Core Tutorial 7a: Revolutions in Cognitive Psychology

Vocabulary flashcards covering the transition from behaviorism to cognitive psychology, key historical dates, disciplines involved in cognitive science, and contrasting views of the mind.

Cognitive psychology

The study of the human mind and its cognitive processes, combining psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, anthropology, and philosophy.

Behaviorism

A school of thought that defined psychology as the science of behavior, focusing exclusively on observable behavior and stimulus–response relationships because mental events cannot be directly observed.

Cognitive revolution

A movement that brought the mind back into experimental psychology, influenced by researchers such as Noam Chomsky and Jerome Bruner, after behaviorism failed to explain language and complex thought.

1956

The year identified by George A. Miller as particularly important for the development of cognitive science, marked by the emergence of many theories of the mind.

1960

The year identified as the birth of cognitive science.

Behaviorist View of the Mind (B.F. Skinner)

The perspective that the inner workings of the mind should be ignored because they cannot be directly observed or scientifically measured, viewing the mind as a blank slate that pairs stimulus with response through conditioning.

Cognitive Science View of the Mind

The perspective that the mind is an information-processing system functioning like a computer, which actively encodes, stores, retrieves, and manipulates data using internal mental representations between input and output.

Linguistics (in cognitive study)

The discipline focused on studying language structures and the cognitive processes responsible for language.

Computer science (in cognitive study)

The discipline that contributes to cognitive science by using computers to simulate cognitive processes.

Neuroscience (in cognitive study)

The discipline focused on studying brain functions and their relationship to the mind.

Interdisciplinary research

The approach of combining knowledge and methods from different disciplines (such as psychology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience) to understand cognition.