Cognitive Processes I
(B.A. (Hons) Applied Psychology)
Module I Introduction: Lecture 2 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Dr. Ben Wright Assistant Professor
Contact Details
Telephone: 9871124442 Email: bwright@[Link]
Definitions
1. Cognition is a term referring to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. These processes include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging and problem solving. These are higher-level functions of the brain and encompass language, imagination, perception and planning 2. Cognitive Psychology is the branch of Psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember and learn. As part of the larger field of Cognitive Science, this branch of Psychology is related to other disciplines including Neuroscience, Philosophy and Linguistics
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Key Figures I
Cognition can be traced back to Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952) and Donald Hebb (19041985) linked psychological phenomena with brain structure and function. With the rise of computer science and artificial intelligence, analogies were drawn between information processing by humans and by machines
Kurt Koffka (1886-1941), Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967) and Max Wertheimer (18801943) co-founded Gestalt Psychology
Key Figures II
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) focused on child development and, in 1955, created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology George Miller (1920-) is well known for his book The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two and for dedicating his career to the development of WordNet, a semantic network for the English language used for many machine ontologies The cognitive approach was brought to prominence by Donald Broadbents (1926-1993) 1958 book Perception and Communication in which he presented an information processing model of cognition The term was coined by Ulric Neisser (1928-2012) in his 1967 book Cognitive Psychology. Neisser characterised people as dynamic information-processing systems whose mental operations might be described in computer terms
Key Figures III
Avram Noam Chomsky (1928-) is an American Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist, Historian and Activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. Chomskys critique of the behaviourist model of language acquisition is widely regarded as a key factor in the decline of behaviourisms prominence At a Massachusetts Institute of Technology meeting in 1956, Chomsky delivered a paper on his theory of language, Miller on the magic number seven in short-term memory and Newell and Simon on the General Problem Solver computer model
Cognitive Psychology I
Perception: - General perception - Psychophysics - Attention and filter theories - Pattern recognition - Time sensation - Form perception Categorisation: - Category induction and acquisition - Categorical judgement and classification - Category representation and structure Memory: - Aging and memory
Cognitive Psychology II
- Autobiographical memory - Emotion and memory - Episodic memory - Eyewitness memory - False memories - Memory biases - Short-term memory - Long-term memory - Semantic memory Knowledge representation: - Mental imagery - Propositional encoding Numerical cognition
Cognitive Psychology III
Language: - Linguistics and grammar - Phonetics and phonology - Language acquisition Thinking: - Concept formation - Judgement and decision making - Logic, formal and natural reasoning - Problem solving Cognitive Psychology is related to a range of other disciplines
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