Cognitive Psychology, 6th Edition PDF

 6 E D I T I O N Cognitive Psychology This page intentionally left blank  6 E D I T I O N Cognitive Psychology ROBERT J. STERNBERG Oklahoma State University KARIN STERNB...

 6 E D I T I O N Cognitive Psychology This page intentionally left blank  6 E D I T I O N Cognitive Psychology ROBERT J. STERNBERG Oklahoma State University KARIN STERNBERG Oklahoma State University with contributions of the Investigating Cognitive Psychology boxes by JEFF MIO California State University–Pomona Australia Brazil Japan Korea Mexico Singapore Spain United Kingdom United States This is an electronic version of the print textbook. Due to electronic rights restrictions, some third party content may be suppressed. Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. The publisher reserves the right to remove content from this title at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 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Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 15 14 13 12 11 Contents in Brief CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology 1 CHAPTER 2 Cognitive Neuroscience 41 CHAPTER 3 Visual Perception 84 CHAPTER 4 Attention and Consciousness 135 CHAPTER 5 Memory: Models and Research Methods 185 CHAPTER 6 Memory Processes 228 CHAPTER 7 The Landscape of Memory: Mental Images, Maps, and Propositions 269 CHAPTER 8 The Organization of Knowledge in the Mind 319 CHAPTER 9 Language 359 CHAPTER 10 Language in Context 401 CHAPTER 11 Problem Solving and Creativity 442 CHAPTER 12 Decision Making and Reasoning 487 Glossary 530 References 538 Name Index 593 Subject Index 603 v Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology 1 n Believe It or Not: Now You See It, Now You Don’t! 2 Cognitive Psychology Defined 3 Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology: Rationalism versus Empiricism 6 Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology 7 Early Dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition 7 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Pragmatism 9 It’s Only What You Can See That Counts: From Associationism to Behaviorism 11 n Believe It or Not: Scientific Progress!? 12 The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Gestalt Psychology 13 Emergence of Cognitive Psychology 13 Early Role of Psychobiology 14 Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Computation, and Applied Cognitive Psychology 14 Cognition and Intelligence 17 What Is Intelligence? 17 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Intelligence 17 Three Cognitive Models of Intelligence 18 Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology 22 Goals of Research 22 Distinctive Research Methods 23 n In the Lab of Henry L. Roediger 24 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Self-Reports 32 Fundamental Ideas in Cognitive Psychology 34 Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology 36 Summary 38 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 39 Key Terms 40 Media Resources 40 CHAPTER 2 Cognitive Neuroscience 41 n Believe It or Not: Does Your Brain Use Less Power Than Your Desk Lamp? 42 Cognition in the Brain: The Anatomy and Mechanisms of the Brain 43 Gross Anatomy of the Brain: Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain 43 n In the Lab of Martha Farah 47 Cerebral Cortex and Localization of Function 51 vi  Contents vii Neuronal Structure and Function 61 Receptors and Drugs 64 Viewing the Structures and Functions of the Brain 65 Postmortem Studies 65 Studying Live Nonhuman Animals 66 Studying Live Humans 66 Brain Disorders 75 Stroke 75 Brain Tumors 76 n Believe It or Not: Brain Surgery Can Be Performed While You Are Awake! 77 Head Injuries 77 Intelligence and Neuroscience 78 Intelligence and Brain Size 78 Intelligence and Neurons 79 Intelligence and Brain Metabolism 79 Biological Bases of Intelligence Testing 80 The P-FIT Theory of Intelligence 80 Key Themes 81 Summary 81 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 82 Key Terms 82 Media Resources 83 CHAPTER 3 Visual Perception 84 n Believe It or Not: If You Encountered Tyrannosaurus Rex, Would Standing Still Save You? 85 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Perception 86 From Sensation to Representation 86 Some Basic Concepts of Perception 88 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: The Ganzfeld Effect 90 Seeing Things That Aren’t There, or Are They? 90 How Does Our Visual System Work? 93 Pathways to Perceive the What and the Where 95 Approaches to Perception: How Do We Make Sense of What We See? 96 Bottom-Up Theories 97 Top-Down Theories 107 How Do Bottom-Up Theories and Top-Down Theories Go Together? 110 Perception of Objects and Forms 111 Viewer-Centered vs. Object-Centered Perception 111 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Depth Cues in Photography 112 The Perception of Groups—Gestalt Laws 113 Recognizing Patterns and Faces 116 n In the Lab of Marvin Chun 119 viii Contents n Believe It or Not: Do Two Different Faces Ever Look the Same to You? 120 The Environment Helps You See 121 Perceptual Constancies 121 Depth Perception 124 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Binocular Depth Cues 127 Deficits in Perception 127 Agnosias and Ataxias 127 Anomalies in Color Perception 130 Why Does It Matter? Perception in Practice 131 Key Themes 132 Summary 132 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 134 Key Terms 134 Media Resources 134 CHAPTER 4 Attention and Consciousness 135 n Believe It or Not: Does Paying Attention Enable You to Make Better Decisions? 136 The Nature of Attention and Consciousness 137 Attention 138 Attending to Signals over the Short and Long Terms 139 Search: Actively Looking 143 Selective Attention 148 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Attenuation Model 151 Divided Attention 153 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Dividing Your Attention 155 n Believe It or Not: Are You Productive When You’re Multitasking? 157 Factors That Influence Our Ability to Pay Attention 159 Neuroscience and Attention: A Network Model 160 Intelligence and Attention 161 When Our Attention Fails Us 163 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) 163 Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness 165 Spatial Neglect—One Half of the World Goes Amiss 165 Dealing with an Overwhelming World—Habituation and Adaptation 167 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Overcoming Boredom 167 Automatic and Controlled Processes in Attention 169 Automatic and Controlled Processes 170 n In the Lab of John F. Kihlstrom 171 How Does Automatization Occur? 172 Automatization in Everyday Life 174 Mistakes We Make in Automatic Processes 175  Contents ix Consciousness 177 The Consciousness of Mental Processes 177 Preconscious Processing 178 Key Themes 182 Summary 182 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 184 Key Terms 184 Media Resources 184 CHAPTER 5 Memory: Models and Research Methods 185 n Believe It or Not: Memory Problems? How about Flying Less? 186 Tasks Used for Measuring Memory 187 Recall versus Recognition Tasks 187 Implicit versus Explicit Memory Tasks 190 Intelligence and the Importance of Culture in Testing 192 Models of Memory 193 The Traditional Model of Memory 193 The Levels-of-Processing Model 200 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Levels of Processing 201 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Elaboration Strategies 202 An Integrative Model: Working Memory 203 Multiple Memory Systems 209 n In the Lab of Marcia K. Johnson 211 A Connectionist Perspective 212 Exceptional Memory and Neuropsychology 214 Outstanding Memory: Mnemonists 214 n Believe It or Not: You Can Be a Memory Champion, Too!!! 216 Deficient Memory 217 How Are Memories Stored? 223 Key Themes 225 Summary 226 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 227 Key Terms 227 Media Resources 227 CHAPTER 6 Memory Processes 228 n Believe It or Not: There’s a Reason You Remember Those Annoying Songs 229 Encoding and Transfer of Information 230 Forms of Encoding 230 Transfer of Information from Short-Term Memory to Long-Term Memory 233 x Contents n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Memory Strategies 238 Retrieval 242 Retrieval from Short-Term Memory 242 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Test Your Short-Term Memory 242 Retrieval from Long-Term Memory 244 Intelligence and Retrieval 246 Processes of Forgetting and Memory Distortion 246 Interference Theory 247 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Can You Recall Bartlett’s Legend? 