Chapter 1 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology PDF

Chapter 1 KMF1023 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Ross Azura Zahit Office Tel : 082 – 584586 Email : [email protected] Fakulti Sains Kognitif & Pembangunan Manusia Universiti Malaysia Sarawak ACTIVITY 1 COGNITION...

Chapter 1 KMF1023 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Ross Azura Zahit Office Tel : 082 – 584586 Email : [email protected] Fakulti Sains Kognitif & Pembangunan Manusia Universiti Malaysia Sarawak ACTIVITY 1 COGNITION DICTIONARY Everyday Cognition 3  COGNITION Perception Reasoning & decision- Attention making Cognition Problem- Memory solving Represen- Language tation of knowledge All include “hidden” processes of which we may not be aware  What is Cognitive Psychology Broad definition: Empirical investigation of mental events and knowledge involved in recognizing an object, remembering a name, having an idea, understanding a sentence, and solving a problem. Specific definition: The empirical investigation of mental processes and activities used in perceiving, remembering and thinking, and the act of using those processes. Some Questions to Consider How is cognitive psychology relevant to everyday experience? Are there practical applications of cognitive psychology? How is it possible to study the inner workings of the mind when we can’t really see the mind directly? What is the connection between computers and the study of the mind? History of Cognitive Psychology 7  Studying the Mind Caption: Timeline showing early experiments studying the mind in the 1800s and events associated with the rise of behaviorism in the 1900s  The First Cognitive Psychologists Donders (1868) Mental chronometry Measuring how long a cognitive process takes Reaction-time (RT) experiment Measures interval between Caption: A modern version of Donders’ (1868) reaction-time experiment: (a) the stimulus presentation and simple reaction-time task; and (b) the choice reaction-time task. person’s response to stimulus Simple RT task: participant pushes a button quickly after * Choice RT – Simple RT = Time to Mental responses cannot be measured a light appears make a decision directly but can be inferred from the participant’s behavior Choice RT task: participant pushes Choice RT = 1/10th sec one button if light is on right side, longer than Simple RT another if light is on left side 1/10th sec to make decision Wundt (1879) Ebbinghaus (1885) First psychology laboratory Read list of nonsense syllables aloud many times to determine University of Leipzig, number of repetitions necessary Germany to repeat list without errors RT experiments After some time, he Approach relearned the list  Structuralism: Short intervals = fewer experience is determined Caption: Ebbinghaus’s retention curve, repetitions to relearn determined by the method of savings. by combining elements (Based on data from Ebbinghaus, 1885) of experience called Learned many different sensations lists at many different Savings = [(initial repetitions) retention intervals – (relearning repetitions)] / Method  Analytic (initial repetitions) introspection: Forgetting curve shows participants trained to savings as a function of describe experiences retention interval and thought processes in response to stimuli John Watson John Watson noted two 9-month-old became Classical Conditioning problems with this: frightened by a rat after a Pair a neutral event with an event loud noise was paired with that naturally produces some Extremely variable results every presentation of the rat outcome. After many pairings, the from person to person “neutral” event now also Results difficult to verify produces the outcome Invisible inner mental Watson (1920) – “Little Albert” processes experiment - Behavior can be proposed a new approach analyzed without any reference called behaviorism to the mind. Examined how pairing one stimulus with another Eliminate the mind as a topic affected behavior of study Caption: Pavlov’s famous experiment Instead, study directly paired ringing a bell with presentation of food. Initially, only presentation of the observable behavior food caused the dog to salivate, but after a number of pairings of bell and food, the “Little Albert” experiment bell alone caused salivation. This principle of learning by pairing, which came to be Classical conditioning of fear called classical conditioning, was the basis of Watson’s “Little Albert” experiment.  