Cognitive Psychology, Chapter 1

cognition

• mental processes involved in knowledge, memory, thought, perception, judgment, language

• sometimes defined as scientific study of acquisition, retention, & use of knowledge

amnesia

• condition caused by brain damage

• loss of ability to remember certain things, leading to consequences in daily living

memory

• capacity to encode, store, retain, and retrieve info

• necessary for learning

• connects past experience and future action

• “the storage”

knowledge

• acquired & retained information/understanding/skills

• stored, structured representation of the world in the brain

• “the content”

learning

• process of acquiring new info/behaviours/skills via experience/study/observation

• changes behaviour/cognitive structures

• “the process”

thinking

• active cognitive process of mentally handling knowledge (e.g., reasoning, judgments, problem-solving, decision-making)

• “the manipulation”

sensation

• physiological process of sensory receptors detecting external stimuli (e.g., light, sound, smell)

perception

• mental interpretation & organization of sensory signals into meaningful experiences

judgment

• mental process of evaluating situations/cues/info to form opinions, make decisions, & infer outcomes

Bruner

• foundational figure in cognitive revolution

• shifted focus in psychology from behaviourism to how humans construct, categorize, and represent knowledge

• theories on knowledge acquisition, learning, and education

Gestalt

• school of thought, origins in Germany & Austria

• emphasis on the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, perception, and holistic behaviour

• elements gain meaning only as part of the “whole”

Wundt

• “father” of experimental psychology

• focus on conscious experience (feelings, thoughts, perceptions, recollections)

• developed introspection & claimed it to be the only way to study thoughts

introspection

• process through which one “looks within”, to observe & record the contents of one’s own mental life

• criticized for relying on non-reliable & unobservable data (beliefs, preferences, hopes, expectations) which cannot be refuted, therefore cannot be used towards hypotheses

behaviourism

• school of thought, contributions by Skinner & Watson

• focuses on learning through observable, measurable behaviours rather than internal mental states

• criticized for not considering mental processes (e.g., perception, beliefs, memories), leading to misinterpretation of actions

cognitive revolution

• 1950s-1960s

• intellectual shift in psychology, linguistics, and computer science away from behaviourism, toward studying the mind as an information processor

behaviourist movement

• perspective that dominated American psychology for several years

• focus on principles of conditioning

• early within, avoided terms that refer to representations & processes within the mind

transcendental method

• 18th century philosopher Kant

• involves taking observable facts and working backwards by finding underlying causes that led to effects

• built on the premise that the presence of something usually leads to visible effects

• used in experiments to enhance effects or observe how “x” changes in response to collect data

theory of computation

suggests that

• human mind is an information-processing system & cognition is a form of computation

• mental processes can be understood as algorithms, similar to how computers operate, allowing for the simulation of human thought

information processing theory

• views human mind like a computer, focusing on how information is received, encoded, stored, and retrieved

• suggests a sequential process involving sensory input, attention, working memory, and long-term memory to explain learning, cognition, and behaviour

response time (RT)

• the duration of time needed to make a particular response

• measures speed/time

cognitive neuroscience

the study of understanding mental functions through observing the brain and nervous systems

clinical neuropsychology

the study of brain function using cases of damage/illness that has disrupted normal brain functions

neuroimaging techniques

non-invasive methods to examine brain structure or function