Introduction to Cognitive Science

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Introduction to Cognitive Science Thomas R.
Shaffer Ph.D.
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What is Cognitive Science

• Cognitivism refers to the belief that human
  behavior can be understood if we understand how
  people think
• Cognitive Science concerns the study of internal
  mental processes. That is Cognitive psychologists
  study how people perceive, learn, remember,
  learn, and think
• Cognitive Science is a perspective that one uses
  to approach the study of Psychology (e.g.
  behavioral, psychodynamic, social).
• Although Cognitive Science is a unified field
  (unlike psychology itself) it draws on many other
  fields including neuroscience, computer science,
  linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy.
• In addition Cognitive Science interacts with
  other fields within psychology, such as
  psychobiology, developmental psychology, social
  psychology, and clinical psychology.
• Most importantly Human cognition has evolved over
  time as a means of adapting to our environment,
  we call this ability to adapt to the environment,
  intelligence

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What is Cognitive Science

• Although the field primarily concerns the study
  of human mental processes, much can be learned
  from comparative cognition or the study of
  behavioral linguistic processes in animals.
• Cognitive science is not constrained by age, and
  a great deal of research in the field concerns
  developmental cognition, or how the thought
  processes change throughout the life span.
• An understanding of the normal operations of the
  mind is enhanced by observations of mental
  dysfunction, thus Cognitive Science relies
  heavily on observations gained from clinical
  populations.
• Clearly Cognitive Science is a field that draws
  from a large number of related disciplines.

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What is Cognitive Science

• Some traditional areas of study for Cognitive
  Psychologists
• Perceptual processes
• Attention
• Memory
• Knowledge Acquisition Comprehension
• Language
• Reasoning Problem Solving
• Emotion

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Philosophy and the History of Cognitive Science
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Early Influences on Cognitive Science

• Philosophers have been interested in mental
  experiences for thousands of years. The argument
  which continues to prevails today among
  psychologists about sensory experiences being
  direct or indirect, was first considered by some
  of the most famous philosophers in history
• The Greek philosophers Socrates his student
  Plato felt that sensory experiences were
  imperfect representations of reality, that is,
  our sensations are unstable and do not reflect
  actual reality (e.g. the allegory of the cave).
• In Contrast, Platos student, the philosopher
  Aristotle felt careful observation and logical
  deduction and inductive reasoning could allow one
  to gain an accurate representation of the world.
• Aristotle wrote extensively about memory, and is
  the first philosopher to take an inductive
  observational approach to his work, he describes
  memory as resulting from 3 concepts 1) similarity
  2) Contrast, and 3) continuity (e.g. things are
  linked together in memory by there relative
  difference or similarity and because they occur
  together in space and time).
• The mind for Aristotle was furnished by
  experience, a position similar to that of John
  Locke who centuries later described the mind as a
  blank slate or Tabla Rasta.

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The intellectual Spirit of the 17th
Century-Mechanism

• Mechanism-The doctrine that natural processes are
  mechanically determined and capable of
  explanation by the laws of physics chemistry
• Mechanism had its origins in physics chemistry
  (e.g. natural philosophy)
• All matter in the universe was made up of atoms
  that were in constant motion.
• Because motion was based on the law of physics,
  and all motion was subject to measurement, every
  physical effect in the Universe should be
  predictable.
• Once scientists understood the laws by which the
  world functioned, then the future should be
  predictable
• Scientists attributed everything in the Universe
  to God and since God was perfection, the Universe
  was an orderly place.

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Rationalism vs. EmpiricismTwo methods of
attempting to understand human functioning in a
mechanistic world.

• Rationalism understanding the world through
  introspection (Plato, cs. 428-348 B.C. René
  Descartes, 1596-1613)
• Empiricism understanding the world through
  observation (Aristotle, 384-322 B.C. John Locke,
  1632-1704)

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Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• Descartes most important contribution to modern
  psychology is his attempt to resolve the mind
  body problem. That is are the mental world and
  the material world distinct from each other.
• Prior to Descartes the Mind was assumed To
  control the body, the interaction flowed in one
  direction only.
• Descartes redefined this theory and proposed that
  the interaction between mind body is a mutual
  interaction, with each exerting an influence on
  the other.
• As Descartes was an influential philosopher this
  led directly to scientists and philosophers
  beginning to reexamine the physical body. For
  Descartes, the mind had only one function,
  thought.
• This focus on the physical-psychological duality
  redirected the focus of scholars from the
  abstract concept of the soul to the scientific
  study of the mind and mental processes.

