Winegard 1 Flashcards
Cognitive Psych:
Is the scientific study of the mind as an information processor. Cognitive psychologists try to build up cognitive models of the information processing that goes on inside people’s minds, including perception, attention, language, memory, thinking and consciousness
Information processing approach?
The information processing approach is based on a number of assumptions, including:
Information made available from the environment is processed by a series of processing systems (e.g. attention, perception, short-term memory);
These processing systems transform, or alter the information in systematic ways;
The aim of research is to specify the processes and structures that underlie cognitive performance;
Information processing in humans resembles that in computers
Cognitive revolution: Otto Selz
Otto Selz (1881-1943) was a German psychologist who formulated the first non-associationist theory of thinking in 1913. Selz, unlike Wundt, believed that higher order mental processes could be studied in the laboratory
Selz conducted research where he would ask people to find a word related to but more generic than other word, such as “farmer,” “publication,” “worker,” or “newspaper.”
The participants then explained how they identified the features of the words selected, how the features fit into larger categories, and how the categories led them to knew words
Otto discovered minds were doing more than associating; they were using a “schema” or organizing mental principle that guided their thoughts
Cognitive revolution: Behaviourism: John von Newman (1903-1957)
John von Neumann (1903-1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientists, and polymath (dude was brilliant! As a 6 year old, he could divide two 8-digit numbers in his head!!)
He was a key figure in the development of the digital computer and some of the key ideas about computation
In a 1945 EDVAC report, von Neumann stated that stored programs in a computer would reside in the computer’s memory along with the data it was to operate on. He described this in terms of idealized neurons
Serial vs parallel processes
Computers at the time Neumann published “the computer and the brain” were serial processors (could only process one thing at a time).
The brain on the other hand can handle parallel processes and is much faster.
Cognitive revolution: Herbert Simon (1969)
Herbert Simon (1969) compared the mind to computer processing systems
He noted that the brain is like the computer’s hardware and the mind is the computer’s software
Sensory and perceptual systems act as input channels; mental processes are analogous to software applications; memory storage is to disk storage; and, memory retrieval is to printer or screen display
In 1957, Simon predicted that computer chess would surpass human chess abilities within “ten years” when, in reality, the transition took about 40 years (but it did happen)
Cognitive revolution: Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky had a huge impact on the cognitive revolution both through his theories about language and his brutal takedown of B.F. Skinner
Syntactic Structures was Chomsky’s first book. A 100 page monograph it was written in an attempt to create a formal model of the syntax of language (grammar)
The book is technical, but key point: associationism cannot account for language
Chomsky takeaways?
Chomsky eventually came to the view that children had an innate predisposition for language development (nativist theory of language)
This development occurred via a language acquisition device (LAD) that possessed abstract rules for translating linguistic input into linguistic output including the production of speech and the comprehension of others’ speech
His argument was that there is simply not enough information in the child’s environment to provide him or her with the information necessary to learn a grammatical language (poverty of the stimulus)
Language is: abstract, complicated, generative, and creative
Other early highlights: George A. miller?
George A. Miller – devised models of memory and the mind based on the ideas of Chomsky and Artificial Intelligence. Key insight: human short-term memory capacity is generally limited to between 5 and 9 storage units (hence the need for chunking)
Other early highlights: Ulric Neissor?
In 1967, Ulric Neisser codified these burgeoning cognitive approaches in his textbook Cognitive Psychology which summarized and synthesized the state of the field and was used to train many hundreds of future cognitive psychologists.
Key Concepts: algorithms?
Algorithms: These are series of instructions that solve problems. Specifically, an algorithm is a list of instructions applied to input which results in specified and determined output
Key concepts: recursion?
Recursion: In language, this entails embedding a structure (sentence)within another structure of the same type. This creates the endless generative component of language
Mediational processors
Processes that act as mediators between the stimulus (input) and response (output)
Behaviourist model?
- only study observable/ external behaviour
Cognitive model?
- can scientifically study internal behaviour.
