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Cognitive Psychology:

  • Scientific, Historical, Philosophical foundations of psychology

  • Variety of theoretical approaches to psychology

  • Knowledge and critical understanding various influences upon psychology

  • Historical roots are vitally important to psychology.

(Cartesian) Dualism - mind-body:

  • Divided world into souls (divine, immaterial) and everything else (matter)

  • Souls could not be studied scientifically - to be studied using philosophy and religion.

  • Everything else could be studied scientifically.

  • Doubt everything - cogito ergo sum.

  • Mind and body influence each other.

  • Lots of behaviour was involuntary (no thinking involved) - behaviourism.

  • Descartes - mechanistic view everything (apart human souls) sophisticated machine.

  • Mechanistic Physiology - Psychological functioning (but not reason - human soul) caused by brain and nervous system (beginnings of cognitive neuropsychology)

  • Descartes’ Importance:

    • Held that there were two different types of things (substances) in the world - matter and thought.

    • Said animals were completely mechanical but humans are different (rational soul)

    • Psychological function as a machine → cognitive neuropsychology, behaviourism.

L’homme Machine:

  • de La Mettrie - humans were just machines.

  • Mechanistic materialist - no soul only matter.

Main Positions on Mind-Body:

  • Dualism - mind and brain independent.

  • Materialism - mind is the brain (physical state of)

  • Functionalism (machine) - mind is a separate layer of information.

Psychology emerges as a separate discipline.

  • Psychology emerges independent academic discipline.

  • Early pioneers experimental method to study mind: Hermann von Helmholtx, Ernst Weber, Gustav Fechner, and Wilhelm Wundt.

  • First Laboratory Experimental Psychology founded by Wundt at Leipzig Germany (1879)

Hermann von Helmholtz:

  • Trained medicine.

  • Psychic, Physiology, Psychology

  • Studied nerve transmission.

  • Importance - possible measure information in the nervous system which was once thought to be impossible.

  • Technology - until galvanometer couldn’t measure the current sensitively.

Wilhelm Wundt:

  • Founded first psychology research laboratory.

  • First psychology journal in 1881.

  • Trained doctoral students 180+, in 1879, dispersed throughout world founding own labs, spreading new experimental psychology.

  • Importance of approach - psychophysics:

    • Mental chronometry

    • Apparatus present visual stimuli in RT expts.

    • Measure durations of central mental processes (discrimination and decisions)

    • Hermholtz only showed duration of peripheral events (motor nerves)

  • Introspection - process reporting own conscious experience

  • Highly practiced trained observers

    • Analysed conscious processes → basic elements

    • How elements organised, laws connection.

  • Analogous chemistry (different elements combine to make compounds and new properties)

Clever Hans:

  • Hans (horse) owner’s motivation scientific - aimed to show Darwin was correct in suggesting humans and animals have similar mental processes.

  • Ruled Hans not receiving international cues (no deceit)

  • Oskar Pfungst - found unintentional cues (bobbing heads) from owner and others.

  • If people didn’t know the answer, Hans didn’t.

Ivan Pavlov:

  • Russian physiologist

  • Physiology in digestion of dogs

  • Collection, measurement in different secretions (saliva, gastric juices)

  • Noticed that just setting up experiment (before) → saliva - ‘psychic secretions’

  • These ‘psychic secretions’ were learnt (experience is not innate)

  • ‘Psychic secretions’ - conditioned reflexes.

  • Innate digestive responses - unconditioned reflexes.

  • Thought animals including humans are complicated machines - Descartes’ reflex arc.

  • Conditioning could be understood in terms of behaviourism (no need mental processes) → behaviourism.

Little Albert Study:

  • Distrusted unscientific nature introspective psychology.

  • Held Pavlov’s conditioned reflex as model objective, non-mentalisitic science - behaviourism.

Skinner:

  • Admired Pavlov’s experiments and how Watson extended the idea of conditioned reflex to emotions.