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Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• Descartes proposed that because the body is
  proposed of physical matter it possessed the
  characteristics that all matter has and is
  responsive to the laws of physics
  mechanics.Therefore the body is like a machine
  (e.g. e.g. mechanism)
• Descartes also noted that many of the bodys
  movements were involuntary (e.g. the automatons)
  and this led directly to his idea of indulatio
  reflexa.
• Indulatio reflexa is the movement of the body not
  supervised or determined by conscious will to
  move.
• Thus Descartes is often referred to as the first
  author of the theory of reflex action (S-R
  psychology).

Descartes revolutionary idea is that the mind and
body, although distinct, are capable of
interaction within the human organism.
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Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• Descartes proposed that the mind as opposed to
  the body was inmaterial, and unitary (that is
  occurred at just one point).
• Thus a mind body point of interaction was
  necessary (a physical point)
• Descartes proposed that this occurred in the
  conarium, or pineal gland.
• A quantity of physical motion (animal spirits)
  produced a mental quantity (e.g. a sensation).
  This could also occur in reverse and the point of
  transfer was the conarium.
• The doctrine of derived ideas was descartes split
  thoughts into two forms, derived ideas (direct
  application of an external stimulus) and innate
  ideas (not produced by external ideas but arising
  from the mind or consciousness.
• Among the inate ideas Descartes described were
  god, the self, perfection, and the infinity.

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Rationalism vs. EmpiricismTwo methods of
attempting to understand human functioning in a
mechanistic world.

• Rationalism understanding the world through
  introspection (Plato, cs. 428-348 B.C. René
  Descartes, 1596-1613)
• Empiricism understanding the world through
  obervation (Aristotle, 384-322 B.C. John Locke,
  1632-1704)

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The Empiricists

• During the years after the renaissance several
  advances were made in philosophy that ultimately
  laid the conceptual foundations for Psychology
• the early empiricists emphasized (Hobbes, Locke,
  Berkely) the effects of experience and
  environment on a passive mind, the beginnings of
  the nature/nurture argument that we still discuss
  today
• The later empiricists (Hume, Hartely, and James
  John Mill, emphasized the role of the active
  mind in the formation of associations, which
  predated the interest of Psychologists in
  learning memory.
• The empiricists felt that in the tradition of
  Aristotle, that in order to understand the mind
  it was appropriate to focus on the study of
  nature and external reality.
• The empiricists rejected the idea altogether of
  innate ideas

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Locke is credited with conceiving the concept of
  the mind as a Tabula Rasa, or blank page, without
  innate ideas.
• Locke However did believed in a dualism of mind
  and body and ascribed some cognitive powers to
  the mind.
• Locke wrote in Essays about knowledge from the
  environment coming in from the senses and then
  being structured and rearranged by reflective
  processes (a very contemporary view of
  perception)
• He also distinguished between types of
  information available from the environment.
  Primary Attributes were those that could be
  directly linked to Physics, (e.g. awareness of
  mass, motion, and numbers) 
• Secondary attributes were those that were
  dependant on the interpretation of the organism
  (e.g. taste, smell, sound) things that the
  physics of Newton and Galileo had demonstrated
  were unchanging constant, but that were
  perceived differently by individual people

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• Locke also speculated on the differences between
  types of ideas
•  Simple attributes (or ideas) included simple
  sensations that were below conscious awareness
• Complex Attributes (or ideas) were made up of
  simple attributes that were bound together by
  "attractive forces" and allowed for conscious
  awareness of objects or people.
• both the concept of simple and complex ideas, and
  the concept of primary and secondary attributes
  are believed to be be an attempt to bring
  Neutonian gravitational hypothesis into
  speculation about human consciousness.

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Sensory Physiology and the History of Cognitive
Science
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Sensory Physiology and the History of Cognitive
Science Herman Von HelmHoltz (1821-1894)

• Progress in sensory physiology was led by perhaps
  the greatest of the 19th Century Physiologists,
  Herman Von HelmHoltz.
• HelmHoltz received his medical degree in 1842 and
  accepted a professorship in 1849 at the
  University of Konigsberg.
• He is known as one of the most brilliant
  contributors of all time in physiological optics
  physiology.
• He was also a brilliant designer and mechanical
  engineer , who invented among other things the
  ophthalmoscope, a device still used by
  opthamologists to examine the retina, and the
  myograph, which measures the muscular
  contractions.

