PSYCH 258: cognitive psychology: midterm 1

what is cognition?

acquiring and processing information about the world in order to make behavioural decisions

-process that produce complec behaviors such as remembering, recognizing, or making a decision

why do people study cognition

try to understand the world and its phenomena without regard to a specific end-use of this knowledge

what is neuroscience

study of the brain itself

• modern tools allow researchers to measure the activity of the intact brain

• non-invasive techniques measure the activity of small portions of the brain

• invasive measures allow for the measurement of individual neurons

what is cognitive psychology

the study of human behavior, using experiments to understand how the mind works

what is computational modelling

simulating brain processes using computers

what are artificial neural-networks

machin learning techniques that are modelled on the brain

why is studying processes like thinking, reasoning, and remebering hard to study

because they dont require recieving information from the environment

what is dualism

mind and body consist of fundamentally different properties

what is monism

only one basic substance of which the mind and body are both made

what is physicalism/materialism

cognition is derived from physical phenomena - no need for mind or soul

idealism

reality only exists in the mind

neutral monism

there is only one substance, it is not physical or mental

what is pragmatic materialism

what most scientists follow: think about the brain as a physical element and try to understand it whether or not it has a physical element

-it is possible to understand complex cognition based on knowledge about how the brain works- based on the assumption that there is not a non-physical mechanism underlying mental processes

what does the complexity of the brain limit?

our knowledge of the brain is limited so behavior must be observed

what are the three historical approaches to studying cognition

structuralism, behaviorism, cognitivism

who founded structuralism

william wundt. he thought we should try and study the workings of the mind directly, and break the mind down into simpler elements

what was the main method for structuralism

introspection- used own internal experiences as elements if consciousness. wanted to discover basic principles of how elements interact and form the working mind

why did structuralism not end up being a dominant method

it lacked scientific validity

• cannot be objectively verified by others

• no replication

• can only access consiously aware processes

how is cortical blindness evidence for unsconscious processing

those with cortical blindness report not being able to see however they will behaviorally respond to visual stimuli

what is cortical blindness

damage to the part of the brain that processes incoming visual information before sending it to a high-level processing that leads to conscious perception

what area of study still uses introspection as a crucial method of investigation?

visual imagery

who was john b watson?

founder of behavioralism. opposed structuralism and wanted a more scientific approach, believed that for psychology to be true science it must abandom the study of internal states and focus on observable behavior

what did behaviourism aim to pair

stimulus and response through observation of behavior

what branch of psychology thought of the brain as a ‘black box’

behaviorism: ignored how subjects generate a response to the stimulus

who was john watson inspired by

pavlov

what was pavlovs major contribution to psychology

classical conditioning

what is classical conditioning

an involentary response can be produced by a previously unrelated stimulus if it has been paired with a stimulus that does cause that reaction

what experiment was done by watson and rayner in 1920 to determine if fear responses can be conditioned in children?

little albert

what was the little albert study

• baby albert was exposed to white furry things after they had been repeatedly paired with loud crashing noises

• by the end of the experiment albert feared all furry objects even when they werent paired with loud noises

what was watsons take on nature versus nurture

he thought that nature played the more critical role

who came up with operant conditioning?

B. F. skinner

what is operant conditioning?

rats were trained to engage in certain behaviors based on reinforcement or punisment

overtime rats learned which behaviors were reinforced an behaved accordingly

what does operant conditioning act on?

volentary responses- behavior through reward and punishment

what is reinforcement learning?

behavung accordingly in response to punisment and reward

what was behaviorism based on?

experiments using the skinner box

what did skinner argue all behaviors coud be explained by?

operant and classical conditioning

how did Noam Chomsky critique behaviorism?

Noam chomsky argued that you dont always need reward and punishment because people exhibit behavior that has not been taught or enforced through conditioning

How did edward tolman critique behaviorism?

came up with the idea of latent learning which cannot be explained by behaviorism

what was tolmans rat maze experiment?

1. rats explore maze without food

2. rats trained to turn to right to locate food

3. rat turn put in maze from other side and turned left despite the food training

suggests that when the animal was in the maze with no food it learned the maze though there was no benefit

rats turned left to find the food after exploring the maze despite training to turn right- created a cognitive map of the maze during exploration

what is latent learning?

learning in the absence of conditioning

what is the fundamental flaw of the behaviorist apporoach

it does not account for flexibility in cognition that allows for the generation of novel behaviors that have not been observed or performed

• saying a new sentance you never heard

• taking a new route to class

• parking in a different location

what are computers?

machines that are able to automatically generate functions

what is functions in the sense of a computer

a mapping between one set of objects and another- taking and input and produce an output

what is algorithm

a recipe for producing a desired result- can be very complicated

what were computers in the 20th century?

computers were humans that could perform necasary algorithms and functions

who is Alan turning 1930?

first described a machine to perform any mathematical function by storing symbols, providing sets of instructions for what the machine has to do when it encounters each symbol

what did alan turing devise

a machine that can recive a set of instructions as a function not just a single finction- the programmable computer

what was the first computer made of and what could it do?

made of gears and vacuum tubes, it encoded information based on whether the current was flowing through or not

• could perform any function given the time and resources

• used for code breaking in WWI

what is the colosus computer and when was it invented?

1944- made of gears and vacuum tubes- binary information coding, used for code breakung in WWI

when was the electrical transmitter created and what did it do/

1947- replaced vacuum tubes and gears, made of semiconductor materials, were more efficeint and reliable

what was the cognitive revolution

veiwed cognition as a type of computation

• sensory info→info processing→ behavior or decision

• rendered black box irrelevant

what was the goal of research during the cognitive revolution?

determine what underlying algorithm or function the brain is using to execute input and output functions

what did people think early in the computer revolution but why was it not possible?

many thought that a machine with human like intelligence was around the corner but there was a gap between having a computer that can complete any function and knowing the correct algorithm to execute those function

reverse engineering?

thinking about the brain as it carries out computational steps and representing stages of processing as sequences using flowcharts

what was the cognitive approach?

measuring observabe behavior in order to test theories of underlying processes

what was donders research question

how might mental responses consist of component processes?

what was donders cognitive experiment?

compared reaction times between detection discrimination and choice

• detection- push light when it turns on

• push button when left light turns on only

• push left button when left turns on and right button for right

what where the results of donders experiment?

• detection had the shorted reaction times

• discrimination were second

• choice was longest

concluded that diff in reaction time was due to different combinations in underlying cognitive processes. the more processes involved the longer it takes

what is hypothesis driven research?

researchers have hypothesis or guess based on evidence and then test hypothesis with appropriate methods and asess if the results support the hypothesis

what is phenomenon driven research?

an outcome of effect is found as a result of an experiment or study without being predicted as a hypothesis- researches conduct follow up studies to try and replicate and or extend upon the found effect

what is human factors

a feild of pysch that studies how people interact with physical systems

what do human factors asess?

reaction times, memory of system, easy of operation

what led to the signal detection theory?

human factors

what is the signal detection theory?

considers how people make decisions under circumstances of uncertainty-without examining underlying cognitive mechanisms