  • Skinner had difficulty moving from salivary reflexes to everyday life.

  • Learning everyday life is not a passive acquistion - we learn by actively manipulating environment.

  • Skinner’s Box - allowed study actively acquired learning (operant conditioning) - implications to real life.

  • Reinforcement Schedules:

    • Variable-ratio schedule - highest response rate (money in) and greatest resistance extinction.

Radical Behaviourism:

  • Can know nothing about so it is ignored (not proper study to science)

  • Dispose of the imagined internal cause.

    What is Information?:

    • Information is a statement about a fact of the world.

      • Narrowing down uncertainty.

    George Boole:

    • Human reasoning modelled using a few logical principles called the ‘university laws of thought’

    • Represented sentences in language symbols and variables.

    • E.G - ‘it is sunny’ (x) and ‘it is hot’ (y) which creates ‘It is sunny and it’s hot’ (x AND y)

    Boolean Algebra:

    • AND, OR, NOT, XOR, 0, 1

    • Computers just store and transform information (all 0 and 1s)

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    Electrical circuits (Shannon, 1937):

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    Brain is an information processing device.

    Mental Representations -

    Information in the abstract - divorced from How Implemented.

    Cognitive Psychology big idea → psychological functioning is information processing.

    • Manipulation of mental representations (information) by algorithms.

    • S-?-R : Cognitive Psychology

    • S-R : Behaviourism

    Problem of Homunculus:

    We act with purpose - appear to choose how we react to things (free will)

    • Believed we have ‘a little man’ (homunculus) sitting inside our brain and deciding how we react (infinate regress)

    Computers - no Homunculus:

    • Computers act apparent purpose - feedback, no need for homunculus

    Beginnings of Cognitive Psychology and Influential Thinkers:

    • George Miller (1920-2012):

      • Limitations human short-term memory (early computers)

    • Noam Chomsky (1928-present)

      • Language, behaviourist account inadequate.

    • Donald Broadbent (1926-1933)

      • Attention, models, cognition

    Edward Tolman:

    • Questioned ‘empty organism’ - behaviourist (S-R)

    • Purposive behaviourism (behaviour as goal-orientated’

    • Proved through a rat run max for food (Blodgett 1929)

    • Rats fed day 3 and day 7 catch up with day 1

    • Suggests day 3 and day 7 that the rats learnt a cognitive map, given the goal of food to use knowledge.

    George Miller:

    • Limits of short-term memory.

    • First evidence that the human mind is like the computer with limited working memory.

    • Linked to the idea that an individual can retain 7 (plus / minus 2) chunks of information.

    Behaviourism:

    • Skinner - Language learnt as operant conditioning (1957)

    • Behaviourist account language acquisition inadequate (review 1959)

      • Rapid language acquistion children creativity language

      • Innate rapid language acquistion device (LAD)

    David Broadbent

    • Attention - mental act of selectively attending some part of the environment whilst ignoring other things.

    • Theory of ‘Selective Hearing’ - influential early use of schematic model of cognition (attention is a just part of memory cognition)

    Stimulating human thinking:

    • Psychologists began to write programs to mimic human functioning - AI

    • ELIZA (1964-1966) - Primitive natural language processing, early chatterbot.

    • MYCIN (early 1970s) - expert system.

    • Tasks are always harder than initially thought (need top-down information about the world)

    Hard vs Easy Task:

    Hard

    Easy

    Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov (1997) - Computers are better because of ‘closed world’ no needed top-down information in order to understand something.

    Walking down the street - computers can’t do it

    Criticisms:

    • Skinner - Cognitive Psychology’s core subjects are not observable.

    • Relying on an indirect observation - weakness.

      • However, the gap in indirect observation is narrowing.

        • E.G - RT, list of words recalled → brain imaging.

