Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology studying mental processes like perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, and decision-making.
• It examines how people acquire, process, and store information.
• This field draws on disciplines including neuroscience, linguistics, and computer science.
• Cognitive psychologists often employ experimental methods for studying mental processes.

Key Concepts in Cognitive Psychology

• Information processing: The mind is treated as an information processor similar to a computer, receiving, processing, and outputting information.
• Schema: Mental frameworks for organizing and interpreting world information.
• Mental representation: How information is encoded in the mind, including imagery, concepts, and language.
• Attention: Focusing on specific environmental aspects while ignoring others; a limited resource.
• Perception: Organizing and interpreting sensory information.
• Memory: Encoding, storing, and retrieving information over time, with three key stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Memory Systems

• Sensory memory: An initial, brief recording of sensory information like iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory.
• Short-term memory (STM): A limited capacity memory system (typically 7 ± 2 items) holding information for a brief period (seconds). Rehearsal aids transfer to long-term memory (LTM).
• Long-term memory (LTM): A vast and relatively permanent memory store. Includes episodic memory (personal experiences), semantic memory (general knowledge), and procedural memory (skills).

Perception and Attention

• Selective attention: Focusing on specific stimuli while filtering out irrelevant information.
• Change blindness: Failing to notice significant changes in the environment.
• Visual perception: Interpreting visual information, including form, depth, and motion perception.
• Gestalt principles: Rules describing how the brain groups elements into organized patterns (e.g., figure-ground, proximity, similarity).

Language

• Language acquisition: How humans acquire language, considering nature and nurture influences.
• Language processing: How humans comprehend and produce language, involving phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and semantics.
• Language development: Stages of language development from babbling to complex sentence construction.
• Bilingualism: The cognitive advantages of learning multiple languages.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

• Problem-solving: Strategies and methods for overcoming obstacles and achieving goals, including algorithms and heuristics.
• Decision-making: Cognitive processes used to choose among alternatives. Decision processes can be influenced by cognitive biases and emotions.

Cognitive Development

• Piaget's stages of cognitive development: Four stages where children's understanding of the world changes qualitatively over time.
• Vygotsky's sociocultural theory: Emphasizes social interaction and cultural context in cognitive development.
• Information processing theory of cognitive development: Examining how children's cognitive abilities change with age.

Cognitive Neuroscience

• Relationship between brain activity and cognition: Neuroscientific methods study the neural underpinnings of different cognitive processes.
• Brain areas involved in specific cognitive functions: Specific brain regions are linked to particular cognitive activities.
• Neuroimaging techniques: Methods (e.g., fMRI, EEG) to investigate brain activity associated with cognition.

Cognitive Biases

• Cognitive biases: Systematic errors in thinking affecting judgment and decision-making. Examples include confirmation bias, availability heuristic, and anchoring bias.
• Impact of biases on everyday life: Cognitive biases can result in inaccurate conclusions, poor choices, and adverse consequences.