Cognitive psychology

• Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.
• Memory, attention, perception, reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, and language are all aspects of cognitive psychology.
• A cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn language.
• Objects look farther away on foggy days than they really are due to a phenomenon known as atmospheric perspective.
• Many people remember a particular experience, such as a very happy moment or an embarrassment during childhood, yet they forget the names of people they have known for many years.
• Cognitive psychologists use various methods to study how people think, including experimental methods, observational methods, and computational modeling.
• Cognitive psychology developed from psychology and has been influenced by other disciplines such as philosophy and physiology.
• Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world, in part through introspection, the examination of inner ideas and experiences.
• Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter, primarily through empirical methods.
• Rationalist philosophers acquire knowledge through thinking and logical analysis.
• Empiricist philosophers acquire knowledge via empirical evidence.
• Jerry Fodor popularized the concept of the modularity of mind, arguing that the mind has distinct modules, or special-purpose systems, to deal with linguistic and, possibly, other kinds of information.
• Karl Spencer Lashley considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior.
• The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve shows that the first few repetitions result in a steep learning curve, while later repetitions result in a slower increase of remembered words.
• In the early 1960s, developments in psychobiology, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence, as well as the reactions against behaviorism by many mainstream psychologists, converged to create an atmosphere ripe for revolution.
• John Watson, the “father” of radical behaviorism, believed that psychologists should concentrate only on the study of observable behavior.
• Modularity implies that the processes that are used in one domain of processing, such as the linguistic or the perceptual domain, operate independently of processes in other domains.
• In the early 1950s, a cognitive revolution occurred and increased interest in the study of mental processes (cognitions) emerged.
• Thorndike's assertion that when certain stimulus-response are followed by pleasure, they are strengthened, while responses followed by annoyance or pain tend to be “stamped out” is known as the law of effect.
• We best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes, according to Gestalt Psychology.
• An Integrative Synthesis: Associationism is the study of the association of stimuli.
• Hermann Ebbinghaus studied how people learn and remember material through rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material to be learned.
• Associationism, as defined by Ebbinghaus and Thorndike, is the study of the association of stimuli.
• Structuralism, as defined by Wundt, is the study of the elements of the mind through introspection.
• B.F. Skinner believed that virtually all forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the environment.
• Functionalism, as defined by James, is the study of the functions of the mind through the study of behavior.
• Correlational studies cannot infer causation and determine the nature of the relationship between variables by the size of the "r".
• Controlled laboratory experiments involve obtaining samples of performance at a particular time and place.
• Computer simulations and artificial intelligence involve attempting to make computers simulate human cognitive performance on various tasks or researchers programming computers to imitate a given human function or process.
• In an experiment, the independent variable is manipulated, the dependent variable is measured, and all other variables are controlled and prevented.
• Psychobiological research involves investigators studying the relationship between cognitive performance and cerebral events and structures.
• Fundamental ideas in cognitive psychology include that empirical data and theories are both important, cognition is generally adaptive but not in all specific instances, cognitive processes interact with each other and with noncognitive processes, and cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods.
• Case studies involve engaging in intensive study of single individuals, drawing general conclusions about behavior.
• Naturalistic observation involves observing real-life situations, as in classrooms, work settings, or homes.
• Self-reports in psychobiological research can be obtained from participants' reports of own cognition in progress or as recollected.
• Typical dependent variables in experiments include percent correct/error rate, accuracy of mental processing, and reaction time (milliseconds).
• Performance components are used for the actual writing in research methods such as controlled experiments, psychobiological research, self reports, case studies, and naturalistic observation.
• Typical independent variables in experiments include characteristics of the situation, presence or absence of a stimulus, characteristics of the task, and characteristics of participants.
• Psychobiological research can be conducted on animal brains and human brains, using postmortem studies and various psychobiological measures or imaging techniques.
• Two Greek philosophers who have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology and many other fields are Rationalist Plato and Empiricist Aristotle.