Cognitive Psychology Exam 1

cognitive psychology

branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind

mind

system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals

cognition

mental processes (ex. perception, attention, etc.) that our mind does

1800s

believed it was impossible to study the mind because its properties can’t be measured

first cog. psych experiment

Donders, 1868

• Choice vs. simple reaction time

• Determined mental responses cannot be measured directed but can be inferred from behavior

1879

William Wundt funds 1st scientific psych lab

• Structuralism + Analytic Introspection

• Ideas abandoned in early 1900s (too subjective)

structuralism

overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience called sensations; like periodic table of elements but all the basic sensations involved in creating experience

• Elements are sensations, images, and feelings

analytic introspection

trained subjects to describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli in terms of elementary mental elements

Ebbinghaus’s Memory Curve

• How rapidly information learned is lost over time

• Self-subject, repeated lists to 13 nonsense syllables one at at time at a constant rate

• Record time to learn 1st time, delay, how long it took to relearn

• More rapidly the 2nd time but with some forgetting

• Created ideas of savings and the savings curve

savings

original time to learn list- time to relearn after delay

• Longer delays = smaller saving, means more forgetting

savings curve

memory drops rapidly first 2 days after initial learning then levels off- memory can be quantified

1894

Mary Calkins

• Earned Ph.D. under William James but was denied her degree

• Developed the paired association technique to study memory (1894)

1940s-1960s

Abandoning the study of the mind

• Watson’s Behaviorism

• Said we can’t study invisible mental processes, only objective behaviors

behaviorism

says that all human and animal behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment

• focuses entirely on observable or measurable behaviors

• rejects the study of internal mental states, like thoughts, feelings, and motivations