Chapter 1

- Several interacting cognitive processes are used in even the simplicist of everyday
tasks without even being aware
- Balance of experimental control and lack of cofounding variables and the efficacy
and real world application of experiments is important

Complex lexicon: part of your memory system that stores information about word
meanings

Experimental paradigm: two-strip down and thus results cant easily be generalized to the
real world

Naturalistic observation: observer watching people in familiar everyday contexts going

about their cognitive business

- Observers remains as unobtrusive as possible to not disrupt or alter behaviours that

are being observed
- Hard to assess when it has effects on the observation
- Ecological Validity: things studied do occur in the real world not just in a lab
- Determine how flexible cognitive processes are and how environmental changes
affect them
- Pretty easy to do and not a lot of people or resources are required to carry it out
- Experimental control: observer has no means to isolate cause of different
behaviours or reactions
- Use to identify problems issues or phenomena of interest to be investigate down the
road with other research methods that have more control
- Recordings are only good as what was planned to be recorded we miss the stuff we
aren’t looking for

Introspection: observer observes his or her own mental processes

- Benefit so that observing own reaction and behaviour may give better insight into an
experience and the factors that influence it but also can cause bias to your own
cognition
- Subtly and unconsciously distort observations

- Difference between observational methods and experiments is investigators degree

of experimental control
Experimental Control: experimenter can assign participants to different experimental
conditions causing minimization of preexisting difference between them, ideally controlling
all variables that might affect performance of research participants other than the
variables on which the study is focussed on

Experiment: experimenter manipulates one or more independent variables and observers

how the recorded measures change as a result

- Most cognitive psychology experiments are this type

- Independent variable = experimental conditions
- Dependent variable = recorded measures
- Between subjects design: different experimental participant are assigned to
different experimental conditions and the research looks for difference in
performance between two groups
- Within subjects design: expose the same experimental participant to more than on
condition and compare results to other participants
- Quasi Experiments: independent variables that cant be assigned are study
- Allow for isolation of causal factors and make better supported claims about
causality when compared to observational methods
- Don’t study real world phenomena

Brain imaging: construction of pictures of the anatomy and function of intact brains

• Cognitive psychology became its own discipline in 1960s

• 17th – 18th century philosophers seriously debated nature of the human mind and
knowledge
o During this time two ideologies emerged
▪ Empiricism (David Locke, John Hume, Stuart Mill): knowledge from
and individuals own experience, all our knowledge is acquired from
observation and analysis of events
• when born our cognition is a blank slate
▪ Nativism: biological and genetic factors determining ones cognitive
abilities
• From Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kent
• Individuals differences in cognitive abilities to innate abilities
that people are born with
 • Cognitive processes hardwired in the brain and difficult to
modify with experience

Wilhelm Wundt founded first institute for research in experimental psychology 1879 →
when the actual field of cognitive psychology argued to have arisen

Structuralism (Wilhelm Wundt): discovery of elemental component of the human mind,

building blocks of the conscious experience and how they combine to produce complex
mental phenomena

- Introspection arose (James Baldwin Wundt’s student) first experimental

psychology lab in north America 1889
- Big on experimental studies in a lab with high levels of control
- Bottom up model: basic elements to perceptual experience

Functionalism (William James): Different from structuralism in that it tries to explain the
functions of the mind why it works the way it does and uncover its elemental units

- Look at people in real life situations using observational methods

Behaviorism: objective natural science. Goal is to predict and control behaviours, looks at
the relationship between input and outputs

- Input = stimuli in environment

- Output = behavioural response
- Highly critiqued introspection method
- Only should focus on observable overt behaviour
- Larning is important
- Thought bad to talk about mental representations consciousness or mental states
o Contributed negatively to developmental of psychology as a scientific
discipline
o But did come up with rigorous research methods → examine the workings of
mind without relying on subjective measures

Gestalt Psychology: psychological phenomena to be analyzed and studied in their

entirety, Individuals able to experience or perceive total structure of an experience or
object as a whole

- Observer doesn’t construct perceptual experience or conscious cognitive

experience
- Top down determine perceptual experience
Individual difference and human cognitive abilities (sir Francis Galton): intellectual
abilities like other biological properties subject to same pressures of natural selection and
are therefore inherited

- Mental imagery is a cognitive ability → attributed to Galton

- Looked at family trees of “smart” men

Cognitive Revolution 20th century when there was a field of psychology devoted to study of
cognitive psychology

- In part due to WW2 and need for human factor engineering caused new problems
that ended solutions
o Heavy machinery and highly trained persons to operate
o Person-Machine system : interactions between human and machines
caused machines operated by a person must be designed to interact with
operators physical and cognitive capacities and limitations
▪ Humans share properties with inanimate objects that engineers
designed
▪ Peoples minds cant do too many thing simultaneously
- Development in the field of linguistics (Noam Chomsky): how people acquire
understand produce language
o Behaviorism couldn’t explain language adequately
o Say sentences they’ve never heard before and use incorrect grammar
despite lack of reinforcement
o Language development not grounded in laws of conditions
- Neuroscience development localization of function in the brain
o Brain connections formed by cell assembles provide different brain functions
(Donald Hebb)
o Specific cell in visual cortex in cats specialized to respond to specific kinds
of stimuli and early experience shape brain development (David Hubel and
Torsten Weisel)
- Computer metaphor of the mind: compare peoples cognitive activities to
operation of computer
o Structures for storage and structures for processing
Paradigm: body of knowledge structured according to what its proponent s consider to be
important

- Assumptions investigators make in phenomena study

- Kinds of experimental methods and measures appropriate for investigation

4 types of paradigms

1. Information processing approach: human mind computer analogy

a. Cognition is information through a system and that system is our mind
b. Information flow: low level detectors and registers to temporary memory
stores and then more long term and semi permanent memory stores
c. At each level operations can be performed
d. Key assumptions
i. Cognitive abilities =systems or interrelated capacities
ii. People are general purpose symbol manipulator
e. Scientists concerned with understanding nature of presentation under study
and nature of processes that operate
f. Lab research and cognitive processes are stable basic processes underlying
cognition
2. Connectionism: cognitive machinery underlying all cognition composed of highly
interactive network of connection among simple processing units
a. Units = neurons
i. Neutral networks
b. Non localist no central place for storage but wide distribution among neuron
like processing units which code patterns across others units and weighted
which can heighten or inhibit connections
c. Based on prior experience and learning that impacts positive and enatic
weighting of connections
d. Lab research and cognitive processes are stable basic processes underlying
cognition
3. Evolutionary approach: to understand cognition we need to understand
evolutionary pressure our ancestors have faced in the past
a. Context in which cognition occurs
b. Cognition based on system evolved over many generation
c. Different processes to deal with different environmental pressures from our
past
d. Social issues: enforcing social contracts and detection of cheaters
4. Ecological approach: cognition doesn’t occur in a context free vacuum. All
activities shaped by culture context and situation under which they occur
a. Measure attention by tracking eye movements