249 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: The Serial-Position Curve 250 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Primacy and Recency Effects 250 Decay Theory 251 The Constructive Nature of Memory 252 Autobiographical Memory 253 n Believe It or Not: Caught in the Past!? 256 Memory Distortions 256 n In the Lab of Elizabeth Loftus 260 The Effect of Context on Memory 263 Key Themes 266 Summary 266 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 267 Key Terms 268 Media Resources 268 CHAPTER 7 The Landscape of Memory: Mental Images, Maps, and Propositions 269 n Believe It or Not: City Maps of Music for the Blind 270 Mental Representation of Knowledge 271 Communicating Knowledge: Pictures versus Words 273 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Representations in Pictures and Words 275 Pictures in Your Mind: Mental Imagery 276 Dual-Code Theory: Images and Symbols 277 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Can Your Brain Store Images of Your Face? 277 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Analogical and Symbolic Representations of Cats 279 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Dual Coding 279 n In the Lab of Stephen Kosslyn 280 Storing Knowledge as Abstract Concepts: Propositional Theory 281 Do Propositional Theory and Imagery Hold Up to Their Promises? 283 Mental Manipulations of Images 287 Principles of Visual Imagery 287 Neuroscience and Functional Equivalence 288 Mental Rotations 289 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Try Your Skills at Mental Rotation 292 Zooming in on Mental Images: Image Scaling 294  Contents xi n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Image Scaling 294 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Image Scanning 295 Examining Objects: Image Scanning 296 Representational Neglect 298 Synthesizing Images and Propositions 299 Do Experimenters’ Expectations Influence Experiment Outcomes? 299 Johnson-Laird’s Mental Models 301 Neuroscience: Evidence for Multiple Codes 304 Spatial Cognition and Cognitive Maps 308 Of Rats, Bees, Pigeons, and Humans 308 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Dual Codes 308 Rules of Thumb for Using Our Mental Maps: Heuristics 310 n Believe It or Not: Memory Test? Don’t Compete with Chimpanzees! 311 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Mental Maps 314 Creating Maps from What You Hear: Text Maps 314 Key Themes 316 Summary 316 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 318 Key Terms 318 Media Resources 318 CHAPTER 8 The Organization of Knowledge in the Mind 319 n Believe It or Not: There Is a Savant in All of Us 320 Declarative versus Procedural Knowledge 321 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Testing Your Declarative and Procedural Knowledge 321 Organization of Declarative Knowledge 322 Concepts and Categories 323 n Believe It or Not: Some Numbers Are Odd, and Some Are Odder 328 Semantic-Network Models 332 Schematic Representations 336 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Scripts—The Doctor 338 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Scripts in Your Everyday Life 339 Representations of How We Do Things: Procedural Knowledge 340 The “Production” of Procedural Knowledge 340 Nondeclarative Knowledge 342 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Procedural Knowledge 342 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Priming 343 Integrative Models for Representing Declarative and Nondeclarative Knowledge 344 Combining Representations: ACT-R 344 Parallel Processing: The Connectionist Model 348 How Domain General or Domain Specific Is Cognition? 354 xii Contents n In the Lab of James L. McClelland 355 Key Themes 355 Summary 356 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 357 Key Terms 357 Media Resources 358 CHAPTER 9 Language 359 n Believe It or Not: Do the Chinese Think about Numbers Differently than Americans? 360 What Is Language? 361 Properties of Language 361 The Basic Components of Words 365 The Basic Components of Sentences 367 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Syntax 367 Understanding the Meaning of Words, Sentences, and Larger Text Units 368 Language Comprehension 368 Understanding Words 369 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Understanding Schemas 373 Understanding Meaning: Semantics 374 n Believe It or Not: Can It Really Be Hard to Stop Cursing? 375 Understanding Sentences: Syntax 377 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Your Sense of Grammar 378 n In the Lab of Steven Pinker 380 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Syntax 381 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Speaking with Non-Native English Speakers 385 Reading 386 When Reading Is a Problem—Dyslexia 386 Perceptual Issues in Reading 387 Lexical Processes in Reading 388 Understanding Conversations and Essays: Discourse 392 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Discourse 392 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Deciphering Text 393 Comprehending Known Words: Retrieving Word Meaning from Memory 393 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Effects of Expectations in Reading 394 Comprehending Unknown Words: Deriving Word Meanings from Context 395 Comprehending Ideas: Propositional Representations 395 Comprehending Text Based on Context and Point of View 396 Representing the Text in Mental Models 396 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Using Redundancy to Decipher Cryptic Text 398 Key Themes 398 Summary 398 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 400  Contents xiii Key Terms 400 Media Resources 400 CHAPTER 10 Language in Context 401 n Believe It or Not: Is It Possible to Count Without Words for Numbers? 402 Language and Thought 403 Differences among Languages 403 n Believe It or Not: Do You See Colors to Your Left Differently than Colors to Your Right? 408 n In the Lab of Keith Rayner 411 Bilingualism and Dialects 412 Slips of the Tongue 418 Metaphorical Language 419 Language in a Social Context 421 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Language in Different Contexts 422 Speech Acts 423 Characteristics of Successful Conversations 426 Gender and Language 426 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Improving Your Communication with Others 429 Do Animals Have Language? 429 Neuropsychology of Language 432 Brain Structures Involved in Language 432 Aphasia 436 Autism 438 Key Themes 439 Summary 440 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 441 Key Terms 441 Media Resources 441 CHAPTER 11 Problem Solving and Creativity 442 n Believe It or Not: Can Novices Have An Advantage Over Experts? 443 The Problem-Solving Cycle 444 Types of Problems 447 Well-Structured Problems 447 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Move Problems 447 Ill-Structured Problems and the Role of Insight 454 Obstacles and Aids to Problem Solving 460 Mental Sets, Entrenchment, and Fixation 460 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Luchins’s Water-Jar Problems 461 xiv Contents Negative and Positive Transfer 462 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Problems Involving Transfer 462 Incubation 465 Neuroscience and Planning during Problem Solving 466 Intelligence and Complex Problem Solving 466 Expertise: Knowledge and Problem Solving 468 Organization of Knowledge 468 n In the Lab of K. Anders Ericsson 472 Innate Talent and Acquired Skill 474 Artificial Intelligence and Expertise 476 Creativity 479 What Are the Characteristics of Creative People? 480 n Believe It or Not: Does the Field You’re in Predict When You Will Do Your Best Work? 482 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Creativity in Problem-Solving 483 Neuroscience and Creativity 483 Key Themes 484 Summary 484 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 485 Key Terms 486 Media Resources 486 CHAPTER 12 Decision Making and Reasoning 487 n Believe It or Not: Can a Simple Rule of Thumb Outsmart a Nobel Laureate’s Investment Strategy? 488 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: The Conjunction Fallacy 488 Judgment and Decision Making 489 Classical Decision Theory 489 Heuristics and Biases 490 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: Framing Effects 497 Fallacies 499 The Gist of It: Do Heuristics Help Us or Lead Us Astray? 501 Opportunity Costs 502 Naturalistic Decision Making 502 Group Decision Making 502 n In the Lab of Gerd Gigerenzer 503 Neuroscience of Decision Making 505 Deductive Reasoning 507 What Is Deductive Reasoning? 507 Conditional Reasoning 507 Syllogistic Reasoning: Categorical Syllogisms 513 Aids and Obstacles to Deductive Reasoning 517 n Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology: Improving Your Deductive Reasoning Skills 519  Contents xv Inductive Reasoning 519 What Is Inductive Reasoning? 