Introduction To Cognitive Psychology PDF

INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY  = trans- and interdisciplinary field dedicated to the scientific study of the COGNITIV nature of mind/cognition E ! Cognitive science treats the mind as the SCIENCE product of the brain (i.e., the material basis...

INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY  = trans- and interdisciplinary field dedicated to the scientific study of the COGNITIV nature of mind/cognition E ! Cognitive science treats the mind as the SCIENCE product of the brain (i.e., the material basis for the mind is the brain), in opposition to philosophical views such as Cartesian dualism. In consequence, the mind can be scientifically studied. Cognition is broadly understood as (neuro-) information processing  e.g., ▪Psychology – evidence about memory, emotions, how we make decisions, how we interact, etc. ▪Linguistics – evidence about how natural languages ​are structured ▪Anthropology – evidence about the nature of cognition throughout history or within different cultures ▪Neuroscience – evidence about the neural activity that accompanies cognitive processes Cognitive science attempts to integrate research efforts from all these domains. * Especially in the last decades, these sciences have become increasingly interconnected and have given rise to new fields of study, such as  Philosophy of mind Cognitive psychology Cognitive Cognitive psychology is the study of how Neuropsychology linguistics Developmental Psycholinguistic people perceive, learn, remember, and psychology s think (about) information. Evolutionary Computational Psychology Linguistics ▪more specifically, the computational processes that make perception, language processing, problem solving, planning, reasoning, etc. possible ▪in short: how we to mentally accumulate, represent and manipulate information Cognitive psychology has an important role in the continuous flow of interdisciplinary research at the heart of this field: questions such as ▪ What are the similarities and the differences between how humans and computers process information? ▪ How do language and thought interact? Cultural anthropology ▪ What is the importance of the cultural Artificial Cognitive anthropology context for cognition? intelligence Robotics have brought forward evidence with Cognitive Neuroscience great theoretical and practical value Computational Neuroscience Adapted from Miller, G. A. (2003). The Cognitive Revolution: A Historical Perspective. Trends in LEVELS OF ORGANIZATION AND ANALYSIS One way to look at the relationships between some fields of cognitive science is to think of them as concerned with different levels of analysis: Philosophy of mind – Cognitive psychology – Cognitive neuroscience – concerned with creating a interested in cognition at interested in the lower broad, explanatory higher levels of organization organizational processes of conceptual framework that (e.g., perception, attention, cognition, at the level of the answers the "big" questions memory, language, etc.) nervous system (What is consciousness? What is the relationship between mind and matter? etc.) THE MIND IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY There are multiple ways in which the mind could be defined in cognitive psychology, depending on what we’re focusing on. the mind is realized in the brain and organized to produce intelligent thought (has a function – survival) by processing information and creating representations of the world structured as different types of cognition (the mental processes) The basic cognitive processes operate together in complex ways, making us able to act within the world and achieve our goals – from the most mundane ones to the ones of greater complexity.  THE HISTORY The Cognitive OF early history recent history Revolution –> the COGNITIV nativism vs. empiricism functionalism vs. structuralism information- processing E approach behaviorism –> advances in cognitive PSYCHOL neuroscience OGY EARLY HISTORY ▪earliest work on the nature of knowledge and the mind (at least in western civilization) – Plato & Aristotle – nativism vs. empiricism ▪the debate continues until the 19th century (Descartes vs. Locke, Hume, Mill, etc.) while sciences such as physics, astronomy or biology are continuously developing, the study of the mind stagnates, as it remains engaged in such debates …even nowadays, nature vs. nurture ▪the scientific method begins to be applied in relation to the study of the mind only towards the end of the century, with empirical evidence slowly starting to replace speculation and magical thinking more and more 1869: Donders’s Pioneering Experiment (what today would be called a cognitive psychology experiment) – he measured reaction time in order to study how long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus/ to make a decision he did not measure the mental processes that lead to the decision to push the button, but rather inferred how long they took, from the reaction times –> ! This is a principle that still holds for all research in cognitive psychology: the operation of the mind cannot be observed directly, so it must be inferred from