Chapter 12: The Cognitive Perspective

Lecture Roadmap

 

1.Basic themes and assumptions

2.Cognitive representation

3.Memory structure & organization

4.Cognition and the self

5.Attributions and decision-making

6.Evaluating the cognitive perspective

Learning Objectives

 

1.Define schema and script and give an example of each

2.Define semantic memory, episodic memory, and procedural memory and describe the differences between each

3.Describe the difference between explicit and implicit memory

4.Define self-schema

5.Define attribution and describe different attribution biases (e.g., hostile attribution bias)

6.Explain how the Cognitive Perspective relates to our personality

Social Learning Theory

 – posits that people learn through observing, imitating, and modeling others' behavior.

◦Includes behaviorism principles but also reintroduces ideas of cognition and internal motivation

The cognitive revolution

an  intellectual shift in psychology that started in the 1950s

• Focus on studying (scientifically) mental processes

• Introduced new subfield: cognitive psychology 

Assumptions of the Cognitive Perspective

1.The mind is important! And we can study it

2.People integrate and organize information

3.Personality is reflected in decision-making processes

cognition

 

 Cognition mediates (explains) the effect of personality on behavior

 How might cognition influence responses?

  Tri-level Framework (Pylyshyn, 1999):

schema

mental organizations of information (knowledge structures)

Types of schemas

• person schemas…

Schemata

◦Help us organize information about our world

◦Help us make predictions

◦Provide a basis for action (especially in ambiguous or novel situations)

For example, think about the first college class you ever attended

◦You had never been to college before

◦But you had a schema for “class” from previous school experience

script

a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting

• a type of schema for events

Cultural schemas

generalized collections of knowledge that we store in memory through experiences in our own culture

• e.g. ordering at a restaurant in the U.S. vs. other cultures

• e.g., Cultures of Honor and aggression

what is memory

researchers distinguish between several different “types” of memory, which operate in slightly different ways

short-term (working) memory

the information we are actively “working with” or thinking about

memory structure

explicit (declarative) memory

 conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences, and concepts

◦Includes semantic and episodic memories that you can recall

implicit memory

 unconscious or automatic memory…

• Not always intentionally stored and cannot always be brought into conscious awareness

• Includes procedural memory

• Includes automatic mental associations

semantic memory

conscious long-term memory for meaning, understanding, and conceptual facts about the world.

episodic memory

memory for events and experiences

• prof going to see the mona lisa with her roommate

procedural memory

knowing how to do something

• tying shoes, having a song memorized on an instrument

  • thinking about how to do something explicitly can actually throw you off if you are used to doing it automatically (proven for basketball, sort of like dance choreo)

maintaining procedural memories

We can keep our procedural memories, even after loosing semantic and episodic memories (e.g., due to brain injury)

• Example: Clive Wearing

• Example: Jason Bourne

semantic network model

graphic depictions of knowledge composed of nodes and links that show hierarchical relationships between objects.

• this is how long term memories are “stored” in the mind

Priming

exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus

• if the concept “orange” is activated, related concepts will temporarily become more accessible in our minds

Priming happens at the implicit (non-conscious) level

• semantic concepts themselves are conscious

• however, the connections/associations between them may not always be

What is in our semantic networks (and connections between them) may give rise to some ____

individual differences

is priming overblown

some research has failed to replicate the walking study (meaning there may not be that big of an effect)

self-schema

cognitive generalizations about the self, derived form past experience, that organize and guide the processing of self-related information

self-schemata drive cognitive processing

• for example, people with an independent self-schemata were faster to process words relating to being independent

• people diagnosed with clinical depression recalled more negative (vs. positive) self-referential adjectives

  • negative bias unique to self; did not apply to other domains

You could have a self-schema on any number of possible dimensions

◦Personality traits

◦Abilities for specific domains (e.g., sports, math, reading)

◦Physical health and appearance

◦Opinions and political ideology

◦Cultural identification

◦Etc.

self-complexity

our self-schemas can also be more or less complex

• def:  having many distinct self aspects

  ◦May help deal with adversity?

(picture: all are separate items)

How might cognition influence responses

tri-level framework

(higher-order cognition)

Attributions

 inferring the cause of an event

◦Internal vs. external attributions

Cognitive bias in depression

• In depressed individuals, self-schema encodes unrealistic negative self-beliefs

• May be more likely to attribute failures to internal factors and successes to external factors.

Attributions and decision-making

cognitive therapy: therapeutic technique for changing faulty schemas

cognitive restructuring: challenge automatic negative thoughts and replace with other self-talk

hostile attribution bias

tendency to interpret the behavior of other people as having hostile intentions

• Especially when social context cues are ambiguous or unpredictable and difficult to interpret

Mindsets

how stable vs. instable people view their abilities

• entity (fixed) mindset

• incremental (growth) mindset

entity (fixed) mindset

viewing ability as “fixed”, essentially unchangeable

incremental (growth) mindset

viewing ability as malleable; something that can be growth/improved over time

Evaluating the Cognitive Perspective

positives

• based on empirical research and supported by data

• can potentially integrate information from various perspectives

critiques

• is there an over-arching theory?

• does it really add anything new to our understanding or personality