Cognitive Psychology – Lecture 1 & Visual Perception

Question-and-Answer flashcards covering key concepts from the Introduction to Cognitive Psychology lecture, including historical foundations, major schools of thought, research methods, developmental theory, and visual perception topics.

What does cognitive psychology study?

How people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.

What are heuristics in cognition?

Mental shortcuts used to process information quickly.

Which heuristic is used when examples easily come to mind?

The availability heuristic.

What is a dialectic?

A developmental exchange of ideas that proceeds through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Name the three stages of the dialectical process.

Thesis → Antithesis → Synthesis.

What is rationalism?

The view that knowledge is gained through thinking and logical analysis.

Which ancient philosopher is most associated with rationalism?

Plato.

Who declared "Cogito, ergo sum" and distrusted the senses?

René Descartes.

What is empiricism?

The view that knowledge is acquired through experience and observation.

Which philosopher promoted the mind as a "tabula rasa"?

John Locke.

How did Immanuel Kant reconcile rationalism and empiricism?

He argued both reasoning and experience are necessary to discover truth.

Define structuralism in psychology.

The study of the mind's structure by breaking perceptions into basic elements.

Who is considered the founder of structuralism?

Wilhelm Wundt.

What research method did structuralists rely on?

Introspection (conscious self-observation).

Give one limitation of introspection.

Reports may be inaccurate or alter the very processes they attempt to describe.

What does functionalism emphasize?

The processes and purposes of thought—what people do and why they do it.

Which psychologist linked functionalism to pragmatism?

William James.

What does pragmatism claim about knowledge?

Knowledge is validated by its usefulness in practice.

What is associationism?

The view that mental elements become linked (associated) through contiguity, similarity, or contrast.

Who first applied associationist ideas experimentally to memory?

Hermann Ebbinghaus.

State Thorndike's Law of Effect.

Responses followed by satisfaction (reward) are more likely to recur.

Define behaviorism.

A school that studies observable behavior and its relation to environmental stimuli.

Who is known as the father of radical behaviorism?

John B. Watson.

What learning phenomenon did Ivan Pavlov discover?

Classical conditioning.

Which learning type relies on reinforcement and punishment?

Operant conditioning.

What did Albert Bandura demonstrate in his 1977 work?

Observational (social) learning through modeling.

Give one major criticism of behaviorism.

It cannot adequately explain complex mental activities such as language acquisition.

What is the core idea of Gestalt psychology?

Psychological phenomena are best understood as organized wholes; "the whole is more than the sum of its parts."

List two primary goals of scientific research.

Data gathering and theory development (also hypothesis formation, testing, application).

Define a scientific theory.

An organized set of explanatory principles derived from observations.

What is a hypothesis?

A tentative, testable prediction that follows from a theory.

What is an independent variable?

A factor the experimenter manipulates.

What is a dependent variable?

The measured outcome that depends on the independent variable.

What is a control variable?

An irrelevant factor held constant to avoid influence on results.

Define a confounding variable.

An uncontrolled factor that systematically affects both IV and DV, threatening validity.

What does a correlation coefficient indicate?

The strength and direction of a relationship between two variables.

What does a correlation of 0 mean?

No relationship between the variables.

Name one fundamental idea in cognitive psychology.

Empirical data and theories are mutually necessary for understanding cognition.

List Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development.

Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, Formal Operational.

During which Piagetian stage does object permanence emerge?

Sensorimotor stage.

What is visual perception?

The process of interpreting and organizing visual stimuli.

In Gibson’s framework, what are distal objects?

Real-world objects in the external environment.

What is proximal stimulation?

The energy pattern (e.g., light) that reaches sensory receptors.

What are perceptual objects?

Mental representations constructed from sensory input.

Describe the Ganzfeld effect.

When a featureless sensory field leads the brain to create illusory perceptions.

Differentiate sensation and perception.

Sensation is raw detection; perception is interpretation and meaning-making.

What does the dorsal visual pathway process?

Location and motion information (the "where" pathway).

What does the ventral visual pathway process?

Color, shape, and identity of objects (the "what" pathway).

Define bottom-up processing.

Data-driven perception that begins with sensory input.

Name four bottom-up theories of form perception.

Direct perception, Template theory, Feature theory, Recognition-by-Components theory.

Define top-down processing.

Perception guided by prior knowledge, expectations, and context.

What is the core claim of Gibson’s theory of direct perception?

The environment provides all necessary information for perception without elaborate cognitive inference.

What depth cue did Gibson highlight as directly perceived?

Texture gradients in the environment.

What is an informational medium in Gibson’s model?

Energy (e.g., light waves) carrying information from distal objects to the observer.