Cognitive Psychology Notes

Asahi Illusion

  • Relates to cognitive psychology due to its reliance on mental processing and interpretation of visual input.

Cognitive Approach

  • Involves theorizing about mental processes based on the relationship between input and output, using experimental evidence.
  • Advantages: Provides insights into internal mental operations.
  • Disadvantages: Only directly measures input and output.
  • Complimentary to Behavioral Neuroscience: Combines cognitive theories with neural data.

Keppel Experiment

  • Demonstrated the difference between spaced/distributed practice and massed practice.
  • Showed the impact of immediate vs. delayed testing conditions on retention.
  • Interactions are crucial in experiments.

Research Types

  • Pure research: Focuses on fundamental principles.
  • Applied research: Applies these principles to real-world problems.
  • Cognitive psychology has a broad domain with many areas of applied research.

History of Cognitive Psychology

  • Structuralism vs. functionalism debate: Early attempts to understand the structure and function of the mind.

Goal & History

  • Goal: Understand how we think.
  • History: Explore how we arrived at our current understanding.
  • How we think has intrigued humankind for a long time.

Philosophy

  • Philosophy was an early attempt to answer questions about the mind.
  • Plato and Aristotle wrote about memory.
    • Plato: Nativist, emphasized innate knowledge.
    • Aristotle: Empiricist, emphasized experience.

Scientific Method

  • The scientific method provided more answers, but the nativist vs. empiricist debate (nature vs. nurture) persists.

Structuralism vs. Functionalism

  • Structuralists and introspection vs. Functionalism.
  • Break experience/perception down into simplest units.
  • Still an advance over rationalist approach.

History: How Did We Get Here?

  • Structuralists and Functionalists were interested in internal mental operations.
  • Major problems arose with these approaches.

Behaviorism

  • Behaviorism rejected mental representations and introspection.

Gestalt Psychology

  • Gestalt psychologists rejected everybody!

Cognitive Revolution

  • The Cognitive Revolution occurred in contrast to Behaviorism.
  • Limited capacity processing: A crucial assumption to make reaction time meaningful.
  • Chomsky vs. Skinner on language as an example.

Cognitive Psychology

  • Mental activity can be studied in different ways.

Information Processing

  • We konw taht waht geos in deos not macth waht coems out (as information processing problem).
  • Focuses on internal (mental) representations.
    • What format do they take?
    • How are they manipulated (transformation and computation in discrete stages)?

Connectionist Approach

  • Contrast with connectionist approach.
  • Parallel distributed processing.
  • Can still make analogies with computers.
  • Aligns with neurological functioning.

How Do We Study Cognition

  • It is popular now to combine cognitive approach with neuroscience (cognitive neuroscience!).
  • Use modern technology to look at brain processing in real time (fMRI, PET, Diffusion Tractography, etc.).
  • This wasn't always an option (and it still isn't easy to get time on an fMRI machine).

Chronometrics

  • Measure reaction time, or accuracy.
  • Relatively fine analysis of internal representations/processes.
  • Handle on mental events which are rapid and efficient.
  • Time as dependent variable.

Classic Studies

  • Mentioning some classic studies to give you a feel for how we can use reaction time to study cognition.
  • Not an exhaustive list.

Simple and Choice Reaction Times

  • Reaction Time: Time required to get an overt response started (S-R time interval).
    • SIMPLE RT (SRT).
    • CHOICE RT (CRT).

Donders’ Measurement of Mental Processes

  • In the 1860s, a professor of physiology tried to measure the speed of mental processes.
  • Specifically stimulus categorization time and response selection time.
  • The challenge: you can’t just measure these things directly.

Donders’s Measurement of Speed of Mental Processes

  • Task A:
    • One Stimulus, One Response.
    • Measures SRT.
  • Task B:
    • Many Stimuli, Many Responses.
    • Measures SRT, Stimulus Categorization, Response Selection.
  • Task C:
    • Many Stimuli, One Response.
    • Measures SRT, Stimulus Categorization.
  • B-C=? Response Selection Time
  • C-A=? Stimulus Categorization Time

Participation Activity Problem

  • I’m told to press a pedal when a light turns green and it takes me 500ms500 ms to do it.
  • Later I’m told that there are two lights and to press the right pedal if a light turns green and the left pedal if it turns red. It takes me 2000ms2000 ms to do it.
  • Finally, I’m told that there are two lights and I should press a pedal if it turns green and nothing if it turns red. It takes me 1500ms1500 ms to do it.
  • What is my response selection time?
  • What is my stimulus categorization time?

Sternberg Paradigm

  • Investigate retrieval from working memory/STM.
  • How can we use RT to investigate this? What questions can be asked?
  • Advancement from Donders because he could manipulate complexity while keeping the process identical.

Sternberg Paradigm

  • The procedure (numbers shown one at a time) e.g.,
    • List 8 4 3 Probe 4 Press: Y
    • List 2 4 9 5 1 Probe 6 Press: N

Mental Operations

  • Memory retrieval (Sternberg paradigm).
  • Sternberg used cognitive psyc methods to answer question: Is a memory search Serial or Parallel?
  • AVXL
    • Was “V” one of the letters? In this case V is the probe, size of the set was manipulated

Mental Operations: Serial or Parallel

  • AVXL Target: V
  • Assumed Steps: Encode, compare, decide, respond
  • How does the process differ when there are 5 items compared to 1?
  • It doesn’t according to Sternberg
  • Same when it is yes answer or no answer

Parallel vs Serial

  • If Serial Search: Time=setup:and:reporting:time+time:per:item∗Size(s):of:memory:setTime = setup : and : reporting : time + time : per : item * Size(s) : of : memory : set Time=intercept+b∗sTime = intercept + b*s
  • If Parallel Search: Time=setup:and:reporting:time+parallel:search:timeTime=setup : and : reporting : time + parallel : search : time

Parallel vs serial

  • Results support serial search
  • Next ask if that search is self-terminating or exhaustive

Self-terminating vs Exhaustive

  • Idealized Search Data

Exhaustive vs Self-terminating

  • Actual results support the exhaustive search prediction
  • Next question is answering why!