First three topics:

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• First three topics
• What Cognition is about
• Methods
• History

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From Reeds text (p. 3) Cognitive psychology
refers to all processes by which the sensory
input is transformed, reduced, elaborated,
stored, recovered, and used.
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• What Cognition is about
• Interaction with the world
• Input (stimulus energies)
• Analysis recognition
• Storage for future reference
• Retrieval
• Choice of response

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• Think about the cognitive psychology of the
  couch potato. Doing so may
• 1. Help you grasp what Cognitive Psychology is
  about.
• Give you new respect for humans as a species.
• If our simplest activities are significant
  achievements, how are we to assess our most
  complex, demanding operations?

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B. The cognitive psychology of the couch
potato Eating potato chips Guiding hand into
bag Controlling grip aperture and
pressure Raising hand to mouth
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Watching television Perception people
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Recognizing people Are they young or old?
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Happy or sad?
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Male or female?
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Watching television Perception people
objects
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Watching television Perception people
objects
actions
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Watching television Perception people
objects actions
Understanding utterances (inc.
inferences) Remembering histories of
characters Understanding story,
relationships Suspending disbelief
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• Methods
• Cognitive psychology is an empirical discipline.
• Disagreements among practitioners are settled by
  appeal to objectively-obtained data.

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• Three steps in empirical research
• Develop theories
• Generate predictions about behaviour
• Based on theories
• 3. Test predictions

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Topic Word recognition Theory People have some
sort of memory trace in their heads for each word
they can recognize in writing. Issue How are all
those traces organized?
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Theory A Traces are organized by
frequency-of-use in searching memory, you
encounter common words first, rare words
last. Theory B Traces are organized by length
in searching memory, you encounter short words
first, long words last.
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Predictions Theory A Ave. response time to
common words should be shorter than average
response time to rare words Theory B Ave.
response time to short words should be shorter
than average response time to long words
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Results of such experiments In fact, when you
do these studies, you observe that RTs to common
words are faster than RTs to rare words. There is
no similarly strong effect of length. Conclusion
Theory A wins.
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• Paradigms
• Independent variables
• Dependent variables
• RT
• Accuracy/error rate
• Task

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Mini-paper 1 In one or two sentences, please
write down what the most important thing you
learned in todays class is. Add your name to
your paper and hand it in before you
leave. Thanks!