519 Causal Inferences 521 Categorical Inferences 521 Reasoning by Analogy 522 An Alternative View of Reasoning 523 Neuroscience of Reasoning 524 n Investigating Cognitive Psychology: When There Is No “Right” Choice 525 Key Themes 526 Summary 527 Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, and Practical Questions 528 Key Terms 528 Media Resources 529 Glossary 530 References 538 Name Index 593 Subject Index 603 To the Instructor Welcome to the Sixth Edition of Cognitive Psychology. This edition is now coau- thored by Karin Sternberg, PhD. As you will see, this edition underwent a major revision. We reorganized and meticulously revised all chapters with the goal of pro- viding an even more comprehensible text that integrates the latest research but also retains students’ interest by providing more examples from other areas of research and from the real world. What Are the Goals of this Book? Cognitive psychologists study a wide range of psychological phenomena, such as per- ception, learning, memory, and thinking. In addition, cognitive psychologists study seemingly less cognitively oriented phenomena, such as emotion and motivation. In fact, almost any topic of psychological interest may be studied from a cognitive per- spective. In this textbook, we describe some of the preliminary answers to questions asked by researchers in the main areas of cognitive psychology. The goals of this book are to: present the field of cognitive psychology in a comprehensive but engaging manner; integrate the presentation of the field under the general banner of human intelligence; and interweave throughout the text key themes and key ideas that permeate cogni- tive psychology. Our Mission in Revising the Text A number of goals guided us through revising Cognitive Psychology. In particular we decided to: make the text more accessible and understandable; make cognitive psychology more fascinating and less intimidating; increase coverage of applications in other areas of psychology as well as in the real world; and better integrate coverage of human intelligence and cognitive neuroscience in each chapter. Key Themes and Ideas The key themes of this book, discussed in greater detail in Chapter 1, are: 1. nature versus nurture; 2. rationalism versus empiricism; xvi  To the Instructor xvii 3. structures versus processes; 4. domain generality versus domain specificity; 5. validity of causal inferences versus ecological validity; 6. applied versus basic research; and 7. biological versus behavioral methods. The key ideas of this book, also discussed at more length in Chapter 1, are as follows: 1. Empirical data and theories are both important. Data in cognitive psychology can be fully understood only in the context of an explanatory theory, but theo- ries are empty without empirical data. 2. Cognition is generally adaptive but not in all specific instances. 3. Cognitive processes interact with each other and with non-cognitive processes. 4. Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods. 5. All basic research in cognitive psychology may lead to applications, and all applied research may lead to basic understandings. Major Organizing and Special Pedagogical Features Special features, some new and some established, characterize Cognitive Psychology Sixth Edition. Here are the new features: Believe It or Not feature boxes present incredible and exciting information and facts from the world of cognitive psychology. A “Neuroscience and …” section in every chapter. An “Intelligence and …” section in every chapter integrates the theme of intelligence with the chapter topic at hand. The separate intelligence chapter, formerly Chapter 13, has been eliminated. Concept Checks follow each major section to encourage students to quickly check their comprehension. And here are some of the established features: Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology feature boxes help students think about applications of cognitive psychology in their own lives. Investigating Cognitive Psychology features present mini-experiments and tasks that students can complete on their own. What’s New to the 6th Edition Cognitive Psychology, 6th edition underwent a major revision to make the book more comprehensible, accessible, and interesting to students. Revision highlights include: Revised In the Lab features, including new profiles of Henry Roediger, III in Chapter 1; Martha Farah in Chapter 2; Marvin Chun in Chapter 3; and Keith Rayner in Chapter 10. Believe It or Not boxes now appear in every chapter to make cognitive psychol- ogy more fascinating and less intimidating to students and to show it can be fun and surprising. xviii To the Instructor The Practical Applications boxes now conclude with a critical thinking question. Concept Checks now appear after each major section. Updated Suggested Readings are now preceded by headings so students can quickly find what they are interested in. Key experiments are now clearly highlighted in Investigating Cognitive Psychology boxes. Thoroughly integrated intelligence coverage (formerly Chapter 13, Intelligence) now appears throughout the 6th edition. Advance organizers added to improve the reading flow and students’ under- standing of how things fit together into a larger context. Updated chapter organization for greater comprehensibility. Reduced coverage of cognitive development and other non-cognitive topics more accurately reflect the focus of cognitive psychology courses. New subheadings increase understanding of content matter and larger context. Chapter-specific revisions include: Chapter 1 1. An all new introduction to intelligence in Chapter 1 discusses what intelligence is, how intelligence relates to cognition, and three cognitive models of intelli- gence (Carroll, Gardner, Sternberg). 2. New everyday examples include analyzing why companies spend so much money on advertising products that students use, for example, Apple iPhone and Windows 7. 3. New example in section on why learning about psychology’s history is impor- tant: a discussion on newspapers’ coverage of the success of educational programs, hardly any which use control groups. 4. New example of how nurture influences cognition by comparing Western and Asian cultures. 5. Expanded discussion of rationalism vs. empiricism now includes Plato and Aristotle. 6. Expanded explanation of Descartes’ views. 7. Enhanced introduction to section on early dialectics and explanation of what dialectics are. 8. Expanded explanation of what being a structuralist means in terms of psychology. 9. Expanded discussion of introspection. 10. Explanation of Ebbinghaus’s experiment and new Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve figure. 11. New example from contemporary times has been added to the section on behav- iorism explaining how reward and punishment are used in modern psychotherapy. 12. New section on criticisms of behaviorism. 13. New Believe It or Not box on scientific “progress” in the first half of the 20th century and the introduction of prefrontal lobotomies. 14. New explanation of why behaviorists regarded the mind as a “black box”. 15. New In the Lab of Henry L. Roediger, III feature. 16. New coverage of control variables. 17. New explanation of why control over experimental conditions is important.  To the Instructor xix 18. Expanded section on when to use correlational studies and discuss their poten- tial shortcomings. 19. New section on how other professions and fields benefit from findings in cogni- tive psychology. Chapter 2 1. New organization: Now a section on the anatomy and mechanisms of the brain discusses the structure of the brain first before going into details regarding neu- ronal structure and function; a second section then discusses research methods/ methods of viewing the brain; a third section discusses brain disorders; and a fourth (new) section covers intelligence and neuroscience. 2. New In the Lab of Martha Farah box. 3. Updated discussion of the function of brain parts reflects the latest literature. 4. Expanded explanation of how autism relates to the function of the amygdala. 5. Reorganized discussion of the hippocampus. 6. Updated and expanded information on the function of the hypothalamus. 7. New coverage of the evolution of the human brain. 8. Updated and expanded coverage of the lateralization of function. 9. New explanation of vocabulary frequently used to describe brain regions: dorsal, caudal, rostral, ventral. 10. The concept of “action potential” is now discussed. 11. Expanded coverage of myelin and Nodes of Ranvier. 12. Updated coverage of neurotransmitters to reflect current status of knowledge. 13. New coverage of genetic knockout studies and neurochemical ways to induce particular lesions in the section on animal studies. 14. New coverage of “noise” in EEG recordings, and how this noise can be dealt with by averaging recordings. 15. New detailed example of a study using ERP to help students understand the technique. 16. New explanation of the N400 effect. 17. Updated discussion of research and imaging methods, including new references. 18. Expanded information on CT scans, angiography, and MRIs. 19. More detailed explanation of the subtraction method. 20. New explanation of how DTI works. 21. Expanded section on TMS and introduced concept of rTMS. 22. Brain disorders discussion now begins by explaining why brain disorders are of importance to finding out how the brain works. 23. New section (part of former Chapter 13, Intelligence) on intelligence and neu- roscience that discusses the connection between intelligence and (a) brain size, (b) neurons, (c) brain metabolism as well as biological bases of intelligence test- ing and the P-FIT theory of intelligence. Chapter 3 1. New “hands-on” activity now opens chapter by asking students to look out of the window to see for themselves how objects that are farther away look small, even if they are huge. xx To the Instructor 2. Reorganized chapter first presents basics of perception, perceptual illusions, and how our visual system works; then, the theories of perception, perception of objects and forms, perceptual constancies; and last, deficits in perception. 