cog psych fall 2014 intro

1. Cognitive Psychology
Fall 2014
Dr. Cervantes

2. 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?

3. Cognitive Psychology is…
• The study of how people perceive, learn,
remember, and think about information.

4. 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

5. 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

6. • 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!

7. '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”

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. • 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

17. 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)

18. Volunteer?
• Try reporting aloud the various steps
involved in grasping a pen
•Phineas Gage

19. 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

20. Some elements of cognitions…
• Often complex
• Occur rapidly
• Occur automatically (unconsciously)
• May occur with other cognitions

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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)