PSY112 M1

• Dialectics


  • How would they compare their ideas together
  • Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
• Cognitive Psychology


  The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information
• Philosophical Antecedents


  • Remembering the past
• Introspection


  (in philosophy) the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes
• Philosophical Antecedents


  • Plato (Rationalism)
  • Aristotle (Empiricism)
  • Rene Descartes (Rationalist)
  • John Locke (Tabula Rasa)
  • Immanuel Kant (Rationalist and Empiricist)
• Cognitive neuroscience


  The study of how the brain and other aspects of the nervous system are linked to cognitive processing and to behavior
• Structuralism


  • Seeks to understand the structure of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components
  • Wilhelm Wundt (German psychologist, founder of structuralism in psychology, introspection)
  • Edward Titchener (First full-pledged structuralist)
• Localization of function


  Refers to the specific areas of the brain that control specific skills or behaviors
• Functionalism


  • The key to understand the human mind and behaviour was to study the processes of how and why the mind works as it does
  • William James (Known for his book of principles of Psychology, leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism)
  • John Dewey (Remembered primarily for his pragmatic approach to thinking and schooling)
• Regions of the brain

  • Forebrain
  • Basal Ganglia
  • Limbic System
  • Thalamus
  • Hypothalamus
  • Midbrain
  • Hindbrain
• 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)
  • Hermann Ebbinghaus (First experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically, studied his own mental processes)
  • Edward Lee Thorndike (Held that the role of satisfaction is the key to forming associations, termed this principle of law of effect)
• Forebrain


  • Cerebral cortex - Receiving and processing sensory information, Thinking, other cognitive processing, and planning and sending motor information
• Basal Ganglia


  • Crucial to the function of the motor system
• Behaviorism


  • Focuses only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli
  • Ivan Pavlov (Dog experiment, Russian Nobel Prize winning physiologist studied involuntary Learning Behavior)
  • John Watson (Father of Radical Behaviorism, known for Little Albert Experiment)
  • B.F Skinner (Operant Conditioning, Non human animals, a radical behaviorist, believed that virtually all forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in reaction to the environment)
• Perception


  The set of processes by which we recognize, organize, and make sense of the sensations we receive from environmental stimuli
• Limbic System


  • Involved in learning, emotions, and motivation
  • Hippocampus - influences learning and memory
  • Amygdala - influences anger and aggression
  • Septum - influences anger and fear
• Gestalt Psychology


  • We best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes
• James Gibson


  • Distal (far) object
  • Informational medium
  • Proximal (near) stimulation
  • Perceptual object
• Cognitivism


  • Belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think
  • Karl Spencer Lashley (One of Watson's former students, challenged the behaviorist view that the human brain is a passive organ, considered the brain to be an active, dynamic organizer of behavior)
  • Alan Turing (Turing Test, Artificial intelligence)
  • George Miller ("The Magic Number Seven")
  • Ulric Neisser (Defined cognitive psychology as the study of how people learn, structure, store, and use knowledge)
• Thalamus


  • Relays sensory information to cerebral cortex
  • Transmits sensory information to the correct regions of the cerebral cortex
• Visual Perception


  • Primary Visual Cortex
  • Visual Association
  • Visual reception
  • Shape Perception
• Attention


  The means by which we actively select and process a limited amount of information from all of the information captured by our senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes
• Hypothalamus


  • Regulates temperature
  • Eating, sleeping
  • Controls the endocrine system and autonomic nervous system
• Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

  • Laboratory
  • Controlled experiments
  • Psychobiological research
  • Self-reports
  • Case studies
  • Naturalistic observation
  • Computer simulations
  • Artificial intelligence
• How the visual system works

  1. Light is electromagnetic radiation that can be described in terms of wavelength

  2. Cornea – pupil – lens – vitreous humor – retina – optic nerve
• Consciousness


  Includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, some of which may be under the focus of attention
• Layers of the visual system

  • Ganglion cells: optic nerve
  • Interneuron cells: (Amacrine cell, Horizontal cell, and Bipolar Cell)
  • Photoreceptors: (Rods and Cones)
• Midbrain


  • Superior Colliculi - Vision
  • Inferior Colliculi - Hearing
  • Reticular activating system - Important in controlling consciousness, attention, cardiorespiratory function, and movement
  • Gray matter, red nucleus, substantia nigra, ventral region - Important in controlling movement
• Four main functions of attention

  • Signal and detection and vigilance
  • Search
  • Divided Attention
  • Selective Attention
• Hindbrain


  • Cerebellum - Essential to balance, coordination, and muscle tone
  • Pons - Involved in consciousness (sleep and arousal), bridges neural transmissions from one part of the brain to another
  • Medulla Oblangata - Serves as juncture at which nerves cross from one side of the body to opposite side of the brain, involved in cardiorespiratory function, digestion, and swallowing
• Percept


  A mental representation of a stimulus that is perceived
• Attending to signals over long and short terms

  1. In the short term, detect a crucial stimulus among the mass of stimuli (signal detection)

  2. Maintain attention over a long period of time (vigilance)
• Bottom-up theory


  • What you sense stimulates your receptors
  • A sequence of events from eye to brain
  • Perception is built on a foundation of information from the environment
  • Looking at something creates an image on the retina
  • This image generates electrical signals that are transmitted through the retina, and then to the visual receiving area of the brain
• Contralateral


  From one side to another
• Signal detection theory


  A framework to explain how people pick out the few important stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli
• Ipsilateral


  On the same side
• Top-down theory


  • What you know influences what you sense
  • The processing that originates in the brain, at the "top" of the perceptual system
  • Perception also involves factors such as a person's knowledge of the environment, and the expectations people bring to the perceptual situation
• Possible outcomes when trying to detect a target stimulus

  • Hits (true positive)
  • False alarm (false positive)
  • Misses (false negative)
  • Correct rejections (true negative)
• Corpus Callosum


  Dense aggregate of neural fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres
• Viewer-Centered Perception


  • The individual stores the way the object looks to him or her
  • Viewpoint dependent process