History of Cognitive Psychology - Comprehensive Notes (Bullet Points)

Overview

  • Topic: History and development of Cognitive Psychology
  • Core idea: Cognitive psychology studies mental processes indirectly because mental processes cannot be observed directly. This field evolved in response to limitations of behaviorism and the need to account for internal processes like memory, perception, and problem solving.
  • Major shift: 1956 Cognitive Revolution; moved from a focus on observable behavior to information processing and mental representations.
  • Key themes: roots in early psychophysics and memory research; criticisms of behaviorism; emergence of information-processing models and connectionism.

What is Cognitive Psychology?

  • Definition: The scientific study of mental processes.
  • Mental processes include: perception, attention, learning & memory, language, reasoning, decision making, metacognition, and more.
  • Practical questions: When do you use these processes? When do you think about these processes?

Can we scientifically study mental processes?

  • Challenge: Mental processes are not directly observable.
  • Comparison to other sciences: You can directly observe a chemical reaction or measure volume of sound, but you cannot directly measure how much attention someone gives to a picture.
  • Core question: How can invisible mental processes be studied scientifically?
  • Framing: A central problem for early and modern cognitive psychology; motivates the use of indirect measurements (behavioral, reaction time, memory tests, etc.).

Roots and Key Movements in Psychology

  • Psychophysics (Fechner)
  • Structuralism (Wundt)
  • Functionalism (William James)
  • Behaviorism (John Watson)
  • Laws of Association (Aristotle)
  • Memory research (Hermann Ebbinghaus)
  • Gestalt Psychology (memory/visual organization, problem solving)
  • Mary Whiton Calkins (memory, recency effect)
  • Classical conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)
  • Emergence of Cognitive Psychology (mid-20th century)
  • These threads collectively shaped the move toward cognitive explanations of mental life.

Fechner and Psychophysics

  • Gustav Fechner (1801–1878)
  • Focus: Relationship between physical properties of a stimulus and the subjective experience of it.
  • Method: Present a stimulus (e.g., light), modulate intensity, rate intensity of the experience.
  • Limitations:
    • Focused on early stages of information processing, not on complex thought.
  • Significance: Established a bridge between physical stimuli and subjective experience; foundational for measuring perception.

Early Memory Research: Hermann Ebbinghaus

  • Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) – pioneer of experimental memory research
  • Key contributions:
    • First experimental investigation of memory
    • Used self-experimentation with lists of nonsense syllables (CVC trigrams) to study learning and forgetting
    • Introduced the learning curve and forgetting curve concepts
  • Learning curve (concept): Performance improves with restudy attempts
  • Forgetting curve (concept): Retention declines over time without practice
  • Savings with relearning:
    • Definition: The relative amount of time saved on a second learning trial due to prior exposure
    • Formal notion: extSavings=T<em>extinitial−T</em>extrelearnTextinitialext{Savings} = \frac{T<em>{ ext{initial}} - T</em>{ ext{relearn}}}{T_{ ext{initial}}} where $T$ denotes learning time on initial vs. relearning trials
  • Practical takeaway: Early memory research showed that memory strength and relearning speed can be quantified, leading to quantifiable curves of learning and forgetting

Mary Whiton Calkins (Early Memory Research)

  • Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)
  • Notable achievements:
    • First woman president of the American Psychological Association (APA)
    • Emphasized cognition in everyday real-world contexts
  • Recency effect:
    • Tendency to better recall items at the end of a list
  • Recency effect example: Word list study with items such as Bread, Glasses, Keychain, Liberty, Dolphin, Painting, Snow, Shadow, Filter, Blossom, Plastic; test recall demonstrated the recency pattern

Gestalt Psychology

  • Core idea: “The whole is different from the sum of its parts.”
  • Human tendency: Actively organize what we see; holistic processing.
  • Relevance to cognition: Important for visual recognition and problem solving (e.g., when patterns or configurations matter more than individual elements)
  • Relationship to Fechner and Ebbinghaus: Builds upon perception and memory but emphasizes organization and wholes rather than just element-by-element processing

Classical Conditioning: Pavlov

  • Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) developed classical conditioning
  • Classic demonstration: Salivation in dogs in response to a neutral stimulus that becomes associated with food
  • Key concepts:
    • Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Elicits an automatic response (e.g., food)
    • Unconditioned Response (UR): Involuntary reflex (e.g., salivation to food)
    • Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Initially neutral stimulus that becomes associated with US
    • Conditioned Response (CR): Learned response to CS after association
  • Mechanism: Repeated pairing of CS with US leads to CS eliciting CR
  • Impact: Provided a rigorous, observable basis for predicting behavior, influencing later behaviorist theories

Behaviorism (Watson) and its Tenets

  • John Watson (1878–1958) emphasized observable behavior and the relationship between stimuli and responses
  • Core stance: Consciousness and mental experiences should not be studied as objects of psychology; psychology should focus on the black box
  • S-R framework: Behavior is the result of stimulus–response relationships
  • Tenets (summarized):
    • Stimuli automatically elicit responses (S → R)
    • Learning is the strengthening of the association between S and R
    • Learning occurs through reinforcement (S → R with reinforcement sr+)
  • Reinforcement: A desired goal that increases the likelihood of the response
  • S-R as the foundation of psychology; consciousness not required for explanation

