Approaches to Cognitive Psychology

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UNIT 2

• Approaches to Cognitive Psychology

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Cognitive Psychology

• According to McMillan
• Cognitive Psychology is the scientific
  study of human thoughts and the mental
  process that underlie behavior ? which
  includes memory, problem solving, perception
  and language.
• i.e. Cognitive Psychology focuses on
  internal psychological processes that
  involves in understanding human thoughts and
  mental processes that defines human behavior.

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Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive Psychology .
• Help us to understand our environment
  more,
• What internal process that are involved in
  making appropriate decision in life.
• These internal processes includes
• Attention
• Perception
• Learning
• Memory
• Language
• Problem solving,
• Reasoning
• Thinking

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Approaches.

• Cognitive scientist have difficulties
  in studying cognitive process in human being
  because mental process cannot be seen,
  unlike overt behavior.
• Scientists need a general framework to guide
  them, a set of assumptions that tells them where
  to start, what to look for, what to be aware of.
• Thus, various approaches to study human
  cognitive process were developed
• Experimental cognitive psychology
• Cognitive science
• Cognitive neuropsychology
• Cognitive neuroscience

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Experimental cognitive psychology

• Experimental cognitive psychology
  foundation for all the approaches in
  cognitive psychology
• Involves
• Conducting experiments on normal
  individuals under laboratory studies.
• Scientific method system of established
  principles and processes of scientific inquiry
• Identifying a problem
• Formulating hypotheses
• Collecting data
• Analyzing the data
• Disseminating findings

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Experimental cognitive psychology

• Experimental Cognitive Psychologist would
  usually.
• Identifying a problem (define a question of
  study).
• Gather information and resources
• Formulate hypotheses
• Conduct scientific experiment
• Collect data
• Analyze data
• Interpret data
• Make conclusion (in order to build a starting
  point for new hypothesis)
• Results (findings) will be disseminate

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Experimental cognitive psychology

• Sample ? normal individuals under laboratory
  conditions
• Controlled environment to understand
  human cognition/thinking process better

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Limitation of Experimental cognitive psychology

• People tend to behave differently when
  they are in the lab situation (when involved
  in experiment) ? resulting in inaccurate
  findings because it does not represent the
  true process of human cognition.
• Normally setting or design of the experiments
  is carried out in advance according to
  scientists needs/ requirement ? little
  emphasize on respondents response.
• Measurement on the speed and accuracy of
  performance provide only indirect
  evidence about the internal process involved
  in cognition.
• Experimenter have the tendency to ignore the
  differences in respondents background (IQ, SES
  etc) ? could affect the experiment result.
  

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Cognitive science

• Cognitive Science
• Focus on the relationship between
  artificial intelligence and Cognitive
  Psychology ? by developing computational models
  in order to understand human cognitions.
• Artificial Intelligence is the study of human
  intelligence such that it can be replicated
  artificially. i.e. AI-

• Systems that think like humans (focus on
  reasoning and human framework)
• Systems that think rationally (focus on reasoning
  and a general concept of intelligence)
• Systems that act like humans (focus on behavior
  and human framework)
• Systems that act rationally (focus on behavior
  and a general concept of intelligence)

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Cognitive science

• A good computational model can-
• show us how a given theory can be
  specified in detail ? allow us to predict
  behavior in new situations.
• Help to stimulate better specification of
  cognitive theories and generates new
  predictions.
• 3 main types of computational models-
• Semantic networks
• Production system
• Connectionist network

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Limitation of Cognitive science

• Normally computational models are used for/as
  prop for a theory, rarely used to make
  prediction ? because often they have no real
  predictive function.
• Connectionist models ? claim to have neuro
  plausibility, do not really resemble the
  human brain.
• Most computational model has been design
  to stimulate human performance on single
  task.

