Introduction to cognitive psychology

It creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking and reasoning

It is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals

It is the study of mental processes, which includes determining the characteristics and properties of the mind and how it operates.

In the ______, ideas about the mind were dominated by the belief that it is not possible to study the mind.

Reasons to the belief that it is not possible to study the mind

Who is a dutch physiologist who conducted one of the first cognitive psychology experiments.

His experiments took place 11 years before the founding of the first laboratory of scientific psychology

He pioneered the reaction time

Franciscus donder's goal is to:

It refers to the time it takes to respond to the presentation stimulus

Steps in simple reaction time

Steps in the choice reaction time task. Added a decision-making step:

Choice reaction time rook______longer than simple reaction time

Key principles of studying the mind

He is a german physiologist, philosopher, and professor, one of the father of modern psychology.

In 1879, he founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research at the University of Leipzig

He pioneered both structuralism and analytic introspection

It is an early school of psychology focused on analyzing the basic elements of consciousness. It sought to understand how simple components like sensations, mental images, and feeling combine to create more complex mental experiences.

Its main goal was to understand the structure and characteristics of mind.

It is a process by which a person looks inward at their own mental processes to gain insights into how they work; it is the self-observation of one's consciousness.

It is used as a technique where trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.

He is a german psychologist aimed to measure the nature of memory and forgetting, specially how quickly learned information is lost over time.

Hermann ebbinghaus used _____ as a measure for forgetting, calculated as (original time to learn the list)-(time to unlearn the list after the delay)

_______resulted in smaller savings, indicating more forgetting

It is rapid in the first two days after initial learning, then levels off

Ebbinghaus plotted percent savings versus time, creating a _______that visually represents the rate of forgetting.

Factors affecting forgetting

This can improve learning

It illustrates that information is lost at an exponential rate if there is no attempt to retain it. Learners may forget an average of 90% of new information within the week.

Ebbinghaus asserted that the best ways to improve memory are better memory representation and repetition based on , especially_.

He is an early American psychologist who taught Harvard's first psychology course.

His observations about the mind, including attention, where based on reflections on his own mental processes rather than experimental results.

He famously described attention as "taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought"

We actively choose what we attend to, which influences what enters our awareness. This section process is crucial for effective functioning.

It enhances our ability to perceive, conceive, distinguish, remember, and react more quickly.

Types of attention

It refers to the focusing on stimuli that are physically present

It refers to the focusing on internal thoughts and concepts

He founded an approach to psychology called behaviorism

He became dissatisfied with the method of analytic introspection.

John watson criticized the introspection because of :

John watson proposed behaviorism as an objective, experimental approach focusing on ______

He focuses on observable behavior, not consciousness

John watson's performed the _____ experiment

John watsons ideas are associated with _______

Who received his PhD from Harvard in 1931, provided another tool for studying the relationship between stimulus and response, which ensured that this approach would dominate psychology for decades to come.

He introduced the operant conditioning, which focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcer.

He is not interested in the mind, but focused on determining how behavior was controlled by stimuli

Behaviorism dominance is focused on understanding behavior through ________

It is focused on observable behavior and stimulus-response relationship.

It refers to a mental representation of the spatial layout of an environment

Language is learned through operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation)

Children say sentences never heard before

By the ______, cognitive psychology replaces behaviorism as the dominant approach

It is a shift from one paradigm to another where a paradigm is a system of ideas that dominate science at a particular time.

It shift from behaviorism to studying the processes of the mind or much commonly known as cognition

Inspired psychologists to think mind as an information processor.

People focus on one auditory message while filtering out another

First flow diagram of how the mind processes information

(first Al program) presented in the summer research project on artificial intelligence. The first use if the term Artificial intelligence

1967 he published a textbook with the title cognitive psychology, which coined the term cognitive psychology and emphasized the information-processing approach to studying the mind.

He published the first book of cognitive psychology. Primarily focused on vision and hearing.

He explored short-term memory, pattern recognition, and sensory processing.

He have minimal discussion of higher mental processes (thinking, problem-solving, long-term memory)

A major step in understanding higher mental processes was ________ memory model, introduced shortly after neisser's work.

It briefly holds information

Atkinson and shiffrins memory model describes memory as three stages process:

It stores information for seconds

It stores information for long periods

Endel tulving further subdivided long term memory into three components:

It is a long term memory of life events

It is a long term memory of facts

It is a long term memory for physical actions

The study of behavior in individuals with brain damage. This has provided insights into how different parts of the brain contribute to cognitive functions

It measures the electrical response of the nervous system, particularly the activity of single neurons, typically using animal models. This helped researchers understand the neural mechanisms underlying cognition

It marked a significant development, enabling researchers to observe which areas of the brain are activated during cognitive tasks.

In the 1990s, ______replaced PET, as it did bot require radioactive tracers and provided higher resolution imaging brain activity.

This experiment illustrate how knowledge influences perception. Participants were shown a kitchen scene followed by a briefly flashed image. This demonstrate how prior knowledge shapes cognitive processing.