3. New introduction to “From Sensation to Perception” discussion illustrates with two examples how complex perception can be. 4. New In the Lab of Marvin Chun feature box. 5. New coverage of the Ganzfeld effect and experiment to experience the Ganzfeld effect. 6. New discussion of light as a precondition for vision, and about the spectrum of light waves and which ones humans can see. 7. Reorganized coverage of how our visual system works. 8. Visual pathways discussion expanded, updated, and now appears near the begin- ning of the chapter. 9. New introduction to approaches to perception (that is, the part about theories), and a more thorough explanation of what bottom-up and top-down approaches are. 10. Direct perception is now discussed as part of bottom-up theories discussion. 11. New sections on the everyday importance of neuroscience and direct perception. 12. New section discusses template theory as an example of a chunk-based theory and connects visual perception with long-term memory. 13. New section on neuroscience and template theories. 14. New discussion of why it is so hard for computers to read handwriting. 15. Updated coverage of pandemonium model and updated coverage of the local- precedence effect. 16. Expanded coverage of neuroscience and feature-matching theories. 17. New section on neuroscience and recognition-by-components theory. 18. Top-down theories section now includes discussion of intelligence and perception. 19. Expanded coverage of elaboration/explanation of object-centered versus viewer- centered representation. 20. Reorganized discussion of Gestalt approach section. 21. Reorganized discussion of the neuroscience of recognizing faces and patterns. 22. New neuropsychological research on perceptual constancies. 23. New coverage of stereoscopic seeing with just one eye in strabismic eyes. 24. Expanded coverage of neuroscience and depth perception, with new research results. 25. Reorganized discussion of ataxias and agnosias separately discusses “difficulties in perceiving the what” and “difficulties in knowing the how”. 26. New section on perception in practice with respect to traffic and accidents. Chapter 4 1. Reorganized chapter first presents attention (signal detection, vigilance, search, selective attention, and divided attention), then discusses what happens when attentional processes fail; habituation and adaptation, as well as automatic and controlled processes in attention are explored; and last, consciousness. 2. Included new introductory example for introduction to signal detection and vig- ilance: lifeguard on beach and research psychologist. 3. Expanded coverage of neuroscience and vigilance.  To the Instructor xxi 4. New research on feature integration theory. 5. Expanded coverage of the neuroscience of visual search and aging. 6. Updated discussion of selective attention. 7. Expanded discussion of neuroscience and selective attention. 8. Divided attention now integrates information regarding human intelligence. 9. Updated and reorganized coverage of theories of divided attention. 10. Revised network model discussion in “Neuroscience and Attention” section. 11. New section on intelligence and attention includes discussion of reaction time and inspection time. 12. Reorganized and updated discussion of section “When our attention fails us” includes a discussion of Gardner’s theory of intelligence as potentially relevant to ADHD treatment. 13. Updated discussion of change blindness and inattentional blindness. 14. Updated coverage of “extinction” in spatial neglect as well as updated informa- tion on neuroscience research in spatial neglect. 15. “Controlled and Automatic Processes” section has been reorganized and updated. 16. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence now connected to controlled and automatic processes. 17. The Stroop effect is now featured in “automatization in daily life”. 18. Updated discussion of consciousness. Chapter 5 1. New discussion of intelligence testing and culture that describes problems of culture-fair testing and how memory abilities may differ across different cultural groups. 2. New coverage of long-term store and new techniques that are being developed to help students transfer learned facts into long-term memory. 3. Expanded coverage of how experiments were conducted on the levels- of-processing approach and what their results mean (in particular, why people with schizophrenia have memory problems). 4. Fisher & Craik (1977) experiment about the effectiveness of acoustic and se- mantic retrieval has been elaborated more, with examples to make clear the dif- ferences between the different kinds of retrieval. 5. Expanded coverage of the phonological loop. 6. New section on intelligence and working memory. 7. New discussion of neuropsychological coverage added to the section on amnesia. 8. New explanation of double dissociation. 9. Updated coverage in section on how memories are stored. 10. Expanded explanation of the term long-term potentiation. Chapter 6 1. Updated research on long-term storage. 2. Expanded neuropsychological coverage of section on long-term storage. 3. New section explaining the difference between interference and decay. 4. Expanded coverage of the spacing effect. 5. Expanded coverage of organization of information. xxii To the Instructor 6. Expanded coverage of forcing functions and their use in hospitals. 7. Expanded coverage and new figure on neuropsychological experiments on retrieval from long-term memory. 8. Expanded coverage of the “recent-probes task”. 9. Expanded coverage of flashbulb memory and the effect of mood on memory. 10. Updated research on memory distortions. 11. Updated research on eyewitness testimony; expanded coverage and new intro- duction of the post-identification feedback effect. 12. Expanded coverage of children as eyewitnesses and lineups. 13. Updated research on context effects. Chapter 7 1. Revised coverage of internal and external representations. 2. Updated research on mental imagery. 3. New research on mental rotations. 4. Updated coverage of gender and mental rotation. 5. Updated coverage of research on image scanning. 6. Updated research on section “synthesizing images and propositions”. 7. Updated coverage of demand characteristics. 8. Updated discussion of Johnson-Laird’s mental models. 9. Updated discussion of mental shortcuts. Chapter 8 1. Updated research on concepts. 2. Updated research on prototypes. 3. New coverage of VAM (varying abstraction model) theory in the exemplars discussion. 4. New discussion of concepts in different cultures. 5. Updated research on scripts, ACT-R, and the PDP model. 6. Expanded section on criticism of connectionist models. Chapter 9 1. New discussion of reading and discourse have been added to this chapter (previ- ously chapter 10). 2. New introduction to section “What is language” discusses how many languages there are in the world, that still new languages are being discovered, etc. 3. Updated research on basic components of words. 4. New introduction to the section on processes of language comprehension. 5. Updated research on section “the view of speech perception as ordinary”. 6. New coverage of new research to explain the phenomenon of phonemic restoration. 7. Updated discussion of the motor theory of speech perception. 8. Updated section on the McGurk effect with the latest neuropsychological research. 9. Updated coverage of semantics.  To the Instructor xxiii 10. Updated research in the section on syntactical priming. 11. More in-depth description of the Luka & Barsalou (2005) experiment. 12. Expanded explanations of phrase-structure grammar. 13. Expanded explanation of the critique of Chomsky’s theory. 14. Updated research on dyslexia. 15. Updated research on lexical processes in reading. 16. New section on intelligence and lexical access speed (from previous chapter 13). 17. Updated research on propositional representations. 18. Updated research on “Representing the Text in Mental Models.” Chapter 10 1. New coverage of animal language (formerly in Chapter 9). 2. Reorganized discussion of the neuropsychology of language. 3. New In the Lab of Keith Rayner boxed feature. 4. New coverage in colors discussion includes recent research and demonstrates how one’s language can influence color perception. 5. New research in section on verbs and grammatical gender features description of new research experiments on grammatical gender and prepositions. 6. New neuropsychological research on bilinguals. 7. Updated research on second language acquisition. 8. Expanded discussion of Meinzer et al. (2007) study. 9. Updated research on language mixtures and change. 10. Extended coverage of neuroscience and bilingualism. 11. Updated research on slips of the tongue. 12. New coverage of Steven Pinker’s new theory of indirect speech. 13. Updated research on gender and language. 14. Updated and revised coverage of animal language. 15. New coverage of the brain and word recognition. 16. New coverage of the brain and semantic processing. 17. Expanded and updated coverage on the brain and syntax. 18. Updated and extended coverage of the brain and language acquisition. 19. Updated and extended coverage on the plasticity of the brain. 20. New and updated research on the brain and gender difference in language processing. 21. Updated research on autism. Chapter 11 1. Reorganized discussion of the problem-solving cycle. 