      Summary:

      • Information in Cognitive Psychology (definition, mental representation and processing, feedback)

      • George Miller, Noam Chomsky, Donald Broadbent influential work

      • Simulating human psych. functioning (flowcharts → programmes), limited success**

        • **large-language models work but do not exhibit the same route to ‘intelligence’ as us – and they do not exhibit self-awareness !

    Behaviourism:

    • ‘Empty organism’ - S-R

    • Can know nothing about a topic / variable so it is ignored (not proper study science)

    What is Cognitive Psychology:

    S-?-4 - Cognitive Psychology

    • Scientific Study of the mind

    • Processes studied include:

      • Perception

      • Memory

      • Thinking

      • Attention

      • Language

    Methods of Enquiry:

    • Experimentation

    • Cognitive Science (Computational Modelling)

    • Cognitive Neuropsychology

    • Cognitive Neuroscience (Neuroimaging)

    Experimentation:

    • Controlled manipulation of independent variables

      • Limit confounding variables.

    • Investigate effect on dependent variable

      • Uncover relationship between IV & DV and cause and effect

    • Often involves:

      • Healthy Individuals

      • Laboratory Conditions

    Strengths:

    • Development & testing of cognitive theories

    • Attempts to ‘generalise’ human cognition

    • Systematically investigates human cognition

    • Can isolate cause & effect

    • Informed other methods of inquiry and areas of psychological understanding

    Weaknesses:

    • Ecological validity

    • Indirect evidence of cognitive processes

    • Theories often in verbal terms

    • Underemphasizes individual differences

    Cognitive Science:

    Computational Modelling

    • Program computer to mimic human cognition

    • Allows theories to be tested

    Rule-based Production Systems

    • Large collection if-then rules

    • Sequential activation of rules produces behaviour more/less like target behaviour

    ‘Neural’ networks/Connectionism

    • Micro-structure of brain as inspiration

    • Distributed representations

    • Parallel processing

    • Content addressability

    • Strengths:

    • Allows theory testing

    • Model human cognition/behaviour

    • Limitations:

    • Rarely used to make new predictions

    • Doesn’t represent complexity of human brain

    • Can often ‘explain’ more than one set of findings

    • Cannot capture scope cognitive processes in ‘real life’

    • Yet to develop unified model of human cognition

    Cognitive Neuropsychology:

    • Study of brain damage & its relationship with ‘normal’ cognition

    • Phineas Gage (1848)

    • Broca (1861)

    • Wernicke (1874)

    Four Aims:

    • Lesion location

    • Assessment of patient’s deficit

    • Building models of normal cognition

    • Localisation of different cognitive functions within brain

    Techniques used:

    • Standardised testing

    • Experimental paradigms

    • Neuroimaging

    • Connectionist modelling

    Strengths

    • Aids theory development & model-building

    • Focuses on ‘normal’ and ‘damaged’ functioning

    • Based upon ‘real-life’ functioning & deficits

    Limitations

    • Assumes relatively independent anatomically discrete modules

    • Assumes ‘normal’ functioning pre-injury

    • Assumes brain function is generalisable

    • Subtractivity & Plasticity

    • Often reliant on single case studies

    Cognitive Neuroscience:

    • Establishes where in brain specific cognitive processes occur

    • Can tell us:

    • Order in which brain parts are activated

    • If two cognitive tasks use same part of brain

    • Number of techniques:

    • Computer tomography (CT)

    • Electroencephalography (EEG)

    • Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

    • Positron emission tomography (PET)

    • Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

    • Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

    Strengths:

    • Allows us to link cognition with brain function

    • Can aid model building at a functional level

    • Can add to understanding gained through other techniques

    Limitations:

    • Limited value in theory development & model building – ‘where’ but not ‘what’

    • Most useful for processes that are functionally discrete

    • Underestimates individual differences?

    • Uses arbitrary threshold levels

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    Summary:

    • Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of the internal processes of the mind

    • Number of methods used within cognitive psychology

    • Each has its advantages & disadvantages

    • Combinations of the different methods may be the way forward…