COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• Cognitive Psychology


  The study of how people think, learn, remember and think about information
• Dialectic


  A developmental process whereby ideas evolve over time through a back-and-forth exchange of ideas; in a way it is like a discussion spread out over an extended period of time
• Heuristics


  Mental shortcuts we use to process information
• Thesis


  A statement of belief
• Antithesis


  Statement that counters a thesis
• Synthesis


  Debate between the thesis and the antithesis
• Philosophy


  Seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world
• Introspection


  The examination of inner ideas and experiences
• Physiology


  Seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living matter, primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods
• Rationalist


  Believes that the route to knowledge is through thinking and logical analysis
• Rationalists


  • Plato
• Empiricists


  • Aristotle
• Empiricist


  Believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence— that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation
• Rationalism


  Belief in reason and logic as the primary source of knowledge
• Empiricism


  The view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation
• René Descartes: 'Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)'
• John Locke: 'Tabula rasa (blank slate)'
• Immanuel Kant


  Believes that both rationalism and empiricism have their place and must work together in the quest for truth
• Structuralism


  An early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind
• Functionalism


  A school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral processes function - how they enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish
• Psychologists


  • Wilhelm Wundt
  • Edward Titchener
  • William James
• Pragmatism


  A philosophy that focuses only on the outcomes and effects of processes and situations, the attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth (What can we do with it?)
• Pragmatists


  • John Dewey
• Associationism


  Examines how elements of the mind, like 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 show polarities
• Psychologists


  • Hermann Ebbinghaus
  • Edward Lee Thorndike
• Law of Effect


  Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely
• Behaviorism


  Focuses only on the relation of observable behaviour and environmental events or stimuli
• Edward Tolman


  Believed that all behavior is directed toward a goal, considered the forefather of modern cognitive psychology
• Gestalt Psychology


  States that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes (the whole is more than the sum of its parts)
• Cognitivism


  The belief that most human behavior explains how people think. It rejects the behavioristic notion that psychologists should avoid studying mental processes just because they are unobservable
• Turing Test


  Judges whether a computer program's output was indistinguishable from the output of humans
• Artificial Intelligence


  Human attempts to construct systems that show intelligence and particularly the intelligent processing of information
• Psychologists


  • Donald Broadbent
• Psychologists


  • Pavlov for his work with dogs
  • Skinner for his work with rats
  • Watson for his work with Little Albert
• Artificial Intelligence


  A computer system that demonstrates intelligent processing of information
• Associationism


  A school of psychology, arising from Locke and Aristotle, that examines how ideas become associated with each other in the mind
• Experiments on Human Behavior

  1. Manipulate the independent variable

  2. Create experimental group

  3. Create control group

  4. Randomly assign participants

  5. Measure the dependent variable

  6. Same for all groups

  7. Control all other variables

  8. Prevent confounds