Cognitive Psychology Overview

Cognitive Psychology: Introduction

• Cognitive Psychology is a subfield of Psychology focusing on the scientific study of the mind and mental processes.
• Mental processes include perception, attention, memory, knowledge, and problem-solving. These processes are crucial for everyday functions.
• The mind is both responsible for everyday functions and determines our mental abilities.
• Cognitive Psychology departs from other schools of thought and builds upon a philosophy in which the mind and body are the same entity.

Pre-Cognitive Psychology Era: Philosophy of Monism

• Monism is the philosophy that the mind and body are one entity.
• Key figures like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke (circa 17th century) were British Empiricists.
• They emphasized scientific observation as a method to understand the brain-mind relationship.

Donders' Decision-Making Experiment (1868)

• Donders' experiment involved two conditions (simple and choice reaction time tasks).
• The difference in reaction time between conditions allowed the inference of the durations of cognitive processes.
• The experiment revealed that it took about 0.1 seconds to make a simple decision.

Hermann Ebbinghaus' Memory Experiment (1885)

• Ebbinghaus's experiment was the first research into memory and forgetting.
• He used nonsense syllables (three-letter combinations of consonant-vowel-consonant) to study memory.
• He measured the time it took him to learn, forget, and relearn novel lists of these nonsense syllables. His experiment allowed the demonstration of a forgetting curve.
• The research revealed that memory decreases rapidly initially then slows down.

Ebbinghaus' Forgetting/Saving Curve

• Ebbinghaus's research detailed how much was remembered/saved over time.
• Ebbinghaus was interested in how quickly he could relearn a list.
• The experiment measured time and percentage of saved time.

Structuralism

• Structuralism aimed to break down the components of the mind.
• Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology lab in 1879.
• Method employed was analytic introspection – subjects were trained to report their sensory experiences.
• Structuralism was influential but was not enduring and relied upon potentially unreliable self-reported data (introspection).

Functionalism

• Functionalism aimed to describe the adaptive function of the mind.
• William James (1842-1910) is considered the father of American psychology.
• Key methods were naturalistic observation and principles of evolution as a means to understand how humans operate and respond to environment stimuli.
• James wrote a seminal book titled 'Principles of Psychology'.

Behaviorism

• Behaviorism focused on observable behaviors rather than internal mental processes.
• John Watson (1878-1958) believed introspection was unscientific.
• Behaviorism proposed that behaviors are learned through a reward-punishment system.
• Subjects are blank slates, devoid of innate cognitive capacity, who react to environmental stimuli.
• Radical behaviorism, lead by B.F. Skinner (1904-1990), was a perspective arguing the concept of internal consciousness is superfluous.
• B.F. Skinner argued that observable behaviors are the only components needed to understand learning.

Radical Behaviorism

• Radical Behaviorism focuses on learning through lawful principles, and how these principles govern behavior when presented a reward-punishment scenario.
• Radical behaviorists believe that mental events such as those considered necessary by other schools of thought are unnecessary.
• Behaviorists believed humans react based on environmental stimuli and associated rewards and punishments, not a conscious choice to think or learn.

Cognitive Revolution

• Interest in the mind resurfaced in the 1940s and 1950s—this is known as the Cognitive Revolution
• Key thinkers like Kohler, Tolman, and Chomsky challenged behavioral approaches.
• The emergence of computers and the increased interest in how information is encoded, stored and processed in humans fueled further interest in studying the mind.

Information Processing

• Information processing is a metaphor that uses a computer to describe how the mind works.
• Complex ideas are broken down into stages.
• The mind can be thought of as a computer-like system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information.
• Humans, as information processors, utilize cognitive functions like attention.

Modern Cognitive Psychology

• Modern Cognitive Psychology integrates multiple concepts.
• Emphasizes thought processes and knowledge as the drivers of behavior.
• More study of the physiology of cognitive processes.
• Focus shifted to studying higher-level cognitive functions (thinking, remembering).

Assumptions of Cognitive Psychology

• Mental processes exist, and are key to understanding the mind.
• Mental processes can be studied through scientific approaches, such as studying physiological correlates of behavior and drawing inferences from behavior.
• Humans are active processors of information and engage in cognitive activities like selecting information and relating it to what is already known.
• Cognition is intimately linked to neuronal/brain activity.