Cognitive Psychology Lecture Notes PDF

# Cognitive Psychology Lecture One - A Brief History of Cognitive Psychology and its Approaches ## Module Outcomes and Aims - To introduce students to the basic theory, research findings and methods of investigation in cognitive psychology - On completion, students should be able to describe the...

# Cognitive Psychology Lecture One - A Brief History of Cognitive Psychology and its Approaches ## Module Outcomes and Aims - To introduce students to the basic theory, research findings and methods of investigation in cognitive psychology - On completion, students should be able to describe the important theories and research findings in cognitive psychology and discuss the theories and key findings covered in the course ## Development Skills - Analytical skills - Communication skills - Critical thinking - Independent working - Research skills ## Cognitive Psychology - Fundamentally, it investigates mental processes - it is the science of the mind - Asks how are mental processes organised and co-ordinated? - It is an approach to psychology which focuses on thinking and knowledge ## Cognition - All the Time - As you listen to a lecture you may be thinking - This sounds important - I should write this down - Search for the tools - Select the crucial information - Carry out the motor tasks involved ## What is Cognition? - Cognition is the: - Acquisition - Storage - Transformation and use of knowledge - Occurs across species, but we will consider human cognition ## Everything We Do Is Cognition - Thinking - Recognizing - Interpreting the environment - Reacting to stimuli ## Example - We watch a video we have not seen before and then write down everything we remember - How do we do this? - We need to create a strong internal representation of the video - We need to access our own memory to do this - The subject matter - The language used - Auditory input - Visual input - We must link the stimuli to what we already know - Then in order to report what we remember we must: - Store the information - Probably only the most salient parts - Access what we recall - Convert to a linguistic code - Move our hands to produce the right letter shapes to write it down - There are lots of processes involved, to do this simple task you must - Acquire, store, transform and use knowledge from experience ## Major Topics in Cognitive Psychology - Perception - Attention - Memory and learning - Language - Thinking, reasoning, and problem solving - Consciousness ## There Are Numerous Practical Applications of Cognitive Research - **Application in everyday life:** - Law - eyewitness testimony - Design of computer systems - Instruction - classroom practice - **Clinical psychology:** - Understanding of brain disorders (schizophrenia, amnesia) - **Study Skills** - How to improve your memory ## Implications for Other Fields - Understanding the types of behaviour studied by other social sciences - Clinical sciences - Social psychology - Economics ## Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) - Regarded as a father of experimental psychology - Founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research at the University of Leipzig in 1879. - By doing this he was able to establish psychology as a separate science - Formed the first journal for psychological research in 1881 - The process of breaking down the mind into its basic elements ## Structuralism - Developed by Wundt - Defines psychology as a science of immediate experience - It studies the structure of the mind built from elements of consciousness such as ideas and sensation - Uses introspection as a method ## Wundt - Introspection - In Wundt's lab the experience of eating an apple would be described as “sweet, crisp, cold” - Saying simply “like eating an apple" would be a stimulus error- describing the object of experience rather than the experience itself ## William James (1842-1910) - Pioneering American psychologists and philosopher - Twice president of the American Psychological Association - Published "Principles of Psychology" in 1890 - Insisted on psychology as a “functional” science - the individual is an active being within the environment - Introduced "stream of consciousness" concept - **James-Lange theory of emotion** - Emotions are feelings which come about as a result of physiological changes, rather than being their cause - Event → arousal → interpretation → emotion ## Functionalism - Main proponents - William James and James Angell - Inspired by Darwin's theory - Interested in the function of conscious activity rather than the structure of consciousness - Emphasis on the biological significance of the behaviour - **Three basic principles of functionalism (Angell)** - Functional psychology is the study of mental operations, not mental structures - Mental processes are not studied as isolated and independent events but as part of the biological activity of the organism - There is no meaningful distinction between mind and body- they are part of the same entity ## John B. Watson (1878-1958) - "Father" of behaviourism - "Psychology as the Behaviourist View it” article was first published in 1913 in Psychology Review, 20, 158-177 ## Behaviourism - The subject matter of psychology is observable behaviour -Mental events cannot be directly observed therefore they should not be the subject of psychology - Most research is focused on the process of learning as it translates to observable behaviour - First defined by John Watson - Notable proponents: - Thorndike - Skinner ## Operant (Instrumental) Conditioning - B.F. Skinner - The