cogpsych 1

• Artificial Intelligence


  The capacity of a computer or robot under computer control to carry out operations typically performed by intelligent entities
• Attention


  The capacity to select and focus attention on relevant stimuli. The cognitive process of attention allows us to orient ourselves in relation to relevant stimuli and subsequently react to them
• Attention is crucial to our everyday existence and is highly significant
• Cognitive Psychology


  The field of psychology that, mostly via behavioral inferences, investigates how the mind functions in relation to perception, attention, thought, language, and memory
• Cognitive Revolution


  Took place in response to behaviorism. The _________ of the 1950s focused on the underlying mental processes that underlie behavior in people. By focusing on processing skills including learning, memory, problem-solving, and language acquisition, the study of human cognition became interdisciplinary
• Decision-Making


  The cognitive processes behind choices
• Information Processing - Speech Perception


  Between the first presentation of the language stimulus and the meaning that the language processor interprets, language processing is thought to constitute a series of psychological processes
• Language Acquisition


  The process by which humans are able to grow and acquire a language. Speaking, listening, writing, and general communication are all included in this
• Memory


  The brain's capacity to store knowledge and intently retrieve it when needed. Enables the recall of information
• Pragmatics


  Maintains that information, language, beliefs, and science are all legitimate as long as they are interpreted in terms of their application in real life and connection to success. The late 1800s saw the introduction of pragmatics to the United States. The originator of pragmatism is acknowledged as Charles Sanders Pierce
• Problem-Solving


  The process through which individuals try to use higher mental functions, such reasoning and creative thinking, to overcome obstacles, carry out plans that get them from one place to another, or come to conclusions
• Perception


  The ability to actively gather, analyze, and interpret the data that our senses provide. Auditory, Olfactory, Tactile, and Visual are just few examples
• Sensation


  The result of a sensory receptor detecting sensory data. Action potentials are the messages that these cells transmit to the central nervous system
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)


  • A common type of therapy that helps us become more aware of our thought processes, challenge erroneous beliefs, and see ourselves and others more clearly
  • A popular and effective extension of cognitive psychology
• Cognitive therapy


  • A specific type of CBT
  • Focuses on the mental processes that underpin a person's behavior rather than the behavior itself
  • Emphasizes that the mental processes that contribute to conduct can be altered, making the behavior more adaptable
• Cognitive psychology fundamental principles

  • Perception
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Language
  • Problem-solving
• Cognitive psychology provides a foundational understanding of how the mind processes information, makes decisions, and interacts with the environment
• Cocktail party effect


  • A fascinating phenomenon in human hearing
  • Refers to our ability to focus on a single communication or sound source in a noisy environment, while filtering out other distracting sounds
• Heuristics


  • Mental shortcuts that people use to make quick decisions, often when faced with uncertainty or limited information
  • Simplify complex decision-making by relying on readily available information or past experiences
• Availability heuristic


  • Proposed by Tversky and Kahneman in 1973
  • Suggests that people estimate the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can recall similar instances from memory
  • Can lead to biases, as people may overestimate the probability of events that are more prominent or memorable to them
• Rationalists


  Believe that reason and innate ideas play a key role in gaining knowledge and that certain truths can be known without relying on sensory experience
• Empiricists


  Argue that knowledge primarily comes from observing the external world and our sensory experiences, and that knowledge is derived from what we can observe and experience, rather than purely through reasoning alone
• Synthesis


  A philosophical approach that combines elements of both rationalism and empiricism, recognizing the importance of both reason and sensory experience in gaining knowledge
• Immanuel Kant


  The most influential philosopher associated with the synthesis of rationalism and empiricism
• Associationism


  Examines how elements of the mind, such as events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning, through contiguity, similarity, or contrast
• Behaviorism


  Focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli, making physical whatever others might have called "mental"
• Behaviorist


  Someone who adheres to the principles of behaviorism
• Black Box


  Behaviorists regarded the mind as a _______ that is best understood in terms of its input and output, but whose internal processes cannot be accurately described because they are not observable
• Cell Assemblies


  Coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation, as the ability of one neuron to stimulate firing in a connected neuron increases
• Channel Capacity


  The upper limit with which an observer can match a response to information given to him or her
• Classical conditioning


  A type of unconscious or automatic learning that creates a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus
• Functionalism


  Seeks to understand what people do and why they do it, in contrast to the structuralists' focus on the elementary contents (structures) of the human mind
• Functionalist


  A person who advocates, or works according to, the principles of functionalism
• Gestalt Psychology


  States that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes, and that we cannot fully understand behavior when we only break phenomena down into smaller parts
• Introspection


  The conscious observation of one's own thinking processes, with the aim of looking at the elementary components of an object or process
• Law of Effect (1905)


  Held that the role of "satisfaction" is the key to forming associations, and that a stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an organism is rewarded for that response
• Modularity


  Implies that the processes used in one domain of processing, such as the linguistic or the perceptual domain, operate independently of processes in other domains
• Operant Conditioning


  Involving the strengthening or weakening of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments
• Physiologist


  A person specializing in the biological study of the functions and processes of living organisms and their parts
• Pragmatism


  A philosophical approach that measures the truth of an idea by experimentation and by examining its practical outcome