Cognitive psychology
Lecture 1; Chapter 1
Even though memory errors are more common than most people expect,
our memories are generally accurate. Many memory errors are caused by
people using general knowledge (schemata, scripts) to interpret, store, and
subsequently recall new information. Such usage tends to regularize what is
encoded and retrieved. However, recalling more regularity than actually
present is not harmful in the majority of cases, because regular events are,
by definition, what happens most of the time. Therefore, automatically
altering unusual details towards normality usually does not cause major
problems.
Cognitive psychology is the study of knowledge
- How do we study and memorize
- How do we focus our attention and concentrate
- How do we make decisions
Mental processing; the fundamental interplay between bottom-up
(incoming/ the text you read) information and top-down knowledge
(inferences based on your memory).
A brief history; Wundt and his student Titchener began the study of
experimental psychology in the late 1800s.
- Introspection;
▪ Wundt and Titchener believed psychology should focus on
studying conscious mental events (structuralism).
▪ Observing and reporting your own thoughts and
experiences(→ introspection)
▪ Required systematic training. Introspections were
meticulously trained; they were given a vocabulary to
describe what they observed, and they were trained simply
to report on their experiences, with a minimum of
interpretation.
Problems with introspection;
▪ Many mental processes are unconscious
▪ Thoughts are not directly observable or measurable
▪ It is generally impossible to know or to test objectively of self-report accurately reflects
the conscious experience.
But introspection may sometimes be useful
▪ Protocol analysis of thinking aloud during problem solving
▪ Most tasks allow different strategies. Often the most direct way of determining which
strategy has been used, is by simply asking the participant.
- Behaviorism sought to overcome the limitations posed by introspection
- Behaviorism (Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner)
, ▪ It focused on observable behaviors and stimuli
▪ A learning history is available and can be objectively studied
• Behaviorism did not allow for the study of unobservable, mentalistic notions. These
include beliefs, expectations, goals, preferences
▪ Behaviorism uncovered principles of how behavior changes in response to stimuli, such
as rewards and punishments.
• This movement in psychology dominated from approximately 1900 to 1950.
Problems with behaviorism
▪ Stimulus-response accounts are not enough
▪ Many of the interesting types of behavior seem to
have a distinctly mental cause
▪ Different stimuli elicit the same behavior
▪ Same stimulus elicits a different behavior
▪ Requires either a much richer and more complex
understanding of what a stimulus is or acknowledging
that stimuli are mentally processed (interpreted
represented)
From introspection and behaviorism, experimental psychologists
learned that;
▪ Introspective methods for studying mental events/processes are not scientific
▪ However, we need to study mental events/processes in order to understand behavior, as
most human cognitive behavior is too flexible and complex to be described in terms of
simple and straightforward stimulus-response associations.
➔ Cognitive revolution
The intellectual foundations of the cognitive revolution
▪ Transcendental method of Immanuel Kant
• Reason backward from observations to determine the cause
• Inference to best explanation- indirectly
• Analogous to a detective using clues left behind to figure out how a crime was
committed
Psychologist began to consider that the human mind might use processes and procedures like a
computer (computer metaphor).
- They incorporated computer terminology (e.g. central processors, filters, buffers)
- This was a new style of theorizing
Cognitive psychologists study mental events, but do so indirectly
- Measure behavior, often under strictly controlled conditions
- Develop hypotheses about underlying, causal mental processes and
events
- Design experiments to test hypotheses
Adriaan de Groot; de empiric cycle
,Experiments allow cognitive psychologists to understand internal complex mechanisms in a simpler,
more constrained manner
Examples of methodologies;
- Measures of performance or accuracy
- Measures of response time (RT)
▪ Mental operations are fast but not instantaneous
- Cognitive neuroscience
▪ Study of the brain and nervous system to understand mental functioning (mind is what
the brain does)
▪ Cases of brain damage
▪ Neuroimaging techniques
Lecture 2; Chapter 6
Memory;
- Short-term memory (STM)
▪ Memory for information currently held in mind (not saved to
LTM)
- Working memory (WM)
▪ Specific theory of STM processing
▪ Emphasizing the role of WM for cognitive abilities (reasoning,
comprehension)
- Long-term memory (LTM)
The modal model
- Experiments supporting the modal model
▪ Presented a long series of words
▪ Perform free-recall afterwards
▪ Look at the position in the list (serial recall)
- Primacy effect;
▪ Better memory for first few items
▪ Long-term memory
▪ Memory rehearsal allows transfer from WM
to LTM
- Recency effect
▪ Better memory for the last few items
▪ Based on working memory
Information transfers to LTM only if the information
is in the STM.
