Intro to Cognitive Psych

• Cognitive Psychology


  Branch of psychology that focuses on the study of mental processes
• Mental processes studied in cognitive psychology

  • Thinking
  • Perceiving
  • Remembering
  • Learning
• Specific mental processes studied in cognitive psychology

  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Language
  • Problem-solving
  • Decision-making
• Cognitive psychologist


  Studies how people acquire, process, store, and retrieve information
• Early approaches to cognition

  • Structuralism - focused on configuring elements (perception)
  • Functionalism - focused on what and why (question and answer methods)
  • Introspection - analyzed own perception and mental states
  • Pragmatists - validated knowledge based on usefulness
  • Associationism - focused on associated learning
  • Behaviorism - focused on relation between observable behavior and environmental stimuli
  • Radical behaviorism - extreme version of associationism
  • Gestalt psychology - focused on organized structured wholes
• Domains of cognitive psychology

  • Perception
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Language
  • Thinking
• Perception


  Interpreting and making sense of sensory information, influenced by experiences, expectations, culture, and context
• Types of perception

  • Visual perception - Gestalt principles, depth perception
  • Auditory perception - speech, pitch, tone
  • Perceptual constancy - size, color, auditory
• Attention


  Selective concentration and focus, essential for perceiving, processing, and responding to information
• Types of attention

  • Selective attention - focus on specific information while filtering out other information
  • Divided attention - ability to focus on multiple tasks simultaneously (decreased performance)
  • Sustained attention - ability to maintain focus over time
• Memory


  Acquiring, storing, retaining, and retrieving information
• Types of memory


  • Sensory memory - brief retention of sensory information
  • Short-term memory - holding information for a short period
  • Long-term memory - holding information indefinitely
  • Episodic memory - memory of specific events
  • Semantic memory - general knowledge
  • Procedural memory - memory of how to do things
• Language

  Psycholinguistics - study of language acquisition, vocabulary development, and Chomsky's theory of universal grammar
• Thinking

  Acquiring, processing, and organizing information, including reasoning, decision-making, problem-solving, and creative thinking
• Problem-solving

  • Finding solutions to complex issues, including identifying the problem, generating solutions, and evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions
• Critical thinking involves evaluating information to make informed decisions