lesson 1& 2

Question 1

classical cognitive approach

Answer 1

1. measuring observable behaviour
2. making inferences about underlying cognitive activity
3. consider what this behaviour says about how the mind works

Question 2

guiding principle of cognitive psychology

Answer 2

while mental processes/responses cannot be measured directly, they can be inferred from behaviour

Question 3

subtractive logic

Answer 3

used to infer the time it takes to make the decision that is required in a choice RT task (the additional component that is not present in the simple rt task) .
time to make a decision= choice rt- simple rt

Question 4

structuralism/ structuralist approach

Answer 4

Wundt.
It focused on breaking mental processes down into their basic components. Structuralists believed that the best way to understand the mind was to analyze sensations, images, and feelings, which they considered the fundamental building blocks of consciousness.
relied on analytic introspection

Question 5

analytic introspection

Answer 5

trained participants are asked to carefully observe and describe their own mental experiences, such as thoughts, sensations, and feelings, in response to controlled stimuli

Question 6

Forgetting Curve

Answer 6

key figure: Ebbinghaus.
how quickly info is lost as a function of time since encoding.

Question 7

‘savings’ method

Answer 7

key figure: Ebbinghaus.
short intervals between relearning attempts involved fewer repetitions to relearn

Question 8

functionalism

Answer 8

key figure: William James.
focuses on the purpose and utility of mental processes and behaviors in helping organisms adapt to their environment and ensure survival. It contrasts with structuralism by examining how and why the mind works (its function), rather than its basic components.

Question 9

Watson and objections to studying the mind

Answer 9

1. variability in results from person to person: has consequences to reliability
2. results difficult to verify: consequences to validity
   - behaviorism was his proposed solution

Question 10

Behaviorism

Answer 10

key figure: Watson
behavior can be adequately analyzed without any reference to the mind

Question 11

classical conditioning

Answer 11

associative learning.
ex. Watson and Rayner “little Albert’ experiment

Question 12

operant conditioning

Answer 12

key figure: skinner
behaviour is shaped by reinforcement

Question 13

Parsimony and conditioning

Answer 13

the parsimony associated with explanations related to conditioning considered a great strength .
aka. these simple concepts can predict / explain a huge range of behaviours

Question 14

2 reasons in favor of studying the mind

Answer 14

1. mental processes can actually be studied scientifically, it just requires clever ideas for experiments that are able to generate empirical evidence
2. it is in fact sometimes necessary to consider what is happening in the mind in order to get a more complete understanding of behavior

Question 15

Behaviorists and Rat maze
(stimulus response mappings)

Answer 15

assumed that rats learn to navigate mazes simply through the repeated reinforcement of stimulus response mappings and have no other higher level knowledge of the layout of the maze itself.
however there was evidence that this was not the case.

Question 16

cognitive maps and rat mazes

Answer 16

contrary to what behaviorists thought, rats were able to perform well when starting in unfamiliar locations of mazes
this served as evidence that rats somehow created a cognitive map and therefore had the ability to more flexibly navigate their environment than their observable behaviour alone indicated .

Question 17

latent learning

Answer 17

a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in behavior but is learned subconsciously and only demonstrated when there is a strong incentive or motivation to do so

Question 18

language acquisition and Skinner

Answer 18

Skinner argued that the acquisition of language can be sufficiently explained through operant conditioning principles alone. He argued that operant conditioning principles alone are adequate to explain how language is learned and there is no need to reference the mind to understand the process

Question 19

Language acquisition and Chomsky

Answer 19

Chomsky argued that children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement , but language must be at least partially determined by factors that cannot be sufficiently explained by operant principles, like inborn biological programming.

Question 20

paradigm shift

Answer 20

a major change in perspective. These can have lots of implications for how people approach ideas , particularly in science.

Question 21

cognitive revolution

Answer 21

produced a paradigm shift away from behaviorists stimulus response relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind

Question 22

information processing approach

Answer 22

early computers processed info in stages, which influenced the way cognitive psychologists thought about mental processes.

Question 23

Dichotic listening task

Answer 23

Key figure: Cherry.
Present message A in left ear and message B in right ear.
participants asked to shadow one image.
participants were only able to consistently repeat what was in the attended ear , not the unattended ear.
was an early demonstration that objective measurements related to what was happening in the mind could in fact be taken , which could then form the basis of theory building

Question 24

filter model of attention

Answer 24

key figure: Broadbent
Flow diagram representing what happens as a person detects attention to one stimulus. Unattended info does not pass through the filter.

Question 25

process models

Answer 25

represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes.

Question 26

structural models

Answer 26

representations of a physical structure. Mimic the form or appearance of a given object. many models in cognitive neuroscience take this form.