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Herman Von HelmHoltz (1821-1894)

• HelmHoltz is best remembered for his measurement
  of the speed of the neural impulse.
• Using the myograph, and electrically stimulating
  the nerve in the leg of a frog, Helmholtz
  measured the latency, nature, and duration of the
  neural impulse.
• He calculated the speed of the neural impulse at
  43 meters per second or 90 feet per second.
• Following these experiments he trained humans to
  press a button when a stimulus was applied to
  their legs, and determined that reaction times
  were longer for appendages that were further away.

The HelmHoltz Motor Above HelmHoltz Resonators
below
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Herman Von HelmHoltz (1821-1894)

• Helmholtz was also able to answer questions
  concerning the physiology of the impulse (e.g.
  was it exclusively electrical or chemical) and do
  different nerves conduct at different speeds.
• Helmholtz also formulated an early theory of
  color vision, by investigating the physiology of
  the muscles of the eye.
• The theory of color vision is now known as the
  Young-Helmholtz theory.
• He also formulated a theory of audition,
  specifically the perception of tones and harmony,
  and the problem of resonance.
• His work is considered a triumph of 19th century
  science.

The HelmHoltz Motor Above HelmHoltz Resonators
below
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Ernst Weber (1795-1878)

• Weber was the first of the two individuals who
  investigated the psychological response to
  physical stimuli.
• He is remembered for influencing a generation of
  investigators through his application of
  experimental physiology to problems in
  psychology.
• Weber earned his doctorate at the University of
  Leipzig in Physiology in 1815, and taught at the
  same institution from1817-1871.
• Weber was primarily interested in the physiology
  of the sense organs.
• Although almost all sensory research to that
  point had been conducted on the senses of vision
  hearing, Weber extended his research to
  cutaneous (skin) senses and muscular sensations.

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Ernst Weber (1795-1878) The Two Point Threshold

• One of Webers most important contributions was
  the investigation of the two point threshold.
• Weber noticed that two tactile stimuli are not
  always perceived as different, when very close
  they are often perceived as one stimulation
  point.
• The two point discrimination concerns the amount
  of distance necessary, between two points that
  touch the skin, before subjects discern a
  difference between the two sensations.
• The two point discrimination threshold is
  different on different areas of the body, Weber
  measured this difference as .22 Centimeters on
  the finger tips, and as 4.06 centimeters on the
  back.
• While we now know that this is due to differences
  in numbers of tactile receptors in different
  areas of the body, to Weber it indicated that
  there is not a simple 1 to 1 relationship between
  the physical characteristics of stimuli and the
  sensations they produce.
• This was a major step in measuring a
  psychological variable!

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Ernst Weber (1795-1878)

• Weber continued to develop the concept of the
  sensory thresholds using weights. Subjects were
  asked to discriminate between a comparison weight
  and a test weight both when touching than and
  when lifting them.
• Smaller differences in the threshold were noticed
  when lifting the weights which allowed Weber to
  speculate that increased sensations from the
  muscles contributed to the smaller threshold.
• These experiments and the similar experiments
  that Weber conducted with the other senses let to
  the development of psychologys first
  quantitative law, the Just Noticeable Difference.
• The JND is defined as the minimum amount of
  increase in a stimulus necessary before a change
  is noticed

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Just Noticeable Difference (JND) Ratios

• Webers research demonstrated that there is not a
  direct correspondence between a physical stimulus
  and our perception it.
• His research provided a method for investigating
  body mind
• He successfully applied the experimental method
  to the investigation of psychological processes,
  although it should be noted that he was
  interested only in the physiology of his
  experiments.
• He significantly influenced investigators that
  followed him and his influence can be found in
  almost every aspect of Psychology today

Vision (brightness) 1/60 Weights 1/40 Temperature
1/30 Skin Pressure 1/17 Smell 1/4 Taste
(salt) 1/3
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Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) The Birth of
Psychophysics

• Gustav T. Fechner founded the discipline of
  Psychophysics, which studies the relationship
  between physical stimuli and our sensory
  experiences.
• He was interested in physics and mathematics and
  moved away from medicine to study the
  relationship between sensory experiences
  physiological experiences. He began lecturing in
  physics in 1824, and by 1830 had begun to
  investigate the problems of sensations.
• In 1850 Fechner proposed a mathematical theory of
  the relationship between physical energy and
  psychological experience which stated that the
  two experiences are related by a logarithmic
  relationship.