- Slowing down the presentation of the list allows for more rehearsal of all
items
Sensory memory; characteristics
- Registers all the information that hits our receptors (=large capacity)
, - Rapid decay of this information; within less than a second (=brief duration)
▪ Information can be integrated during that one second
- Persistence of vision; the perceptual trail of a sparkler; a creation of the mind
Visual vs auditory SM;
- Sensory memory for visual stimuli; iconic memory
- For auditory stimuli; echoic memory
▪ Lasts for a few seconds (3 or 4 sec) after presentation of the original stimulus
▪ Unlike visual memory, in which our eyes can scan the stimuli over and over, the auditory
stimuli cannot be scanned over and over
- Haptic memory for touch
Sensory memory; function
1. Collecting information to be processed
2. Holding the info briefly while initial processing is going on
3. Filling in the blanks when stimulation is intermittent
Information coding in STM;
- Coding; how is information represented in the mind
- Determines the way in which it can be remembered
- Different kinds of mental coding (e.g. auditory, visual, semantic)
Auditory coding;
- Example; representing the sound of a person’s voice
- Also; memory for letters (better; phonemes), words, numbers
- STM experiment (Conrad, 1964)
▪ Subjects saw several letters flashed on a screen and then were asked to write them down
▪ Errors; confusion with letters that sounded like the target letter (s or x instead of f)
- Remember a telephone number; we repeat its sound over and over instead of imagining
what the number look like
Visual coding;
- Remembering figures, maps, floor plans, etc. requires visual coding
- Visual codes are used in STM
▪ Zhang & Simon (1985); experiment with native speakers of Chinese
▪ Stimuli; Chinese Radicals (no sound associated) vs. characters (sound associated)
• Both have a meaning
Lecture 1; Chapter 1
Even though memory errors are more common than most people expect,
our memories are generally accurate. Many memory errors are caused by
people using general knowledge (schemata, scripts) to interpret, store, and
subsequently recall new information. Such usage tends to regularize what is
encoded and retrieved. However, recalling more regularity than actually
present is not harmful in the majority of cases, because regular events are,
by definition, what happens most of the time. Therefore, automatically
altering unusual details towards normality usually does not cause major
problems.
Cognitive psychology is the study of knowledge
- How do we study and memorize
- How do we focus our attention and concentrate
- How do we make decisions
Mental processing; the fundamental interplay between bottom-up
(incoming/ the text you read) information and top-down knowledge
(inferences based on your memory).
A brief history; Wundt and his student Titchener began the study of
experimental psychology in the late 1800s.
- Introspection;
▪ Wundt and Titchener believed psychology should focus on
studying conscious mental events (structuralism).
▪ Observing and reporting your own thoughts and
experiences(→ introspection)
▪ Required systematic training. Introspections were
meticulously trained; they were given a vocabulary to
describe what they observed, and they were trained simply
to report on their experiences, with a minimum of
interpretation.
Problems with introspection;
▪ Many mental processes are unconscious
▪ Thoughts are not directly observable or measurable
▪ It is generally impossible to know or to test objectively of self-report accurately reflects
the conscious experience.
But introspection may sometimes be useful
▪ Protocol analysis of thinking aloud during problem solving
▪ Most tasks allow different strategies. Often the most direct way of determining which
strategy has been used, is by simply asking the participant.
- Behaviorism sought to overcome the limitations posed by introspection
- Behaviorism (Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner)
, ▪ It focused on observable behaviors and stimuli
▪ A learning history is available and can be objectively studied
• Behaviorism did not allow for the study of unobservable, mentalistic notions. These
include beliefs, expectations, goals, preferences
▪ Behaviorism uncovered principles of how behavior changes in response to stimuli, such
as rewards and punishments.
• This movement in psychology dominated from approximately 1900 to 1950.