what we can measure, such as behavior or physiological responding. There is a modern computerized version of Donder’s reaction time experiment that encompasses two tasks, (a) a simple reaction time task and (b) a choice reaction time task. In the simple reaction time task, the participant pushes the J key when the light goes on. In the choice reaction time task, the participant pushes the J key if the left light goes on and the K key if the right light goes on. The purpose of Donders’s experiment was to determine how much time it took to decide which key to press in the choice reaction time task. STRUCTURALISM Structuralism. The use of introspection as a method to understand the mind. 1879: Wundt – the first experimental psychology laboratory ▪assumption: the mind can be known primarily through self-observation ▪method: introspection ▪purpose: to identify the primary experiences from which thoughts are built (structure of thoughts –> structuralism) participants were extensively trained to try their best to describe their experiences in terms of elementary mental elements ▪the approach and was abandoned in the early 1900s STRUCTURALISM example of the use of introspection method: a free-association task The experimenter measures the amount of time the participants take to generate responses to a word. Participants then have to report all their conscious experiences from the moment of the presentation of the stimulus until the moment of their response. Try to identify what is going through your mind (the contents of your consciousness) during the period between reading the word and making your association: book jacket bowl FUNCTIONALISM Functionalism. Behavior as a window to the mind. ▪a reaction to structuralism and the limitations of the introspection method ▪based on the need for a more practical approach to psychology, one that is action- oriented and uses multiple methods ▪purpose: to analyze the functional relationship between stimulus and response emphasis on the function of the cognitive processes, rather than on their structure (structuralism) ▪representatives: William James, John Dewey, Edward Thorndike ▪in his textbook, Principles of Psychology (1890), William James considered a range of cognitive topics, including thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagination, and reasoning and made observations on the nature of attention that are still valid today, after decades of scientific research FUNCTIONALISM William James’s reported observations (of his own experience with) attention: ‘Millions of items... are present to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to.... Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.... It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.’ BEHAVIORISM Behaviorism. A new extreme approach. ▪built on the he success of functionalism and the failures of structuralism ▪held that psychology was to be entirely concerned with external behavior and was not to try to analyze the workings of the mind that underlay this behavior ▪assumption: consciousness/cognition are subjective and non-informative concepts; behavior is the only one that can be empirically analyzed ▪focus on objectivity, scientific method, experiments (*the practice of using animals as laboratory subjects) ▪dominated American psychology for many decades, with psychologists applying the techniques of classical and operant conditioning to classroom teaching, treating psychological disorders, and testing the effects of drugs on animals ▪representatives: Watson, Skinner etc. BEHAVIORISM Watson on consciousness: ‘The Behaviorist, who has been trained always as an experimentalist, holds further that belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic.’ (Watson, 1930, p. 2) By itself, the fact that he wasn’t interested at all in what was going on inside the heads of the subjects of his behavioral experiments (physiologically or mentally) could raise questions about the ethicality of the behavioral approach. RECENT HISTORY – FINAL OBSERVATIONS ▪all approaches had their advantages and disadvantages. ▪new approaches are emerging to fill in the gaps of previous ones, BUT ▪the strengths of each paradigm are found in current cognitive psychology e.g., one important and lasting contribution of behaviorism is a set of sophisticated and rigorous techniques and principles for experimental study that applies to cognitive psychology research today ▪other movements in psychology also provided insights on the nature of the mind and cognition: e.g., Gestalt psychology – the activity of the brain and the mind is more than the sum of its parts the experimental work of Tolman (1938) – the cognitive maps supposedly developed by rats to guide their way towards the food in the maze; the cognitive map – a conception within the rat’s mind, of the maze’s layout THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION Cognitive psychology, as a distinctive field in psychology. The paradigm shift. ▪took form in the two decades between 1950 and 1970, in the cognitive revolution that overthrew behaviorism ~ a scientific revolution involves a paradigm shift; Kuhn’s theory ~ (pardigm – a body of knowledge, based on