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Gustav Fechner (1801-1887)

• Weber had noticed that while very weak stimuli
  were not always sensed, intense ones nearly
  always were.
• Between these two intensities was a Limen, or
  threshold, at which tactile stimuli are first
  perceived.
• Fechner extended this concept to other senses,
  and systemitized the concept of the absolute
  threshold.
• The absolute threshold is different for
  different people, and may change even for the
  same individual over time. A psychological
  variable!

Absolute threshold the minimum amount of
stimuli that can be detected 50 of the time
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Psychophysics

• Fechners work (in combination with Weber's work)
  demonstrated that the experiences of the mind
  could be measured scientifically (The philosopher
  Auguste Comte stated in 1842 that the human mind
  can study any phenomenon except its own
• Fechners book, Elements of Psychophysics, is on
  of the outstanding original contributions to
  psychology and significantly influenced both
  Wilhelm Wundt, and Herman Ebbinghaus

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Three Early Dialectics in the Psychology of
Cognition-Structuralism

• Structuralism structures of the mind can be
  revealed through introspection (Wilhelm Wundt,
  1932-1920)
• Functionalism a pragmatic approach that sought
  to determine why people do what they do (William
  James, 1842-1910 John Dewey, 1859-1952)
• Associationism examined how events or ideas
  become associated with one another (Hermann
  Ebbinghaus, 1850-1909 Edward Lee Thorndike,
  1874-1949)

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Structuralism

• Structuralism was a system of psychology that
  focused on the composition of the mind, that is
  its mental elements or structures.
• Structuralism was a system of psychology that
  focused on the composition of the mind, that is
  its mental elements or structures.
• Structuralism Began in Germany with Wilhelm Wundt
  but obtained a prominence in the United States,
  primarily due to Bradford Titchener, that lasted
  approximately 2 decades, until overthrown by
  newer movements.

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Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

• In 1879, Wundt asked for, and received,
  permission and funding, to start a small
  laboratory.
• Although the laboratory was not officially
  recognized and listed in the catalog until 1883
  it marks the first time a laboratory was
  dedicated to the study of Psychology
• In 1881, two years after the founding of his
  laboratory at Leipzig, he started the first
  journal devoted to Psychology, Philosophical
  studies.

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Wundt The History of Cognitive Science

• Wundt attempts to build on the work of Fechner
  Weber and describe the qualities of perception
• Wundt founds a school of Psychology known as
  Structuralism and pioneers the use of analytical
  introspection as a method of measuring the
  qualities of sensations.
• Structuralism attempts to break down sensations
  into there individual components but this
  technique of introspection comes under heavy
  criticism because of its subjectivity and the
  difficulty of replicating introspective
  experiences
• Wundts laboratory is very much in the
  traditional of strict experimental control but
  his theories of the mind become quite
  controversial.
• Wundt believes that mental operations produce
  products that are not just the sum of separate
  elements. Conscious mental processes emerge from
  psychological processes. E.G. Psychological
  processes cause the conscious experience.

Wilhelm Wundt 1832-1920
Wundt establishes the first research laboratory
in Psychology At the University of Leipzig in
1879.
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Wundt and Associates at Work

• Wundt began to attract a wide number of
  individuals from around the world to study with
  him. He was a popular lecturer and classes at
  Leipzig sometimes were as large as 600 students.
• This success meant that he began to attract
  brilliant scholars and students from around the
  world to study with him including several
  Americans.
• These individuals returned to the United States
  and formed laboratories of thee own. This meant
  that the Leipzig laboratory exerted an enormous
  influence on the development of modern Psychology

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E. Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

• Structuralism is a term that until relatively
  recently was applied to the system developed by
  Wilhelm Wundt.
• Structuralism is the term used by Bradford
  Titchener, a student of Wundts to describe his
  system of psychology.
• Since Titchener claimed to have faithfully
  brought Wundtian psychology to the United States
  with him, it actually took historians many years
  to notice that Titchener had significantly
  changed and modified the focus of Wundts
  Psychology.
• The discrepancy occurred primarily because
  Titchener was responsible for translating most of
  Wundts books from German into English.
• Structuralism in now used primarily to refer to
  the Work of Titchener while Voluntarism is used
  to refer to the work of Wundt.

