mental variables are unimportant - Epiphenomenal (mental events are caused by physical events in the brain)
This approach was hugely influential
Who founded behaviourism?
Watson (1913)
- There was a need for a scientific approach to psychology which had the same foundations as other physical sciences
Examples of Behaviourism
Classical Conditioning (Pavlov; Watson)
Operant Conditioning (Skinner)
Cognitive Revolution
This is when cognitive psychology became a prominent area of psychology
Behaviourism was thought to be too simplistic
This occurred around the 1950’s, although cognitive psychology was being studied before then)
Examples of influential early cognitive psychology
Tolman (1948) - Cognitive maps
Cherry (1952) - Attention; Cocktail Party Effect
Chomsky (1957) - Language Acquisition is not a part of operant conditioning
Miller (1957) - Memory: Magic number = 7 +/-2
The influence of information theory on cognitive psychology
Influenced by maths, engineering, computers
Developed new concepts (attention, skill, capacity, etc.)
Information Flow/Theory
Information theory studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information
It is a mathematical theory
Bottom - up processing
Data driven
Begins with an analysis of the sensory input (e.g. light on retina)
Perception is built up from low level information
Bottom-up processing refers to processing sensory information as it is coming in
Top - down processing
Concept driven
High level cognitive influences
Knowledge and experience influence our perceptions of the world
Your brain applies what it knows and what it expects to perceive and fills in the blanks
Serial processing
Piecemeal processing
- Bottleneck
- Sequential
…4, 3, 2… - 1 ——–> Stored Knowledge
Parallel processing
Bulk processing
- Late/No bottle neck
- Consecutive
4 3
5 … 2 ——–> Stored Knowledge
6 1
What are the approaches to studying cognition?
1) Experimental Cognition
2) Cognitive Neuropsychology
3) Cognitive Neuroscience
4) Computational Cognition
Experimental Cognition
An approach to studying cognition
Experimenter controls the variables in an attempt to study only one particular variable or system
Theories, etc. are deduced indirectly as a result of measurements of accuracy and reaction time
(Traditional approach)
Cognitive Neuropsychology
An approach to studying congition
How cognitive systems work is deduced based on on brain injuries or abnormalities
- This involves studying very small samples (i.e. 1 pp)
Assumes “modularity of mind” - Fodor (1983)
Relies heavily on double dissociations
“Modularity of Mind”
Fodor (1983)
One area damaged = one particular function/set of functions will be affected
Double dissociations
When two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other
Example:
- Speech production and language comprehension are both involving the use of language but have been shown to correlate with different brain regions
Cognitive Neuroscience
An approach to studying cognition
Brain imaging
Brain imaging techniques
- Single unit recording
- EEG (Electroencophalograph
- PET (Positron Emmission Tomography)
- fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery)
- TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation)
Computational Cognition
An approach to studying cognition
- Artificial intelligence - Physical electronics and computer programs
- Connectionism
- Abstract associative networks
Connectionism
Connectionism is a movement in cognitive science that hopes to explain intellectual abilities using artificial neural networks (also known as “neural networks” or “neural nets”)
Summary of cognitive psychology
- 70(ish) years
- Information processing account: Mind = computer analogy
- Variety of approaches and applications
Information processing - key concepts
- Something is being represented (most accounts)
- Modular and discrete systems
- Information processing = chaos to order
- Bottom-up vs. top-down processing
- Serial vs. parallel processing
