cognition textbook defintions exam 1

chapters 1-4

mind

System that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions such as

perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning.

cognition

the mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory

cognitive psychology

The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning, and decision making.

In short, cognitive psychology is concerned with the scientific study of the mind and mental processes.

coined in 1967

Franciscus Donders, 1868

studied how long it took people to make a decision, processing speed

reaction time

The time it takes to react to a stimulus.

This is usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus.

Examples of responses are pushing a button, saying a word, moving the eyes, and the appearance of a particular brain wave

difference between simple and choice time = how long it takes to react

simple reaction time

Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus

choice reaction

Time to respond to one of two or more stimuli.

took one-tenth of a second longer

For example, in the Donders experiment, asking his participants to push the left button when they saw the left light go on and the right button when they saw the right light go on

Wilhem Wundt

founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology

structuralism

analytic introspection

structuralism

An approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations.

bottom-up sensation, the receptors in body create our world view

analytic introspection

A procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.

shown a picture of a rose, describe the qualities and “building blocks” of the rose

“red” “soft” “delicate” NEVER naming the actual object

participants had to be conditioned into responding in this way, biased experiment

Hermann Ebbinghaus

first to scientifically study memory, he studied his own mind using quantitative method for measuring memory.

repeated lists of 13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUH, and ZIF

recorded how long it took to learn the first time, delay, then RELEARNED IT

Savings

Learning Curve, Forgetting curve

savings

Measure used by Ebbinghaus to determine the magnitude of memory left from initial learning.

Higher savings indicate greater memory. - dont need to know formula

savings curve, forgetting curve

decline rapidly over the first two days, after that the forgetting leveled out

memory has already been solidified

William James

First psychology textbook; some of his observations are still valid today

father of functionalism ?

John Watson

rejected Wundt’s introspection → behaviorism

Little Albert experiment

used classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind.

pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior.

behaviorism

observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists

did not allow any consideration of the mind’s role in creating behavior.

classical conditioning

A procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response.

Ivan Pavlov

the father of classical conditioning

pairing of food (which made the dog salivate) with a bell (the initially neutral stimulus) caused the dog to salivate to the sound of the bell

BF Skinner

operant conditioning

argued that children learn language through operant conditioning

operant conditioning

A learning process by which behaviors are made more likely to recur by the inclusion of reinforcers or less likely to recur by the inclusions of punishments.

Operant conditioning can be used to shape behavior toward a more desired outcome.

Edward Tolman

didn’t agree with behaviorism

rat in the maze rewarded when turning right, but when map was flipped instead of turning right the rat learned and turned left. results didn’t perfectly match with behaviorism

rat created a cognitive map (Mental conception of a spatial layout)

Noam Chomsky

children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by parents (“I hate you, Mommy,”

language development driven by an inborn biological program that holds across cultures

cognitive revolution

A shift in psychology, beginning in the 1950s, from the behaviorist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in terms of the mind.

One of the outcomes of the cognitive revolution was the introduction of the information-processing approach to studying the mind

paradigm

A system of ideas, which guide thinking in a particular field.

paradigm shift is when the thinking shifts from one paradigm to another

information processing approach

developed after the invention of the computer

the approach to psychology, developed beginning in the 1950s, in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages.

developed after neissers book?? - double check that

cocktail party effect

Colin Cherry - audio messages, people were aware of the noise but were not gathering meaning and understanding those noises

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations.

Donald Broadbent

designed the first diagram to describe the flow of information in the mind based off the cocktail party effect results

artificial intelligence

The ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence.

first models of memory

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s

Endel Tuvling representation

Episodic memory is memory for events (like what you did last weekend).

Semantic memory is memory for facts (such as the capitals of the states)

Procedural memory is memory for physical actions, muscle memory

neuropsychology

the study of the behavior of people whose brains had been damaged by traumatic injury, had been providing insights into the functioning of different parts of the brain since the 1800s.

Electrophysiology

measuring electrical responses of the nervous system, made it possible to observe and measure the activity of specific neurons.

brain imaging

technique such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that results in images of the brain that represent brain activity. In cognitive psychology, activity is measured in response to specific cognitive tasks.

PET

fMRI