Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

Flashcards about Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Concerned with the internal processes involved in making sense of the environment and deciding on appropriate action.

Processes Included in Cognitive Psychology

Attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and thinking.

Cognitive Revolution

A decline in the influence of behaviorism and a reemergence of the study of the mind.

Ulric Neisser

Coined the term “cognitive psychology” in 1967.

Noam Chomsky

Our innate ability to pick up the structure of language.

George Miller

Famous paper “The magical number 7, plus or minus 2”.

Cognitive Psychology Approach

Using behavioural evidence to enhance our understanding of human cognition.

Information-processing approach

An approach based on an analogy between the mind and the computer.

Serial Processing

Processing in which one process is completed before the next one starts

Bottom-up processing

Processing that is directly influenced by environmental stimuli.

Parallel processing

Processing in which two or more cognitive processes occur at the same time. (Highly practiced tasks)

Top-down processing

Stimulus processing that is influenced by factors such as the individual’s past experience and expectations

Cascade Processing

Later stages of processing are initiated before one or more earlier stages have finished.

Task Impurity Problem

Most cognitive tasks require several processes thus making it hard to interpret the findings.

Cognitive Neuropsychology

Focuses on the patterns of cognitive performance (intact and impaired) of brain-damaged patients having a lesion (structural damage to the brain caused by injury or disease).

Modularity

Cognitive system consists of numerous modules or processors operating fairly independently of each other.

Universality

Individuals share a similar or an equivalent organisation of their cognitive functions, and presumably have the same underlying brain anatomy

Cognitive Neuroscience

Involves intensive study of the brain as well as behaviour.

Dorsal

Superior or towards the top

Ventral

Inferior or towards the bottom

Anterior

Towards the front

Posterior

Towards the back

Lateral

Situated at the side

Medial

Situated in the middle

Computational Cognitive Science

Application of computational principles to understanding human behavior

Computational modeling

Involves programming computers to model or mimic human cognitive functioning.