2. Streamlined discussion of well-structured problems. 3. Updated section on problem representation. 4. Streamlined discussion of insight. 5. Streamlined discussion of the early Gestaltist view. 6. Expanded discussion of the Metcalfe (1986) experiment covered in the section on the neo-Gestaltist view. 7. Coverage of neuroscience and insight aggregated into a neuroscience section, expanded, and updated. 8. Streamlined discussion of intentional transfer. xxiv To the Instructor 9. Revised discussion of incubation includes new coverage of a meta-analysis. 10. New discussion of intelligence and complex solving (formerly chapter 13). 11. Section on expertise has been updated and an experiment on beer tasting in experts and novices has been added. 12. Updated discussion of automatic expert processes. 13. Updated coverage of innate talent and acquired skill. 14. New and updated coverage of artificial intelligence and expertise (formerly chapter 13). 15. Updated and streamlined coverage of creativity. 16. Updated discussion of neuroscience and creativity. Chapter 12 1. Reorganized discussion of judgment and decision making for improved comprehension. 2. New explanation of the difference between the model of economic man and woman and subjective expected utility theory. 3. Streamlined discussion of subjective expected utility theory. 4. Streamlined and updated coverage of satisficing now includes a comparison with classical decision theory. 5. Updated discussion of framing effects. 6. Updated coverage of gambler’s fallacy and hot hand. 7. Updated discussion of the evaluation of heuristics. 8. Updated section on naturalistic decision making. 9. Expanded discussion of evolution and reasoning. 10. Updated and streamlined coverage of syllogisms. 11. Streamlined discussion of inductive reasoning. 12. Streamlined section on reaching causal inferences. 13. Updated section on categorical inferences. 14. Updated coverage of an alternative view of reasoning. 15. Updated and expanded section on the neuroscience of reasoning. Ancillaries As an instructor, you have a multitude of resources available to you to assist you in the teaching of your class. Student ancillaries are also offered. Available resources include: Instructor’s Manual with Test Bank—Written by Donna Dahlgren of Indiana University Southeast. The Instructor’s Manual portion contains chapter out- lines, in-class demonstrations, discussion topics, and suggested websites. The Test Bank portion consists of approximately 75 multiple choice and 20 short- answer questions per chapter. Each multiple-choice item is labeled with the page reference and level of difficulty. PowerLecture with ExamView—With the one-stop digital library and presen- tation tool, instructors can assemble, edit, and present custom lectures with ease. The PowerLecture, contains a selection of digital media from Wadsworth’s latest titles in introductory psychology, including figures and tables. Create, deliver,  To the Instructor xxv and customize printed and online tests and study guides in minutes with Exam- View’s easy-to-use assessment and tutorial system. Also included are animations, video clips, and preassembled Microsoft PowerPoint lecture slides, written by Lise Abrams of University of Florida, based on each specific text. Instructors can use the material or add their own material for a truly customized lecture presentation. CogLab 3.0—Free with every new copy of this book, CogLab 3.0 lets students do more than just think about cognition. CogLab 3.0 uses the power of the web to teach concepts using important classic and current experiments that demon- strate how the mind works. Nothing is more powerful for students than seeing the effects of these experiments for themselves! CogLab 3.0 includes features such as simplified student registration, a global database that combines data from students all around the world, between-subject designs that allow for new kinds of experiments, and a “quick display” of student summaries. Also included are trial-by-trial data, standard deviations, and improved instructions. And when you adopt Sternberg’s COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, you and your stu- dents will have access to a rich array of online teaching and learning resources that you won’t find anywhere else. The outstanding site features tutorial quizzes, a glos- sary, weblinks, flashcards, and more! Acknowledgments We are grateful to a number of reviewers who have contributed to the development of this book: Jane L. Pixley, Radford University Takashi Yamauchi, Texas A & M Martha J. Hubertz, Florida Atlantic University University David C. Somers, Boston University Jeffrey S. Anastasi, Sam Houston Michael J. McGuire, Washburn State University University Robert J. Crutcher, University of Kimberly Rynearson, Tarleton State Dayton University Eric C. Odgaard, University of South Florida A special thank you goes to Gerd Gigerenzer and Julian Marewski for their helpful review of, and comments on, Chapter 12. We would also like to thank Ann Greenberger, developmental editor, as well as all members of our Wadsworth/Cengage Learning editorial and production teams: Jaime Perkins, Acquisitions Editor; Paige Leeds, Assistant Editor; Lauren Keyes, Media Editor; Beth Kluckhohn, Senior Project Manager for PreMedia Global; Tangelique Williams, Developmental Editor; Matt Ballantyne, Senior Content Proj- ect Manager; and Jessica Alderman, Editorial Assistant. To the Student Why do we remember people whom we met years ago, but sometimes seem to forget what we learned in a course shortly after we take the final exam (or worse, some- times right before)? How do we manage to carry on a conversation with one person at a party and simultaneously eavesdrop on another more interesting conversation taking place nearby? Why are people so often certain that they are correct in an- swering a question when in fact they are not? These are just three of the many ques- tions that are addressed by the field of cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychologists study how people perceive, learn, remember, and think. Although cognitive psychology is a unified field, it draws on many other fields, most notably neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy. Thus, you will find some of the thinking of all these fields represented in this book. Moreover, cognitive psychology interacts with other fields within psychology, such as psychobiology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and clinical psychology. For example, it is difficult to be a clinical psychologist today without a solid knowledge of developments in cognitive psychology because so much of the think- ing in the clinical field draws on cognitive ideas, both in diagnosis and in therapy. Cognitive psychology has also provided a means for psychologists to investigate ex- perimentally some of the exciting ideas that have emerged from clinical theory and practice, such as notions of unconscious thought. Cognitive psychology will be important to you not only in its own right, but also in helping you in all of your work. For example, knowledge of cognitive psy- chology can help you better understand how best to study for tests, how to read ef- fectively, and how to remember difficult-to-learn material. Cognitive psychologists study a wide range of psychological phenomena such as perception, learning, memory, and thinking. In addition, cognitive psychologists study seemingly less cognitively oriented phenomena, such as emotion and motiva- tion. In fact, almost any topic of psychological interest may be studied from a cogni- tive perspective. In this textbook we describe some of the preliminary answers to questions asked by researchers in the main areas of cognitive psychology. Chapter 1, Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: What are the origins of cognitive psychology, and how do people do research in this field? Chapter 2, Cognitive Neuroscience: What structures and processes of the human brain underlie the structures and processes of human cognition? Chapter 3, Visual Perception: How does the human mind perceive what the senses receive? How does the human mind perceive forms and patterns? Chapter 4, Attention and Consciousness: What basic processes of the mind gov- ern how information enters our minds, our awareness, and our high-level processes of information handling? Chapter 5, Memory: Models and Research Methods: How are different kinds of information (e.g., our experiences related to a traumatic event, the names of U.S. presidents, or the procedure for riding a bicycle) represented in memory? xxvi  To the Student xxvii Chapter 6, Memory Processes: How do we move information into memory, keep it there, and retrieve it from memory when needed? Chapter 7, The Landscape of Memory: Mental Images, Maps, and Propositions: How do we mentally represent information in our minds? Do we do so in words, in pictures, or in some other form representing meaning? Do we have multiple forms of representation? Chapter 8, The Organization of Knowledge in the Mind: How do we mentally organize what we know? Chapter 9, Language: How do we derive and produce meaning through language? Chapter 10, Language in Context: How does our use of language interact with our ways of thinking? How does our social world interact with our use of language? Chapter 11, Problem Solving and Creativity: How do we solve problems? What processes aid and impede us in reaching solutions to problems? Why are some of us more creative than others? How do we become and remain creative? Chapter 12, Decision Making and Reasoning: How do we reach important deci- sions? How do we draw reasonable conclusions from the information we have available? Why and how do we so often make inappropriate decisions and reach inaccurate conclusions? To acquire the knowledge outlined above, we suggest you make use of the fol- lowing pedagogical features of this book: 1. Chapter outlines, beginning each chapter, summarize the main topics covered and thus give you an advance overview of what is to be covered in that chapter. 