Cognitive Psychology Concepts and Theories

Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive psychology studies how the brain processes information, encompassing mental processes like perception, learning, memory, thinking, and language.

Stages of Cognitive Processing

• Input → Perception → Learning and Memory Storage → Retrieval → Thinking

Approaches to Studying Cognitive Psychology

• Experimental psychology: Scientific testing of psychological processes in humans and animals.
• Computer modeling: Simulating human cognitive processes using computers, often used to test information-processing mechanisms.
• Cognitive neuropsychology: Studying brain activities underlying cognitive processes, often through investigating cognitive impairment in brain-damaged patients.
• Cognitive neuroscience: Investigating human cognition by relating it to brain structure and function, typically using brain-imaging techniques.

Key Concepts

• Behaviorism: An approach to psychology focusing on observable behavior, rejecting the consideration of internal mental processes.
• Gestalt psychology: Emphasizes how components of perceptual input become grouped and integrated into patterns and whole figures.
• Schema: A mental pattern, usually derived from past experiences, used to interpret new information. Schemas are influenced by personal experiences.
• Top-down processing: Uses stored knowledge and schemas to interpret incoming stimuli.
• Bottom-up processing: Processing driven by information contained in the incoming stimulus itself.
• Feature detectors: Specialized neural units tuned to specific stimulus features (like lines of a particular angle). Feature detectors combine to detect more complex features; combining these further detects more complex patterns.
• Limited-capacity processor model: The idea that our brains have limited cognitive resources and that information processing must be prioritized; this process is known as selective attention.
• Sensory/perception: Sensory information refers to raw, bottom-up input from senses and how that is interpreted by cognitive processes is perception.
• Blindsight: The ability for some functionally blind people to detect visual stimuli at an unconscious level without conscious awareness.
• Templates: Stored representations of objects enabling object recognition.
• Reversible figures: Illustrations useful in understanding how figures and their ground are perceived.
• Feature extraction theories: Analyzing objects as combinations of features rather than storing complete templates.
• Pandemonium model: A feature extraction theory with levels of 'demons' that detect specific features. This is a bottom-up approach; and feature combination is through hierarchical structure.
• Geons: Three-dimensional features that are combined to allow object recognition.
• Parallel distributed processing (PDP): A model that attempts to model the brain's processing by using a network of interconnected nodes.
• Visual illusions: Occur when the perceptual system's interpretation of the world doesn't accurately reflect reality.
• Sensory conspicuity: Describes how easily an object can be detected by the senses. Attention conspicuity: The prominence of an object that attracts one's focused attention.
• Visual search: Experimental procedure of searching through a field of objects to locate a target.
• Constructivist approach: The idea that our perception is built up from incomplete sensory information using stored knowledge. We act as 'scientists,' forming hypotheses about stimuli and testing them.
• Masking: A disruptive effect of an auditory or visual pattern presented immediately after a stimulus. A noise mask is one example of masking.
• Re-entrant processing: Communication between different brain areas is never strictly one-way; a signal going from one area to another is typically followed by a signal returning to the first area.
• Gibsonian view of perception: Perception involves interacting with the world, perceiving is direct and involved in how we act.
• Ventral stream: A visual pathway primarily associated with object recognition and identification
• Dorsal stream: A visual pathway primarily associated with processing spatial information, object location, and driving behaviour responses.
• Auditory localisation: The ability of the brain to locate the source of a sound.
• Binaural cues and spectral cues: Help us determine azimuth (horizontal location), and elevation (vertical location) of sounds respectively.
• Mental models: Cognitive constructions that represent problem premises and how the premises are interpreted.
• Sensory overload: A condition where a cognitive system is overwhelmed by excessive incoming sensory information
• Proprioception/Kinesthesis: Proprioception is about the position of the body, limbs, and joints in space, while kinesthesis is about awareness of movement. These are essential for coordination and movement.
• Haptic information: A combination of touch, kinesthesis, and proprioception, crucial for interacting with objects in our environment.
• Attention: A cognitive process that involves selection and prioritization of information, central to perception and memory. This can be directed intentionally (endogenous) or unintentionally (exogenous)
• Spotlight of visual attention analogy: Describes how attention can highlight the objects/events in the "spotlight". Focusing attention on a particular region.
• Saccades: rapid eye movements essential for visual exploration.
• Covert attention: Focussing attention without eye movements. This is often associated with endogenous attention tasks.
• Conjunction search/pop-out: Combining features during a search is often slower than processing something that 'pops out'' or easily discerned.
• Breakthrough: the ability of unattended information to sometimes reach conscious awareness.
• Early/late selection: Early selection models suggest that attentional selection occurs relatively early in the processing stream, filtering out information before it's fully processed. Late selection models, conversely, argue that most stimuli are initially processed and meaning is made before attentional filtering takes place.
• Selective filtering/selective set: selective filtering requires selection for one source of information for further processing; selective set tasks require that a target be detected from a small set of possibilities.
• Stroop effect: A demonstration of the relationship between controlled and automatic attention. A particular example of automatic and controlled processing.
• Slips of action: Errors in executing action sequences when one part of the sequence goes wrong or is omitted.
• Contention scheduler: A part of the attention control system that automatically prioritizes a task and allows smooth, unconscious execution of automatic behaviours; important in everyday tasks and interactions.
• Frontal lobe syndrome: The pattern of deficits in goal-directed and behaviour arising from damage to the frontal lobes.
• Combining tasks: Multi-tasking is the process of trying to perform two or more tasks at once.

This quiz explores fundamental concepts in cognitive psychology, including schema theory, attention models, and brain modularity. It addresses how perception and memory are influenced by cognitive processes and the role of various brain regions. Test your understanding of important theories and neural mechanisms in cognition.