Cognitive Psychology Overview

Lecture 1c: Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies information processes.
• It's interested in how humans acquire, store, and transform information.
• Cognition is not directly observable; thus, indirect methods to study cognition are needed.
• Introspection, a systematic examination of one's own thoughts and feelings is an early method.
• Introspection has limitations; mental processes occur too quickly, interpretation is subjective, and self-reported accounts may be inaccurate.
• Modern day research may still use introspection as a tool.
• Experiments are used to infer cognitive processes.
• Surveys and questionnaires are employed to collect behavioral evidence.
• Think-aloud procedures gather verbal descriptions of participants' thoughts as they perform a task.
• Experiments employ tightly controlled conditions and clever designs to measure behavioral measures such as speed and accuracy.
• A limitation of experiments is their lack of ecological validity. This means the results may not apply to real-world situations since the controlled environment differs drastically from how people think normally.

Lecture 2: Sensation and Perception

• Perception is fundamentally different from sensation.
• Sensation is the initial intake of information (e.g., sights, sounds), which converts to signals the brain can process.
• Perception interprets and understands these sensations.
• The Gestalt psychologists identified key principles of perceptual organisation, which are still important today.
• The law of proximity states that objects near each other tend to be perceived as a group.
• The law of similarity states that objects appearing similar tend to be grouped together.
• The law of good continuation states that we tend to perceive lines or objects in a continuous way rather than fragmented lines or discontinuous objects.
• The law of closure states that we often perceive incomplete figures as complete.
• The law of figure and ground states that visual stimuli are separated into the figure (more salient) and the ground.
• These principles explain why visual illusions and ambiguous images are compelling.

Lecture 3: Attention

• Attention differs from perception.
• It is a limited resource, selectively focusing on a certain part of the stimulus, thus often disregarding others.
• Attention is divided into goal-directed (top-down) and stimulus-driven (bottom-up) processing.
• Goal-directed attention is motivated by your intentions or goals.
• Stimulus-driven attention is influenced by certain characteristics of the stimulus, like the unexpectedness or salience of the stimulus.
• Attention is highly flexible and does not always need to be directed to adjacent regions of space.
• Two theoretical models for how people focus on space, the spot light, and zoom lens models.
• The Posner's cueing task demonstrated the role of attention in directing attention without moving the eyes.
• Multitasking involves allocating attention between two or more tasks and is less efficient than focusing on one task.
• The difficulty of a multitasking task depends on the task difficulty and the level of overlap in the task demands.

Lecture 4: Short-Term and Working Memory

• Short-term memory (STM) is a limited capacity storage system.
• STM duration is approximately 20 seconds.
• Information is lost through decay (a natural fading of information) or interference ( new information displaces older information).
• Memory span refers to the number of items a person can retain in the correct order.
• Rehearsal is crucial to transfer short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM), for example by repeating words or numbers
• Working memory is a system (like STM but more complex) that is used for processing and manipulating information.
• Working memory extends on STM, by adding more components like the Central Executive.
• Baddeley and Hitch proposed four components:
  • Central Executive: the attentional controller.
  • Phonological loop: holds and manipulates verbal information.
  • Visuospatial Sketchpad: holds and manipulates visual and spatial information.
  • Episodic buffer: binds together information from other components to create a coherent representation.

Lecture 5: Implicit and Explicit Learning

• Explicit learning involves a conscious effort to learn.
• Implicit learning occurs outside of conscious awareness.
• Key approaches to learning include
  • Classical conditioning
  • Operant conditioning
  • Observational learning

Lecture 6: Semantic Memory

• Semantic memory is a type of long-term memory.
• It stores general knowledge about the world, the meanings of words, and concepts, for example.
• The common features approach to categorizing concepts suggests concepts are categorized based on characteristics they share.
• The prototype approach is an alternative idea regarding knowledge
• Exemplar approach: categorize based on previously encountered instances of those concepts.
• Knowledge-based approach
  • concepts are defined using their causal, functional and structural properties
  • this approach takes context into account ( unlike the others ).

Lecture 7: Everyday Memory

• Everyday memory is concerned with events that have occurred in the past.

• Everyday memory tasks, like recall of events, have particular features.

• The memories involve social interaction, a sense of self, past experience and are very personal.

Lecture 8: Autobiographical Memory

• Autobiographical memory is a form of declarative memory centered around past events in your life
• Contains a very high level of personal importance about those events, which are important to the sense of self
• Highly personal, and experiences are unique
• Episodic and semantic memories are also part of this.

Lecture 9: Prospective Memory

• Prospective memory is when you deliberately remember to do something in the future
• Two main types - Time based - Event based
• Factors can influence memory, such as situational context, stress, age and task complexity.

Lecture 10: Problem Solving

• Problem solving is when you don't have a clear strategy, or a clear solution available at the start. It is different from memory in that it requires thought and potentially multiple steps to determine the solution
• Well-Defined problems vs Ill Defined
• Heuristics vs Algorithms
• Strategies (such as means-ends analysis or hill climbing) for solving problems
• Mental Set: the tendency to solve problems by repeating the same successful strategies used in the past, even if a different strategy might be better
• Functional Fixedness: the tendency to focus on a certain function of an object, thus hindering the possibility of applying a different, better strategy

Lecture 11: Emotion

• Emotions are defined as short-lived physiological states
• Three main theories:
  • Categorical approach (Ekman)
  • Dimensional approach (Watson and Tellegen)
  • Embodied approach
• Emotions have several properties:
  • Appraisal: The assessment of the stimulus and its significance
  • Autonomic Response (physiological components)
  • Action Tendency (motivational components)
  • Expression: observable physical responses
  • Feeling: the conscious experience of the emotion
• Emotions affect cognitive processes, such as attention and memory

Lecture 12: Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion

• The importance of the amygdala in emotional processing.
• The emotional appraisal process, which leads to specific emotional responses (e.g., anxiety to danger)

Lecture 13: Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory & Testimony

• Amnesia as a case study showing impairments in different kinds of memory
• Eyewitness Testimony: the concept that memory is not static, but rather is easily influenced by misinformation, and suggestive questioning after an event of interest