Lesson 1 Intro to Cognitive Psychology

LESSON 1: INTRO TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn language - - Heuristics are mental shortcuts we use to process information. When we think about an issue and certain examples immediately come to mind, we are using the “availability heuristic” Dialectic - A dialectic is a developmental process whereby ideas evolve over time through a back-and-forth exchange of ideas; in a way, it is like a discussion spread out over an extended period of time Thesis - A thesis is a statement of belief Antithesis - is a statement that counters a thesis. Synthesis - integrates the most credible features of each of two (or more) views. PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY RATIONALISM - - Plato - believes that the route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need any experiments to develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested in cognitive processes would appeal to reason as a source of knowledge or justification René Descartes - Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)  Viewed the introspective, reflective method as being superior to empirical methods for finding truth.  Only proof of his existence is that he was thinking and doubting. EMPIRICISM - Aristotle - believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence— that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation John Locke – Tabula Rasa  Humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through empirical observation. Immanuel Kant - both rationalism and empiricism have their place PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY STRUCTURALISM - 1st major school of thought in psychology. Goal of Psychology: seeks to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components (affection, attention, memory, and sensation) Method:  Introspection- conscious observation of one’s thinking processes. Introspection aims to look at the elementary components of an object or process. Proponent: Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener Challenges of Introspection:  People may not always be able to say exactly what goes through their mind or may not be able to put it into adequate words.  What they say may not be accurate.  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 FUNCTIONALISM - Goal of Psychology: seeks to understand what people do and why they do it particularly interested in the practical applications of their research. Functionalists were interested in how people learn; they did not really specify a mechanism by which learning takes place Method  Various method - introspection, observation, experiment Proponents: William James, Principles of Psychology (1890) PRAGMATISTS - Knowledge is validated by its usefulness: Goal of Psychology: concerned not only with knowing what people do; they also want to know what we can do with our knowledge of what people do. Proponent: John Dewey ASSOCIATIONISM - Goal of psychology: examines how elements of the mind, such as events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning  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). Edward Lee Thorndike - Law of Effect, Law of Satisfaction, Law of Readiness Role of “satisfaction” is the key to forming associations. A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an organism is rewarded for that response BEHAVIORISM - Goal of Psychology: focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli Considered an extreme version of associations focuses entirely on the association between the environment and an observable behavior. Method: Animal experiments, conditioning experiments Proponents of Behaviorism: 1. John Watson - He believed that psychologists should concentrate only on the study of observable behavior. Behaviorism also differed from previous movements in psychology by shifting the emphasis of experimental research from human to animal participants 2. Burrhus Frederic Skinner - Believed that virtually all forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by reactions to the environment.  Rejected mental mechanisms  Believed instead that operant conditioning—involving the strengthening or weakening of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments—could explain all forms of human behavior. 3. Ivan Pavlov - Began with the observation that dogs salivated in response to the sight of the lab technician who fed them. This response occurred before the dogs even saw whether the technician had food. - CRITICISMS:  Behaviorism did not account as well for complex mental activities, such as language learning and problem-solving.  More than understanding people’s behavior, some psychologists wanted to know what went on inside the head  Using the techniques of behaviorism to study nonhuman animals was often easier than studying human ones. Some psychologists rejected radical behaviorism. They were curious about the contents of the mysterious black box. - Edward Tolman (1886–1959), thought that understanding behavior required taking into account the purpose of, and the plan for, the behavior Bandura (1977) noted that learning appears to result not merely from direct rewards for behavior, but it also can be social, resulting from observations of the rewards or punishments given to others GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY - Goal of psychology: to understand psychological phenomena as organized, structured wholes. The whole differs from the sum of its parts Methods: Various methods – experiment, observation Proponents: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler EMERGENCE OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - In the early 1950s, a movement called the “cognitive revolution” took place in response to behaviorism. Cognitivism is the belief that most human behavior explains how people think. Karl Lashley (1890-1958) - Psychobiological arguments against behaviorism On a behaviorist, stimulus-response account, an activity such as rapidly playing a correct sequence of notes from memory on an instrument would involve an associative chain of stimuli and responses Such associative chains cannot explain the behavior; input is never put into a a static system, but always into a system which is actively organized Noam Chomsky - Linguistic arguments against behaviorism Arguments from language acquisition Behaviorists cannot explain how children can produce novel sentences they never heard Infinite number of sentences we can produce cannot be learned by reinforcement – there must be a cognitive algorithmic structure in our mind underlying language Alan Turing - Development of first computers His “Colossus” computer helped break the German “Enigma” codes during the World War II It has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by two years Analogy between computers and human minds - Hardware (brain), Software (mind). Thinking can be described in terms of algorithmic manipulation of some information. These ideas gave rise to the information processing paradigm in psychology – cognitive psychology Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as human attempts to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information. Many of the early cognitive psychologists became interested in cognitive psychology through applied problems. Advertising has extensively used applied cognitive psychology.