The History and Methods of Cognitive Psychology

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The History and Methods of Cognitive Psychology
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What is Cognitive Psychology?

• The branch of psychology that studies how we
  perceive, attend, recognize, remember

what happens in our minds
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Cognitive activities

• Perception
• Attention
• Memory
• Language
• Reasoning/decision making

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Some elements of cognitions

• Often complex
• Occur rapidly
• Occur automatically (unconsciously)
• May occur with other cognitions

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What is the mind ?

• How can we study the inner workings of the mind
  when we cant see the mind?

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Variables that could change a cognition

• Age
• How well rested the subject is
• Cultural background

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Experimental Design

• Hypothesis

Test or Experiment
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
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Methods of Experimentation

• Introspection
• Naturalistic observation
• Controlled observation
• Clinical interviews
• Experiments (and quasi-experiments)
• Brain imaging

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Methods

• Introspection
• Insight
• Ecological validity
• Experimenter control
• Observer bias
• Can you really do something while doing it?

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Types of Experiments

• Naturalistic observation
• Ecological validity
• Little experimenter control
• Observer bias

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Methods

• Experiments
• Experimenter control
• Isolate causal factors
• May not be ecologically valid

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Methods

• Controlled observation / Clinical interviews
• Ecological validity
• Only some experimenter control
• Observer bias

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Methods

• Brain Imaging

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Methods

• Brain Imaging
• CAT/MRI shows anatomy
• Magnetic fields, not usable on some subjects
• Small, noisy location for subject
• Does not show function
• PET - shows function
• Brain activity averaged over time
• fMRI shows anatomy and function
• Similar to MRI
• EEG/ERP overall general electrical activity of
  brain

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The history of studying cognitions

• Greeks
• 17-19 c.
• Empiricism
• Schools of psychology

• Nativism

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Schools of psychology

• Structuralism
• Functionalism
• Behaviorism
• Gestalt psychology
• Genetic epistemology
• Individual differences
• Cognitive psychology (cognitive revolution)

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Schools of psychology

• Structuralism
• Attempted to find simplest units of the mind
  (like a period table of elements)
• More complex behaviors explained by combining
  different elements (research never really got
  this far)
• Method Introspection

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Schools of psychology

• Functionalism
• Asked the question Why?
• Why does the mind work the way it does?
• Why does this behavior help a person adapt to
  their environment?
• Method Observations in real life

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Schools of psychology

• Behaviorism
• Goal to predict and control behavior
• Method Observation of only visible, measurable
  behaviors
• (mental states cannot
• be studied)

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Schools of psychology

• Gestalt psychology
• The mind is not divisible
• The mind is a whole entity, and imposes its own
  structure on how to interpret stimuli
• It is the relationship between elements that
  matters
• Method Experimentation with perception, problem
  solving

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Figure 1-1 (p. 11)Examples of Gestalt figures.
Gestalt psychology
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Schools of psychology

• Genetic epistemology the mind changes over
  time
• The mind goes through different stages, which can
  be separated from each other by the different
  cognitive abilities present at each stage
  (Piaget)

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Schools of psychology

• Individual differences
• Tried to determine if a mental characteristic
  (eg., intelligence) was inherited or acquired
  later from the environment
• Type of statistics typical used in cognitive
  psychology developed

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Schools of psychology

• Cognitive psychology
• Proposed that mental states could be studied
  (reaction to behaviorists)
• Some results
• Human factors engineering
• Limited-capacity processors
• The magical number seven, plus or minus two
• Linguistics

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• More results
• Localization of function / plasticity of nervous
  system
• Computer metaphor / artificial intelligence
• Cognitive neuroscience

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Paradigms of Cognitive Psychology

• Information Processing
• Connectionism
• Evolution
• Ecology

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Figure 1-4 (p. 29)A typical information-processi
ng model.
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Figure 1-5 (p. 31)A typical connectionist model.
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Paradigms of Cognitive Psychology

• Evolution
• Our minds are biological systems which evolve and
  adapt to our environment, and is subject to the
  laws of natural selection
• For each type of problem, we therefore have
  special-purpose programs to solve them
• Ecology
• Cognition occurs in the context of culture, not
  in a vacuum

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Outline

• Syllabus
• What is cognitive psychology?
• Elements of cognition
• What are experiments?
• History of cognitive psychology
• Current methods of study
• Paradigms of cognitive psychology