Cognitive Psychology Overview

Cognitive Psychology

• Study of how humans interpret, process information, and respond to their environment.
• Investigates the underlying mental processes involved in everyday experiences.

Information Processing Model

• Explains knowledge acquisition, storage, and usage through these steps:

  • Sensation, perception, and attention (acquiring knowledge)
  • Memory (storing knowledge)
  • Reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, and language (using knowledge).

• Explains complex behaviors through these processes:

  • Perception, attention, memory, comprehension, judgement, and decision-making.

Major Sub-Areas

• Perception: How we receive information from the environment.
• Attention: How we allocate cognitive resources.
• Language: How we communicate information.
• Reasoning: How we derive information from existing knowledge.
• Problem Solving: How we gain new information.

Applications of Cognitive Psychology

• Improving training and learning.
• Analyzing human behavior in various contexts.
• Computer science (interface design).
• Enhancing written and verbal communication.
• Predicting consumer preferences (e.g., car design).

History of Cognitive Psychology

• Philosophy: Ancient Greek thinkers to the present, debating the origin of knowledge (nativism vs. empiricism).
• Introspection: Late 1800s to 1920s. Structuralism (elements of knowledge) and functionalism (function of knowledge)
• Involved subjective observations but ultimately unreliable.
• Behaviorism: 1920s to 1950s. Focused on observable behavior without considering thought or consciousness.
• Emphasized associative learning (stimulus-response) and experimental methods.
• Cognitive Revolution: 1960s-present. Returning to study the mind employing scientific methods to investigate mental processes.

Early Philosophical Roots

• Nativism (Plato): Knowledge is innate.
• Empiricism (Aristotle): Knowledge arises from experience.
• Method of discussion: Early philosophical inquiry. Challenges: lacks testability and observation.
• Significant contribution: Established the conceptual basis for studying psychology.
• Example (eyes and stability): The apparent stability of the visual scene, despite constant eye movements, is an example of how philosophical inquiry can be used to examine mental processes.

Measuring Unseen Mental Processes

• Reaction Time: Donders' studies using reaction time experiments (first cognitive experiment) demonstrated mental processes are not instantaneous.

Introspection's Limitations

• Subjectivity: Introspective reports vary among individuals, lacking reliability and objectivity.
• Measurability: Difficulties in objectively measuring mental processes.

Behaviorism's Limitations

• Limited Explanations: Failed to explain complex behaviors (language) that can't be reduced to simple stimulus-response relationships.
• Problems with Practical Applications: Insufficient to address complex real-world problems.
• Incomplete Understanding of Behavior: Behaviorism failed to account for various aspects of human behavior.

Cognitive Revolution

• Influenced by the computer metaphor (modeling the mind as an information processing system).
• Emphasis on internal mental representations and processes.
• Shift to studying mental representations (information stored in the mind) and processes (operations on that information).

The Computer Metaphor

• Cognitive psychologists attempted to model the mind as a computer.

• Limitations: The mind is different from a computer. However, this metaphor encouraged a new way of thinking about internal mental processes.

• Binary code (computer) versus neural activity patterns in the brain(mind).

• The computer metaphor provided a useful framework, despite inherent limitations..