certain assumptions, that guides research in a certain field, dictating what subjects to be approached, the way to approach them, the research methods etc.) ▪a shift from the focus on stimulus–response relationships to an approach whose main interest was to understand the operation of the mind THE BEGINNINGS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY ▪its development was brought forward by advances in several disciplines: psychology, linguistics, anthropology, computer science (mostly AI) ▪influences from three main directions: Studies on Human Performance (WWII motivated) + ideas in the area of information theory; r: Broadbent - flow diagrams to depict the processes involved in attention; Miller Advances in Computer Science (Information Processing): a host of concepts have been taken from computer science and used in psychological theories; r: Newell; Simon Linguistics - shows that certain features of language are more sophisticated than previously thought and cannot be explained in the behaviorist paradigm; r: Noam Chomsky 1967: the first cognitive psychology book – Neisser, “to provide a useful and current assessment of the existing state of the art” (p. 9) ▪other important representatives: Hebb, Lashey the main approaches to cognitive psychology were influenced by distinct pressures coming from: ▪the field of artificial intelligence (the desired to create high-level formal models that describe cognition in an algorithmic manner - limited number of steps in information processing) ▪the field of neurosciences (the desire to develop low-level models with explanatory power in relation to the human brain) model = a schematic, simplified representation of a cognitive process, intended to describe and explain that process ▪i/ high-level - a model that looks and behaves as similar as possible to the reality it approximates, without necessarily having the same internal functioning ▪i/ low-level - a model in which it is important to represent the types of components that make up reality, as well as the interactions between these components, in order to approximate the global functioning of that reality these distinct approaches are consistent with the paradigms that have dominated cognitive science: the (classical) symbolic paradigm and the (neo) connectionist paradigm COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURES the essential, global and procedural structure of a computational cognitive model, general according to the domain to which it is applied (domain-general vs. domain-specific) = general propositions related to the representations and processes that produce intelligent thought (*one of the fundamental hypothesis of cognitive science is that thinking/cognition is produced by computational procedures that operate on mental representations) ▪predominantly used to explain important aspects of human thinking, such as problem solving, memory and learning, but ▪they can also be used as blueprints for developing robots that possess some human-like cognitive abilities THE SYMBOLIC PARADIGM ▪the first dominant paradigm in cognitive science, developed as a result of advances in information theory ▪inspired by formal logic and the digital computer ▪aims to identify the basic components of cognition ▪based on the mind = computer metaphor (the assumption that the hardware that implements cognition is irrelevant => information processing is discussed without reference to the brain) ▪assumptions: all knowledge is represented by symbols or symbolic structures these symbols can be manipulated based on some combination rules (logical, mathematical rules) THE SYMBOLIC PARADIGM ▪in order to have intelligent behavior, the existence of a physical-symbolic system is necessary and sufficient: symbol = any physical patterns that can replace a concept and can be combined to form complex structures symbolic system – contains processes/rule sets that can be used to manipulate complex structures ! the processes that generate and transform complex symbolic structures can, in turn, be represented as symbols ▪ implication: since the human mind is capable of intelligent behavior, it must be a physical-symbolic system ▪there is, in principle, no obstacle to emulating the human mind in an artificial system (with the sufficient condition of the construction of a physical-symbolic system) EXAMPLE If P is kind, then P helps others. If P is kind, then P cares about others. If P is kind, then P is not cruel. If P cares about others and helps others, then P is kind. If P is friendly, befriend P. If P is cruel, then avoid P. How it works: 1. Checking the fit of the information after "IF..." with existing knowledge/evidence. 