1. What is cognition? (book definition)
Cognition comprises the mental processes that are involved in:
Perception
Attention
Memory
Problem solving
Reasoning
Decision making

2. Why should you care?
Many of you may be interested in clinical, school, or social psychology
Many of these fields study personality
What is personality at the lowest level?
How we perceive things
How/what we remember
How we make decisions
etc.
These are all based in our cognition

3. Why else should you care?
Billions of neurons to create the smartest animals on the planet
But we don’t know how it works!
“The three-pound enigma.”

4. The complexity of cognition
Walking to class today
Memory - Remembering what building class is in
Perception & attention - Looking at a campus map to find the building
Language - Asking someone for directions
Reasoning - Finding the best route to get to the room
It all seems so automatic!

5. Automaticity can get in the way
Example: Stroop effect
Instructions: Read the words on the next slide out loud
Example:
WATER
APPLE

6. Stroop

7. Stroop effect
Instructions: Read the ink color on the next slide out loud and ignore the word
Example:
GLASS
BOOK

8. Stroop

9. Deconstructing the Stroop effect
Reading is highly automatic
We generally learn color naming first
Cannot stop reading even after lots of practice!
So cognition is pretty automatic
Right?
INSERT: But how automatic is it?
SHOW: Change blindness - Harborside Video

10. Sometimes your eyes can lie…

11. The Flash-Lag effect
An object is flashed at the same instant that a moving object arrives at same position
Perceived to spatially lag the moving object
Moving objects processed more slowly than static objects?
Or, do we make predictions of where a moving object will be?
INSERT: But how automatic is it?
SHOW: Change blindness - Harborside Video

12. What is cognition? (simple definition)
The behind the scenes functioning of the mind
How the mind creates behaviors that are similar to all people
How the mind creates behaviors that are not similar to all people (individual differences)

13. Cognitive Science: The big picture
Cognitive science: The study of the mind, approached from many disciplines
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Just one piece of the picture
Cognitive Psych

14. Disciplines of cognitive science
Psychology: Scientific study of behavior produced by the mind
Neuroscience: Studies the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the brain
Philosophy: How our mind constructs reality, questions of consciousness
Linguistics: Scientific study of origins and development of language

15. Applications: Human factors
Human factors: Designing systems within the limits of human cognition
Don’t overload memory
Don’t make words hard to see
Real-world examples
Medical technology
Three Mile island
Early fighter planes

16. Applications: Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence: The development of technology that performs functions similar to human thought
Relates to philosophy
What is consciousness?
How does our brain create consciousness?

17. History: Back in the day…
Aristotle BC
Tabula rasa (“blank slate”)
Structure of the mind already in place?

18. Fast forward to the 1860s
Franciscus Donders - measured the speed of thought
1868
Reaction time experiments

19. What is reaction time?
The time elapsed between some stimulus and the person’s response
Typically measured in milliseconds
Considered a measure of difficulty
Space Bar
Time (ms)
Person’s Reaction Time

20. Donders’ Subtraction Simple reaction time See light, press button
Figure 1.3 (p. 6) A modern version of Donders’ (1868) reaction time experiment. (a) the simple reaction-time task; and (b) the choice reaction-time task. For the simple time reaction text, the participant pushes the J key when the light goes on. For the choice reaction time test the participant pushes the J key if the left light goes on, and the K key if the right light goes on. The purpose of the Donders experiment was to determine the time it took to decide which key to press for the choice reaction time test.
Simple reaction time
See light, press button
Choice reaction time
See light, which button?

21. Measuring the speed of thought
Simple Reaction Time experiment:
Stimulus:
The light
Mind:
Sees light
Response:
Press button
Choice Reaction Time experiment: *
Stimulus:
The light
Mind:
Sees light
Mind:
Which button?
Response:
Press button

22. Measuring the speed of thought
Example:
Choice Reaction Time experiment: 500 ms -
Simple Reaction Time experiment: 350 ms
DISCUSSION: Why might this not work?
ANSWER: Pure insertion
150 ms
150 ms for the extra stage in choice RT:
150 ms to choose which button to press

23. What does this tell us? Specifically:
How long it takes for the mind to choose a response

24. What does this tell us? Generally:
Mental responses cannot be measured directly
Must infer mental processing through behavior
Behavioral measures
Reaction times
Accuracy/error rates
What’s wrong with this? The assumption of pure insertion

25. Discussion time! Has anyone thought of a potential flaw in this logic?
Clue: Imagine cooking something and inserting a new step. What happens to the final recipe?
The assumption of pure insertion

26. Hemholtz’s Unconscious Inference (1860s)
Figure 1.5 (p. 8) The display in (a) looks like (b) a gray rectangle in front of a light triangle; but it could be (c) a gray rectangle and a six-sided figure that are lined up appropriately.

