Psych 213 History and Early Views of Cognition PDF

Psych 213 History and Early Views of Cognition Jan 09, 2025 Martin Luther King Jr. once said ‘We are not makers of History. We are made by History” …  Last class: Intro to cognition Cognition is the act of thinking and effects on behaviour and in...

Psych 213 History and Early Views of Cognition Jan 09, 2025 Martin Luther King Jr. once said ‘We are not makers of History. We are made by History” …  Last class: Intro to cognition Cognition is the act of thinking and effects on behaviour and in the brain Basic versus applied research Cognition encompasses cognitive psychology, neuroscience and computational modelling Experimental Approaches Computer Modelling  How to experiment * a review Often testing a hypothesis by examining how people perform on a mental task Factors that affect the independent variable (IV)- dependent variable (DV) relation are control or nuisance variables  What is the IV, DV? A study examined if listening to Country or Rap Music helps students improve grades. Possible variable to control for?  Multiple variables are allowed! How does the type and duration of psychotherapy affect self- concept? Cognitive Somatic 1 week 1 month  Multiple variables are allowed! How does the type and duration of psychotherapy affect self- concept and memory? Multiple DVs Cognitive Somatic 1 week 1 month  Today’s agenda Let’s go back in time Historical approaches to studying cognition The birth of cognitive psychology and early views Information processing view Ecological validity Historical approaches to studying cognition Philosophical foundations from Ancient Greece Rationalism and Empiricism The early days of psychology as an experimental science Structuralism and Functionalism Behaviorism and then Cognitive Psychology Focusing on actions to accepting thought  Philosophical foundations of cognitive psychology Ancient Greek philosophers considered the locus of the mind (sensations, memory) and basis of human personality Aristotle and Plato  Plato First early philosopher to consider “what is the mind?” Thoughts are the result of observation and guided by innate prior knowledge (logic) Rationalism view: Knowledge is driven by implicit innate logic, not through learned experience Knowledge is a reflection of reality  Plato First early philosopher to consider “what is the mind?” Thoughts are the result of observation and guided by innate prior knowledge (logic) Rationalism view: Knowledge is driven by implicit innate logic, not through learned experience Knowledge is a reflection of reality  Aristotle Combined philosophical and scientific approaches Empiricism view Knowledge comes from experience and perception, this is the source of reality We know nothing before experience The basis of thought is forming associations based on observations The mind is nothing before forming associations Foundation of many cognitive theories that emphasize associations  The link between philosophy and cognition Studying Philosophy asking questions about how and why we think Studying Cognition gathering evidence to support the answers Western and Eastern Philosophy linked differently to Cognition Eastern Philosophy: Everything, including the mind is impermanent; the self is constantly changing and an illusion created by the mind; We are all interconnected and part of a greater universe  Scientific cultural differences Western science Uses methods and experiences to reduce processes to their most basic level Seeks a more analytic understanding Eastern science Uses methods that pay more attention to context and integrative Seeks a more holistic understanding Varnum et al., 2010 Early days of experimental psychology (1800s) Structuralism Identifying the basic building blocks of the complex thoughts or the conscious experience Reductionist view Reduce mental actions to simple pieces Emphasized systematic observation of mental experiences Introspection or self-report of thoughts or observations  Wilhelm Wundt Founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research and practiced Structuralism Goal was to identify the simplest units of the mind Thought these units can be combined by following certain laws or rules to create complex thoughts (memories, imaginations) Asked what is the mind made of using introspection Measure responses to simply sensory stimuli (basic elements)  Wundt’s empirical introspection Experimental self-report or observation about conscious experience of simple stimuli Sounds, colors, etc. Used mental chronometry to estimate the time for a participant to perceive these simple stimuli “I hear it”; “I see it”) This time may be a measure of a basic unit of the mind E.g., The ‘thought meter’  Summarizing Structuralism Systematic observation of the elements of the mind Understanding these elements will help understand more complex cognitive processes, like perception, memory and learning Criticisms Simplistic approaches (focusing on simple sensory processes) Introspection might be too subjective (people might not be so good at reporting what they perceive)  Early days of experimental psychology Functionalism (1800s) asks why the mind works Not interested in breaking down mental states to basic elements Cognition is about serving a function and changes with goals and context The whole is greater than the sum of the parts Can’t reduce cognition to a set of “bricks”, because it is about what the “house” looks like William James  William James and pragmatism Pragmatic Why search for basic elements? Consciousness is personal It cannot be broken down into parts as it is constantly changing Need to use direct observation and fieldwork Need to study usefulness and variability of the mind in the real world  Functionalism Focuses on the ‘usefulness of knowledge’ Contributed an emphasis on the adaptive functions of our mind How we use cognitive processes based on setting / scenarios Context matters! Yet, difficult to study some aspects of the mind (consciousness, imagery), especially if cognition is always changing!  