Cognitive Psychology Exam 1

Cognition

Refers to the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge.

Cognitive Psychology

subdiscipline of experimental psychology focused on investigating the mental processes that give rise to our perceptions and interpretations of the world around us

Cognitive Approach

theoretical orientation that emphasizes people's thought processes and their knowledge

1. What is the relationship between cognition, cognitive psychology, and the cognitive approach?

They all involve mental processes and knowledge. Cognitive psychology uses the cognitive approach to study cognition

2. What makes cognitive psychology unique compared to other psychological perspectives?

Metacognition? Information processes, focus on internal processes and introspection

Empirical Evidence

scientific evidence obtained by careful observation and experimentation

Introspection

Systematic analysis of your own sensations

Recency Effect

Remembering things better at the end of the list

Behaviorism

Focuses on objective and observable behavior reactions to stimuli

Operational Definition

Precise definition that specifies exactly how to measure and/or manipulate variables

needs to be observable and countable

Gestalt Psychology

Humans have basic tendencies to actively organize what we see, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

believe the context is the thing to study not the individual pieces

rejected Wundt and Behaviorism

Gestalt

Overall quality that transcends the individual elements

• Information-processing Approach

Argued that a) our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer, and b) information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages one step at a time

• Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

Memory involves a sequence of separate steps

• Sensory Memory

Storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy

• Short-Term Memory/Working Memory

Capacity for holding a small amount of information

• Long-term Memory

Where informative knowledge is held indefinitely

• Ecological Validity

Extent to which research findings can be generalized to real life

Know the contributions each psychologist below made to cognitive psychology and explain how their ideologies differ

• Wilhelm Wundt

(father of psychology) german physiologist who founded psychology as a formal science; opened first psychology research laboratory in 1879 (Rejected by James). He believed in structuralism through introspection.

structuralism: break down everything we know into the most basic elements

• Ebbinghaus

father of memory research

created the forgetting curve (shows a pattern of forgetting over time - recall goes down overtime but eventually plateaus) and serial position effect in memory (Rejected by James & Bartlett). Studied nonsense syllables, how long it took to learn new/old lists, and it takes less time to learn old lists.

• Mary Calkins

First female president of the APA, word pairs that share more meaning are easier to remember. Paired-associate learning, found that word pairs were easier to remember ex: (FSU and Inferior). Also touched based on recency effect (more likely to recall words in the end of the list than the middle)

• William James

founder of functionalism; studied how humans use perception to function in our environment (Rejected Wundt & Ebbinghaus, rejected the idea of basic memory) (James views were more like Calkins). Also studied how the human mind is active and inquiring instead of a passive system. He emphasized the kinds of psychological experiences that people encounter in their everyday lives.

• Frederic Bartlett

He was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology. Memory as active, constructive process. Schema-based approach (Rejected Ebbinghaus and Wundt)

1. What are the 2 essential components of an operational definition?

It must be 1) specific and precise and 2) able to be measurable to be measured and tested

2. Operationally define these variables: memory, intelligence, aggression, attraction. Try to come up with a few of your own too!

Memory: How many words are recalled from a list

Intelligence: score on an IQ test

Aggression: Number of physical and verbal threats

Attraction: Number of minutes to people touch each other in two hours

3. Explain how organization is important to gestalt theory.

A component of patterns are organized together because even because of it over searching quality

4. Discuss the drawbacks of introspection.

Is wildly in accurate people over and under exaggerate thei feelings thoughts

The subjective nature leaves it open to mistakes and inaccuracies

5. Understand each step of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model. Describe the strengths/weaknesses of this model.

Outline of a simple model for working memory.

Theres sensory memory, short-term memory (working memory) and long-term memory.

Sensory is the external output (keyboard and mouse)

Short-term memory would be the RAM

Long-term memory is the gigabytes or the hard drive of the computer. Advantages: Helped progress research Disadvantages: Too simplistic to explain how complex the mind really is, researchers used people with brain lesions to map out the brain but you can't necessarily always have someone available to test on that has brain damage, implies our mind is a passive storage dump instead of how it actually is which is an active mind.

6. Why did Ebbinghaus learn non-sense syllables instead of actual words?

For validity And accuracy reduced confounding effects of previous experience with language on their ability to recall information

7. What are the factors that contributed to the emergence of modern cognitive psychology?

Dissatisfaction with behaviorism linguistics Colin must be must be born with an innate understanding of language man.

machine: Errors in the way man must know how to get machine to function like humans developmental psychology: object permanence

8. Think about why cognitive psychology research could have issues regarding ecological validity.

Cognitive research conditioning are very difficult to make like neutral conditions

The Relationship Between Mind, Brain, and Behavior

• Cognitive Neuroscience

Combines research techniques of cognitive psychology with various methods for assessing the structure in function of the brain

• Social Cognitive Neuroscience

Study of the processes in the human brain that allow pe in the human brain that allow people to understand others understand it themselves and understand navigating the social world effectively

• Brain Lesions

The destruction of brain tissue caused by strokes, tumors, or accidents.

