Introduction to Cognition

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Introduction to Cognition

• Cognitive processes are very familiar and taken
  for granted.
• These processes are performed without effort so
  we perceive them as simple
• Since they are perceived as simple people believe
  studying them must be easy
• Unfortunately, they only appear easy once you
  know the answers

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Examples

• Two trains approaching each other, one moves at
  20 mph the other 40 mph. A bird flies back and
  forth between the two trains at an average of 50
  mph. 4 hours later the trains meet. How far did
  the bird fly?
• He who hesitates is lost, but haste makes wastes
  and you should look before you leap.

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Goals of the Course

• To learn what is currently known about human
  memory and cognition
• To learn how these discoveries were made and how
  are understanding of memory and cognition will
  change as new discoveries are made
• To understand how our knowledge of human
  cognition can impact other fields of study and
  our own way of thinking and remembering

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What is Memory?

• Webster the power, act, or process of recalling
  to mind facts previously learned or past
  experiences
• Problem - circular definition
• Cognitive definition the mental process of
  acquiring and retaining information for later
  retrieval, and the storage system in which these
  processes operate.

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What is Cognition?

• The mental processes and activities used in
  perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, and
  understanding, and the act of using these
  processes
• Cognition involves semiautonomous mental processes

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A Quick History of Cognition

• Questions asked by cognitive psychologists are
  related to the same question ancient Greek and
  Roman philosophers were asking
• What is the nature of the mind?
• They attempted to answer these questions using
  deductive reasoning

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Middle Ages

• Rise of Christianity around 700AD led to the loss
  of all the works of the Greeks and Romans
• It was felt all knowledge could be gained through
  the Bible or the works of Aristotle. Science and
  philosophy were seen as unnecessary

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16th and 17th Centuries

• The use of empirical methods observations
  became important
• While our sensory systems may not be perfect, we
  can still use them to learn about the world

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19th Century

• Increased interest in the brain and measuring
  activity of the nervous system
• 1850 von Helmholtz measures the speed of a
  nerve impulse in a frogs leg
• 1879 former lab assistant to von Helmholtz,
  Wilhelm Wundt, sets up a lab to study mental
  processes using the scietific method of physiology

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Beginning of Psychology

• 1879 Wundt interested in how higher mental
  processes produce perceptions, memory, etc.
• 1890s Titchner, a student of Wundts, attempts
  to describe the structure of the mind, starting
  structuralism

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Behaviorism

• American psychologists become unhappy with
  structuralism
• Functionalism psychology was to study the
  function of the mind
• Watson and others criticized the sstudy of the
  mind as not being scientific. Psychology became
  the study of observable behavior

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Return to the Study of Mental Processes -
Cognition

• 1950s Psychologists began to see that
  behaviorism was too rigid and didnt let them
  study more interesting topics
• Behaviorism unable to address relatively simple
  issues or more complex abilities such as language

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The New Cognitive Psychology

• 3 assumptions of cognitive psychology
• Mental processes exist and need to be studied if
  psychology is to be useful
• It is possible to infer an underlying mental
  process by measuring changes in behavior that
  occur when a mental process is used
• Humans are active information seekers. They do
  not just respond to the environment

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An important Issue in Using Inference

• Caution that the jump from behavior to mental
  process isnt too great
• There may be alternative inferences that explain
  the data that need to be eliminated
• Another definition of inference could be educated
  guess