COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY REVIEWER 1

• Cognitive Psychology investigates how people think and study how they perceive, learn, remember, and think about information
• Dialectic is a developmental process where ideas evolve through a pattern of transformation
• Historians of psychology trace its roots to two approaches: Philosophy and Physiology
• Rationalism believes in acquiring knowledge through thinking and logical analysis without the need for experiments
• Empiricism acquires knowledge through empirical evidence, experience, and observation
• Structuralism was the first major school of thought psychology
• Wilhelm Wundt, the Father of Psychology, and the Founder of Structuralism in Psychology, used introspection to investigate the elementary components of an object or process
• Functionalism focuses on understanding the processes of thought rather than its components, studying what people do and why they do it
• William James, a key figure in Cognitive Psychology, discussed attention, consciousness, and perception
• Pragmatism believes knowledge is validated by its usefulness and is concerned with what people can do without knowledge of what people do. Also believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness
• Associationism examines how elements of the mind, such as events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind
• Hermann Ebbinghaus first experimenter to apply associanitism principles systematically, specifically ,he studied his mental process.
• Law of Effect states that a stimulus will produce a certain response if rewarded for it
• Behaviorism focuses on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli
• Ivan Pavlov studied classical conditioning and the importance of contingency in conditioning
• John B. Watson believed in studying observable behavior and not internal mental contents
• Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a radical behaviorist, believed human behavior could be explained by reactions to the environment
• B.F. Skinner:

  • Operant conditioning involves strengthening or weakening behavior based on reinforcement or punishment
  • Applied experimental analysis of behavior to psychological phenomena like learning, language acquisition, problem-solving
• Edward Tolman:

  • Father of Modern Cognitive Psychology
  • Believed understanding behavior required understanding the purpose and plan for the behavior
  • Thought all behavior is directed toward a goal
• Albert Bandura:

  • Noted learning can result from observations of rewards or punishments given to others
  • Emphasized how we observe and model our own behavior after others
  • Introduced the concept of social learning and considering internal mental processes
• Criticism of Behaviorism:

  • Did not account well for complex mental activities like language learning and problem-solving
  • Some psychologists wanted to understand what goes on inside the head
• Gestalt Psychology:

  • States we best understand psychological phenomena when viewing them as organized wholes
  • Studied insight to understand unobservable mental events
  • Emphasized that the whole is more than the sum of its parts
• COGNITIVISM

  • Belief that human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think
• Psychobiology:

  • Branch of science dealing with the biological basis of behavior and mental phenomena
  • Describes the interaction between biological systems and behavior
• Karl Spencer Lashley:

  • Challenged the behaviorist view of the brain as a passive organ
  • Considered the brain an active, dynamic organizer of behavior
• Donald O. Hebb:

  • Proposed the concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain
  • Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation
• Noam Chomsky:

  • Stressed the biological basis and creative potential of language
  • Pointed out the infinite number of sentences we can produce with ease
• Jerry Fodor:

  • Introduced the modularity of the mind concept
  • Processes used in one domain of processing are independent of processes in other domains
• Turing Test:

  • A computer program judged successful if its output is indistinguishable from humans
• Artificial Intelligence (AI):

  • The attempt to construct systems showing intelligent processing of information
• Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology:

  • Controlled laboratory experiments
  • Psychobiological research
  • Self-reports
  • Case studies
  • Naturalistic observations
  • Computer simulations & AI
• The experimenter conducts research typically in laboratory setting

  LABORATORY O R OTHER CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS