Cognitive Processes PSY 334

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Cognitive ProcessesPSY 334

• Chapter 1 The Science of Cognition

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Study Aids

• On reserve at the library
• An old edition of the textbook page numbers on
  the syllabus correspond to the current edition,
  not this one.
• See pgs 5-6, Chapter 1 How to study this book.
• Pay special attention to the summary statements
  highlighted between lines in the textbook.

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Early History

• Empiricism vs nativism (nurture vs nature)
• Famous empiricists
• Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Mill
• Famous nativists
• Descartes, Kant
• Lots of philosophical speculation but no use of
  the scientific method to answer questions.

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Scientific Psychology

• Scientific study began in 1879
• Structuralism Wundt, Titchener and systematic,
  analytic introspection.
• Functionalism -- William James armchair
  introspection.
• Behaviorism (1920)
• Thorndike consciousness as excess baggage.
• Watson consciousness as superstition.

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Early Mentalists

• Gestalt psychologists (German)
• Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler
• Critics of behaviorism
• Tolman
• European psychologists
• Bartlett
• Luria
• Piaget

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Mind for Behaviorists
Input Sensation
Output Behavior
What happens inside the box to produce the
observed behavior?
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Mind for Cognitive Theorists
Mental Representations Goals, Expectations,
Cognitive Maps Processes
Input Sensation
Output Behavior
What happens inside the box to produce the
observed behavior?
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Three Important Influences

• Human performance studies in WWII information
  needed to train military.
• Artificial intelligence thinking about how
  machines accomplish things leads to more
  analytical thinking about how humans do.
• Linguistics behaviorist principles could not
  account for the complexities of language use.

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Pioneers of Cognitive Psychology

• Information theory
• Donald Broadbent
• Artificial Intelligence
• Newell Simon
• Linguistics
• Chomsky
• Miller
• Neissers book Cognitive Psychology

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Sternbergs Paradigm

• 3 9 6
• Is 9 part of this number?

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Concerns about Cognitive Models

• Relevance do lab-task processes operate in the
  same manner in real life?
• Sufficiency can simple theories explain complex
  processes?
• Cognitive architectures
• Necessity does the mind actually work as
  described by specific theories?
• Cognitive neuroscience

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Other Approaches to Cognitive Psychology

• Connectionism (neural net models) can higher
  level functions be accomplished by connected
  neurons?
• Parallel distributed processing (PDP) --
  Rumelhart McClelland
• Situated cognition the ecological approach
• Gibsons affordances
• Do we explain cognition in terms of the external
  world or internal mind?

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Cognitive Neuroscience

• Pages 16-31 review basic concepts about the
  brain.
• If you have not taken PSY 210 and find this
  material confusing, come see me.
• New methods permit study of normal human
  functioning in more complex tasks
• EEG
• Imaging techniques PET fMRI