Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology is…

• the study of the way in which the brain processes information
• includes the mental processes involved in perception, learning and memory storage, thinking and language
• Sensation
  • sensory inputs from senses
  • bottom-up
  • 5 senses, balance
• Perception
  • making sense
  • interpreting what was sensed
  • top-down
• Memory
  • sensory memory → short term → working memory → long term

Stages of Cognitive Processing

INPUT→ PERCEPTION → LEARNING AND MEMORY STORAGE → RETRIEVAL → THINKING

• this figure should be regarded as a greatly simplified representation of the general sequential order of the cognitive processes which typically occur, but it would be more realistic to think of cognition as ^^a continuous flow of information from the input stage through to the output stage^^, undergoing different forms of processing along the way
• the mind seeking to understand itself

Why Study Cognitive Psychology?

• Intellectual Curiosity
  • The cognitive psychologist is like the tinkerer who wants to know how a clock works. Cognitive psychologists ^^strive to understand the mechanisms that make such intellectual sophistication possible.^^
• Implications to Other Fields
  • An appreciation of how humans think is important to understanding why certain thought malfunctions occur (^^clinical psychology^^), how people behave with other individuals or in groups (^^social psychology^^), how persuasion works (^^political science^^), how economic decisions are made (^^economics^^), why certain ways of organizing groups are more effective and stable than others (^^sociology^^), and why natural languages have certain features (^^linguistics^^)
• Practical Applications
  • If we really understood how people acquire knowledge and intellectual skills and how they perform feats of intelligence, then we would be able to improve their intellectual training and performance accordingly.

Approaches to the Study of Cognition

• Experimental Psychology
  • the scientific testing of psychological processes in human and animal subjects
  • use of animals
  • Ex. Skinner: rats and pigeons
• Computer Modelling
  • the simulation of human cognitive processes by computer
  • often used as a method of testing the feasibility of an information-processing mechanism
  • design computer programs to mimic the way the brain works
• Cognitive Neuropsychology
  • the study of the brain activities underlying cognitive processes, often by investigating cognitive impairment in brain-damaged patients
  • patients with brain damage (which part and cognitive defects)
  • Lesioning
  • destroy certain parts of the brain
  • can help the patient
• Cognitive Neuroscience
  • the investigation of human cognition by relating it to ^^brain structure and function^^, normally obtained from brain imaging techniques
  • came later
  • does not need the patient to die
  • brain scanning technology (PET, MRI, fMRI)

History of Cognitive Psychology

Early History

• ^^Plato and Aristotle^^, in their discussions of the nature and origin of knowledge, speculated about ^^memory and thought^^
• Empiricism vs Nativism
  • ^^Empiricism^^ held that all knowledge comes from ^^experience^^ (e.g., Berkeley, Locke, Hume, and Mill)
  • ^^Nativism^^ held that children come into the world with a great deal of ^^innate knowledge^^ (Descartes and Kant)
• only in the 150 years has it been realized that human cognition could be the subject of scientific study rather than philosophical speculation

Dialectic

• Dialectic: a developmental process where ideas evolve over time through ^^a pattern of transformation^^
• Thesis: a statement of belief
• Antithesis: a statement that counters a previous statement of belief
• Synthesis: integrates the more credible features of each of two (or more) views

Philosophical Antecedents

• Rationalist
  • acquire knowledge through thinking and logical analysis
  • Descartes
• Empiricist
  • acquire knowledge via empirical evidence
  • Locke
• Synthesis
  • both have a role
  • Kant

Psychology in Germany

• Wilhelm Wundt, his students, and many other early psychologists used a method in inquiry called ^^introspection^^, in which highly trained observers reported the contents of their own ^^consciousness^^ under carefully controlled conditions.
• In an introspective experiment, ^^Mayer and Orth (1901)^^ had their participants perform a ^^free-association task^^. The experiments spoke a word (coat, dot, book, bowl) to the participants and then measured the amount of time the participants took to generate responses to the word.

Psychology in America

• William James’ Principles of Psychology (1890) reflected principles of pragmatism and functionalism
• ^^Edward Thorndike^^ developed a ^^theory of learning^^ that was directly applicable to classrooms. Thorndike was interested in such basic problems as ^^the effects of reward and punishment on the rates of learning^^.
• John Watson and other behaviorists led a fierce attach not only on introspectionism but also on any attempt to develop a theory of mental operations.
• A number of German psychologists immigrated to America and brought Gestalt psychology with them. ^^Gestalt psychology claimed that the activity of the brain and the mind was more than the sum of its part.^^
• Edward Tolman was an American psychologist who did his research on animal learning and anticipated many ideas of modern cognitive psychology.
• The introspectionists held a naive belief in the power of self-observation. The behaviorists were so afraid of falling prey to subjective fallacies that they refused to let themselves think about mental processes.