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E. Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

• Titchener was an Englishman, who initially
  attended Malvern College and Oxford University
  where he studied philosophy and physiology
• Early on he became interested in Psychology, and
  as he was unable to study the subject at Oxford,
  he traveled to Leipzig and studied with Wilhelm
  Wundt. He received his doctorate in Psychology
  from Leipzig in 1892.
• From Leipzig Titchener moved on to Cornell
  University in the United States where he took
  over the experimental laboratory at that
  university from Frank Angell. He remained at
  Cornell for the next 35 years until his death at
  the age of 60.
• In addition to translating Wundts books into
  English, Titchener also wrote several famous
  texts in psychology, including, An Outline of
  Psychology (1896) and a 4 volume set entitled
  Experimental Psychology A Manual of Laboratory
  Practice. These last 4 Books were to become
  classics in the field and were translated into
  numerous languages.

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The Titchener System

• Titchener was only concerned with consciousness,
  and only with the generalized mind, not with
  individual minds. This meant that he rejected as
  a measurement error any report of individual
  errors
• The main research method in Titcheners laboratory
  (as in Wundts) was introspection, and Titchener
  would only allow those who had been extensively
  trained in introspection to perform experimental
  introspections.
• Titchener often drilled his students in what he
  referred to as hard introspection labor. In
  fact observers often had to perform over 10,000
  introspections under the watchful eye of
  Titchener before their data would be excepted as
  accurate. Titchener always had the final say on
  what was a correct introspection.
• These methods were described extensively in
  Titcheners 4 volume Experimental Psychology A
  Manual of Laboratory Practice, published from
  1901-1905.
• For many psychologists, including John Watson and
  Oswald Kulpe, these manuals were there first
  exposure to the rigid experimentalism of Wundt
  and Titchener.
• However, even though the books gave explicit
  instructions on how to conduct introspections of
  consciousness, in keeping with Titcheners believe
  that psychology should only study consciousness,
  they included no mention of subjects like
  learning, memory, motivation, emotion,
  developmental or clinical psychology

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Early Dialectics in the Psychology of
Cognition-Functionalism

• Structuralism structures of the mind can be
  revealed through introspection (Wilhelm Wundt,
  1932-1920)
• Functionalism a pragmatic approach that sought
  to determine why people do what they do (William
  James, 1842-1910 John Dewey, 1859-1952)
• Associationism examined how events or ideas
  become associated with one another (Hermann
  Ebbinghaus, 1850-1909 Edward Lee Thorndike,
  1874-1949)

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Early Dialectics in the Psychology of
Cognition-Associationism

• Structuralism structures of the mind can be
  revealed through introspection (Wilhelm Wundt,
  1932-1920)
• Functionalism a pragmatic approach that sought
  to determine why people do what they do (William
  James, 1842-1910 John Dewey, 1859-1952)
• Associationism examined how events or ideas
  become associated with one another (Hermann
  Ebbinghaus, 1850-1909 Edward Lee Thorndike,
  1874-1949)

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The Associationism of Ebbinghaus

• Ebbinghaus, a prominent researcher at the
  University of Berlin, first examined the
  relationship between the amount of material to be
  learned and the time and effort required to learn
  it.
• To do this he read out loud lists of nonsense
  syllables and repeated them back, all in time to
  a metronome. He recorded the amount of
  repetitions necessary before he could repeat them
  back perfectly.
• Ebbinghaus also assessed the effects of different
  amounts of learning on memory. He used different
  lists, each with 16 nonsense syllables, and
  varied the repetitions of each. All were then
  relearned 24 hours later.
• The relationship were clear, as the original
  number of repetitions increased, the time
  necessary to relearn them 24 hours later
  decreases.

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Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

• In his best known experiment, Ebbinghaus measured
  forgetting by memorizing lists of nonsense
  syllables and recording the rate at which he
  forgot them.
• The Ebbinghaus forgetting curves are now
  classics in the field of memory research, and in
  many ways set the trend of the study of memory
  for years to come.
• Ebbinghaus was also a mathematical and
  statistical expert, he introduced the concept of
  mean and variability.
• He also investigated additional concepts in
  memory including active vs. passive learning, the
  effects of spaced vs. massed information, the
  effects of parts vs. a whole percept, and the
  effects of sleep on learning (sleep slows
  forgetting)
• In perspective Ebbinghaus was an innovator and a
  pioneer who had an immense influence on
  experimental research in Psychology.

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Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)

• Edward Thorndike was a tremendously productive
  and influential psychologist.
• Thorndike was one of the most important early
  theorists in animal learning, educational
  psychology, and behavioral psychology. His
  dissertation on animal learning was one of the
  most cited papers in American Psychology at the
  time
• Thorndike developed his law of effect in 1898,
  several years earlier than Ivan Pavlov proposed
  his laws of reinforcement.
• Although the theories are almost identical the
  two individuals were not aware of each other for
  many years to come.

