cognition midterm chapter 1
What was Cherry's dichotic listening test and what does it tell us about perception? Outline Broadbent's information processing diagram applied to Cherry's study.
"Dichotic" listening Present message A in left ear Present message B in right ear Participants were asked to attend to either the left or right message. Participants were able to focus only on the message they were shadowing ......
What is cognition?
Cognition refers to the mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory these mental processes are associated with the mind. Cognition involves all of the mental activities that are involved in learning, remembering, and using knowledge. Perception Paying attention Remembering Distinguishing items in a category Visualizing Comprehension and production of language Problem solving Reasoning and decision-making Most automatic, but all include "hidden" processes of which we may not be aware
Describe the rise of behaviorism, especially the influence of Watson andSkinner. How did behaviorism affect research on the mind? Outline the first classical conditioning and operant conditioning experiments.
John Watson PhD (from the University of Chicago) in Psychology in 1904 John Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism Eliminate the mind as a topic of study. Analytic introspection Extremely variable results from person to person Results difficult to verify Invisible inner mental processes Instead, study directly observable behavior Eliminate study of consciousness (thinking, memory, emotions) Reaction time - observable behavior Classical Conditioning; Operant Conditioning Watson and Rayner (1920) - "Little Albert" experiment Classical conditioning of fear 9-month-old became frightened by a rat after a loud noise was paired with every presentation of the rat Behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind Examined how pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior Classical conditioning Pair a neutral event with an event that naturally produces some outcome After many pairings, the "neutral" event now also produces the outcome Watson: Everything from speech to emotional responses were simply patterns of stimulus and response. Watson no mind, no consciousness Watson believed that all individual differences in behavior were due to different experiences of learning, and this is measured in behavior. B.F. Skinner (1940s-1960s) Interested in determining the relationship between stimuli and response (same as Donders) Positive reinforcement: Behavior that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated Negative reinforcement: Removal/avoidance of a stimulus produces desired outcome Behaviorism was prominent throughout the 1940's to 1960's. Psychologists applied both classical and operant conditioning to classroom study and in the treatment of psychological disorders. A small pool of psychologists continued to utilize observation of behavior to infer mental processes.
What are two ways of defining the mind? What is cognition and how does it relate to the mind?
2 definitions (from your book...) 1. The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning . This definition reflects the mind's central role in determining our various mental abilities. 2. The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals . Representations
Describe the events that helped lead to the decline in importance of behaviorism in psychology and the events that led to the "cognitive revolution."How did Skinner and Chomsky differ on their views on language acquisition.
A controversy over language acquisition Skinner (1957) - Verbal Behavior Argued children learn language through operant conditioning Children imitate speech they hear Correct speech is rewarded Chomsky (1959) Argued children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement Children say things they have never heard and can not be imitating Children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for Language must be determined by inborn biological program
Describe the behavioral experiment by Tolman and how it was used to infer processes of the mind. How did this differ from the study of behaviorism?
Edward Chance Tolman - behaviorist and cognitive psychologist Tolman (1938): trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze behaviorism predicts that the rats will learn to "turn right to find food " When rats were placed in the opposite start arm, they still traversed to "B" to retrieve food.I Tolman believed that the rats had created a cognitive map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm. Cognitive map: conception within rats mind where locations are in space Did not support behaviorism interpretation Internal processes such as thinking or "maps within the mind" were not observable. Cognitive neuroscience has determined we use both cognitive maps and working reference to complete this task.
Why could we say that Donders and Ebbinghaus were cognitive psychologists, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology? Describe Donders's experiment and the rationale behind it, and Ebbinghaus's memory experiments. What do Donders's and Ebbinghaus's experiments have in common(inferring mental processes)?
Franciscus Donders (1868) - first "cognitive psychology" experiment. Measuring how long it takes a person to make a decision Reaction-time (RT) experiment RT: Measures interval between stimulus presentation and person's response to stimulus (ms/s) Simple RT task: participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears Choice RT task: participant pushes one button if light is on right side, another if light is on left side Choice (Decision) Right or Left? Which button to push? Followed by action. Donders measured the relationship between presentation of the stimulus and the subject's response. Donders (1868) - results Choice RT - Simple RT = Time to make a decision Choice RT = 1/10th sec longer than Simple RT 1/10th sec to make decision Significant findings from Donders (1868) first cognitive psychological experiment Measured stimulus - response Mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant's behavior Donders inferred that during the 1/10th sec. subjects were "making a decision"
Define reaction time. Give examples of how this dependent variable is used today in cognitive psychology.
RT: common measurement in cognitive psychology studies measuring perception, attention, and recognition.
Why are models important in cognitive psychology? What are structural models? Process models? Do the boxes in process models correspond to structures in the brain?
Structural models are representations of a physical structure. i.e. model airplane Mimic the form or appearance of a given object Structures can also be represented by diagrams, (flow charts) that don't represent the physical structure of the brain but how these physical structures are interconnected. i.e. the human visual system and the process of visual perception is completed by the interconnections of the visual cortex and association cortices. Process model Process models represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes and outcomes/actions of these processes.
What is the information processing approach to studying the mind? What period of time did it coincide with?
To understand complex cognitive behaviors: 1. Measure observable behavior 2. Make inferences about underlying cognitive activity 3. Consider what this behavior says about how the mind works 1950's: technological advances -the computer How are humans and computers are both similar and different in how they process information? What can be measured in humans and computers that are immeasurable in the other? These are the limitations of this analogy and, thus, the challenges that will be faced when studying cognition of the mind? Can a computer program "think" like a human? Shift from behaviorist's stimulus-response relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind Information-processing approach A way to study the mind created from insights associated with the digital computer Information is first received by an input processor, then it is stored in a memory unit, then it is processed/analyzed by an arithmetic unit, and creates some type of output/data. Early computers (1950s) Processed information in stages Information processing approach to studying the mind: approach traces mental operations involved in cognition.
What method did William James use to study the mind?
William James early American psychologist who taught the first psychology course at Harvard University Principles of Psychology (1890) Observations based on the functions of his own mind, not experiments Considered many topics in cognition, including thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagination, and reasoning.
Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology? What did he call his 'school of thought'? Describe the method of analytic introspection that was used in this laboratory. What were the criticisms of the method of analystic introspection?
William Wundt (1897) First psychology laboratory University of Leipzig, Germany Schools of Thought/Schools of psychology Approach structuralism Structuralism: experience is determined by combining elements of experience called sensations Just as chemistry developed a periodic table of the elements, which combine to create molecules, Wundt wanted to create a "periodic table of the mind," which would include all of the basic sensations involved in creating the human experience Wundt (1897) MethodAnalytic introspection: participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli Studied elements that made up conscious perception Required extensive training from participants Wundt asked participants to describe their experience of hearing a five-note chord played on the piano. One of the questions Wundt hoped to answer was whether his subjects were able to hear each of the individual notes that made up the chord. Structuralism - abandoned in early 1900's - the sum is not the whole of its parts.