2. If there is a match, "THEN..." is executed (execute can also mean a new inference) 3. The procedure is repeated: e.g., ▪The sensory organs continuously send information to the brain. Stimuli activate knowledge in long-term memory ("IF...THEN" rules) ▪Working memory temporarily stores knowledge/information until execution it represents the number of knowledge/information that can be used simultaneously (rules that can be activated simultaneously) => in this case, ▪a cognitive process is that process which finds the rules to be activated by the stimuli – in the present case: verifying the match, THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH ▪the dominant approach in cognitive psychology ▪cognition as a set of steps for processing information – inspired by how computers process information in stages information is first received by an input processor - > then stored in a memory unit -> then processed by an arithmetic unit -> which then creates the computer’s output ▪the aim: to trace sequences of mental operations involved in cognition This diagram shows many messages entering a “filter,” which selects the message to which the person is attending for further processing by a detector and then transfer to short-term memory Flow diagram for Broadbent’s filter model of attention. ▪Broadbent’s flow diagram was the first model to provide a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of a sequence of processing stages ▪one advantage of this model was that it could be tested by further experiments ▪the flow diagrams have become one of the standard ways of depicting the operation of the mind ▪in his textbook (1967), Neisser pointed to the gaps in knowledge at that time regarding the higher mental processes (i.e., thinking, problem solving, long-term remembering) and the physiological mechanisms of cognition ▪naturally, these gaps started to be filled in by new experimental work, new theories and techniques ▪just one year after the publication of Neisser’s book, Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s (1968) provided a model of memory by distinguishing between different components of the memory process, this model opened the way for studying each part separately Criticism: John Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment THE (NEO) CONNECTIONIST PARADIGM ▪the second paradigm in cognitive science, inspired by the physiology of the brain ▪the need to have cognitive models that approximate the way information is actually processed in the brain (more specifically, inspired by the way neurons & synapses work) ▪cognition = the result of a network of connections between (many) simple units that will influence each other's activation states in a network of weighted connections ▪computations are parallel THE (NEO) CONNECTIONIST PARADIGM unlike symbolic models, concepts are not linked by if-then rules, but by connections (which can be excitatory or inhibitory) here we can see a parallel with the functioning of the brain ! of course, the brain doesn't work like that, but it's a plausible modelling Concept = node (each concept is represented by a node) node – neuron connection – synapse; can be + (excitatory) or – (inhibitory) COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE ▪cognitive psychologists have gradually broadened their approach as they have begun to deal with more complex phenomena and to pay more attention to the nature of information processing in the brain important insights into the physiological basis of the mind were provided by: Neuropsychology (the study of the behavior of people with brain damage - insights into the functioning of different parts of the brain) Electrophysiology (measuring electrical responses of the nervous system - insights into the activity of single neurons) ▪therefore, with the development of knowledge about the brain and methods for studying brain activity, barriers to understanding the mind by studying the brain are slowly being eliminated, and brain processes are now being considered in almost all analyses of human cognition The field of cognitive neuroscience is devoted to the study of how cognition is realized in the brain (i.e., the neural basis of cognition), with exciting new findings even in the study of the most complex thought processes. ▪understanding the brain is necessary for understanding cognition ▪the brain can be studied at levels ranging from single neurons to complex networks that interconnect different areas ▪the interconnections between different places in the brain are determined both by physical connections created by neurons, and by the specific functions that the the brain is just one part of the nervous system; in brain is carrying out at a particular some cases, considerable information processing time takes place via neurons outside the brain ▪the brain is, therefore, not only extremely complex, but its functioning is changeable and dynamic, in keeping with the ▪the neuron - the basic building block of the nervous system ▪neurons communicate by releasing chemicals, called neurotransmitters, from an axon terminal on one side of a synapse that act on the membrane of a dendrite of the receiving neuron, to change the electric potential across the membrane ▪this sequence is the core of neural information processing, yet intelligence arises from this simple system of interactions ☺ ▪from an information-processing point of view, neurons are the most important components of the nervous system ▪Information is represented by patterns of activity across many regions of the brain and by changes in the synaptic connections among neurons that allow ▪the central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord ▪the major function