27. What does this tell us? Specifically:
How does our mind recognize objects that are occluded by other objects?
Some kind of automatic filling-in process
Object recognition: we’ll talk about this in a few weeks

28. What does this tell us? Generally:
Some of our perceptions are the result of automatic processes beyond our control
Like reading the Stroop task
Cognitive psychology can help to unmask the automatic processes

29. Foundations of cognition
These early researchers developed some basic principles:
Donders: Mental processes must be inferred from behavior
Hemholtz: Mental processes are automatic and often unseen

30. Willhelm Wundt
First experimental psychology laboratory (Europe)
Leipzig, Germany ~1879
Controversy regarding whether Wundt or James established first psychological lab

31. Edward Titchener 1867-1927 Born in England
Studied in Germany under Wundt
Stories

32. Structuralism (Wundt and Titchener)
The study of the structure of the conscious mind
Focus on the sensations, images, and feelings that are elements of consciousness

33. Conscious “structure” of an apple
Red
Cold
Crisp
Sweet

34. Wundt’s Introspection
How to study the mind?
Introspection: “Self-observation”
Subjects looks carefully inward and report on inner situations and experiences
Example: Describe the experience of hearing a 5-note chord on the piano
Hear one sound or individual notes?

35. Wundt’s introspection criteria
The subject must know when the experience begins and ends
Subject is master of situation
The subject must maintain "strained attention”
Mind does not wander
Scientific method: observation, measurment, hypothesis testing, replication, inductive/ deductive reasoning
Criterion important for “methodical” aspect of Introspection.
Compare to methods of chemistry physics
Required specially trained observers to perform.
Concrete example…
1. Contrast with stream of consciousness approach

36. Problems with structuralism
Observers were highly trained, but self-reports were not consistent across people
How can psychologists draw clear conclusions when introspection produces such varied data?

37. Behaviorism A response to Wundt’s introspection
The scientific study of observable behavior only
Behaviorism is “antimentalistic”
Since mental processes can’t be seen, they have no place in psychology
Explanations like classical conditioning

38. John B. Watson 1878-1958 Professor of psychology
Founder of behaviorism
Bonus points for guessing middle name: Broadus
Raised in South Carolina
Mom wanted him to become preacher
Grad school at University of Chicago; studied psychology, neurology and philosophy
Academic job at John’s Hopkins for 14 years.
Kicked out of academia for relationship with grad student.
Finished career in advertising.
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become the type of specialist I might select- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant, chief, and yes even beggarman and thief regardless of the talnets, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

39. B.F. Skinner 1904-1990 Professor of psychology Behaviorism
Operant conditioning
Positive and negative reinforcements
Burrhus Fredric Skinner
Raised in Pennsylvania
Graduate school at Harvard in psychology
Eventually taught at Harvard

40. Classical conditioning
If Unconditioned Stimulus  Unconditioned Response (meat powder) (salivation)
then pair
Conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus
(tone) (meat powder)
then eventually
Conditioned stimulus  conditioned response
(tone) (salivation)

41. Operant conditioning
It is possible for the animal to generate a response and for that response to have consequences:
Act cute --> Get pet
Poop on rug --> Get scolded

42. Cracks in the behaviorist framework
1960s: Criticisms of behaviorism
Behaviorism could not explain some phenomenon
Critical periods/early learning
Language
Inability to override instinctual behavior

43. Problems with behaviorism: Critical periods
Critical period: A time when an animal is able to learn particular information rapidly and with little exposure
If the time window is missed, the animal learns with greater effort or not at all

44. Critical periods example
Some birds follow the first large thing that they see when they are hatched - usually first large thing is mom
The tendency to follow the first large thing has a critical period
What happens if the first large thing is not mom?

45. Critical periods: Lorenz as mom
Behaviorism cannot explain critical periods!

46. Problems with behaviorism: Language
The behaviorist account of language (Skinner, 1957):
Children learn language through imitation and reinforcement. Appropriate speech is rewarded.

47. Criticism of behaviorist account of language
The response (Chomsky, 1959):
Behaviorist accounts ignore that language is generative. This means that virtually everything you say and hear is novel. It can’t be the case that you understand it because of reinforcement in the past, because you’ve never heard it before.

48. Evidence that for non-behaviorist view of language
Generativity of language (production of novel sentences)
Overextension of grammar
“I hitted the ball.”
This is never spoken by adults

49. Problems with behaviorism: Instinct/Fixed Actions
The Misbehavior of Organisms (Breland & Breland, 1961):
Try to train raccoon to put two coins in a piggy bank
Raccoon would instinctively rub coins together, like they would with shellfish
No amount of reward would cause extinction of the rubbing response

50. The rise of something new…
Information processing approach
The mind processes information as it comes into the brain
Rebirth of cognitive psychology parallels development of computers

51. Cognition and Computation
Perception
Attention
Memory
Problem solving
Reasoning
Decision making
COMPUTATION
Input from many sources
Processing (memory, software)
Output to many sources

52. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon
Computer science & artificial Intelligence
Economics & mathematics
Nobel Prize in economics for decision making

53. The mind as computer? Computer hardware diagram:
Figure 1.7 (p. 13) (a) flow diagram for an early computer; (b) flow diagram for an early computer program.
Can we apply boxes and arrows to the mind?

54. Early IP experiment: attention
Example: Cherry’s (1953) attention experiments
String of words presented to each ear
Subjects attend to one ear only
Unattended stream is not remembered

55. The mind as computer? Block diagram of mental processes:
Figure 1.8 (p. 13) Broadbent’s diagram depicting mental processes that occur as a person pays attention to one stimulus in the environment. This diagram shows that many messages enter a “filter” that selects the message to which the person is attending for further processing by a detector and then storage in memory.
(Flow diagram of how attention works)

56. The End. Next class: Methods of cognitive psychology!
How do we measure behavior?
How do we measure the brain?
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world?