PSC 100: Chapter 1 (Intro to Cognitive Psychology)

cognitive psychology

A branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind.

In order to understand how the mind works, what did scientists use to describe its functions?

A digital computer, since both the mind and computers process information in stages.

Miller's magic number

A rule that the information processing of the human mind is limited to about 7 items (plus or minus 2).

analytic introspection

A technique in which subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli. The subjects' goal was to describe their experience in terms of elementary mental elements.

structuralism

According to this approach, our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience that structuralists call sensations. Wundt wanted to create a "periodic table of the mind," which would include every basic sensation involved in creating experience.

behaviorism

An objective, experimental branch of natural science with the goal of predicting and controlling behavior.

information-processing approach

Approach based on the concept that the mind processes information in a number of stages.

Donald Broadbent

Based on Colin Cherry's research, he proposed the first flow diagram of the mind. "Input" = sounds of both the attended and unattended messages; "filter" lets through attended messages and filters out unattended messages; and "detector" records info that gets through the filter.

Why was Donders' experiment important?

Because it was one of the first cognitive psychology experiments and because it illustrates that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior.

operant conditioning

Focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers.

John B. Watson

Founded behaviorism because he rejected the method of analytic introspection. He wanted to restrict psychology to observable data, and replace the study of the mind with the study of directly observable behaviors. His most famous experiment was the "Little Albert" experiment (with the boy and the white rat). His ideas are associated with classical conditioning.

Wilhelm Wundt

Founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology. The lab was in Germany. His approach was called structuralism, and he thought he could achieve a description of the components of experience by using analytic introspection. Made a substantial contribution to psychology by his commitment to studying behavior and the mind under controlled conditions.

short-term memory

Has limited capacity and holds information for only a few seconds.

What was B. F. Skinner's argument about language development?

He believed that children acquire language through operant conditioning; that children imitate speech they hear, and repeat correct speech because it is rewarded. Noam Chomsky rejected this because children often say things that are not reinforced.

What was Noam Chomsky's argument about language development?

He believed that children develop language thanks to an inborn biological program that holds across cultures, and that language is a product of the way the mind is constructed rather than a result of reinforcement.

Why did John B. Watson dislike the idea of analytic introspection?

He thought that it produced extremely variable results from person to person, and that these results were difficult to verify because they were based on invisible inner mental processes.

How did Donders perform his experiment on decision making?

He used 2 measures of reaction time: simple reaction time (how quickly one could push a button in response to a stimulus) and choice reaction time (how quickly one could decide between 2 things and push the correct button). He thought that the difference in reaction time between the simple and choice conditions would indicate how long it took to make the decision that led to pushing the correct button. He concluded that decision-making took 1/10 of a second.

sensory memory

Holds incoming information for a fraction of a second and then passes most of it onto short-term memory.

Franciscus Donders

In 1868, he did one of the first experiments that today would be called a cognitive psychology experiment. His experiment attempted to determine how long it takes for a person to make a decision.

B. F. Skinner

Introduced operant conditioning. Like Watson, he was not interested in what was happening in the mind, but focused only on determining how behavior was controlled by stimuli.

working memory

Involved in holding information in memory as it is being manipulated in our brains, such as while we are doing a mental math problem.

What does the mind do?

It creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning. It is also a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.

What did Ebbinghaus' savings curve show?

Memory drops rapidly for the first 2 days after the initial learning and then levels off. This demonstrated that memory could be quantified and that functions like the savings curve could be used to describe a property of the mind -- in this case, the ability to retain information.

procedural memory

Memory for physical actions; e.g., tying your shoelaces.

episodic memory

Memory of events in your life.

semantic memory

Memory of facts.

heuristics

Mental shortcuts that can aid memory.

structural models

Models that represent the physical structure of something (the brain, in this case). They are designed to simplify the brain's structure, but still contain important information about the structures being represented so we can visualize the layout of a system and how its components are connected and interact. Important: most structural models are designed to represent structures involved in specific functions; e.g., only the parts of the brain involved in vision.

process models

Models that represent the processes involved in cognitive mechanisms; e.g., the process of memory. They make complicated systems easier to understand and provide a starting point for research.

the cognitive revolution

Occurred in the 1950s; the shift from the stimulus-response approach of behaviorists to an approach based on understanding how the mind works.

Edward Chance Tolman

One of the early cognitive psychologists, because he used behavior to infer mental processes. His most famous experiment involved placing a rat in a maze, allowing the rat to develop a *cognitive map* of the maze, and then seeing if the rat could find food that he placed in different locations (which it could). He was unique in his use of the word "cognitive" and his belief that something other than stimulus-response connections could be occurring in the rat's mind.

Colin Cherry's research

Studied dichotic listening. Presented subjects with 2 auditory messages - one to the left ear and one to the right - and had them focus on just one of the messages (the attended message) and ignore the other (the unattended message). He found that when the subject focused on the attended message, they could hear the other message also but didn't know what it said.

William James

Taught Harvard's first psychology course and wrote the first psychology textbook. His observations were based on observations of the operations of his own mind. He observed that paying attention to one thing involves withdrawing from other things, which is still valid today.

the logic theorist

The first artificial intelligence program, created by Simon and Newell. Could use humanlike reasoning processes to solve problems; e.g., creating proofs for problems in logic.

cognition

The mental processes (e.g., perception, attention, memory) that are what the mind does.

How did Hermann Ebbinghaus run his memory experiment?

Using himself as the subject, he repeated lists of nonsense syllables. He determined how long it took him to learn a list for the first time, then waited for a period of time (delay), and then determined how long it took him to relearn the list. Smaller savings meant more forgetting (more time spent relearning), and longer delays resulted in smaller savings.

John McCarthy

Wanted to create artificial intelligence - programming computers to mimic the operation of the human mind. Simon and Newell helped him do this, creating a program that could create proofs for problems in logic.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Was interested in determining the nature of memory and forgetting -- specifically, how rapidly information that was learned is lost over time.

long-term memory

Where some information from short-term memory ends up. Has a very high capacity and can hold information for long periods of time. Sometimes information can be transferred back to short-term memory; e.g., when you remember something from a long time ago.