1 intro

• Learning objectives


  1. What is cognitive psychology

  2. Scientific approach

  3. Brief history of cognitive psychology

  4. Complementary methods in cognitive psychology (principle of converging operations)
• Cognitive psychology


  Study of internal mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, reading, writing, and reasoning. Concerns processes involved in acquiring, storing, and transforming information
• Questions answered by cognitive psychology

  • Why are there still typos in your term papers, despite multiple rounds of proofreading?
  • Why is it difficult to listen to the lecturer and take notes at the same time?
  • Why do you remember things that never happened? (fallibility of human memory, fail to remember what happened or didn't happen)
  • Why do you find some messages more persuasive than others?
  • Ability to read texts like these: order of letters appear in word doesn't matter, first and last letter in right place important, M1ND C4N R34D 7H15 4U7O W/0 7H1NK1NG
• Scientific method (research in cognitive psychology)

  1. Study eg: Stroop effect (1935)

  2. Theory

  3. Predictions / hypothesis

  4. Design and conduct experiment

  5. Collect and analyse data

  6. Compare data against predictions/hypothesis

  7. Draw conclusion about validity of theory
• Stroop effect study


  • IV: stimulus congruency (3 levels – congruent, incongruent, neutral)
  • DV: colour naming time
  • Results: Participants take longer and make more errors in naming the colour in incongruent conditions compared to congruent conditions or when the words are non-color words (neutral condition)
• Computational model that produces Stroop effect in humans: Cohen, Servan-Schreiber & McClelland (1992)
• Explaining the Stroop Effect

  1. Lack of matching – When words and colours don't match (incongruent condition e.g. BLUE), 2 pathways (word reading AND colour naming) are both activated at the same time causing conflict and slowing you down

  2. Automatic VS effortful pathway & inhibition – Word reading pathway is automatic vs colour naming pathway is effortful. In incongruent condition, need time to inhibit the automatic but incorrect responses (i.e. word naming pathway) to let colour naming pathway produce correct response, slowing you down
• Brief history of cognitive psychology


  1. Sensory memory → STM → LTM

  2. Information processing perspective

  3. 1970s: dominant approach in cognitive psychology

  4. Strict ordering – 1 system = 1 info

  5. Assumes that info in environment is processed mentally by different systems, each system handles different info. Info is transformed before being passed to the next system.

  6. Serial processing – in order, one process completed before the next begins

  7. Currently viewed as a limiting idea

  8. Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) - Info passing through different memory stores

  9. Sensory inputs: visual, audio → sensory memory

  10. Attention → STM

  11. Rehearsal to keep in (maintain) memory → LTM stable

  12. Limitations: strictly serial, no possibility of parallel processing (multiple boxes can be activated at the same time)

  13. Historical precursors to cognitive psychology
• Rehearsal to keep in memory


  Maintains long-term memory stability
• Limitations of rehearsal:
• No possibility of parallel processing (multiple boxes can be activated at the same time)
• Processing is typically more interactive (top to bottom, bottom to top)
• Historical precursors to cognitive psychology

  • Introspection
  • Behaviourism (Watson, 1919)
• Introspection


  Looking inside one's own mind, examining, describing own thoughts and mental states
• Introspection in relation to structuralism


  Breaking down mental experiences into simple events
• Limitations of introspection:
• Unaware of underlying cognitive processes - how we differentiated between words like JUDGE and JUGDE
• Potential bias of conscious experience
• Delay between conscious experience and reporting it
• Uncertainty on how to reconcile conflicting introspection reports
• Behaviourism (Watson, 1919)


  Subjective introspection deemed unreliable, focus on objective behavior verifiable by observation
• Focus on measurable behavior, behavior controlled by rewards and punishments
• Limitations of behaviorism:
• Abstract research, inaccessible to psychologists in other areas
• Results on non-human subjects, unclear if generalizable to humans
• Little evidence that children acquire language through behavioristic principles
• Grammatical errors typically not corrected, difficult to explain behaviorally how children learn language
• Cognitive revolution


  Linking mental processes to computers, explaining cognitive phenomena as information being stored and transformed similar to computers
• Task of cognitive psychologist to shed light on brain's "software" based on experimental data
• Growth of cognitive psychology from original ideas, parallel findings to explain cognitive phenomena as information processing
• Cognitive psychology (1967)


  Introduced by Ulric Neisser, considered the father of cognitive psychology
• Complementary approaches to cognitive psychology

  • Experimental cognitive psychology
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Cognitive neuropsychology
  • Computational cognitive science
• Experimental cognitive psychology:
• Focuses on carrying out experiments on healthy participants under laboratory conditions
• Explores processes and mechanisms underlying human cognition based on behavioral data
• Study of where and when cognitive processes occur in the brain using technology
• Common techniques used in cognitive neuroscience:
• Event-related potentials (ERP): Measure electrical activity on the scalp surface, useful for accessing the time-course of cognitive processes
• Patterns of cognitive performance shown by brain-damaged patients provide insights into normal brain function
• Event-related potentials (ERP)


  • Measure electrical activity on scalp surface
  • Very useful for accessing time-course of cognitive processes
  • Patterns of cognitive performance shown by brain-damaged patients