Psychological Antecedents

Structuralism vs Functionalism

• Structuralism
  • What are the elementary contents (structures) of the human mind?
  • Wundt
• Functionalism
  • How and why does the mind work?
  • James
• Synthesis
  • associationism
  • Ebbinghaus and Thorndike

Associationism vs Behaviorism

• Associationism
  • How can events or ideas become associated in the mind?
  • Thorndike
• Behaviorism
  • What is the relation between behavior and environment?
  • Pavlov
• Synthesis
  • radical behaviorism
  • Watson and Skinner

Behaviorism dominated until less radical behaviorist cognitive map -- a thought (Tolman)

• Synthesis: cognitions should play an active role in psychology (Gestalt, Bandura)

The Cognitive Revolution

• Cognitive psychology as we know it today formed in the 2 decades between 1950 and 1970, in the Cognitive Revolution that ^^overthrew behaviorism^^.
• Research on Human Performance
  • During World War II, governments needed practical information about how to train soldiers to use sophisticated equipment and how to deal with problems such as the breakdown of attention under stress.
• Information Theory
  • Donald Broadbent and other psychologists, such as George Miller, Fred Attneave, and Wendell Garner, initially developed these ideas with respect to perception and attention, but such analyses soon pervaded all of cognitive psychology.
• By the mid-1950s, the ^^concept of information processing^^ had entered psychology and reinvigorated on interest in the unobservable mental processes that mediated between stimulus and a response.
• Artificial Intelligence
  • Developments in AI, which tries to get computers to behave intelligently, served as an ^^indirect influence^^.
• Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, both at Carnegie Mellon University, spent most of their lives educating cognitive psychologists about the implications of AI (and educating workers in AI about the implications of cognitive psychology).
• A host of concepts have been taken from computer science and used in psychological theories. Probably more important, observing how we can analyze the intelligent behavior of a machine has largely liberated us from out inhibitions and misconceptions about our own intelligence.
• Linguistics
  • The study of the structure of language served as the ^^third influence^^ on cognitive psychology
• In the 1950s, ^^Noam Chomsky’s linguistic analysis^^ proved critical in enabling cognitive psychologists to fight off the prevailing behaviorist conceptions.
• The publication of Ulric Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology in 1967 was a milestone because it gave legitimacy to the field.
• The journal Cognitive Psychology was launched it in ^^1970^^. This journal has done much to define the field.

Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

• ^^Karl Spencer Lashley emphasized that the brain actively processes information.^^ He considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior.
• ^^Donald Hebb targeted cells as center of learning.^^ Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation.
• ^^Linguist Noam Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s verbal behavior: “reductio ad absurdum.”^^ Chomsky stressed both the biological basis and the creative potential of language. He pointed out the infinite numbers of sentences we can produce with ease. He thereby ^^defied^^ behaviorist notions that we ^^learn language by reinforcement^^. Even young children continually are producing novel sentences for which they could not have been reinforced in the past.
• ^^1950s: Development of Computers^^. Some psychologists were intrigued by the tantalizing notion that machines could be programmed to demonstrate the intelligent processing of information.
• Turing Test and AI: a computer program would be judged as successful to the extent that its output was indistinguishable, by humans, from the output of humans
• A cognitive revolution occurred and increased interest in the study of mental processes (cognitions).
• Cognitive Science
  • This new field emerged in the 1970s, which aims to integrate research efforts from psychology, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and AI.
• The fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive science overlap
  • Cognitive Science: makes greater use of such methods as ^^logical analysis and the computer simulation of cognitive processes^^
  • Cognitive Psychology: ^^relies heavily on experimental techniques^^ for studying behavior that grew out of the behaviorist era

Core Concepts

• Mental Representations
  • an unobservable internal code for information
  • unlike a physical external representation (such as an artist’s sketch of something), mental representations are ^^private^^ and are ^^perceived only by their owners^^
  • scientists cannot read your thoughts because they cannot process your conscious and unconscious mental representations
  • ^^all you know about the world^^ is found in your mental representations
• Stages of Processing
  • the steps required to form, modify, and use mental representations in a cognitive task
  • ^^Processes modify mental representations in a series of stages^^
  • to be able to recall a meaningless syllable, you had to compute a mental representation during encoding, store this representation as an item on the list, retrieve the representation when trying to remember, and then convert the representation to a spoken or written word
  • multiple stages of processing must take place before a response occurs
• Serial vs Parallel Processing
  • Serial Processing: refers to cases in which cognitive operations occur ^^one at a time in series^^
  • Parallel Processing: refers to cases in which cognitive operations occur ^^simultaneously in parallel^^
  • Do cognitive processes occur one at a time or simultaneously during a given stage of processing?
  • In given list of words in a memory task, is each item on the list encoded one at a time, or are all of them encoded simultaneously
• Hierarchical Systems
  • the hierarchical design of information processing components and systems is the mind’s cognitive architecture
  • the distinction between a working memory and a long-term memory system is such an architectural design
  • ^^symbolic models^^ explain cognition in terms of ^^simulations that operate like a computer program that encodes^^, stores, and manipulates symbols
  • ^^connectionist models^^ explain cognition in terms of ^^simulations of simple neuronlike units^^ in complex networks
• Consciousness
  • cognitive scientists often talk about consciousness as self-knowledge, the capacity to represent the self mentally in addition to the objects, events, and ideas encountered in the external world
  • a difficult concept to investigate because it is not well defined
  • Informational Access: a secondary meaning of consciousness which is the capacity to be able to report on mental representations and the processes that operate on them
  • Sentience: the basic capacity for raw sensations, feelings, or subjective experience of any kind

Gestalt Psychology

• concentrated how we perceive parts of a pattern within the context of a whole
• Gestalt Principle of Continuation: a Gestalt psychologist would argue that the auditory system ‘expects’ the beep to continue because of the principle of continuation

Gibson’s Ecological Theory

• Gibson suggested that there are certain invariant properties in the environment that perceptual systems may take advantage of
• the invariant properties of any stimulus will be available even though a other properties will be changing and can help maintain the perceptual constancy of an object
  • we are able to recognize a friend’s voice when their voice is distorted by the telephone or when they have a cold or are whispering

Gibson’s Direct Perception (Ecological Model)

• all the information needed to form a perception is available in the environment
• perception is immediate and spontaneous
• no top down processing is necessary
• perception and action cannot be separated
• perception guides action and action generates more new perceptual information