Cognitive Psychology – Goldstein – Ch. 1
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Cognitive Psychology
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The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind.
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Mind
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The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, reasoning, and is a system that creates representations of the world. This first definition reflects the mind's central role in determining our various mental abilities while the second part of the definition reflects the mind's importance for functioning and survival.
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Cognition
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The mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and making decisions.
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Reaction Time
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The time it takes to react to a stimulus. This is usually determined by measuring the time between presentation of a stimulus and the response to the stimulus. Examples of responses are pushing a button, saying a word, moving the eyes, and the appearance of a particular brain wave.
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Simple Reaction Time
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Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response).
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Choice Reaction Time
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Reacting to one of two or more stimuli. For example, in Donders' experiment (Ch.1), participants had to make one response to one stimulus and a different response to another stimulus.
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Structuralism
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An approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations. (See Ch.1, 3)
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Savings Method
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Method used to measure retention in Ebbinghaus' memory experiments. He read lists of nonsense syllables and determined how man repetitions it took to repeat the lists with no errors. He then repeated this procedure after various intervals following initial learning and compared the number of repetitions needed to achieve no errors.
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Analytic Introspection
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A procedure used by early psychologists in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes elicited by stimuli presented under controlled conditions.
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Behaviorism
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The approach to psychology, founded by John B. Watson, which states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists.
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Classical Conditioning
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A procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response (in the subject). (See Ch. 1, 6)
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Operant Conditioning
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Type of conditioning championed by B. F. Skinner, which focuses on how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval, or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection.
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Cognitive Map
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The mental conception of a spatial layout.
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Cognitive Revolution
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A shift in psychology - beginning in the 1950s - from the behaviorist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in terms of the mind. One of the outcomes of the cognitive revolution was the introduction of the information-processing approach to studying the mind.
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Information-Processing Approach
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The approach in psychology, developed beginning in the 1950s, in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages.
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Model
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In cognitive psychology, a representation of the workings of the mind; often presented as interconnected boxes that each represent the operation of specific mental functions.
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Logic Theorist
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Computer program devised by Alan Newell and Herbert Simon that was able to solve logic problems.
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Artificial Intelligence
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The ability of a computer to perform tasks usually associated with human intelligence.
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Physiological Approach
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Studying of the mind by measuring physiological and behavioral responses, and explaining behavior in physiological terms.
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Behavioral Approach
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Studying the mind by measuring a person's behavior and explaining this behavior in behavioral terms.
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Examples of early experimental research on the mind?
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The work of Donders (simple vs. choice reaction time) and Ebbinghaus (the forgetting curve for nonsense syllables).
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First laboratory of scientific psychology?
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Founded in 1879 by Wundt, was largely concerned with studying the mind. Structuralism was the dominant theoretical approach of this laboratory, and analytical introspection was one of the major methods used to collect data.
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William James?
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From the U.S., used observations of his own behavior as the basis of his textbook Principles of Psychology.
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B.F. Skinner
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His work on operant conditioning assured that behaviorism would be the dominant force in psychology through the 1950s. Believed behavior can be explained by: natural selection, evolution of operant conditioning, and evolution of culture.
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Donders' Experiment
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Simple vs. choice reaction time tasks. It was important because it was one of the first cognitive psychology experiments and because it illustrates something extremely significant about studying the mind: Mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior.
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Ebbinghaus' Experiment
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The forgetting curve for nonsense syllables. Used nonsense syllables so that his memory would not be influenced by the meaning of a particular word. Used the SAVINGS METHOD to analyze his results. Savings = [(Initial repetitions) - (Relearning repetitions)/Initial repetitions] x 100 Although his method was very different from Donders' method, both measured behavior to determine a property of the mind.
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Garcia Effect
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Animals programmed through evolution to make certain connections more easily than others, called preparedness b/c animals come pre-wired such that certain associations are easier to form Ex. nausea and food, why if you get sick once often can never eat that again.
