Chapter 1: Influences on Study of Cognition/Overview

Cognitive Psychology

refers to all processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered and used. These are processes that are done consciously and unconsciously

attention

mentally focusing on stimulus

perception

intercepting sensory information for meaningful information

pattern recognition

classifying a stimulus into a known category

memory

storage facilities and retrieval process of cognition

Empiricism

FOCUS: the view that knowledge comes from own experiences via own experiences

How mind operates based on past learning, where it can also link together two events that occured in the same space of time with no real connection (ie. superstitions)

Nativism

FOCUS: this view emphasizes role of constitutional factors over learning to acquire abilities and tendencies, where the mind is a product of innate mechanisms.

Capabilities and attributes stem from biologically endowed capabilities.

Nativists suggest that cognitive functions are hard-wired or built-into humans

Structuralism

FOCUS: the goal of studying the mind should be to break it down into smallest components (building blocks of the mind)

Question: What are the basic building blocks of consciousness?

Methods used: introspection in labs

These are broken down int mode, quality, intensity and duration

What is introspection?

the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes

Functionalism

FOCUS: determine why the mind works the way it does, where the function of the mind was more important than elemental units

Question: Why does the mind have the operations it has?

Mission of psychology to be explanation of experiences and how they enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish

Methods: introspection in natural environment

Behaviourism

FOCUS: a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior.

Unobservable subjective mental state (consciousness) and subject processes like (expecting, believing, hoping) were studied in behaviorism

Method: Observe under controlled conditions (not introspection)

Studied relationship between input [stimuli] and outputs [responses]

mental representation

internal depictions of information (internal copies of external stimuli)

Gestalt Psychology

FOCUS: a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts.

Key Question: What are rules by which we parse the world into wholes? What organization does the mind impose on different configurations of simple stimuli?

Method: Introspection in labs

Example: how different shapes form an object (shapes into bicycle)

Individual Differences

FOCUS: intelligence, morals, personality are innate (genetically passed down)

Question: How do people differ?

This view studied mental imagery in laboratory and natural setting, which measured how people were different cognitively (ie. different sub-components of the mind that people vary on)

This realm invented tests/questionnaires to asses mental abilities that are used today (Quantitative data)

Method: Tests, statistical analysis

Which philosophers supported empiricism?

1) Locke
2) Hume
3)Stuart Mill

Which philosophers supported Nativism?

1) Plato
2) Descartes
3)Kant

Which philosophers supported structuralism?

1) James Baldwin
2) Wilhelm Wundt

Which philosophers supported functionalism?

1) William James

Which philosophers supported behaviourism?

1) Watson
2) Skinner
3)Tolman

Which philosophers supported Gestalt Psychology?

1)Wertheimer
2) Koffka
3)Kohler

Which philosophers supported Individual differences?

1) Sir Francis Galton