of the spinal cord is to carry motor messages from the brain to the muscles, and sensory messages from the body to the brain ▪the lower parts of the brain are evolutionarily more primitive and consequently, they are responsible for more basic functions ▪the neocortex is the most recently evolved portion of the brain and is divided into left and right hemispheres; the cortical regions of each hemisphere are typically organized into four lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal, which are separated by major sulci *the front portion of the frontal lobe, called the prefrontal cortex, is thought to control higher-level processes, such as planning ▪one of the interesting curiosities of anatomy is that the right part of the body tends to be connected to the left hemisphere and the left part of the body to the right hemisphere; thus, the left hemisphere controls motor function and sensation in the right hand; the right ear is most strongly connected to the left hemisphere Brodmann (1909/1960) identified 52 distinct regions of the human cortex, based on differences in the cell types in various regions. Many of these regions proved to have functional differences as well. ▪the brain is organized into a number of distinct areas, which serve different types of functions, with the neocortex playing the major role in higher cognitive functions ▪the left and right hemispheres appear to be somewhat specialized for different types of processing: in general, the left hemisphere seems to be associated with linguistic and analytic processing the right hemisphere is associated with perceptual and spatial processing ▪much of the evidence for the differences between the hemispheres comes from research with patients that suffered brain injuries (damage to specific brain regions produce either a loss of function or other specific behavior related to the damage; studying the effects produced by the injury is informative for a better understanding of brain’s functioning) ▪different specific areas of the brain support different cognitive functions (e.g., some of the most studied, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area) ▪in many areas of the cortex, information processing is structured spatially in what is called a topographic organization FINAL OBSERVATIONS ▪cognitive psychology moved from the early information-processing work of a half century ago, that made no reference to brain processes, to the point of view that such references are a necessary part of cognitive theory (see Kriegeskorte, 2015, for a review of the changes that impacted this shift). ▪an important aspect of this changing point of view is the increasing use of neural imaging techniques research has shown that neuroscience data make psychological theories more persuasive even when the neuroimaging evidence is actually irrelevant to the theory ▪More research in psychology is now aimed at trying to understand the function of a particular brain structure. ▪Also, there has been a huge surge of interest from artificial intelligence in deep learning; deep learning systems have been shown to be capable of greater accuracy than humans in recognizing objects (object recognition). ▪+ new research area: explainable artificial intelligence WHY STUDY COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE? PRACTICAL UTILITY. ▪The study of the dysfunctions/abnormalities within the cognitive processes and ways to improve them (clinical psychology and psychotherapy) ▪ How people behave in social environments or in groups (social psychology, organizational psychology) ▪ How can people learn more effectively (educational psychology) ▪ How people make economic decisions (economics – behavioral economics) ▪ How and in what contexts can people be convinced to buy a product/ vote for a candidate etc. (political science, advertising) ▪ What forms of social organization work better than others and why (sociology, anthropology, political science) ▪ Why do all natural languages ​have certain features and what are these features (linguistics) ▪ + probably the central question of the last decades: How can we create robots/algorithms that emulate the human mind (artificial intelligence) PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: HOW TO STUDY BETTER FOR EXAMS Research in the field of cognitive psychology has highlighted several strategies for effective learning: 1. Before reading, skim through the chapter headings, subheadings, and any chapter summaries to get an idea of ​the chapter's purpose 2. Based on the information you gathered at point 1, try to formulate a specific question (or more) for each section 3. Read each section actively trying to answer your questions (+ try to relate what you read to your personal experience, other information you have etc.) 4. Extract one or more main ideas for each section. If there already are main ideas highlighted, read the section summaries and ask yourself if you have identified the same ideas and, if not, why. 5. When you recap, keep in mind the main ideas you got out and the questions you asked in the first phase, as well as any new ones. + Try to imagine what exam questions you would formulate based on each section