4:39 PM Two topics 1. What is Cognitive Psychology about? Interaction with the world The cognitive psychology of the Couch Potato 2. What methods does Cognitive Psychology use? How are questions framed? Three steps in empirical research

4:39 PM 1. What is Cognitive Psychology about? From Reed’s text (p. 3): “Cognitive psychology refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.” What is sensory input? Transformation? Reduction? … that’s our subject this term

4:39 PM 1. What is Cognitive Psychology about? Interaction with the world. Input  External influences on input – what’s out there?  Internal influences on input – what do you notice? Perception Storage Retrieval Response selection

4:39 PM Cognitive Psychology of the Couch Potato One way to illustrate the complexity and sophistication of human cognition is to consider the cognitive psychology of the couch potato. We’ll look at what is regarded as a pointless, undemanding task that doesn’t require much skill. Anybody can do it. How hard could it be?

4:39 PM Thinking about the couch potato will:  Illustrate what Cognitive Psychology is about.  Give you new respect for humans as a species. If our simplest activities are significant achievements, how should we evaluate our most complex, demanding operations?

4:39 PM Couch Potato Cognitive Tasks A. Eating potato chips B. Perception Perceiving people Perceiving objects Perceiving actions C. Language Syntax, vocabulary, and prosody Inferences & figurative language Humour D. Memory & comprehension tasks

4:39 PM A. Eating potato chips To manage this you must: Guide hand into bag – not down outside Control grip aperture and pressure – don’t break chip; don’t let it fall Raise hand to mouth – not to cheek or ear

4:39 PM B. Perception To watch television, you must not only see the images on the screen, you must perceive them. That is, you must attach meaning to the images arriving at your retina. Things you must perceive include people

4:39 PM Perceiving people… Are they young or old?

4:39 PM Perceiving people Happy or sad?

4:39 PM Perceiving people Male or female?

4:39 PM  Objects B. Perception Watching television requires perceiving People

4:39 PM Perceiving objects

4:39 PM Perceiving objects

4:39 PM  Actions B. Perception Watching television requires People Objects

4:39 PM Perceiving actions

4:39 PM Perceiving actions

4:39 PM C. Language Language tasks required for television watching include: Understanding vocabulary – what do individual words mean? Pragmatics Syntax: The cat bit the dog vs. the dog bit the cat. Prosody – the affective and pragmatic value of intonation.

4:39 PM C. Language Language tasks (continued): Understanding utterances, inc. inferences “The dog barked. The baby woke.” Literal vs. figurative language – same external form, different meanings “A rolling stone gathers no moss” Understanding humour

4:39 PM D. Memory & comprehension tasks Memory tasks in television watching: Remembering histories of characters Who is Chandler? What would he do if a waiter spilled soup on him? Who is Tony Soprano? How would he respond to a neighbour in need of help?

4:39 PM D. Memory & comprehension tasks Understanding story, relationships How would the story develop if Chandler found his wife was having an affair with a friend of his? How would the story develop if Tony Soprano found his wife was having an affair with a friend of his?

4:39 PM D. Memory & comprehension tasks Suspending disbelief Does the Federation really exist? Klingons? In the show 24 Hours, the action unfolds during one 24 hour day. But you watch it over 24 weeks. How can you accept that the time elapsed is both one day and 24 weeks?

4:39 PM Conclusion Being a couch potato is a very complex task. It requires accurate sequencing of movements using gross and fine motor control, perception, understanding of vocabulary, sentence structure, prosody, figurative language, and pragmatics, memory encoding and retrieval, comprehension of narrative, and deliberate suspension of disbelief.

4:39 PM 2. Method How are issues framed? What do we count as evidence? Cognitive Psychology is an empirical discipline. Disagreements among practitioners are settled by appeals to objectively-obtained data.

4:39 PM 2. Method This reliance on objective ways of settling disagreements and insistence on accepting only conclusions backed up by adequate experimental evidence distinguishes psychology from other disciplines such as sociology, MIT, anthropology, political science, history, and women’s studies. Like physics, chemistry, and biology, we search for causes through experiments rather than simple observation.

4:39 PM 2. Method Three steps in empirical research: 1. Develop theories 2. Generate predictions about behaviour Based on theories 3. Test predictions

4:39 PM 2. Method – an example Topic – Visual word recognition General theory – people have a memory trace in their heads for each word they can recognize in writing. Issue – how are traces organized?

4:39 PM 2. Method – an example Theory A – Traces are organized by frequency-of-use: you search among common words first, rare words last. Theory B – Traces are organized by length: you search among short words first, long words last. In order to test these theories, we use them to generate competing predictions about human performance.

4:39 PM 2. Method – an example Prediction from Theory A Ave. response time to common words should be shorter than average response time to rare words Prediction from Theory B Ave. response time to short words should be shorter than average response time to long words

4:39 PM 2. Method – an example In fact, when you do these tests, you find that reaction times (RTs) to common words are faster on average than RTs to rare words there is very little effect of word length on RT Conclusion: Theory A wins.

4:39 PM 2. Method In your reading, pay attention to research paradigms - what is a participant in an experiment asked to do? What cognitive processes are required, in what order, for them to carry out that task adequately? Independent variables Dependent variables: RT Accuracy/error rate