Chapter 1 Intro

Which of the following is a criticism of analytic introspection?

It produces variable results from person to person.

episodic memory (long term memory)

memory for events in your life

semantic memory (long term memory)

memory for facts

long term memory

some info in short term memory can be transferred to this high capacity system that can hold info for long periods of time ~remembering something brings it back to short term memory

Tolman

~used behavior to infer mental processes ~cognitive map: a rat is placed in a maze at point A and cheese is at point B. The rat turns right to reach the cheese but is later placed at a point C and finds the cheese at point B by by turning left. The map is the conception of the maze in the rats mind

cognitive science

an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the mind that includes cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence

Watson

he believed that behavior can be analyzed without reference to the mind and he examined how pairing one stimulus with another affects behavior

sensory memory

holds incoming info for a fraction of a second then passes most of this information to short term memory which has limited capacity and holds info for seconds

the first experiments in cognitive psychology were based on the idea that mental responses can be ....

inferred from the participants behavior

working memory

involved in holding info in memory as it is being manipulated

Noam Chomsky

language development is determined not by imitation or reinforcement but by an inborn biological program that holds across cultures

how to understand complex cognitive behaviors

measure observable behavior, make inferences about underlying cognitive ability, and consider what this behavior says about how the mind works

The main point of the Donders' reaction time experiments was to....

measure the amount of time it takes to make a decision.

behavior approach

measures the relationship between physiology and behavior

mental chronometry ~Donders

measuring how long a cognitive process takes

According to your text, the behavioral approach to the study of the mind involves...

measuring the relation between stimuli and behavior.

The process during which information is strengthened and transformed into a strong memory that is resistant to interference is known as...

memory consolidation.

procedural memory (long term memory)

memory for physical actions

Donders contribution

mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behavior

What does cognition involve?

perception, attention, memory, representation of knowledge (associations between concepts), language, problem solving, and reasoning and decision making

Gais et al.'s research on the impact of sleep on memory consolidation illustrates which type of approach to the study of the operations of the mind?

physiological

Behaviorists believe that the presentation of ________ increases the frequency of behavior.

positive reinforcers

Reaction time refers to the time between the ________ of a stimulus and a person's response to it.

presentation

short term memory

receives info from sensory memory and has limited capacity and holds info for seconds

structural models

represent structures in the brain that are involved in specific functions

In Donders' experiment on decision making, when participants were asked to press a button upon presentation of a light, they were engaged in a...

simple reaction time task

how research progresses from question to question

start with what is known (theory; prior results), ask questions, design experiments, obtain and interpret results, and use results as the basis for new research questions and experiments

mind

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

process models

~illustrate how process operate with boxes representing processes and arrows indicating connections between processes ~ex. Broadbent's Filter Model

cognition involves

Perception, Attention, Memory, Representation of knowledge: associations between concepts, Language, Problem-solving, Reasoning, and decision-making. All include "hidden" processes of which we may not be aware

Which of the following events is most closely associated with the decline of behaviorism as an approach to psychology?

Skinner's publication of the book, Verbal Behavior

Who developed the concept of the cognitive map?

Tolman

A mental conception of the layout of a physical space is known as...?

a cognitive map

cognitive revolution

a shift in psychology from the behaviorists stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind

n Donders' experiment on decision making, when participants were asked to press one button if the light on the left was illuminated and another button if the light on the right was illuminated, they were engaged in a...

choice reaction time task.

Your text describes the occurrence of a "cognitive revolution" during which dramatic changes took place in the way psychology was studied. This so-called "revolution" occurred parallel to (and, in part, because of) the introduction of....

computers

Miller "The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus"

there are limits to the human's ability to process info- the info processing of the human mind is limited to about 7 items

flow diagram of the mind

~Broadbent provided a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of sequence of processing stages and proposed a model that could be tested ~input- filter- detector- to memory : many messages enter a filter which selects the message to which the person is attending for further processing by a detector and then storage in memory

Pavlove

~Classical conditioning (how pairing one stimulus with another, previously neutral stimulus causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus ) in dogs ~pairing of food with (made dogs salivate) with a bell (initially neutral stimulus) caused the dog to salivate to the sound of the bell

