What is the big picture

1
What is the big picture?

• Why study cognitive psychology?
• A lot of this stuff youve already seen eg
  Freud went on and on about memory forgetting
• What makes cognitive psychology worth studying?
• What is cognitive psychology, anyway?
• psychology that thinks people are computers . ?

2
Cognitivism a big deal

• In the computer age, thinking is no longer a
  big deal
• Computers do maths, search for stuff, sort our
  email
• Your microwave decides how to cook your chicken
• Before 1935 or so, thought was something only
  humans did
• World War 2 changed that
• The philosophy that thought can considered as
  independent of a thinker is called cognitivism

3
A brief history of thought

• In ancient times, thought was associated with
  divinity
• created man in his image
• The idea that thought is special or magical
  continued into mainstream psychology in the 20th
  century
• Freud the mind is mysterious, bound to human
  biology
• Maslow thought is bound to the human condition

4

• Skinner the mind is an inscrutable black box
  which causes stuff to happen
• Around 1935, mathematicians looked mathematical
  functions which can evaluate other functions
• Alan Turing and Alonzo Church worked on this
  problem
• Resulted in Turing Machines, which can follow a
  set of instructions

5
Thinking machines? What?

• Philosophically, caused an outrage
• Surely this wasnt real thought the way people do
  it?

• The debate was halted by World War 2
• German engineers developed the Enigma Machine, a
  machine to encode messages
• Allied mathematicians were tasked with breaking
  the code had to perfect computers to do it

6
After the war

• Once the war was over, thinking machines were all
  over the place
• IBM calculators
• Cannon aiming computers
• Each capable of a specific task

• The search was on for a general purpose computer
• A good solution was provided by John von Neumann
• the von Neumann architecture

7
Enter Don Broadbent

• Broadbent asks the question what if we imagine
  that the mind is like a computing machine?
• He applies von Neumanns architecture to human
  psychology
• Important moment in psychology thought loses its
  magic it can now be understood completely, from
  a mathematical and engineering point of view
• Not saying the mind is a computer just asking,
  what if it were?

8

• 1950s computer
• Limited memory
• Limited processing capacity
• Narrow pipe for moving information from memory to
  the processor

• 1950s cog. psych mind
• Limited STM capacity
• Limited central executive
• Narrow attention channel for moving information
  from STM to cent. Exec.

Kinda similar, huh?
9
Quite a useful way to think

• You can get quite far by asking that question
• if the mind were like a computer, then it
  should.
• Slowly, piece by piece, you can imagine a
  computer that works just like the mind does
• Shows the same strengths, makes the same mistakes
• This type of imaginary computer is called a model
• Modelling is one of the main jobs of cognitive
  psychologists

10
Notice the change

• We have gone from Freud
• The mind is made of three parts, and it has an
  energy called libido
• To the cognitive psychologist
• The mind works as if it had a central processor
  that were connected to a central store by a
  limited size bus
• Not concerned about how it is as much as how it
  works

11
Criticisms of cognitive psychology

• Cognitive theory is too cold and inhuman it
  cannot take into account emotion
• Not that it cannot rather than it does not
• Some people research only the role of emotion on
  cognition
• Anxiety and attention
• Depression and cognition
• Mood congruence
• Wide clinical application (e.g. catastrophic
  thinking)

12

• Cognitive psychology is too pessimistic about
  humans it presents us a machines or zombies
• Since when is pessimism/optimism a measure of a
  good theory?
• Would you like a nice theory or a useful one?
• Thinking as if humans were machines is very
  useful
• You can predict human behaviour (to an extent)
• You can then apply your knowledge
• Better computers, can help people from forgetting
  stuff, etc

13

• Cognitive psychology presents us as machines,
  and thus denies the importance of free will
• No cognitive psychologist would deny that free
  will is an aspect of human psychology
• Not that it is denied havent figured out how
  it fits in yet
• Any theory which is completely deterministic
  would be hard for most cognitive psychologists to
  swallow

14

• Cognitive psychology does take into account
  effects of ideology on human psychology, and
  ignores power differences between researcher and
  subject
• No theory can take everything into account
  marxist theory doesnt take peoples expectations
  into account either!
• Cognitive psychology works at a different level
  of analysis wrong to declare a theory wrong
  because it doesnt work like your favorite
  (fallacy of misplaced essentials)

15
The next stepCognitive Science

• During the 1980s, a new discipline started
  appearing
• Computer science, artificial intelligence,
  neuroscience cognitive psychology teamed up
• Study thinking machines as separate from the
  implementation
• Application improve knowledge about humans, and
  leads to better computers