2. Opening questions emphasize the main questions each chapter addresses. 3. Boldface terms, indexed at ends of chapters and defined in the glossary, help you acquire the vocabulary of cognitive psychology. 4. End-of-chapter summaries return to the questions at the opening of each chapter and show our current state of knowledge with regard to these questions. 5. End-of-chapter questions help you ensure both that you have learned the basic material and that you can think in a variety of ways (factual, analytical, crea- tive, and practical) with this material. 6. Suggested readings refer you to other sources that you can consult for further information on the topics covered in each chapter. 7. Investigating Cognitive Psychology demonstrations, appearing throughout the chapters, help you see how cognitive psychology can be used to demonstrate various psychological phenomena. 8. Practical Applications of Cognitive Psychology demonstrations show how you and others can apply cognitive psychology to your everyday lives. 9. In the Lab of... boxes tell you what it really is like to do research in cognitive psychology. Prominent researchers speak in their own words about their research—what research problems excite them most and what they are doing to address these problems. 10. Believe It or Not boxes present incredible and exciting information and facts from the world of cognitive psychology. 11. Key Themes sections, near the end of each chapter, relate the content of the chapters to the key themes expressed in Chapter 1. These sections will help xxviii To the Student you see the continuity of the main ideas of cognitive psychology across its vari- ous subfields. 12. CogLab, an exciting series of laboratory demonstrations in cognitive psychology provided by the publisher of this textbook (Wadsworth), is available for pur- chase with this text. You can actively participate in these demonstrations and thereby learn firsthand what it is like to be involved in cognitive-psychological research. This book contains an overriding theme that unifies all the diverse topics found in the various chapters: Human cognition has evolved over time as a means of adapting to our environment, and we can call this ability to adapt to the environ- ment intelligence. Through intelligence, we cope in an integrated and adaptive way with the many challenges with which the environment presents us. Although cognitive psychologists disagree about many issues, there is one issue about which almost all of them agree; namely, cognition enables us to successfully adapt to the environments in which we find ourselves. Thus, we need a construct such as that of human intelligence, if only to provide a shorthand way of expressing this fundamental unity of adaptive skill. We can see this unity at all levels in the study of cognitive psychology. For example, diverse measures of the psychophysiolog- ical functioning of the human brain show correlations with scores on a variety of tests of intelligence. Selective attention, the ability to tune in certain stimuli and tune out others, is also related to intelligence, and it has even been proposed that an intelligent person is one who knows what information to attend to and what in- formation to ignore. Various language and problem-solving skills are also related to intelligence, pretty much without regard to how it is measured. In brief, then, hu- man intelligence can be seen as an entity that unifies and provides direction to the workings of the human cognitive system. We hope you enjoy this book, and we hope you see why we are enthusiastic about cognitive psychology and proud to be cognitive psychologists. About the Authors Robert J. Sternberg is Provost and Senior Vice President as well as Professor of Psy- chology at Oklahoma State University. Prior to that, he was Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, and before that, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. Dr. Sternberg received his B.A. from Yale and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. He also holds 11 honorary doctorates. He has received numerous awards, including the James McKeen Cattell Award from the American Psychological Society; the Early Career and McCandless Awards from the APA; and the Outstanding Book, Research Review, Sylvia Scribner and Palmer O. Johnson Awards from the AERA. Dr. Sternberg has served as President of the American Psychological Association and of the Eastern Psychological Association and is currently President-elect of the Feder- ation of Associations of Brain and Behavioral Sciences. In addition, he has been edi- tor of the Psychological Bulletin and of the APA Review of Books: Contemporary Psychology and is a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He was the director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise at Yale University and then Tufts University. Karin Sternberg is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University. She has a PhD in psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, as well as an MBA with a specialization in banking from the University of Cooperative Education in Karlsruhe, Germany. Karin did some of her doctoral research at Yale and her postdoc- toral work in psychology at the University of Connecticut. Afterwards, she worked as a research associate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and School of Public Health. In 2008, together with her husband, Robert J. Sternberg, she founded Sternberg Consulting. The company’s focus is on applying in practice their theories of intelligence, wisdom, creativity, and leadership, among others. This has led to consult- ing work and product development based on their theories (e.g., admissions tests for higher education institutions and schools, training programs, etc.). xxix This page intentionally left blank  C H A 1 P T E R Introduction to Cognitive Psychology CHAPTER OUTLINE Cognitive Psychology Defined Three Cognitive Models of Intelligence Carroll: Three-Stratum Model of Intelligence Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology: Gardner: Theory of Multiple Intelligences Rationalism versus Empiricism Sternberg: The Triarchic Theory Psychological Antecedents of Intelligence of Cognitive Psychology Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology Early Dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition Goals of Research Understanding the Structure of the Mind: Distinctive Research Methods Structuralism Experiments on Human Behavior Understanding the Processes of the Mind: Psychobiological Research Functionalism Self-Reports, Case Studies, An Integrative Synthesis: Associationism and Naturalistic Observation It’s Only What You Can See That Counts: Computer Simulations and Artificial Intelligence From Associationism to Behaviorism Putting It All Together Proponents of Behaviorism Criticisms of Behaviorism Fundamental Ideas in Cognitive Psychology Behaviorists Daring to Peek into the Black Box Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Summary Gestalt Psychology Thinking about Thinking: Analytical, Creative, Emergence of Cognitive Psychology and Practical Questions Early Role of Psychobiology Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering, Key Terms Computation, and Applied Cognitive Psychology Media Resources Cognition and Intelligence What Is Intelligence? 1 2 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Here are some of the questions we will explore in this chapter: 1. What is cognitive psychology? 2. How did psychology develop as a science? 3. How did cognitive psychology develop from psychology? 4. How have other disciplines contributed to the development of theory and research in cognitive psychology? 5. What methods do cognitive psychologists use to study how people think? 