Cognitive psychology week 1

What are the basic concepts that underlie cognitive psychology?

• Human behaviour as driven by latent mental processes

• sensation, perception, attention, learning, memory, language, motivation, emotion.

• These work together as building blocks for higher levels of cognition.

Ontology

What kinds of things exist and their relationships.

• A set of concepts and categories in a subject domain that shows the properties and relationships between them.

• eg: memory and attention are interconnected concepts that exist under the topic of cognitive psychology?

Is there such thing as a theory in cognitive psychology that is completely correct?

No, as there is no set of facts that can be memorised and completely trusted.

When was the behaviourist point of view?

1900-1950

When was the cognitive point of view?

1950-present

What are the three steps to the behaviourist point of view?

• Environmental happenings

• Stimulus: the environmental stimuli is encoded by the brain

• Behaviour: Stimulation is associated with specific actions.

What are the four steps to the cognitive point of view (1950s-present)?

• Environmental happenings

• Stimulus: brain encodes environmental stimuli.

• Thoughts: mental processes act on the encoded representations.

• Behaviour

Classical view of cognition

The flow of information through information processing structure.

• Thought processes rely on manipulation of abstract symbols according to rules.

• Based on computer metaphor of the mind.

The 3 examples of classical cognition

• Semantic network model

• Logical rules

• Mental models

Semantic Network Model:

A network with hierarchical organisation.

eg: root at the top and lots of information extending on branches, getting more specific with each branch.

Logical rules model of classical cognition

Knowledge is organised and based on a set of rules.

eg: When the animal barks and wags it’s tail it is a dog.

Mental models example of classical cognition

More complex, causal relationship. Apply deductive reasoning to come to a conclusion.

What is cognitive psychology?

The study of how the mind encodes, represents and processes information.

What is the goal of cognitive psychology?

To explain and predict behaviour by understanding the representations and processes that underlie that behaviour. Because none of the cognitive psychology concepts are fixed, we can only learn about it through studies of cognition.

What is the goal of conducting experiments and making models to explain cognitive psychology?

To explain and predict behaviour by understanding the representations and processes which underlie behaviour.

What are the characteristics of a theory?

Describes, explains and predicts a cognitive process.

What are the 4 types of attention?

• Covert attention

• Overt attention

• Selective attention

• Divided attention

Covert attention

Paying attention to something without directly looking at it.

Divided attention

Attending to more than one thing at the same time

Overt attention

Move eyes to look at the thing you are attending to.

Selective attention

Focus on one object at the expense of others.

• Focuses attention on the thing you want to percieve and prevents unnecessary perception of things you don’t want to percieve.

• May percieve an object differently depending on what you’re attending to.

What are two types of representation?

• Cognitive representation

• Perceptual representation

Cognitive representation

A stored representation of an experience with the world that can be accessed when not currently experiencing the thing represented.

eg: a memory of playing a card game in the church on Red Earth

Perceptual representation

The visual and sensory processes that allow for active perception in the present moment. eg: being able to see the rainbow colours of the Jesus banner in the church on Red Earth.

What are three formats upon which mental representations can differ?

• Implicit knowledge vs explicit knowledge

• Imagistic vs Linguistic

• Spatial vs Syntactic

3 processes needed to represent something

• Construction of the mental representation

• Imagination/hypothetical thought

• Memory

How was the War of Ghosts experiment conducted?

• Bartlett read British participants a Native American story called The War of Ghosts.

• Participants were immediately asked to repeat the story.

• Participants were asked to remember story again months and years later.

What aspects of the story could participants recall 20 hours later?

Lots of details and story structure

What aspects of the story could participants recall 30 months later

Could still remember some of the story

What aspects of the story could participants remember 6 years later?

The basic skeleton of the story and some main events.

Main things noticed about ability to recall story across time

• ability to remember general outline stays constant after first recall.

• Style and rhythm are altered

• Forms and items become stereotyped

• Story is rationalised and participants explain meaning of various symbols.

• With infrequent reproduction, details are omitted or simplified.

What is memory comprised of initially?

Specific details and a theory of how those details fit together.

• If not recalled, the details are gradually forgotten until only the gist of what occurred remains.

What is the intention of many Indigenous stories in oral traditions?

Knowledge is passed down through generations using stories. Stories are told only in specific situations with careful rituals in order to prevent information from being degraded. This is important for survival.

What is the difference story recall in Western and Oral traditions?

In Western groups, recalling the story multiple times or passing it from one person to another results in distortions of the original narrative. In oral traditions, passing the knowledge down in only special situations and rituals helps protect the information.

The hierarchy of representations

• Basic representations: sensory motor perceptual and procedural representations.

• Intermediate representations: non-verbal episodic and semantic representations. (mental imagery of events not put into words)

• Highest level representations: Verbal declarative representations. Verbal narrative (advanced episodic memory), and Verbal abstract (conceptual labels like words, abstract concepts).

How our mental representations are organised

• we have multiple representations of the same info.

• Higher levels are contained within lower levels.

• What we attend to, encode and remember is interconnected, and forms the foundation for subsequent learning.

How did European people typically create maps?

• Using latitude, longitude and the position of the sun at noon.

How did Polynesian people navigate?

By imagining a world where the person didn’t move, but the world moved around them.

• used cues such as the stars, wind, currents and sun.

How can Tupaia’s map be read with reasonable accuracy?

• Find the sun at noon, imagining your current position is at one of the islands. This view will give a relatively solid understanding of how to get to the next island.

• Tupaia tried to incorporate the Western navigational tendency to find the sun at noon.

• The difference in navigational style illustrates how having different prior knowledge can lead people to focus on different aspects (selective attention).

What is cognition?

Human perceptions and representations which influence the resulting processes and actions.

2 non-classical accounts of cognition

• Cognition is situated

• Cognition is embodied

Meaning of cognition is situated

Perception and cognition are not just operations in the head but interactions with the world. They involve time and space.

Meaning of cognition is embodied

All perceptual activity provides information about the perceiver as well as the environment.

• so if I perceive someone as annoying soon after meeting them, that provides information about my own tendency to judge people?

Systems that were traditionally considered non-cognitive, but impact cognition

• reward

• affect

• social interaction

• development