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Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Cognitive neuropsychology is a branch of
  cognitive psychology that aims to understand how
  the structure and function of the brain relates
  to specific psychological processes.
• Emphasize on ? study the cognitive effects of
  brain injury or neurological illness ? by
  inferring to models of normal cognitive
  functioning (in order to understand the normal
  human cognition).
• Evidence is based on case studies of individual
  brain damaged patients who show deficits in brain
  areas

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..OTAK

• Setiap bahagian otak sangat penting dalam
  mempengaruhi perkembangan bayi ? berintegrasi
  juga dengan integrasi dengan emosi dan
  tingkahlaku sosial.

• Otak Luar Cortex neocortex
• berlipat-lipat, disinilah letaknya intelligence
  (tempat berfikir), kawasan yang mengawal
  penglihatan, pendengaran, rekacipta, percakapan
  dan pemikiran. Ia terbahagi kepada
  bahagian-bahagian (lobes)

Otak Tengah Limbic System mengawal emosi,
ingatan, motivasi, t/l agrasif, kawal suhu badan,
lapar, aktiviti sistem saraf, rembesan hormon,
dan pusat kepuasan

• Pangkal Otak Brain stem
• Kawal proses-proses hidup,spt bernafas,
  pergerakan jantung, proses ginjal, tidur,
  arousal, attention keseimbangan badan
  (balance/movement), dll.

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Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Cognitive neuropsychologist assume that
  cognitive system consists of several
  modules or cognitive processors within the
  brain.
• i.e. the cognitive processors involved in
  understanding speech is different from
  actual talking.
• So, some brain damage patients are good at
  language comprehension but poor at talking
  (or vice-versa) .
• From these studies researchers infer that
  different areas of the brain are highly
  specialized.

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Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Cognitive neuropsychology also uses many of the
  same techniques and technologies from the wider
  science of neuropsychology and fields such as
  cognitive neuroscience (neuroimaging e.g. PET
  scan/MRI/CT scan electrophysiology
  neuropsychology test) to measure either brain
  function or psychological performance

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Limitations Cognitive Neuropsychology

• Assume that the cognitive performance of
  a brain damage patients provide direct
  evidence of the impact of brain damage
  (of previously normal cognitive system).
• The whole cognitive neuropsychological
  approach is very complex ? because every
  individual are different (in age, size, SES,
  educational background) , but they have
  similar kind of brain damage. So????
• The study of brain damage patients can
  lead to underestimates of brain areas
  involved in performing any given
  cognitive functioning

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field
  concerned with the scientific study of biological
  component underlying cognition ? with specific
  focus on the neural component of mental
  processes.
• It addresses the questions of how psychological/
  cognitive functions are produced by the brain ?
  focused on uncovering the neural mechanisms
  underlying cognitive processes.
• Includes studying about perception,
  attention, motor control, language, learning,
  memory, spatial and social cognition

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both
  psychology and neuroscience, overlapping with
  disciplines such as biology, physiology,
  physiological psychology, cognitive psychology
  and neuropsychology.
• Therefore, the Cognitive neuroscientists comes
  from various backgrounds, such as..
• cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology,
  Bioengineering,
• Psychiatry, neurology, physics, computer
  science, linguistics, philosophy and
  mathematics.

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience
  include experimental paradigms from psychophysics
  and cognitive psychology, functional neuro
  imaging, electrophysiology, cognitive genomics
  and behavioral genetics.
• Scientist tried to understand the
  relationship between the brain and mind ?
  from various aspects.
• Studies of the human brain are done
  scientifically ? in controlled environment
  (lab)
• Studies of patients with cognitive deficits due
  to brain lesions constitute an important aspect
  of cognitive neuroscience
• Theoretical approaches include computational
  neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
• Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in
  cognitive science, plus evidence from
  neuropsychology and computational.

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Limitation 0f Cognitive Neuroscience

• Relating to the validity of the data
  collected (results from the study).
• Can the result be generalized to other
  situation ? since each individual
  (respondents) participated in the study
  have significant individual differences???