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The Law of Effect

• Thorndike referred to his approach to learning as
  connectionism, he hypothesized that an organism
  learned about connections between situations and
  types of responses.
• He is one of the first to hypothesize that if
  all of these (responses situational variables)
  could be analyzed man could be told what would
  and would not satisfy him and annoy him in every
  conceivable situation.
• The law of effect refers to stamping in or
  stamping out a response tendency by attaching
  favorable or unfavorable consequences.
• By definition the law of effect states any act
  which in a given situation produces satisfaction
  becomes associated with that situation, and when
  the situation reoccurs the act is more likely to
  reoccur than before.

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Behaviorism

• An extreme version of associationism that focuses
  entirely on the association between the
  environment and observable behavior (Ivan Pavlov,
  1849-1936 John Watson, 1978-1958 B.F. Skinner,
  1904-1990)

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Gestalt Psychology

• An anti-behavioral movement that focused upon
  organized, structured wholes (Köhler, 1927, 1940
  Wertheimer, 1945, 1959)

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Gestalt Psychology

• During the first decade of the twentieth century
  , Gestalt psychology provided a major alternative
  and challenge to structuralism, functionalism,
  and behaviorism.
• By 1912 John Watson was beginning to attack the
  doctrine of voluntarism structuralism as well
  as the functionalist movement. Animal research
  was coming from the laboratories of Pavlov and
  Thorndike, and the Psychoanalysis movement of
  Sigmund Freud was 10 years old.
• At approximately the same time the behaviorist
  revolution was gathering strength in America, the
  Gestalt movement was redefining Psychology in
  Germany.
• Much of the Gestalt movement was in response to
  the static voluntarism of Wundt which still
  dominated the thinking of German Psychologists.
• The three founders of the Gestalt movement, Max
  Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler
  rebelled against Wundtian Psychology in much the
  same way as the American behaviorists

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Gestalt Psychology

• Gestalt is a German word that means shape or
  form, and initially the Gestalt psychologists
  were interested in perception, However later,
  their interests broadened to include learning,
  problem solving, and cognition.
• The first experiment carried out by the Gestalt
  psychologists occurred in 1910. Max Wertheimer,
  while on vacation in Germany, noticed the
  apparent motion of telephone poles, buildings,
  and even mountains when he looked out the window
  of the train he was riding on.
• Wertheimer, got off the train at Frankfurt and
  ended up consulting Professor Friedrich Schumann
  of the Psychological Institute at the University
  of Frankfurt. Although Schumann could not explain
  the apparent motion phenomenon, he encourage
  Wertheimer to investigate the phenomenon and
  generously offered the use of his laboratory and
  equipment.
• The meeting with Schumann turned out to be a
  fateful one, as Schumann also introduced
  Wertheimer to his colleagues at Frankfurt, Kurt
  Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler.
• Together the triumvirate of Wertheimer, Koffka,
  and Kohler would become the leaders of the
  Gestalt movement and for the next 20 years would
  redefine German psychology

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Gestalt Psychology

• Although the behaviorist and gestalt movements
  began at the same time, and both developed in
  response to the dissatisfaction with
  introspection and voluntarism, they were
  fundamentally different ways of thinking about
  psychology.
• Gestalt psychologists, while they rejected
  Wundts Titcheners attempts to reduce
  consciousness to its basic elements, did accept
  the concept of consciousness. The behaviorists
  completely refused to acknowledge the usefulness
  of the concept of consciousness for a scientific
  psychology.
• The hypothesis behind gestalt psychology was that
  when sensory elements are combined (e.g. lines
  edges, colors) they form a new pattern or
  configuration which is something new and did not
  exist in any of the original stimuli.
• e.g. The whole is different that the sum of its
  parts

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Early Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology

• Karl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) neuroanatomy
• Donald Hebb (1949) cell assemblies
• Engineering and Computation serial vs. parallel
  processing

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Key Issues in Cognitive Psychology

• Nature vs. Nurture
• Rationalism vs. Empiricism
• Structures vs. Process
• Domain Generality vs. Domain Specificity
• Validity of Causal Inferences vs. Ecological
  Validity
• Applied vs. Basic Research
• Biological vs. Behavioral Methods

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Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

• Theories and empirical data go hand in hand.
• Cognition is adaptive but not all the time.
• Cognitive processes interact with each other and
  with non cognitive processes (e.g., biology)
• Cognition needs to be studied through multiple
  methods.
• Basic and applied research go hand in hand.