Cognitive Psychology Ch. 1

Cognitive Psych Definition

Scientific study of mind, mental processes, and how mind operates

Mental processes included in cognition

Attention, creativity, decision-making, intelligence, language, learning, memory, perception, and reasoning

Franciscus Donders

Studied reaction time using mental chronometry

Mental chronometry

Measuring how long a cognitive process takes using reaction time

Choice Reaction Time

Require multiple cognitive operations

Simple Reaction Time

Measuring 1 input and 1 output

Difference between Simple and Choice Reaction Times

Decision Time

Father of Experimental Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

Analytic Introspection (Wilhelm Wundt)

participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

Who studied their own memory? They learned nonsense syllables and tracked forgetting overtime. Forgetting Curve

Hermann Ebbinghaus

What is the forgetting curve?

Shows how savings decay across retention intervals

Father of American Psychology who authored "Principles of Psychology"

William James

Who was a student of William James and discovered the Recency Effect

Mary Culkins

Recency Effect

More likely to remember last words in a list

Herman George Canady

Psychologist best known for his research on implicit racial bias in IQ testing.

George Sanchez

Studied cultural bias in IQ testing, focused on mental measurement, and founded chicano psychology

What is Behaviorism?

Scientific study of objective and observable behavior (Reaction to Wundt's analytic introspection)

What types of phenomenons did Wundt believe should only be studied?

Objective, observable, and overt phenomenons

Who founded Behaviorism?

John Watson

Little Albert Experiment (J. Watson)

Demonstrating behavior can be analyzed without reference to brain

Who founded operant conditioning?

B.F. Skinner (believed all mental events are triggered by external environmental stimuli that give rise to behaviors)

What is operant conditioning?

shaping behavior with reward/punishment

What factors contributed to the cognitive revolution?

Dissatisfaction with behaviorism, rise of technology, and demands of war

Whose work challenged behaviorist interpretation?

Edward Tolman

Edward Tolman Experiment

Rats navigate using cognitive map of space

What did Noam Chomsky believe?

Believes all humans have an inborn ability to master all complex & varies aspects of language

Info processing approach

Way to study mind based on insights associated with digital computer

What did the demands of war (WWII) establish?

Human Factors Engineering

Person Machine systems

Machinery operated by person must be designed to interact with physical, cognitive, and motivational capacities and limitations