6. What are the current issues and various fields of study within cognitive psychology? n BELIEVE IT OR NOT NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T! Now view the following video. Your task will be to count Cognitive psychology yields all kinds of surprising find- the number of times that students in white shirts pass the ings. Dan Simons of the University of Illinois is a master basketball. You must not count passes by students wear- of surprises (see Simons, 2007; Simons & Ambinder, ing black shirts: 2005; Simons & Rensink, 2005). Try it out yourself! http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php Watch the following videos and see if you have any com- Note: Do not read on before you have watched the video. ments on them. http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/23.php Well, it doesn’t really matter how many passes there were. Did you notice the person in the gorilla outfit walk Note: Do not read on before you have watched the video. across the video as the students were throwing the balls? Did you notice that the person who answers the phone is Most people don’t notice. This video demonstrates a not the same as the one who was at the desk? Note that phenomenon called inattentional blindness. You will they are wearing distinctively different clothing. You have learn more about this concept in Chapter 4. Throughout just seen an example of change blindness—our occa- this book, we will explore these and many other sional inability to recognize changes. You will learn phenomena. more about this concept in Chapter 3. Think back to the last time you went to a party or social gathering. There were probably tens and maybe hundreds of students in a relatively small room. Maybe music played in the background, and you could hear chatter all around. Yet, when you talked to your friends, you were able to figure out and even concentrate on what they said, filtering out all the other conversations that were going on in the background. Suddenly, however, your attention might have shifted because you heard someone in another conversation nearby mention your name. What processes would have been at work in this situation? How were you able to filter out irrelevant voices in your mind and focus your attention on just one of the many voices you heard? And why did you notice your name being mentioned, even though you did  Cognitive Psychology Defined 3 Kane Skennar/Digital/Vision/Getty Images When you are at a party, you are usually able to filter out many irrelevant voice streams in order to concentrate on the conversation you are leading. However, you will likely notice somebody saying your name in another conversation even if you were not listening intently to that conversation. not purposefully listen to the conversations around you? Our ability to focus on one out of many voices is one of the most striking phenomena in cognitive psychology, and is known as the “cocktail party effect.” Cognitive processes are continuously taking place in your mind and in the minds of the people around you. Whether you pay attention to a conversation, estimate the speed of an approaching car when crossing the street, or memorize information for a test at school, you are perceiving information, processing it, and remembering or thinking about it. This book is about those cognitive processes that are often hidden in plain sight and that we take for granted because they seem so automatic to us. This chapter will introduce you to some of the people who helped form the field of cognitive psychology and make it what it is today. The chapter also will discuss methods used in cognitive-psychological research. Cognitive Psychology Defined What will you study in a textbook about cognitive psychology? Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. A cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn language. Consider some examples: Why do objects look farther away on foggy days than they really are? The dis- crepancy can be dangerous, even deceiving drivers into having car accidents. Why do many people remember a particular experience (e.g., a very happy moment or an embarrassment during childhood), yet they forget the names of people whom they have known for many years? 4 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Why are many people more afraid of traveling in planes than in automobiles? After all, the chances of injury or death are much higher in an automobile than in a plane. Why do you often well remember people you met in your childhood but not people you met a week ago? Why do marketing executives in large companies spend so much company money on advertisements? These are some of the kinds of questions that we can answer through the study of cognitive psychology. Consider just the last of these questions: Why does Apple, for example, spend so much money on advertisements for its iPhone? After all, how many people remember the functional details of the iPhone, or how those functions are distin- guished from the functions of other phones? One reason Apple spends so much is because of the availability heuristic, which you will study in Chapter 12. Using this heuristic, we make judgments on the basis of how easily we can call to mind what we perceive as relevant instances of a phenomenon (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). One such judgment is the question of which phone you should buy when you need a new cell phone. We are much more likely to buy a brand and model of a phone that is familiar. Similarly, Microsoft paid huge amounts of money to market its roll-out of Windows 7 in order to make the product cognitively available to potential customers and thus increase the chances that the potential cus- tomers would become actual ones. The bottom line is that understanding cognitive psychology can help us understand much of what goes on in our every- day lives. Why study the history of cognitive psychology? If we know where we came from, we may have a better understanding of where we are heading. In addition, we can learn from past mistakes. For example, there are numerous newspaper stories about how one educational program or another has resulted in particular gains in student achievement. However, it is relatively rare to read that a control group has been used. A control group would tell us about the achievement of students who did not have that educational program or who maybe were in an alternative program. It may be that these students also would show a gain. We need to compare the stu- dents in the experimental group to those in the control group to determine whether the gain of the students in the experimental group was greater than the gain of those in the control group. We can learn from the history of our field that it is important to include control groups, but not everyone learns this fact. In cognitive psychology, the ways of addressing fundamental issues have chan- ged, but many of the fundamental questions remain much the same. Ultimately, cog- nitive psychologists hope to learn how people think by studying how people have thoughts about thinking. The progression of ideas often involves a dialectic. A dialectic is a developmental process where ideas evolve over time through a pattern of transformation. What is this pattern? In a dialectic: A thesis is proposed. A thesis is a statement of belief. For example, some people believe that human nature governs many aspects of human behavior (e.g., intel- ligence or personality; Sternberg, 1999). After a while, however, certain indivi- duals notice apparent flaws in the thesis.  Cognitive Psychology Defined 5 An antithesis emerges. Eventually, or perhaps even quite soon, an antithesis emerges. An antithesis is a statement that counters a previous statement of belief. For example, an alternative view is that our nurture (the environmental contexts in which we are reared) almost entirely determines many aspects of human behavior. A synthesis integrates the viewpoints. Sooner or later, the debate between the thesis and the antithesis leads to a synthesis. A synthesis integrates the most credible features of each of two (or more) views. For example, in the debate over nature versus nurture, the interaction between our innate (inborn) nature and environmental nurture may govern human nature. The dialectic is important because we may be tempted to think that if one view is right, another seemingly contrasting view must be wrong. For example, in the field of intelligence, there has been a tendency to believe that intelligence is either all or mostly genetically determined, or else all or mostly environmentally determined. A similar debate has raged in the field of language acquisition. Often, we are better off posing such issues not as either/or questions, but rather as examinations of how different forces covary and interact with each other. Indeed, the most widely ac- cepted current contention is that the “nature or nurture” view is incomplete. Nature and nurture work together in our development. Nurture can work in different ways in different cultures. Some cultures, espe- cially Asian cultures, tend to be more dialectical in their thinking, whereas other cultures, such as European and North American ones, tend to be more linear (Nisbett, 2003). In other words, Asians are more likely to be tolerant of holding beliefs that are contradictory, seeking a synthesis over time that resolves the con- tradiction. Europeans and Americans expect their belief systems to be consistent with each other. Similarly, people from Asian cultures tend to take a different viewpoint than Westerners when approaching a new object (e.g., a movie of fish in an ocean; Nisbett & Masuda, 2003). In general, people from Western cultures tend to process objects independently of the context, whereas people from many Eastern cultures process objects in conjunction with the surrounding context (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). Asians may emphasize the context more than the objects embed- ded in those contexts. So if people see a movie of fish swimming around in the ocean, Europeans or Americans will tend to pay more attention to the fish, and Asians may attend to the surround of the ocean in which the fish are swimming. The evidence suggests that culture influences many cognitive processes, including intelligence (Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004). If a synthesis seems to advance our understanding of a subject, it then serves as a new thesis. A new antithesis then follows it, then a new synthesis, and so on. Georg Hegel (1770–1831) observed this dialectical progression of ideas. He was a German philosopher who came to his ideas by his own dialectic. He synthesized some of the views of his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries. You will see in this chap- ter that psychology also evolved as a result of dialectics: Psychologists had ideas about how the mind works and pursued their line of research; then other psycholo- gists pointed out weaknesses and developed alternatives as a reaction to the earlier ideas. Eventually, characteristics of the different approaches are often integrated into a newer and more encompassing approach. 