Cognitive Psychology Lecture 1 PDF

OUTLINE: 1. Definition of Cognitive Psychology 2. From Plato to Cognitive Psychology 1. Philosophical Antecedents of cognitive Psychology 2. Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology 3. Emergence of Cognitive Psychology 3. Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology 4. Key...

OUTLINE: 1. Definition of Cognitive Psychology 2. From Plato to Cognitive Psychology 1. Philosophical Antecedents of cognitive Psychology 2. Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology 3. Emergence of Cognitive Psychology 3. Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology 4. Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology 1. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED Cognitive Psychology The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think. Examples How people perceive various shapes Why they remember some facts and forget others How they learn language Cognition (Ashcraft, 2002) The collection of mental processes and activities used in perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, and understanding, and the act of using those processes ? If you wanted to understand how people think which method would you use? What would you focus on?  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.1.Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology PLATO (ca. 428-348 B.C) – Rationalism Nature of reality Reality resides not in the concrete objects we perceive but in the abstract forms that these objects represent How to investigate reality Observation is misleading The route to knowledge is through logical analysis  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.1.Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology ARISTOTLE (ca. 384-322 B.C) – Empiricism Nature of reality Reality lies only in the concrete world of objects that our bodies sense How to investigate reality The route to knowledge is through empirical evidence, obtained through experience and observation Observations of the external world are the only means to arrive at truth  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.1.Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology RENE DESCARTES(1596-1650) – Rationalism “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) one could not rely on one’s senses more enthusiasm for empirical observation only proof of his existence is that he was thinking and doubting.  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.1.Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)– Empiricism “tabula rasa” (“blank slate”) Locke believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical observation. Locke’s term for this view was tabula rasa (meaning “blank slate” in Latin). The idea is that life and experience “write” knowledge on us. For Locke, then, the study of learning was the key to understanding the human mind. He be lieved that there are no innate ideas. In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) dialectically synthesized the views of Descartes and Locke, arguing that both rationalism and empiricism have their place. Both must work together in the quest for truth. Most psychologists today accept Kant’s synthesis.  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.2.Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology Structuralism Goal of psychology Structuralism seeks to understand the structure (configura tion of elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components (affection, attention, memory, sensation, etc.). Method Introspection – looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness Proponents Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.2.Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology Functionalism Goal of psychology psychologists should focus on the processes of thought rather than on its contents. Functionalism seeks to understand what people do and why they do it. Pragmatists believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness: interested in how people learn, Method: Various methods – introspection, observation, experiment Proponents William James Principles of Psychology (1890) AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS: ASSOCIATIONISM Associationism examines how elements of the mindlike events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning. For example, associations may result from: contiguity (associating things that tend to occur together at about the same time); similarity (associating things with similar features or properties); contrast (associating things that show polarities, such as hot/cold, light/dark, day/ night) Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949) Role of satisfaction: (law of effect)  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.2.Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology Behaviorism Goal of psychology To study observable behavior Any hypotheses about internal thoughts and ways of thinking are nothing more than speculation We can not say anything meaningful about cognition VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTRY BEHAVIOR Method Animal experiments, conditioning experiments Proponents John Watson, B.F. Skinner , Pavlov Behaviorists regarded the mind as a black box that is best understood in terms of its input and output, but whose internal processes can not be accurately described because they are not observable. EDWARD TOLMAN (1886–1959), understanding behavior required taking into account the purpose of, and the plan for, the behavior. Tolman (1932) believedthat all behavior is directed toward a goal. For example, the goal of a rat in a maze may be to try to find food in that maze. Tolman is sometimes viewed as a forefather of modern cognitive psychology Bandura: learning appears to result not merely from direct rewards for behavior, but it also can be social, resulting from observations of the re wards or punishments given to others.  2. FROM PLATO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2.2.Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology Gestalt Psychology Goal of psychology: To understand psychological phenomena as organized, structured wholes. The whole differs from the sum of its parts Gestaltists studied insight, seeking to understand the unobservable mental event by which someone goes from having no idea about how to solve a problem to understanding it fully in what seems a mere moment of time. Method: Various methods – experiment, observation Proponents: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler  EMERGENCE OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY In 1950, “cognitive revolution” took place in response to behaviorism. Cognitivism is the belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think. A synthesis of earlier forms of analysis, such as behaviorism and Gestaltism. Like behaviorism, it adopts precise quantitative analysis to study how people learn and think; like Gestaltism, it emphasizes internal mental process  EARLY ROLE OF PSYCHOBIOLOGY Karl Lashley (1890-1958) Lashley considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior. Lashley sought to understand how the macro-organization of the human brain made possible such complex, planned activities as musical performance, game playing, and using language. Donald Hebb (1949) proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain. Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation.  Noam Chomsky Chomsky stressed both the biological basis and the creative potential of language. Arguments from language acquisition Behaviorists can not explain how children can produce novel sentences they never heard Infinite number of sentences we can produce can not be learned by reinforcement – there must be a cognitive algorithmic structure in our mind underlying language  Alan Turing Soon it would be hard to distinguish the communication of machines from that of humans “Turing test,” by which a computer program would be judged as successful to the extent that its output was indistinguishable, by humans, from the output of humans Artificial intelligence (AI) is the attempt by humans to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information George Miller (1956) Miller also introduced the concept of channel capacity, the upper limit with which an observer can match a response to information given to him or her.  ULRIC NEISSER Ulric Neisser’s book Cognitive Psychology (Neisser, 1967) was especially critical in bringing cognitivism to prominence by informing undergraduates, graduate students, and academics about the newly developing field. Neisser defined cognitive psychology as the study of how people learn, structure, store, and use knowledge. Subsequently, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon (1972) proposed detailed models of human thinking and problem solving from the most basic levels to the most complex. By the 1970s cognitive psychology was recognized widely as a major field of psychological study with a distinctive set of research methods. JERRY FODOR (1973) Modularity of mind. Mind has distinct modules, or special-purpose systems, to deal with linguistic and, possibly, other kinds of information. Phrenologist Franz-Joseph Gall late eighteenth century believed that the pattern of bumps and swells on the skull was directly associated with one’s pattern of cognitive skills. HISTORY OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology Name Nature of reality Testing the reality Plato Reality lies in Logical analysis abstract form  REFERENCES: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - U-System Accounts www.u.arizona.edu › ~dusana › notes Sternberg, R. (2005). Cognitive psychology. New York: Wadsworth.