Lecture 1 - Intro to Cognitive Psychology

What is cognitive psychology?

It is the study of intelligent behaviour where we try to find out how people think, learn, remember, read etc…

How do we study cognitive psychology?

We observe behaviour in order to infer thoughts because a lot of our cognition is unconscious and more complex than we realise.

What is an example of cognition being more complex than it seems?

When you are listening in a lecture, you might think it doesn’t require much work. But actually actively listening, plus writing notes, and understanding the material, while also focusing on the lecture (as opposed to other things - like a person tapping their foot to your right) requires a lot of cognition/brain power.

Thus, it’s more complex than you might think.

What did people historically think about the scientific study of the mind?

Many people thought that it was impossible to study the mind.

This is because the mind is controlled by the soul and the soul is not physical, making it impossible to observe and thus study.

This was known as the ‘mind-body problem.’

What made people change their minds about studying the mind?

Early research in perception inspired people to try and study the mind scientifically. This is because, through their research about the connection between external stimuli and one’s internal understanding, other researchers realised that they could study something of the mind.

So they tried to study more of it.

Who was the ‘first’ psychologist and what did he do?

Wilhelm Wundt.

Wundt was very interested in the contents of our mind. He investigated the immediate experiences of our mind via analytic introspection to understand the contents of our mind.

What type of thinking was Wilhelm Wundt part of? Why?

He was a structuralist because he wanted to know the contents of our minds.

What were the limitations of structuralism?

Wundts methods relied heavily on introspection, which was heavily subjective and would not be able to be verified by someone else. This created a lot of issues as such a technique was not considered scientifically valid.

In terms of scientific experiments, what was Wundt the first to develop ideas about?

1. Experimentation

2. Attention

3. Memory

4. Language

How did Titchener affect the spread of Wundt’s ideas about structuralism?

Titchener was Wundt’s protege and wanted to bring Wundt’s ideas about structuralism to America.

However, this only created controversy about Wundts techniques because Titchener made himself the ‘king’ of structuralism when he went to America and acted like his opinions were only right and that everyone else was wrong.

What was William James concerned about in psychology?

He was a functionalist where he was interested in the purpose of our thoughts rather than the elements.

He would ask questions like “what can consciousness do?” and was therefore concerned with prediction and control through direct observations.

What were the 4 key principles of the scientific method?

1. Empiricism

2. Determinism

3. Testability

4. Parsimony

Define empiricism.

To observe what we study.

Define determinism.

Whatever you’re observing has a cause.

Define testability.

Must be able to test a theory.

Define parsimony.

Always start with the most simple explanation for something and only once its falsified make it more complex.

How do the 4 key principles of the scientific method clash with the study of the mind?

1. Empiricism - problem, because we cannot physically observe the mind

2. Determinism - no problem

3. Testability - problem, if we cannot observe the mind how do we test it?

4. Parsimony - no problem

What has science always had a problem with?

In science we are always needing to study the observable by inferring unobservable entities (ie. gravity, atoms and the mind).

What makes inferring thinks about unobservable entities acceptable?

When it does something useful.

Why did behaviourism come about?

With the issues in observing the mind in structuralism, behaviourism became super popular because it provided a way to physically observe the functions of the mind.

What research was the groundwork for behaviourism?

Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning research.

Why was Ivan Pavlov’s research so important in behaviourism?

John Watson, who founded behaviourism, was enamoured by Pavlov’s work regarding stimuli and responses.

As a result, he felt that this was what psychology was.

Watson felt that our behaviour could be controlled by stimuli and responses and that our brain processes would never be able to be understood and so they were ‘unimportant.’ Hence, animals were thought to be a good substitute for human behaviour.

So Pavlov made Watson’s behaviourists point of view think that human behaviour was just about a stimulus and a response.

What was B.F Skinner’s role in behaviourism?

Skinner developed the idea of operant conditioning.

What are the limitations of behaviourism?

Behaviourism explains how we train behaviour but not how we understand thought.

Who disagreed with behaviourism and why?

E.C. Tolman.

He believed that behaviour was not just a result of a cause and an effect (ie. he didn’t agree with behaviourism).

Instead Tolman felt that learning could be latent; unconscious and requiring no reward or punishment.

What was E.C. Tolman’s experiment?

Rats in Mazes.

The objective of this experiment was to see if rats would be able to find the cheese in the maze.

Phase 1:

• A rat was put in a maze from point A and allowed to wander around it. It later found the cheese in chamber B.

Phase 2:

• From point A, the rat turned right to get the cheese.

Phase 3:

• When placed in point C, the rat did not turn right, but turned left to where the cheese was in chamber B.

How did E.C. Tolman’s Rat in the Maze experiment help de-bunk behaviourism?

According to behaviourism, the rat should have just learned the behaviour to turn right because that’s when the rat found the cheese.

However, this did not happen as shown in pahase 3 when the rat was placed in a new orientation and instead of turning right, turned towards chamber B (left).

Hence, by allowing the rat to wander around, E.C Tolman said that the rat probably created a cognitive map of the maze and was able to learn that the cheese is not there when it turns right, but instead is in chamber B.

This unravelled the principles of behaviourism because the rat did not just learn a behaviour but learned beyond an action.

What was the thing that ‘killed’ behaviourism?

Noam Chomsky also was against behaviourism.

His ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument talked about how language is not a result of a stimulus and response and NO behaviourist could explain language through a behaviourist view.

If behaviourism does not really talk about the mind, is it still useful in psychology?