Cognitive Psychology Overview

Study Notes

The study of mental processes and behavior is called psychology.
Cognitive Psychology focuses specifically on the study of mental processes.
Cognitive Neuroscience seeks to understand how the brain enables the mind.
Cognitive science is a broader field that encompasses how the brain, body, and environment all work together.

The study of cognitive psychology is based on introspection, behaviorism, and cognitivism.
Introspection was established by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany.
Trained assistants used introspection to report their thoughts and sensations in response to stimuli. Focus was on identifying the underlying structure of these experiences.

Classical conditioning is one of the most famous examples of behaviorism.
It involves learning through association, where a neutral stimulus is paired with a naturally occurring stimulus to elicit a response.
Pavlov’s famous experiment demonstrated classical conditioning by pairing a bell with food to elicit salivation in dogs.
Examples include:
- A child crying at the sight of a needle after having a flu shot.
- Someone experiencing nausea after eating a food that once made them sick.
- PTSD, where location, objects, or sounds trigger fear and unpleasant reactions in those who experienced trauma.

Criticisms from within the field of behaviorism pointed to the complexity of animal behavior and the limitations of classical conditioning.
Criticisms from outside behaviorism suggested that mental processes were important for understanding behavior.
Both internal and external critiques contributed to the shift towards cognitivism.
The rise of cognitivism and cognitive psychology was also influenced by the development of computers in the 1950s.

Cognitivism proposed that mental processes are important for understanding behavior.
The computer analogy suggests that, just like computers, the mind processes information through stages of input, processing, and output.