Cognitive Psychology Lecture Notes

Flashcards covering key principles, historical figures, current approaches, core scientific principles, and research methods in cognitive psychology based on the lecture notes.

Perception

Interpreting sensations.

Attention

Focusing on particular stimuli.

Memory

Allows us to remember episodes, information, and interpretations when retrieving them.

Languages

Communicate our thoughts and ideas with others.

Decision-making

Weighing options, both helpful and unhelpful.

Brain activity

Controls all of the other principles of cognitive psychology.

Aristotle

Envisioned memory metaphorically as a wax tablet, with memories formed in the tablet like molds in hot wax.

Wilhelm Wundt

Studied consciousness and used self-reports to see how people perceived sound, colors, and other senses.

Fechner and Helmholtz

Studied perception using psychological methods with the goal of developing laws of perception.

Ebbinghaus

Focused on memory and tested his own memory to see how relearning gained from previous exposure to info.

Behaviorists

Argued self-reporting was biased and subjective, focusing instead on behaviors they could observe.

BF Skinner

Stated that language learning occurs through conditioning and imitation.

Chomsky

Argued that children produce language that hasn't been said around them and have the mental capacity to learn the rules of a language without feedback.

Computer Metaphor

A popular metaphor for cognition that sees the mind as an information processing model.

Neisser

Considered the father of cognitive psychology, coined the term, and focused on neuroscience.

Representationalism

An approach where knowledge about the world is represented in some form in our minds so cognitive processes may operate on or interpret representations; aligns well with the biological perspective.

Embodied Cognition

Views cognitive processes as providing a means of interacting with the world, examining cognition as interaction between humans and their environment.

Biological Perspective

A perspective in cognitive psychology that focuses on neural networks.

Empiricism

A core principle of the scientific method defined as systematic observation.

Determinism

A core principle stating that behaviors have underlying causes, and understanding involves identifying these causes and their relation to a certain behavior.

Testability

A core principle stating that theories must be studied in a way that allows them to be evaluated through observation.

Parsimony

A core principle preferring simple explanations over complex ones, where the simpler theory is widely accepted until it is refuted.

Case Studies

Research method in which individual cases are observed and investigated.

Correlational Studies

Research method that records the frequency and intensity of many variables at once.

Experimental Studies

Research method that simplifies the context surrounding a behavior, allowing for focus on the impact of a small set of variables.