Psychology as a science: Behaviourism* 1900s: Psychology is struggling to be taken seriously as a science This resulted in a shift from studying the mind to behaviour Focused on what can be observed (input, output) Behaviourism did not consider mental processes Focused on animal research Highly controlled experiments, more than human research It is ok because this view assumes all species obey the same laws of behaviour * A review of intro psych course content, see textbook for more info  Notable contributions (a review) Classical Conditioning (Pavlov) Learning by making associations between cue, a stimuli and the natural response Instrumental Learning (Thorndike) and Operant Conditioning (Skinner) Behaviour is contingent on a schedule of reinforcements Rewards encourage behaviors Punishment reduce behaviors  Problems with Behaviourism Overestimated the scope of their explanations The assumption that learning is the same for all individuals and across species is false Do we all learn the same? Cannot measure or account for complex human behavior  Mary Whiton Calkins (1863 - 1930) First female president of the APA (American Psychological Association) in 1905 Also first woman run a psychology lab at Wellesley College Spoke out against of behaviorism Opposed eliminating introspection Need it to study complex behaviour like imagination, judgment  An example of Behaviourism’s limitations: Language Language is learned through conditioning But we see evidence of latent learning Learning in the absence of conditioning (reward/punishment) * see Tolman experiments in textbook for more information if needed E.g., Children learn to apply language rules to new situations Children will pluralize objects by adding an ‘s’ even if they have never seen/hear the word (mouses) We need to refer to mental processes (rules) to explain this behavior!  The cognitive revolution (1950s) Accepted that there are internal mental states Accepted the scientific method to study these states, like Behaviourism and other fields Driven by technology The computer is the mascot of this movement! Led to the view of the mind as a processor of information  Information processing view The mind is a computer The mind performs computations on information from the external world to generate behaviour 1. Information is processed by a series of processing systems 2. Processing systems change information in systematic ways 3. Information processing in these systems takes time 4. Our information processing capacity is limited  Let it flow: Box and arrow flowcharts Processing occurs in systematic stages, changes information (move from memory systems) Information processing takes time. If interrupt this time, you impair information processing Waugh & Norman model of memory Let’s put this model in action! What were Count the words? backwards Tennis by 3’s Pencil Suitcase 124 Spatula Cradle Artichoke Information processing takes time, has limits 1 Thenumberofremembered words decreasesas the time doing thedistractortaskincreased 0.8 Pro p o rt io n correct Youcannot process (rehearseinformation) 0.6 words and move memory systems. Shows the limitsof processing 0.4 0.2 0 0 4 8 12 16 20 Distractor duration(seconds)  Why do we process information? We process information to reduce uncertainty Humans do not like uncertainty! The more uncertain something is, the longer it will take it to process The amount of information processed is inversely related to how much we expect that information to occur. If we don’t know what to expect, we must process more An early experiment on information processing William Hick (1952) Research Question: What is the relationship between choice reaction time, a proxy for processing, and the amount of information within an event? Conducted a behavioral experiment measuring reaction time to detect light An early experiment on information processing Participants saw a display of 10 lamps A lamp lit up every few seconds Participants were asked to press a button when a lamp lit up Across trials, the number of lamps that could light up For some trials: one of the ten lamps would light up High certainty For some trials: any of the ten lamps could light up Low certainty An early experiment on information processing People were slower (higher reaction time) to detect a light if any lamp could light up than when only one lamp could light up Reaction time to press the button (dependent variable) in response to a light increased with the number of possible light alternative (uncertainty) Mean reaction time (ms) 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 Stimulus uncertainty Hick’s Law: The more information to process, the longer it takes to make a response to that information Information processing limits: Choice overload bias The greater the number of choices (or uncertainty of choice) taxes information processes Leads to overwhelmed feeling and poor choices The average American takes 7.4 minutes to select a movie on Netflix, many give up. Why we are never satisfied with what we are watching on Netflix! Information processing limits: Decision fatigue We have a limited amount of cognitive processes (resources) to make decisions Decisions become harder to make - and worse - throughout the day. Over time, More impulsive (“yes, I will buy that zucchini spiralizer on Amazon:) Less rationale (“cheetoos for dinner is healthy!”) Real world example Judges are more likely to grant parole to prisoners early in the day (de facto decision is to deny parole) Torres et al., 2022  Reduce decision fatigue Make big decisions in the morning Develop Daily routines  Ecological validity The extent to which the findings of a research study can be generalized to real-life naturalistic settings Do we act the same way when doing computer experiments as we do in the real world?  Ecological validity Traditional laboratory approaches that try to control for confounding variables do not appreciate the complexity of cognition Highly controlled, often artificial stimuli Remembering an array of lights Remembering a list of unrelated words Removing confounding variables to understand principles of cognition in its ‘pure form’ raises the question: is there any pure form, really?  Summary History behind cognition as a scientific study Greece – Structuralism/Functionalism – Behaviourism - Cognition The basic assumption of cognition research is information processing We select information from our environment to process so we can reduce uncertainty The goal of cognitive research is to understand the computations made on information as a sequences of operations Often represented in flowcharts But we must be mindful of ecological validity