Cognition: The act or process of knowing.

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Chapter 1

• Introduction

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Cognition The act or process of knowing.
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Cognitive psychology refers to (the study of)
all processes by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, recovered, and
used. (Neisser, 1967)
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Cognitive processes generally refers to human
intellectual processes such as

• Perception
• Attention
• Learning
• Memory
• Problem Solving
• Reasoning
• Decision Making
• Language Comprehension

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The cognitive revolution
In the late 1950s or early 1960s there seemed
to be a shift in the prevailing paradigm in
psychology from behaviorism to cognitivism.
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Contrasting Behaviorism and Cognitivism

• What are the core beliefs of Behaviorism?
• What are the core beliefs of Cognitivism?

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Two important distinguishing beliefs
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Some criteria that might be used to evaluate the
approaches

• Adequacy (or sufficiency)
• Predictive ability
• Parsimony
• Heuristic value

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Conceptual Approaches to Cognition

• The information processing approach
• The neural network approach

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The Information Processing Approach
The information processing approach is based on a
computer metaphor The mind works like a computer
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Metaphor A figure of speech in which you talk
about something as if it were something else, as
if the two were analogous.
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Examples of metaphors

• Im drowning in debt
• Shes sharp as a tack
• He has a big ego

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Metaphors of memory

• The memory is burned into my brain.
• Its a strong memory
• My mind recorded everything that happened.
• Ill have to file that one away
• I dug up an old memory

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Metaphors suggest a way of thinking about
something

• Memory as a muscle
• Memory as a filing cabinet
• Memory as a video recorder
• Memory as an archeological investigation

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Examples of the computer metaphor

• Information is processed by the memory system
• Information is encoded into memory
• Information is retrieved from memory

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Example of the information processing approach
The modal model of memory
Sensory Memory
Short Term Memory
Long Term Memory
Input
Output
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Another example of the information processing
approach
Example based on a letter matching experiment
by Posner
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The Experiment

• Participant is presented a pair of letters
• Participant responds as quickly as possible if
  the two letters are the same (yes) or not
  (no).
• The time taken to respond (reaction time) is
  recorded.

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Trial Types
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An information processing model to account for
findings
Compare Name Codes
Compare Visual Images
Different?
Access Name Codes
Different?
No
Same?
Same?
Yes
Yes
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The Neural Network Approach
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The Neural Network Approach
The neural network approach is based on a brain
metaphor The mind works like a brain
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Facts about the brain

• Basic processing unit -- neurons
• Essentially two states
• active (action potential)
• passive (resting potential)
• Threshold of firing
• Neurons interconnected forming a network
• Activation (and inhibition) spreads among neurons

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Facts about neural networks

• Processing unit neurode
• Two states
• active (output)
• passive (no output)
• Threshold of firing
• Neurodes interconnected forming a network
• Activation (and inhibition) spreads among
  neurodes

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A Hypothetical Network
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Man
Woman
Psychologist
Artist
Father
Therapist
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Defining Properties
Man
Woman

Psychologist

Artist

Father

Therapist

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Defining Properties
Man
Woman

Buddy Grah
Psychologist

Stuart Bonnington
Artist

Father
Georgia Okeefe

Therapist

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Defining Properties
Man
Woman

Buddy Grah
Psychologist

Stuart Bonnington
Artist

Father
Georgia Okeefe

Therapist