The decline of behaviourism Skinner (1938) ~ A controversy over language acquisition ~ Interested in determining Skinner (1957) Chomsky (1959) the relationship between Argued children learn Argued children do not stimuli and response language through operant only learn language conditioning through imitation and Operant conditioning Children imitate speech reinforcement Shape behavior by they hear Children say things they rewards or punishments Correct speech is have never heard and rewarded can not be imitating Behavior that is rewarded Children say things that is more likely to be are incorrect and have repeated not been rewarded for Behavior that is punished Language must be is less likely to be determined by inborn repeated biological program Tolman (1948) The decline of behaviourism trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze Two competing interpretations: Behaviorism predicts that the rats learned to “turn right to find food” Caption: Maze used by Tolman. (a) Rat initially explores the maze; (b) then learns Tolman believed that the rats to turn right to obtain food at B when it starts at A; (c) when placed at C, the rat turns left to reach the food at B. In this experiment, precautions are taken to prevent the rat from had created a cognitive map knowing where the food is based on cues such as smell. of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm What happens when the rats are placed in a different arm of the maze? The rats navigated to the specific arm where they previously found food Supported Tolman’s interpretation Did not support behaviorism interpretation  ACTIVITY 2: The complexity of Cognition Cognitive processes are usually complex and hidden from view. Example: The Stroop effect Beginning in the top left-hand corner, name each colour as fast as you can 14 Beginning in the top left-hand corner, name the colour of ink in which each word is printed as fast as you can COGLAB 15 DEMO  Which task was more difficult? Why do you think it is more difficult? The effect names of the words interferes with the ability to name the colours of the ink People can’t help paying attention to the words even though they weren’t asked too Some stimulus can affect our behaviour by forcing themselves on our consciousness even if we are actively trying to ignore them It was difficult to ignore the automatic reading process 16  To understand complex cognitive behaviors: Measure observable behavior Make inferences about underlying cognitive activity Consider what this Information- behavior says about processing how the mind works Cognitive approach revolution A way to study the mind created from Studying the Shift from insights associated Mind behaviorist’s with the digital stimulus-response computer relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind  COGNITIVE REVOLUTION Caption: Timeline showing events associated with the decline of the influence of behaviorism (above the line) and events that led to the development of the information-processing approach to cognitive psychology (below the line). The Cognitive Revolution Cherry (1953) Broadbent (1958) Early computers (1950s) Dichotic listening Flow diagram Present message A in representing what Processed information left ear happens as a person in stages Present message B in directs attention to one How much information right ear stimulus can the mind absorb? To ensure attention, Unattended information Attend to just some of shadow one message does not pass through the incoming Participants were able the filter information? to focus only on the message they were shadowing Caption: (a) Flow diagram for an early computer. (b) Flow diagram for Broadbent’s filter model of attention.  Researching the Mind Behavior approach measures relationship between stimuli and behavior Physiological approach measures relationship between physiology and behavior Both contribute to our understanding of cognition  Researching the Mind – Memory Consolidation Memory for recent events is fragile If processing is disrupted, recent memories can fail to be consolidated New information can interfere with memory consolidation  Researching the Mind – Memory Consolidation Behavior approach Muller and Pilzecker (1900) had participants learn two lists of words – Independent variable: One group learned the second list immediately after the first list The other group experienced a six-minute delay between learning the lists – Dependent variable: Memory (recall) for the first list of words  Researching the Mind – Memory Consolidation Behavior Approach Gais et al. (2007) the effect of sleep on memory consolidation – Independent variable: One group learned a list of words shortly before going to sleep The other group, many hours before going to sleep – Dependent variable: Memory (forgetting) for the list of words measured two days later Caption: Results of the Gais et al. (2007) experiment in which memory for word pairs was tested for two groups. The sleep group went to sleep shortly after learning a list of word pairs. The awake group stayed awake for quite a while after learning the word pairs. Both groups did get to sleep before testing, so they were equally rested before being tested, but the performance of the sleep group was better.  Researching the Mind – Memory Consolidation Physiological approach Gais et al. (2007) the effect of sleep on memory consolidation – Brain activity at encoding and retrieval – Measured using brain imaging (fMRI) Results – Found differential brain activity between the two groups  Cognitive Science Interdisciplinary study of the mind – Psychology – Computer science – Cognitive anthropology – Linguistics – Neuroscience – Philosophy Goal: finding ways to study and understand the inner workings of the mind