PSY 211- exam one (cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, behaviorism)

Cognitive psychology

the scientific study of mental processes by which humans acquire knowledge (learn about the world) and use knowledge (interact with the world)

Cognitive psychology approach

infer what is going on inside of the mind

Biggest challenge in cognitive psychology

the mind is unobservable

Behaviorism

 a theory that all human and animal behaviors are learned through interaction with the external environment rather than internal mental states

Behaviorist view of psychology

the mind is nonexistent

Radical behaviorism

we are stimulus-response machines, and there is no mind; behavior is the result of simple conditioning

Downfall of behaviorism

Philosophical basis challenged; how do we create and use language if we are unconsciously creating sentences without conditioning? (we don't condition kids to say bad words) 

Karl Popper

falsifiability as criterion for good science (false or not → testable predictions for mind) 

Introspection

sit around and think about how mind woks to understand it

legacy of behaviorism

• Introspection no longer considered valid evidence; importance of rigorous experimental designs 

• Explanation for some human behavior: conditioning, gambling behavior, and phobias 

Cognitive neuroscience

 study of neural mechanisms underlying mental processes

• Primary techniques are fMRI and EEG/ERPs

• Neural mechanisms to better understand cognition 

Cognitive neuroscience approach

measure brain activity to infer what's going on inside the brain