Lecture 1 (introduction)

Cognitive Psychology (CP)

understanding how humans perceive external stimuli with their senses. The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.

Mind

A complex system specialized in receiving and processing information, not equated with consciousness. Material foundation is the brain.

Two approaches to understanding human mind:

philosophy through introspection and physiology through empirical methods.

CP depends on:

rationalism and empiricism.

Rationalism

road to truth is reasoned contemplation.

Empiricism

we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence.

Availability Heuristic

Making judgments based on how easily we can recall relevant instances of a phenomenon.

Dialectic

A developmental process where ideas evolve over time through a pattern of transformation.

In a dialectic:

a thesis is proposed - an antithesis emerges - a synthesis integrates the viewpoints.

Wilhelm Wundt

A German psychologist who contributed to the development of structuralism.

Introspection

Deliberately looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness. The aim of introspection is to look at the elementary components of an object or process.

Functionalism

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

Pragmatism

The belief that knowledge is validated by its usefulness. What can you do with it?

William James:

leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism.

Associationism

Examining how elements of the mind can become associated with one another in the process of learning.

Associations may result from:

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

similarity (associating things with similar features or properties); or

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

Hermann Ebbinghaus

The first experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically. Studied his own mental processes, how people learn and remember material through rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material to be learned.

Edward Lee Thorndike:

held that the role of “satisfaction” is the key to forming associations.

Thorndike Law of Effect

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

John Watson

"Father" of radical behaviorism, focusing on the study of observable behavior, didn’t like internal mental contents or mechanisms much.

B.F Skinner

a radical behaviorist, believed that virtually all forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the environment. Skinner conducted research primarily with non-human animals.

Bandura

noted that learning appears to result not merely from direct rewards for behavior, but it also can be social, resulting from observations of the rewards or punishments given to others.

Cognitivism

The belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think.

Karl Spencer Lashley

challenged the behaviorist view that the human brain is a passive organ merely responding to environmental contingencies outside the individual. Instead, Lashley considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior.

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.

Channel Capacity

The upper limit with which an observer can match a response to given information.

George Miller Magic Number

The capacity of the human mind to hold about seven, plus or minus two, pieces of information.

Jerry Fodor

popularized the concept of the modularity of mind. He argued that the mind has distinct modules, or special-purpose systems, to deal with linguistic and, possibly, other kinds of information.

Modularity:

implies that the processes that are used in one domain of processing, such as the linguistic or the perceptual domain operate independently of processes in other domains.

Intelligence

The capacity to learn from experience, adapt to the environment, and use metacognitive processes. It may require different adaptations within different social and cultural contexts.

Metacognition

People's understanding and control of their own thinking processes.

Cultural Intelligence (CQ)

A person's ability to adapt to challenges in diverse cultures.

Carroll Three-Stratum Model of Intelligence

Stratum I includes many narrow, specific abilities (e.g., spelling ability, speed of reasoning).

Stratum II includes various broad abilities (e.g., fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, short-term memory, long-term storage and retrieval, information- processing speed).

Stratum III is just a single general intelligence (sometimes called g).

Fluid Ability

Speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning for novel problems.

Crystallized Ability

Accumulated knowledge and vocabulary.

Gardner Intelligence

Theory of multiple intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.

Robert Sternberg Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence

Intelligence comprises creative, analytical, and practical aspects.

Cognitive Psychology Research Methods

laboratory or other controlled experiments, psychobiological research, self-reports, case studies, naturalistic observation, and computer simulations and artificial intelligence, research goals include data gathering, data analysis, theory development, hypothesis formulation, hypothesis testing, and perhaps even application to settings outside the research environment.

Ecological Validity

The degree to which findings in one context may be considered relevant outside that context.

Introspection:

looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness.

MIT Conference (1956)

A historical moment in the emergence of cognitive psychology, with contributions from Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon, and George Miller.

Turing Test

A test to determine if a computer can be mistaken for a human more than 30% of the time.

Goals of cognitive psychology research:

data gathering and analysis, theory dev and hypothesis form and test, application.