Franciscus Donders 1868

~Interested in reaction time to measure how long it takes a person to make a decision. ~Donders inferred a measure for mental response from the observed behavior that was measured- reaction time. ~Donders concludes decision making takes 1/10th of a sec ~simple reaction time: pushing a button as rapidly as possible when a light stimulus is presented ~ choice reaction time: with the use of two lights: pushing the left button when the left light goes on and the right button when the right light goes onbu

Donders Experiment

~Reaction-time (RT) experiment: measures interval between stimulus presentation and a person's response to stimulus ~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 RT - Simple RT = time to make a decision ~Choice RT= 1/10th sec (100ms) longer than simple RT ~1/10th sec (100ms) to make a decision

~Beilock and Working Memory

~Subjects with low working memory (LWM) and high working memory (HWM) were assigned a task under low and high pressure conditions ~under low pressure conditions subjects with HWM performed better because they used a calculation strategy which is more accurate and those with LWM use a shortcut method which is less accurate ~under high pressure conditions both those with HWM and LWM resorted to shortcut methods under pressure and performed the same

Ebbinghaus

~Wanted to determine how rapidly info is lost over time by means of a quantitative method for measuring memory (repeated lists of nonsense syllables by learning a list and measuring how much was forgotten after a delay with savings) ~savings: a measure to determine how much was forgotten after delay (original time to learn the list) - (time to relearn the list after the delay) ~ the longer the delay the smaller the savings ~ savings curve (percent savings vs. time): memory drops rapidly for the first 2 days after the initial learning and then levels off

Colin Cherry

~explored divided attention: when we decide to attend to one thing we must withdraw from other things ~experiment: placed 2 different recordings in left and right ears of participants and asked them to focus their attention on one of the messages and ignore the other one. The participants could hear the unfocused message but were unaware of its contents

Wilhelm Wundt: Structuralism 1879

~first psychology lab ~He believed in structuralism and he attempted to achieve this scientific description of the components of experience through analytic introspection ~Structuralism: overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience called sensations ~Analytic Introspection: a technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli ~invisible inner mental processes ~analytic introspection example: describe experience of hearing a 5 note chord on a piano ~structuralism: not a fruitful approach

Broadbent

~flow diagram representing what happens as a person directs attention to one stimulus ~unattended info does not pass through the filter

classical conditioning

~how pairing one stimulus with another, previously neutral stimulus causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus ex. Little Albert Experiment ~used by Watson to argue that behavior can be analyzed without reference to the mind

Skinner and Operant Conditioning

~operant conditioning: focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers such as food or social approval (or withdrawal of negative reinforcers such as shock or social rejection) ~"Verbal Behavior" children learn language through operant conditioning: children initiate speech they hear and correct speech is rewarded

John Watson and Behaviorism

~problems with analytic introspection (Wundt): (1) it produced extremely variable results from person to person (2) these results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes ~"Psychology As the Behaviorist Views It" (1) Watson rejects introspection as a method and (2) observable behavior, not consciousness (which would involve unobservable processes such as thinking, emotions, reasoning) ~Little Albert Experiment: 9 month old is subjected to a loud noise every time a rat came close to the child ~classical conditioning: how pairing one stimulus with another, previously neutral stimulus causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus

Ebbinghaus Study

~read list of nonsense syllables (DAX) aloud many times to determine the number of responses necessary to repeat the list without errors and after some time he relearned the list ~short intervals = fewer repetitions to relearn ~learned many different lists at many different retention intervals ~Savings = (initial repetitions- relearning)/(initial repetitions) ~forgetting curve shows savings as function of retintion interval

the cognitive revolution

~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

Herb Simon & Alan Newell

~the logic theorist: a program that was able to create proofs of mathematical theorems that involve principles of logic; used humanlike reasoning processes to solve problems

information processing approach

~traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition ~the operation of the mind can be described as occurring in a number of stages

Tolman cont...

~trained rats to find food in four armed maze ~two competing interpretations: behaviorism predicts that the rats learned to "turn right to find food" but Tolman believed that the rats had created a cognitive map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm based on that map ~when the rats were placed in a different arm of the maze the rats navigated to the specific arm where they previously found food, supporting Tolman's interpretation over behaviorism interpretation

William James

~wrote the Principles of Psychology based on observations of the operations of his own mind ~attention requires withdrawal from other things