Intro to cog

cognitive psychology

is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.

heuristics

are mental shortcuts we use to process information

dialectic

is a devel opmental process whereby ideas evolve over time through a back-and-forth exchange of ideas; in a way, it is like a discussion spread out over an extended period of time

dialectic process

A thesis is proposed
an antithesis emerges

A synthesis integrates the viewpoints

philosophy

which seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world, in part through introspection,

introspection

the examination of inner ideas and experiences (from intro, “inward, within,” and spect, “look”)

physiology

which seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter, primarily through empirical (observation based) method

rationalists

believes that the route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need any experiments to develop new knowledge.

empiricists

believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence— that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation

Descartes

he viewed the introspective, reflective method as being superior to empirical methods for finding truth

i think, therefore i am

cogito, ergo sum

John Locke

- believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical observation.

blank slate

Locke’s term for this view was tabula rasa (meaning - in Latin)

John Locke

the study of learning was the key to understanding the human mind. He believed that there are no innate ideas.

Immanuel Kant

German philosopher - (1724–1804) synthesized the views of Descartes and Locke, arguing that both rationalism and empiricism have their place. Both must work together in the quest for truth.

Structuralism

seeks to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components (affection, attention, memory, and sensation)

Introspection

- is the conscious observation of one’s own thinking processes. The aim of introspection is to look at the elementary components of an object or process.

Rationalism, Empiricism, Synthesis

Methods to gain knowledge

rationalism

through reflective thinking and logical analysis

empiricism

through observation

synthesis

through the use of observation as well as thinking and logical analysis

approaches to studying the mind

structuralism, functionalism, pragmatism, synthesis, behaviorism, gestalt psychology, synthesis

functionalism

Processes of how the mind works

pragmatism

Research that can be applied to the real world

synthesis

How learning takes place by associating things with each other

behaviorism

Relations between observable behavior and environmental events/stimuli

behaviorism

Use of animals in research in addition to humans Quantitative analysis

gestalt psychology

Psychological phenomena studied as organized wholes

Synthesis

Understand behavior through the ways people think

Synthesis

Experiments, computer simulation, protocol analysis

Functionalism

seeks to understand what people do and why they do it.

Pragmatists

believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness: What can you do with it?

Associationism

examines how elements of the mind, such as events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning.

Contiguity

(associating things that tend to occur together at about the same time);

similarity

(associating things with similar features or properties);

Contrast

(associating things that show polarities, such as hot/cold, light/dark, day/night).

Law of effect

A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an organism is rewarded for that response

Edward LeeThorndike

- believed that an organism learns to respond in a given way (the effect) in a given situation if it is rewarded repeatedly for doing so (the satisfaction, which serves as a stimulus to future actions).

Behaviorism

focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli.

contingency

Effective conditioning requires -

John B Watson

The father of radical behaviorism is

Operant conditioning

involving the strengthening or weakening of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments

Behaviorists

- regarded the mind as a black box that is best understood in terms of its input and output, but whose internal processes cannot be accurately described because they are not observable.

Walter Freeman

Psychiatrist - developed a particular kind of lobotomy in 1946—the transorbital or “ice pick” lobotomy.

transorbital lobotomy

inserted an ice pick–like instrument through the orbit of the eyes into the frontal lobes where it was moved back and forth.

Gestalt Psychology

states that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes.

maxim of gestalt psychology

“the whole is more than the sum of its parts

Cognitivism

is the belief that most human behavior explains how peo ple think.

Donald Hebb

proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain.

Cell assemblies

- are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation.

Turing Test

that judges whether a computer program’s output was indistinguishable from the output of humans

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

is defined as human attempts to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information

Jerry Fodor

popularized the concept of the modularity of mind.

Independent Variable

are aspects of an investigation that are individually manipulated, or carefully regulated, by the experimenter, while other aspects of the investigation are held constant

Dependent Variable

are outcome responses, the values of which depend on how one or more independent variables influence or affect the participants in the experiment.

Confounding Variables

are a type of irrelevant variable that has been left uncontrolled in a study.

subtraction method

involves estimating the time a cognitive process takes by subtracting the amount of time information processing takes with the process from the time it takes without the process

correlation

a statistical relationship between two or more attributes, such as characteristics of the participants or of a situation

correlation coefficient

describes the strength of the relationship

correlation

A - is a description of a relationship

negative

A - relationship indicates that as the measure of one variable increases (e.g., fatigue), the measure of another decreases (e.g., alertness).

positive

A - relationship indicates that as one variable increases (e.g., vocabulary size), another variable also increases (e.g., reading comprehension).

No Correlation

when the coefficient is 0—indicates that there is no pattern or relationship in the change of two variables (e.g., intelligence and ear lobe length).

postmortem

studying an individual’s brain after their death

self-reports

an individual’s own account of cognitive processes

case studies

in-depth studies of individual’s

naturalistic observation

detailed studies of cognitive performance in everyday situations and nonlaboratory contexts

ecology

is the study of the interactive relationship between an organism (or organisms) and its environment.

Cognitive science

is a cross-disciplinary field that uses ideas and methods from cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, AI, phi losophy, linguistics, and anthropology