Problems with behaviorism
▪ Stimulus-response accounts are not enough
▪ Many of the interesting types of behavior seem to
have a distinctly mental cause
▪ Different stimuli elicit the same behavior
▪ Same stimulus elicits a different behavior
▪ Requires either a much richer and more complex
understanding of what a stimulus is or acknowledging
that stimuli are mentally processed (interpreted
represented)
From introspection and behaviorism, experimental psychologists
learned that;
▪ Introspective methods for studying mental events/processes are not scientific
▪ However, we need to study mental events/processes in order to understand behavior, as
most human cognitive behavior is too flexible and complex to be described in terms of
simple and straightforward stimulus-response associations.
➔ Cognitive revolution
The intellectual foundations of the cognitive revolution
▪ Transcendental method of Immanuel Kant
• Reason backward from observations to determine the cause
• Inference to best explanation- indirectly
• Analogous to a detective using clues left behind to figure out how a crime was
committed
Psychologist began to consider that the human mind might use processes and procedures like a
computer (computer metaphor).
- They incorporated computer terminology (e.g. central processors, filters, buffers)
- This was a new style of theorizing
Cognitive psychologists study mental events, but do so indirectly
- Measure behavior, often under strictly controlled conditions
- Develop hypotheses about underlying, causal mental processes and
events
- Design experiments to test hypotheses
Adriaan de Groot; de empiric cycle
,Experiments allow cognitive psychologists to understand internal complex mechanisms in a simpler,
more constrained manner
Examples of methodologies;
- Measures of performance or accuracy
- Measures of response time (RT)
▪ Mental operations are fast but not instantaneous
- Cognitive neuroscience
▪ Study of the brain and nervous system to understand mental functioning (mind is what
the brain does)
▪ Cases of brain damage
▪ Neuroimaging techniques
Lecture 2; Chapter 6
Memory;
- Short-term memory (STM)
▪ Memory for information currently held in mind (not saved to
LTM)
- Working memory (WM)
▪ Specific theory of STM processing
▪ Emphasizing the role of WM for cognitive abilities (reasoning,
comprehension)
- Long-term memory (LTM)
The modal model
- Experiments supporting the modal model
▪ Presented a long series of words
▪ Perform free-recall afterwards
▪ Look at the position in the list (serial recall)
- Primacy effect;
▪ Better memory for first few items
▪ Long-term memory
▪ Memory rehearsal allows transfer from WM
to LTM
- Recency effect
▪ Better memory for the last few items
▪ Based on working memory
Information transfers to LTM only if the information
is in the STM.
- Slowing down the presentation of the list allows for more rehearsal of all
items
Sensory memory; characteristics
- Registers all the information that hits our receptors (=large capacity)
, - Rapid decay of this information; within less than a second (=brief duration)
▪ Information can be integrated during that one second
- Persistence of vision; the perceptual trail of a sparkler; a creation of the mind
Visual vs auditory SM;
- Sensory memory for visual stimuli; iconic memory
- For auditory stimuli; echoic memory
▪ Lasts for a few seconds (3 or 4 sec) after presentation of the original stimulus
▪ Unlike visual memory, in which our eyes can scan the stimuli over and over, the auditory
stimuli cannot be scanned over and over
- Haptic memory for touch
Sensory memory; function
1. Collecting information to be processed
2. Holding the info briefly while initial processing is going on
3. Filling in the blanks when stimulation is intermittent
Information coding in STM;
- Coding; how is information represented in the mind
- Determines the way in which it can be remembered
- Different kinds of mental coding (e.g. auditory, visual, semantic)
Auditory coding;
- Example; representing the sound of a person’s voice
- Also; memory for letters (better; phonemes), words, numbers
- STM experiment (Conrad, 1964)
▪ Subjects saw several letters flashed on a screen and then were asked to write them down
▪ Errors; confusion with letters that sounded like the target letter (s or x instead of f)
- Remember a telephone number; we repeat its sound over and over instead of imagining
what the number look like
Visual coding;
- Remembering figures, maps, floor plans, etc. requires visual coding
- Visual codes are used in STM
▪ Zhang & Simon (1985); experiment with native speakers of Chinese
▪ Stimuli; Chinese Radicals (no sound associated) vs. characters (sound associated)
• Both have a meaning
