Cognitive Psychology Spring 2015

Dr. Cervantes

Questions to Consider

• How is cognitive psychology relevant to everyday experience?

• Are there practical applications of cognitive psychology?

• How is it possible to study the inner workings of the mind, when we can’t really see the mind directly?

• What is the field of cognitive psychology?

• If you change your thinking, you change your attitude.

• If you change your attitude, you change your action.

• If you change your action, you change your habit.

• If you change your habit, you change your personality.

• If you change your personality, you change your destiny.

• If you change your destiny, you change your life.

Some Hindu proverb (from an unknown source)

Learning Objectives

• Cognitive Psychology Defined

• History of the Field

• Modern Approaches to Studying the Mind

• Challenges of the Field

• Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology is…

• The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.

History of Cognitive Ψ If you wanted to understand how people think which method would you use? What would you focus on?

Rationalist • Acquire knowledge

through thinking and

logical analysis

Empiricist • Acquire knowledge via

empirical evidence

Decline and Rebirth

• John Watson and Behaviorism – Studied impact of stimulus conditions on

behavior (stimulus-response) –Most famous study: Little Albert

• B.F. Skinner – Studied operant conditioning: believe

reinforcements, not free will, determined behavior

• Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) How do children acquire language?

–Behaviorist:

• Imitate adults and establish stimulus and response connections.

• “Dog”

Chomsky disagreed with Skinner!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

Lewis Carrol

Cognitive Psychology To Behaviorism: “This Should Not Be Possible”

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

How does scientific investigation work? – Theory development

–Hypotheses formulation

–Hypotheses testing

–Data gathering

–Data analysis

If you wanted to understand cognition? What would you focus on?

Clever Crows

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

• Controlled laboratory experiments – An experimenter controls as many aspects of

the experimental situation as possible

• Advantages – Enables isolation of causal factors

– Excellent means of testing hypotheses

• Disadvantages – Often lack of ecological validity

Modern Approaches to Study the Mind

• Behavioral Approach – Measure behavior and explain cognition in terms of

behavior

• Physiological Approach – Measure both behavior and physiology and explain

cognition in terms of physiology

• Self-reports – Participant’s reports of own cognition in progress or

as recollected

• 1st cognitive psychology experiment, 1868

– Donders, Dutch physiologist

– Used mental chronometry

– What is mental chronometry?

– What are 2 ways to measure? • ____________ • ____________

– Mental processes are ____________ from behavior

Modern Approaches to Study the Mind

• 1st cognitive psychology experiment, 1868

– Donders Experiment

– Used mental chronometry

– What is mental chronometry?

– What are 2 ways to measure? • ____________ • ____________

– Mental processes are ____________ from behavior

Modern Approaches to Study the Mind

• Cognitive Psychology versus Neurobiology

–Neurobiology: how does the brain do it?

–Cognitive Psych: how does the mind do it?

–Both can use neurons to describe mind

– The difference is behavior (the big picture)

Volunteer?

• Try reporting aloud the various steps involved in grasping a pen

•Phineas Gage

Challenges of Cognitive Ψ

• Often times, “the processes involved in cognition are complex and hidden from view”

• Take a moment and think about all that is happening around you (perception, attention, memory, reasoning)

• Complexity examples

Some elements of cognitions…

• Often complex

• Occur rapidly

• Occur automatically (unconsciously)

• May occur with other cognitions

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

1. Data without a theory is meaningless, theory without data is empty

• Example: observation that people’s ability to

recognize faces is better than their ability to recall faces

• A theory provides – An explanation of data – Basis for prediction of other data

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

2. Cognitive processes interact with each other and with non-cognitive processes

• Examples – Memory processes depend on perceptual

processes

– Thinking depends on memory

– Motivation interacts with learning

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

3. Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods

• There is no one right way to study cognition

• Cognitive psychologists need to learn a variety of different kinds of techniques to study cognition

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

4. Basic research in cognitive psychology may lead to application, applied research

may lead to basic understanding

• Basic research often leads to immediate application – Example: spaced vs massed practice

• Applied research often leads to basic findings – Example: eyewitness testimony research has

enhanced our basic understanding of memory construction

Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

Textbook’s Seven Themes of Cognition

• Attention • Data-driven processing vs conceptually-

driven • Representation • Implicit vs explicit memory • Metacognition • Brain • Embodiment

Assumptions of Modern Cognitive

Psychology

1. Mental processes exist

2. These processes can be studied and "discovered"

3. It is possible to infer a mental process from

behavior - can we infer a mental process from brain activity?

4. Mental processes involve a series of steps

5. Mental processes take time

Applications of Cognitive Psychology

• Know Thyself (I think therefore I am)

• Clinical / Neurology (I think therefore I’m wired)

• Human Factors (I think therefore ipod)

• Education (I learn therefore higher ed)

• Commerce (I shop therefore I debt)