SP 201
Cognitive Psychology
CHAPTER 1
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognitive psychology is the study of
perception, attention, memory, language, and
thinking in humans...how we know about the
world.
...the scientific study of the human mind and
information processing
Related to other fields - linguistics, computer
science, philosophy, development, etc.
Scientific Study of Info
Processing...
Scientific study: Based on the experimental
method, empirical, scientific.
Human information processing: People
sometimes operate as information processors.
Information comes from the environment, is
stored briefly, some is selected for additional
processing, something is done to it, it may result
in some additional behavior.
Why do we study it?
Theoretical reasons -
to learn more about Practical reasons - to
the processes that develop better human-
underlie our ability to
machine border,
represent information
about the world in develop improved
memory, how teaching methods,
language works, and understand where
how we solve things like stereotypes
problems, how we come from, etc.
learn things, etc
Models of Cognition
• The primary approach to cognitive
psychology today is information processing.
• The information processing approach
assumes that information from the
environment undergoes a series of
transformations as it is processed by
different cognitive systems
Information Processing
Approach
Assumptions of Info Proc.
Approach
Cognition occurs through series of
sequential stages
each stage performs unique process on
incoming info received from environment
(“internal representations”) or other stages
Response is assumed to be the product of
these processes
2 Issues Result…
What are the stages through which
information passes?
In what form is the information represented
in the human mind?
Domain of Cognitive Psych
The field draws off research, theory and
expertise from at least 12 different areas
Each of these areas are covered in dif
chapters.
Areas in Domain
Cognitive Language
Neuroscience Developmental
Perception Psychology
Attention Thinking and concept
Memory formation
Representation of Human intelligence
Knowledge Artificial Intelligence
Imagery Pattern Recognition
Philosophical Roots
Rationalist Empiricist
Logic & reasoning Experience &
is key observation is key
Philosophical Antecedents of
Psychology
PLATO (ca. 428-348 B.C) – Rationalism
Nature of reality
Reality resides not in the concrete objects we
perceive but in the abstract forms that these objects
represent
How to investigate reality
Observation is misleading
The route to knowledge is through logical analysis
ARISTOTLE (ca. 384-322 B.C)
– Empiricism
Nature of reality
Reality lies only in the concrete world of objects
that our bodies sense
How to investigate reality
The route to knowledge is through empirical
evidence, obtained through experience and
observation
Observations of the external world are the only
means to arrive at truth
RENE DESCARTES(1596-
1650) – Rationalism
“Cogito ergo sum”
Mental representations
Descartes raised, directly or indirectly, virtually all the
significant issues related to the foundations of the science of
the mind
He had taken the principles from his writings on meteors,
optics, mathematics, and mechanics and considered their
applicability to human phenomena
Innate ideas
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)–
Empiricism
“tabula rasa” (“blank slate”)
both sighted and blind people ought to be able to
learn the meanings of words like statue and feel but
the blind ought to be unable to acquire words like
picture and see…
Learning
Humans are born without knowledge
No innate ideas
Structuralism
Goal of psychology
To understand the structure of the mind and its
perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their
constituent components
Method
Introspection – looking inward at pieces of
information passing through consciousness
Proponents
Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener
Functionalism
Goal of psychology
To study the processes of mind rather than its
contents
Method
Various methods – introspection, observation,
experiment
Proponents
William James
Principles of Psychology (1890)
Behaviorism
Goal of psychology
To study observable behavior
Any hypotheses about internal thoughts and ways of
thinking are nothing more than speculation
We can not say anything meaningful about
cognition
Method
Animal experiments, conditioning experiments
Proponents
John Watson, B.F. Skinner
Gestalt Psychology
Goal of psychology
To understand psychological phenomena as
organized, structured wholes
The whole differs from the sum of its parts
Method
Various methods – experiment, observation
Proponents
Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler
Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
Karl Lashley (1890-1958)
Psychobiological arguments against behaviorism
Playing piano
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 can not 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 can not explain how children can
produce novel sentences they never heard
Infinite number of sentences we can produce can
not 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
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
Cognitive Models and
Conceptual Science
In general, most hypotheses about the mind
come from behavioral studies
i.e., seeing what people do in psychological
experiments
However, cognitive psychology also
considers information acquired through
modeling cognitive processes, analyzing
impaired systems, and introspection.
Cognitive Psychology and
Conceptual Science
Conceptual science - very general, consequences
of observations, metaphorical
Cognitive Models - abstract organizational ideas
derived from inferences based on observations;
part of conceptual science
Specialized forms of scientific concepts that have the
same purposes
used to describe the detection, storage and use of
information within the “system”
Computer Modeling
designing a program to run on a computer
to simulate what a human does
should be grounded in what humans actually do
limitation - there are sometimes several means
to the same end
Psychophysics
• is the study of the relationship between
physical reality and the mind.
• refers to the interaction of the mind
(psyche) and the physical world
• how information from the physical world
(such as light and sound) was translated
into mental experience (such as the
perception of brightness and loudness).
