The scientific investigation of human cognition, that is, all our mental abilities – perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, reasoning, and understanding
The Cognitive Revolution began
Mid-1950s
Cognitive psychology became predominant in the 1960s
Since 1970, more than sixty universities in North America and Europe have established cognitive psychology programs
Assumptions of cognitive psychology
Human cognition can at least in principle be fully revealed by the scientific method, that is, individual components of mental processes can be identified and understood
Internal mental processes can be described in terms of rules or algorithms in information processing models
Approaches in cognitive psychology
Experimental cognitive psychology
Computational cognitive psychology
Neural cognitive psychology
Sub-domains of cognitive psychology
Perception
Attention
Learning
Memory
Concept formation
Reasoning
Judgment and decision-making
Problem solving
Perception
How we construct subjective interpretations of proximal information from the environment
Attention
Solves the problem of information overload in cognitive processing systems by selecting some information for further processing, or by managing resources applied to several sources of information simultaneously
Learning
The study of which new information is acquired and the conditions under which it is acquired
Memory
The study of the capacity and fragility of human memory, focusing on how memories are acquired, stored, and retrieved
Concept formation
The ability to organize the perception and classification of experiences by the construction of functionally relevant categories
Judgment and decision-making
The study of how humans make judgments and decisions, including the failures of rational models due to differential assessment of risks and rewards, distorted assessment of probabilities, and limitations in human information processing
Reasoning
The process by which logical arguments are evaluated or constructed, including deductive and inductive reasoning
Problem solving
The study of how humans pursue goal-directed behavior to move from an initial state to a goal state in a problem space
Inductive reasoning
Develops a hypothesis consistent with a set of observations or reasons by analogy
Heuristic judgments, fallacies, and the representativeness of evidence, and other framing phenomena
Affect reasoning
Computational models developed for
Inference making and analogy
Logical reasoning
Bayesian reasoning
Problem solving
The study of how humans pursue goal directed behavior
Solving a problem
Finding operations to move from the initial state to a goal state in a problem space using either algorithmic or heuristic solutions
Problem representation is critical in finding solutions
Expertise in knowledge rich domains (i.e., chess)
Depends on complex pattern recognition
Brain areas engaged in problem solving tasks
Perception
Memory
Attention
Executive function
Linguistic approaches
Focus on the formal structures of languages and language use
What cognitive psychology has focused on
Language acquisition
Language comprehension
Language production
Psychology of reading
What psycholinguistics has studied
Encoding and lexical access of words
Sentence level processes of parsing and representation
General representations of concepts, gist, inference, and semantic assumptions
Computational models developed for language processing
Lexical systems
Parsing systems
Semantic representation systems
Reading aloud
The neuroscience of language has a long history in the analysis of lesions and has also been extensively studied with cognitive imaging
Successful applications of cognitive psychology research
Development of computer interfaces that collaborate with users
Development of a flexible information infrastructure based on knowledge representation and reasoning methods
Development of smart tools in the financial industry
Development of mobile, intelligent robots
Development of bionic components of the perceptual and cognitive neural system
Empirical data and theories
Both are important - data can only be fully understood in the context of an explanatory theory, and theories are empty without empirical data
Theories give meaning to data and assist in both explanation and prediction
Cognition is generally adaptive
But not in all specific instances - the same processes that lead to accurate perception, memory, and reasoning can also lead to systematic errors
Cognitive processes interact with each other and with non-cognitive processes
Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods
Basic and applied research in cognitive psychology often lead to each other
Key themes in cognitive psychology
Nature vs nurture
Rationalism vs empiricism
Structures vs processes
Domain generality vs domain specificity
Validity of causal inferences vs ecological validity
Applied vs basic research
Biological vs behavioral methods
Learning activities include answering questions, online quizzes, and assignments
Learning resources include a textbook by Sternberg