1. Chapter 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

2. Some Questions of Interest
What is cognitive psychology?
How did psychology develop as a science?
How did cognitive psychology develop from psychology?
How have other disciplines contributed to the development of theory and research in cognitive psychology?

3. Some Questions of Interest
What methods do cognitive psychologists use to study how people think?

5. Cognitive Psychology Is…
The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information.
Problem Solving
Memory
Decision Making
Attention
Reasoning
Perception
Language

6. Philosophical Antecedents
Rationalist
Acquire knowledge through thinking and logical analysis
Empiricist
Acquire knowledge via empirical evidence

7. Rationalism (Plato):
René Descartes (1596–1650)
dualism between a material body and immaterial mind or soul
mechanistic explanations for the body’s functions
highest functions of consciousness, will and reasoning, were non-mechanistic

8. Descartes’s Early Life and the Development of His Method
Analytic Geometry—integrating algebra and geometry: numerical relationships of algebraic equations are expressed visually through the use of a coordinate graphing system (“cartesian” coordinates)
Descartes’s Early Life and the Development of His Method

9. Pineal Gland

10. Empiricism (Aristotle)
John Locke (1632–1704)—An English philosopher who theorized that the human mind was a tabula rasa at birth, and that all human knowledge comes through experience

11. Immanuel Kant
Two domains of reality: noumenal and phenomenal
Kant’s noumenal world is indirectly “knowable” by the senses, but can it be scientifically studied?
KANT- critique of pure reason

12. Psychology as science It can be described spatially
It is not too transient to observe/measure
It can be manipulated experimentally
It can be described mathemetically
 so Kant provided the question, Helmholtz’ mechanistic models and Fechner’s math provided the solutions!
The younger Wundt would follow these two…
Wundt was Helmhotz lab assistant

13. Psychological Antecedents: the two “fathers” of psychology?
Structuralism
What are the elementary contents (structures) of the human mind?
Functionalism
How and why does the mind work?

14. William James (1842–1910)—A Harvard professor who established the first psychology laboratory in America
1890 textbook The Principles of Psychology
Philosophy of pragmatism

15. Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949)
—An American comparative psychologist who studied with James and went on to become the country’s best-known psychologist after James’s death. Thorndike became famous for his studies of trial-and-error learning and formulation of the law of effect, and his studies with Woodworth on the transfer of training.

16. Law of Effect—Thorndike’s assertion that when certain stimulus-response are followed by pleasure, they are strengthened, while responses followed by annoyance or pain tend to be “stamped out.”

17. Structuralism
(Wundt)
Functionalism
(James)
Synthesis:
Associationism
(Ebbinghaus &
Thorndike)

18. Psychological Antecedents
Associationism
How can events or ideas become associated in the mind?
Behaviorism
What is the relation between behavior and environment?

19. Psychological Antecedents
Gestalt Psychology
- Cognitions should play an active role in psychology
(Wertheimer, Kohler)

20. Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
1950s: development of computers
artificial intelligence
A cognitive revolution occurred and increased interest in the study of mental processes (cognitions)

21. Psychobiology: Karl Spencer Lashley (1890–1959)
“the necessary conclusion that learning just is not possible”

22. Alan Turing Broke German Enigma code in WWII Openly gay in 1950s
Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher,
Broke German Enigma code in WWII
Openly gay in 1950s
Arrested and convicted
Likely committed suicide as a result
( )

23. Ada, Countess of Lovelace
Daughter of the poet, Byron
Gifted mathematician
wrote first computer program – calculated sequence of Bernoulli numbers
The Lovelace Objection
( )

24. Then and Now
Witch (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell) 1951
CHARLI

25. Research Methods Controlled experiments Psychobiological research
Self reports
Case studies
Naturalistic observation
Computer simulations and artificial intelligence

26. In an Experiment… Manipulate the independent variable
The “cause”
Measure the dependent variable
The “effect”
Control all other variables
Prevent confounds

27. Typical Independent Variables
Characteristics of the situation
Presence vs. absence of a stimulus
Characteristics of the task
Reading vs. listening to words for comprehension
Characteristics of participants
Age differences

28. Typical Dependent Variables
Percent correct/error rate
Accuracy of mental processing
Reaction time (milliseconds)
Speed of mental processing

29. Correlational Studies
Cannot infer causation
Nature of relationship
Positive correlation
Negative correlation
Strength of relationship
Determined by size of “r”

30. Example: Correlational Study
An examination of the relationship between confidence and accuracy of eyewitnesses
What do you think the relationship is?
Positive?
Negative?
Strong?
Weak?
It is not a strong positive correlation!
Many studies indicate that high confidence does not mean high accuracy

31. Psychobiological Studies
Postmortem studies
Examine cortex of dyslexics after death
Brain-damaged individuals and their deficits
Study amnesiacs with hippocampus damage
Monitor a participant doing a cognitive task
Measure brain activity while a participant is reciting a poem

32. Other Methods Self-reports Case studies
An individual’s own account of cognitive processes
Verbal protocol, diary study
Case studies
In-depth studies of individuals
Genie, Phineas Gage, H.M.