6 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology: Rationalism versus Empiricism Where and when did the study of cognitive psychology begin? Historians of psychol- ogy usually trace the earliest roots of psychology to two approaches to understanding the human mind: Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world, in part through introspection, the examination of inner ideas and experiences (from intro-, “inward, within,” and -spect, “look”); Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter, primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods. Two Greek philosophers, Plato (ca. 428–348 B.C.) and his student Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology and many other fields. Plato and Aristotle disagreed regarding how to investigate ideas. Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need any experi- ments to develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested in cognitive pro- cesses would appeal to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. In contrast, Aristotle (a naturalist and biologist as well as a philosopher) was an empiricist. An empiricist believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence— that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation (Figure 1.1). In order to explore how the human mind works, empiricists would design experiments and conduct studies in which they could observe the behavior and processes of interest to them. Empiricism therefore leads directly to empirical investigations of psychology. In contrast, rationalism is important in theory development. Rationalist theories without any connection to observations gained through empiricist methods may not be valid; but mountains of observational data without an organizing theoretical framework may not be meaningful. We might see the rationalist view of the world as a thesis and the empirical view as an antithesis. Most psychologists today seek a synthesis of the two. They base empirical observations on theory in order to explain (b) (a) Figure 1.1 (a) According to the rationalist, the only route to truth is reasoned contemplation; (b) according to the empiricist, the only route to truth is meticulous observation. Cognitive psychology, like other sciences, depends on the work of both rationalists and empiricists.  Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology 7 what they have observed in their experiments. In turn, they use these observations to revise their theories when they find that the theories cannot account for their real-world observations. The contrasting ideas of rationalism and empiricism became prominent with the French rationalist René Descartes (1596–1650) and the British empiricist John Locke (1632–1704). Descartes viewed the introspective, reflective method as being superior to empirical methods for finding truth. The famous expression “cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) stems from Descartes. He maintained that the only proof of his existence is that he was thinking and doubting. Descartes felt that one could not rely on one’s senses because those very senses have often proven to be deceptive (think of optical illusions, for example). Locke, in contrast, had more en- thusiasm for empirical observation (Leahey, 2003). Locke believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical ob- servation. 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 ratio- nalism and empiricism have their place. Both must work together in the quest for truth. Most psychologists today accept Kant’s synthesis. Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology has roots in many different ideas and approaches. The ap- proaches that will be examined include early approaches such as structuralism and functionalism, followed by a discussion of associationism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. Early Dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition Only in recent times did psychology emerge as a new and independent field of study. It developed in a dialectical way. Typically, an approach to studying the mind would be developed; people then would use it to explore the human psyche. At some point, however, researchers would find that the approach they learned to use had some weak- nesses, or they would disagree with some fundamental assumptions of that approach. They then would develop a new approach. Future approaches might integrate the best features of past approaches or reject some or even most of those characteristics. In the following section, we will explore some of the ways of thinking early psycholo- gists employed and trace the development of psychology through the various schools of thinking. Understanding the Structure of the Mind: Structuralism An early dialectic in the history of psychology is that between structuralism and func- tionalism (Leahey, 2003; Morawski, 2000). Structuralism was the first major school of thought in 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.). 8 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Consider, for example, the perception of a flower. Structuralists would analyze this perception in terms of its constituent colors, geometric forms, size relations, and so on. In terms of the human mind, structuralists sought to decon- struct the mind into its elementary components; they were also interested in how those elementary components work together to create the mind. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German psychologist whose ideas contributed to the development of structuralism. Wundt is often viewed as the founder of structuralism in psy- chology (Structuralism, 2009). Wundt used a variety of methods in his research. One of these methods was introspection. Intro- Image not available due to copyright restrictions spection is a deliberate looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness. The aim of introspection is to look at the elementary components of an object or process. The introduction of introspection as an experimental method was an important change in the field because the main emphasis in the study of the mind shifted from a ratio- nalist approach to the empiricist approach of trying to observe behavior in order to draw conclusions about the subject of study. In experiments involving introspection, in- dividuals reported on their thoughts as they were working on a given task. Researchers interested in problem solving could ask their participants to think aloud while they were working on a puzzle so the researchers could gain insight into the thoughts that go on in the participants’ minds. In introspec- tion, then, we can analyze our own perceptions. The method of introspection has some challenges associated with it. First, peo- ple may not always be able to say exactly what goes through their mind or may not be able to put it into adequate words. Second, what they say may not be accurate. Third, the fact that people are asked to pay attention to their thoughts or to speak out loud while they are working on a task may itself alter the processes that are going on. Wundt had many followers. One was an American student, Edward Titchener (1867–1927). Titchener (1910) is sometimes viewed as the first full-fledged structuralist. In any case, he certainly helped bring structuralism to the United States. His experi- ments relied solely on the use of introspection, exploring psychology from the vantage point of the experiencing individual. Other early psychologists criticized both the method (introspection) and the focus (elementary structures of sensation) of structural- ism. These critiques gave rise to a new movement—functionalism. Understanding the Processes of the Mind: Functionalism An alternative that developed to counter structuralism, functionalism suggested that psychologists should focus on the processes of thought rather than on its contents.