method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behaviour - Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behaviour and a consequence for that behaviour - Behavioural modification and reinforcement: - Positive reinforcement- adding something valuable or desirable - Negative reinforcement- avoiding something unpleasant - Positive punishment- adding something unpleasant - Negative punishment- removing something valued or desired ## "The Cognitive Revolution" - Reaction against behaviourism - Intellectual movement in the 1950s that began in the context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research - A key idea in cognitive psychology at the time (50s-80s) was that developing artificial intelligence and computer science would allow testable inferences about human mental processes - Led to the development of Cognitive Science- an interdisciplinary field that involved a number of disciplines: - Education - Linguistics - Neuroscience - Artificial intelligence - Philosophy - Psychology - Anthropology ## The Scientific Method and Psychology - Experimentation - Observation - Case Studies ## Experimentation - **Steps in experimentation:** - Step 1- Identify the problem and formulate a testable hypothesis - Predict the results that would confirm the hypothesis as well as those that would disconfirm it - Step 2 - Design the experiment - Step 3 - Conduct the experiment - Collect multiple observation rigorously and systematically - Step 4 - Evaluate the hypothesis by examining the data - Step 5 - Communicate the results ## Experimental Cognitive Psychology - Involves experiments on healthy individuals under controlled laboratory conditions - **Limitations:** - Ecological validity - lab may differ from everyday life ## Observation - Observation involves observing participants in their natural habitats - We use observation as a method when experiments are impossible or inappropriate for ethical reasons - The researcher observes the key factors rather than manipulating them directly - **Observation can be:** - Overt - the participants are aware they are being observed - Covert - the participants do not know they are being observed ## Structured Observation - Researchers design a type of coding scheme to record the participants' behaviour - Structured observations provide quantitative data. - Coding schemes are ways of categorising behaviour in terms of how often a type of behaviour appears. - **Example coding scheme:** - Observation checklist of students when the teacher leaves the room - Carries on working - Uses mobile phone - Talks to another student - Leaves the room - Eats - **Advantage:** Simple to carry out and provides quantitative data which can be analysed statistically - **Disadvantage:** it gives a very restricted view of what is actually happening- the researcher may miss important behaviour ## Unstructured Observation - Researchers record all of the behaviour they can see (usually using recording equipment such as a video camera) - Difficult to analyse but does provide rich qualitative data - Tendency to record the most eye-catching or noticeable behaviours which might not be the most relevant or important ## Case Studies - Often used in Cognitive Neuropsychology - Aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. - Studies patterns of cognitive performance (intact and impaired) shown by brain-damaged patients - Tries to build a theory about normal cognition from a study of abnormal cognition - Mostly relies on case studies of individuals or small groups - **Focus on dissociations as the building blocks of theories:** - **Single Dissociation:** - Test a patient on a set of tasks - If he/she performs poorly on one, but normally on another task, then one can make inferences about differing underlying processing modules - **Double Dissociation:** - Test two patients on two sets of tasks - If one patient is impaired at one task but normal on the other, while the other patient is normal on the first task and impaired on the other then that is even stronger evidence about different underlying processing modules - **Examples of dissociation:** - Oliver Sacks (Professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University) has written many engaging books (e.g. “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat") that are full of excellent examples of dissociations - An example of "single dissociation”: Patient D.F. was unable to place a card in a slot but could do so when told to place it “as if mailing a letter" - Conclusion - judging orientation is one ability (which D.F. had lost) and visual control of an action another (which D.F. could still do) ## Cognitive Neuroscience - **Definition:** - the study of the neural substrates of mental processes - Uses brain-imaging techniques to study aspects of brain functioning and structures relevant to human cognition - Tries to find out where and when cognitive processes occur - Multidisciplinary academic field - relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neuropsychology, and computational modelling. - **Some of the techniques for the study of brain functioning are:** - Event-related potentials (ERPs) - recordings of electrical brain activity on the surface of the scalp - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; fMRI) - fMRI can detect the functionally induced changes in blood oxygenation in the human brain ## Summary - Cognitive psychology covers a broad range of mental activities. - Developed from early psychological ideas and developments in other disciplines. - Uses a range of techniques to address its subject matter.