• Positron Emission Tomography (PET Scan)

a visual display of brain activity that detects where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain performs a given task. It has lower temporal and takes longer to show where in brain issue is.

• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI)

an imaging technique used to examine changes in the activity of the working human brain by measuring changes in the blood's oxygen levels. (use to detect brain lesion).

• Event-related potential (ERP) Technique

a procedure for recording the very brief, small fluctuations in the brain's electrical activity in response to a stimulus such as an auditory tone. Really good a picking up activity. Average across brain waves to get more precise reading

• Computer Metaphor

The idea that the brain is an information-processing organ that operates, in some ways, like a computer.

1. Differentiate between PET Scans and FMRI.

FMRIs are less invasive use no injections and already radioactive and no radioactive material a measure brain activity that occurs fairly quickly it provides

2. Explain the advantages/drawbacks of each neuroscience technique (think about their spatial vs temporal resolutions).

PET scan gives you low temporal resolution. Not very good with picking up speed in action but it gives you good spatial resolution. Tells us where in the brain things are occurring.

FMRI is much better. Gives you better spatial and higher temporal. Better technique

ERP is really good with temporal resolution. Picks up speed of neurons firing very quickly. But really low on spatial. It only tells you that some part of your frontal lobe is working but not as specific about where.

Single cell recording technique is best of both worlds. Gives you really good temporal and really high spatial.

3. Describe a situation where it would be preferable to use the event-related technique.

Is preferred for use when you want to look at the change in a signal when performing a cognitive task that you know the region of the brain is responsible

4. Explain the computer metaphor in your own words. How are our mental processes like a computer? How are they different?

We compare symbols and make choices based on those comp based on those comparisons computers have unlimited processing capacity well humans also have a limited processing capacity with attention in multitasking

• Theory

Must describe a behavior and make predictions about future behaviors

• Hypothesis

A testable prediction, often implied by a theory

• Correlational Research

Research that examines the relationships between variables, whose purpose is to examine whether and how two variables change together.

• Experimental research

gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group responses

• Independent variable

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.

• Dependent variable

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

• Random assignment

assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

1. Compare and contrast correlational and experimental research. Be sure to address the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Correlation doesn't equal causation. In experimental research, you can draw cause if you do certain things and meet those keys to draw cause.

Limits of correlational research: Two reasons why you cant draw cause from correlation.

1. You have a direction of causality problem. Means that you don't know if its x causing y or y causing x. Example: Violent TV and aggressive behavior. You can plot them and get a correlation but does the violent TV cause aggressive behavior or do aggressive people just want to watch violent TV?

2. There is a third-variable problem. Example: Violent TV and aggressive behavior. You don't know if violent TV leads to the relationship, aggressive behavior leads it or there is a third variable leading to those: neglectful parents. Correlational research

advantage: Can study real-world factors that cannot be manipulated in a laboratory (sex, race, social status, etc.)

Disadvantage: Cannot make causal claims from results

Experiment

Advantage:

Can make causal claims due to experimenter control

Disadvantage:

Studies behavior in contrived, unrealistic settings

Would behavior occur similarly in the real world? Experimental Advantages usually outweigh the disadvantages.

2. Know and be able to distinguish between the 3 rules to draw cause.

Covariation: There is a relationship between the Independent variable and the dependent variable. If you find a relationship, you have established rule one. You can come up with a relationship with correlation (more time you study, better you do on exam) but you cant prove the next two rules with correlational research, only with experimental research.

Time precedence of the cause: You don't know what behavior came first: violent TV or aggressive behavior.

No plausible alternative explanations: The third variable problem. You don't know if theres some third variable that can explain the relationship: neglectful parents.

3. Explain how the two key factors of an experiment help establish time precedence and ruling out explanations.

In an experiment, you can fix the direction of causality problem (time precedence) by manipulating the variables. You can establish time precedence by telling them to watch a certain amount of aggressive TV and then have them act aggressively. That was you know which came first. The second key would be to control extraneous variables to establish ruling out alternative explanations. You do this by random assignment (randomly assign groups) and experimental control (keep everything in the experiment as constant as possible so that only the independent variables vary between groups.)

• Theme 1

The cognitive processes are active, rather than passive

Psychology is empirical, based on observation. We can actively take in information. Ex: when reading we are actively trying to anticipate what the next word(s) will be.

• Theme 2

The cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate

Psychology is Theoretically Diverse. Ex: remember phone number in your memory extremely efficiently.

• Theme 3

The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.

psychology evolves in a socio-historical context; Changes in Psychology mirror changes in Society/Changes in Society (sometimes) mirror changes in Psychology

Prisons: Rehabilitation vs Punishment. Ex: searching for something present than absent.

• Theme 4

The cognitive processes are interrelated with one another; they do not operate in isolation