Behaviorist Examples and Problems

  • Example: A “spoiled” child – stimulus (desire for a toy) leads to a response (crying); reinforcement (parent gives in) reinforces the behavior via a black-box model
  • Laboratory example: Rat in a maze
    • Steps: Rat experiences a stimulus (maze) and produces a response (movement toward cheese)
    • Reinforcement (cheese) strengthens the S–R association
    • With each trial, the rat learns to reach cheese faster (learning via reinforcement)
    • Diagrammatic view: S (maze, stimuli) → R (movement) → Reinforcement (cheese) strengthens the connection
  • Summary: Behaviorism could explain simple learning but faced challenges explaining more complex behavior and cognitive processes

Problems for Behaviorism: Learning Without Responding and Latent Learning

  • McNamara, Long, & Wike (1956): Learning without responding challenges the necessity of overt responding for learning
  • Basic setup:
    1) Cart-rat group pushed through a maze to cheese (no active running by the rat)
    2) Action group: Rats run the maze to cheese
    3) Compare the speed of the two groups on subsequent trials
  • Findings: Cart-rat group learned as quickly as running rats, suggesting learning occurred without corresponding visible responding
  • Implication: If learning can occur without overt behavior, S-R theories are insufficient; internal cognitive representations may be acquired
  • Tolman & Honzik (1930) latent learning study (see next section) further illustrated this challenge to strict behaviorism

Tolman & Honzik (1930): Latent Learning

  • Research question: Do rats learn about a maze even without reinforcement, and how does reinforcement affect performance later?
  • Method: Three groups of rats in a maze over 17 days
    1. Consistent reinforcement group: cheese in the center on every trial
    2. No reinforcement group: cheese never in the center
    3. Delayed reinforcement group: no cheese initially; cheese provided starting on day 11
  • Results: Rats in all groups learned the maze; the delayed reinforcement group showed learning without reinforcement, but performance depended on reinforcement later
  • Conclusion: Latent learning demonstrated that knowledge can be acquired without immediate reinforcement and expressed later when reinforcement is provided
  • Implications for Behaviorism: Challenges the view that learning is solely the result of reinforcement; supports cognitive maps and internal representations
  • Terminology: Latent learning refers to learning that is not immediately expressed in behavior

Problems for Behaviorism: Language and Higher-Order Cognition

  • Lashley argued that skilled behavior is too complex to be fully explained by simple S–R connections; argued against a purely S–R account of complex actions
  • Noam Chomsky criticized behaviorist accounts of language, arguing that linguistic expression is too creative and productive to be explained purely by S–R associations
  • These criticisms contributed to the shift from pure behaviorism toward cognitive explanations of language and higher-order thinking

Emergence of Cognitive Psychology (1956 onward)

  • Cognitive Revolution: 1956—migration from behaviorist explanations to cognitive explanations of mental processes
  • Information Processing Approach:
    • Computer metaphor: input, processing, storage, output
    • Assumptions:
    • Humans as symbol manipulators
    • Thought is active and interpretive
    • Processing occurs in stages and can be isolated and studied
  • Limitations of the strict computer metaphor:
    • Serial processing limitations; humans often process information in parallel
  • Evolving model: Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) and Connectionism

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) and Connectionism

  • PDP basics:
    • Cognitive processing is described in terms of connections between simple units (nodes)
    • Nodes correspond to basic brain units (neurons)
  • Connectionism:
    • Uses brain-inspired networks to model cognitive processes
    • Emphasizes distributed representation and parallel processing
  • Current status:
    • One of the largest areas in psychology
    • Wide influence across psychology and other fields

The Information Processing Approach: Key Features and Criticisms

  • Core ideas:
    • Information is encoded, stored, and retrieved much like a computer
    • Serial, step-by-step processing can be broken into distinct stages
  • Common criticisms/limitations:
    • Human cognition often involves parallel processing and emergence from distributed networks, not strictly serial steps
    • Real-world cognition is influenced by context, prior knowledge, and heuristics

Language and Cognition: Beyond Simple Behaviorism

  • Language as a test case for cognitive theories:
    • Language production and comprehension involve generative rules and structure not easily captured by S–R associations
  • The role of internal representations, rules, and mental models in understanding language and thought

Connections to Foundational Principles

  • Link to early memory research: Measures like recall, recognition, and retention are essential tools for studying cognitive processes
  • Gestalt insights about organization and perception inform modern theories of problem solving and perception beyond simple element aggregation
  • Structuralism/Functionalism provided historical grounding for studying conscious experience and its functions, which cognitive psychology later integrated with experimental methods

Current Status and Core Concepts in Cognitive Psychology

  • Core focus areas today include perception, attention, memory, language, learning, reasoning, decision making, metacognition, and more
  • Key methodological approaches include:
    • Behavioral experiments (reaction time, accuracy, memory tests)
    • Neuroimaging and neural modeling (not explicitly in the slides but common in the field)
    • Computational modeling (information processing, PDP)
  • The field remains deeply interdisciplinary and influential across psychology and related disciplines

Study Guide and Exam Preparation (from the slides)

  • Where does Cognitive Psychology get its roots?
  • Who are: Ebbinghaus and Calkins?
  • What are the tenets and problems with the behaviorist perspective? (be able to discuss specific research as examples of problems)
  • Explain the Tolman & Honzik (1930) research. Know the main research question, how the research was conducted, what the results were, and what conclusions can be drawn from this research.
  • Explain the McNamara, Long, & Wike (1956) research. Know the main research question, how the research was conducted, what the results were, and what conclusions can be drawn from this research.
  • What is the Information Processing Approach? What are its flaws
  • What is Connectionism?
  • Complete the Weekly Quiz by Friday at 5pm