Cognitive Psychology

• Pragmatism: Believed that knowledge is validated by its usefulness

  What we can do with our knowledge of what people do

  Believed in the importance of psychology of learning and memory
• William James(1842-1910):

  Studied attention, consciousness and perception
• John Dewey(1859-1952): believed that education should be based on the idea of constructivism

  Pragmatic approach to thinking and schooling

  To learn effectively, we need to see the point of our education--the practical use of it
• Associationism


  Examines how events or ideas can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning
• Contiguity


  associating things that tend to occur together at about the same time
• Similarity


  associating things with similar features or properties
• Contrast


  associating things that seem to show polarities
• Herman Ebbinghaus(1850-1909)


  Studied and observed his own mental processes

  Used "systematic-experimental introspection"

  People learn and remember materials through rehearsal (conscious repetition of the to-be-learned material)
• Edward Lee-Thorndike(1874-1949)

  Role of "satisfaction" was key of forming associations

  Law of effect = a Stimuli will tend to produce a certain response over time if an organism is rewarded for that response

  An organism learns to respond in a given way (the effect) in a given situation if it is rewarded repeatedly of doing so (the satisfaction serves as the Stimuli to future actions)
• Behaviorism


  Emphasis of the behavior which is seen and measurable

  Usually makes use of Stimulus and Response
• Ivan Pavlov(1849-1936)

  Involuntary learning behavior

  Classical conditioning, over which the dog had no conscious control

  Has the unconditional stimulus and response
• Robert Rescole(1967)

  Classical conditioning involves more than just an association based on temporal contiguity (e.g. food and the conditioned Stimulus occurring at about the same time)

  Effective conditioning requires contingency (e.g. the presentation of food being contingent on the presentation of the conditioned Stimulus)

  Any internal thoughts and ways of thinking are nothing more than speculation, although they might belong within the domain of philosophy

  They certainly have no place in psychology
• John Watson(1878-1958)

  No use of internal mental contents or mechanisms

  Should study observable behavior

  Thinking as subvocalized speech

  Influenced by functionalist on what people do and what causes their actions

  Used animal subjects for experiments
• B.F. Skinner(1904-1990)

  All forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the environment, which could be studied effectively by observing behavior

  Operant conditioning = strengthening or weakening of behavior contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments

  From learning to language acquisition to problem solving
• Edward Tolman(1886-1959)

  The behavior of neither animals nor people could be understood without also taking into account the purpose of, and the plan for, the behavior

  All behavior is directed toward some goal

  Forefather of modern cognitive psychology

  Mental or cognitive maps - training rats in mazes, showed that animals had internal representation of behavior.
• Donald Hebb

  Brought behaviorism in the physiology of the organism

  Influential in establishing physiological psychology as part of behavioral theory

  Worked with Lashley and Robert Yerkes as well as Wilder Penfield
• Phrenology

  The first roots of cognitive neuroscience lie in phrenology, which was a pseudoscientific approach that claimed that behavior could be determined by the shape of the scalp.

  In the early 19th century, Franz Joseph Gall and J.G. Spurzheim believed that the human brain was localized into approximately 35 different sections.
• The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General

  Gall claimed that a larger bump in one of these areas meant that area of the brain was used more frequently
• Pierre Flourens

  a French experimental psychologist, was one of many that challenged the views of the phrenologists.

  Through his study of living rabbits and pigeons, he discovered that lesions to particular areas of the brain produced no discernible change in behavior.

  He proposed the theory that the brain is an aggregate field, meaning that different areas of the brain participate in behavior.
• John Hughlings Jackson

  Caused the localizationist view to re-emerge as the primary view of behavior.

  Jackson studied patients with brain damage, particularly those with epilepsy, discovered that they often made the same clonic and tonic movements of muscle during their seizures, believe that they must be occurring in the same place every time.

  Jackson proposed that specific functions were localized to specific areas of the brain, which was critical to future understanding of the brain lobes.
• Social Learning

  Albert Bandura

  Learning appears to result not merely from direct rewards for behavior

  Can be social, resulting from observations of the rewards or punishments given to others

  How we observe and model behavior often the behavior of others - learning by example
• Gestalt Psychology

  Organized, structure whole and not when we break the phenomena into smaller parts

  "the whole differs from the sum of its parts"
• Cognitivism

  the belief that much of human behavior can be understood if we understand first how people think
• Karl Spencer Lashley(1890-1958)

  PSYCHOBIOLOGY

  Neuroanatomy (study of the structure of the brain) and how the organization of the brain governs human activity

  Brain as an active, dynamic organizer of behavior
• Cognitive Neuroscience

  In 1861, French neurologist Paul Broca came across a man who was able to understand language but unable to speak.

  The man could only produce the sound "tan".

  It was later discovered that the man had damage to an area of his left frontal lobe now known as Broca's area.
• Carl Wernicke


  a German neurologist, found a similar patient, except that this patient could speak fluently but non-sensibly.

  The patient had been the victim of a stroke, and could not understand spoken or written language.

  This patient had a lesion in the area where the left parietal and temporal lobes meet, now known as Wernicke's area.
• Hitzig and Fritsch

  published findings about the behavior of animals

  ran an electrical current through the cerebral cortex of a dog, causing the dog to produce characteristic movements based on where the current was applied
• Korbinian Brodmann

  German neuroanatomist Korbinian Brodmann used tissue staining techniques developed by Franz Nissl to see the different types of cells in the brain.

  Though this study, Brodmann concluded in 1909 that the human brain consisted of fifty-two distinct areas, now named Brodmann areas.

  Distinctions: Brodmann area 17 and 18
• Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Camillo Golgi

  In the early 20th century, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi began working on the structure of the neuron.

  Golgi developed a silver staining method that could entirely stain several cells on a particular area, leading him to believe that neurons were directly connected with each other in one cytoplasm.

  Cajal challenged this view after staining areas of the brain that had less myelin and discovering that neurons were discrete cells.

  Cajal also discovered that cells transmit electrical signals down the neuron in one direction only.