Empiricism
knowledge best based on observation
Basic
the most fundamental, irreeductable level of an occurance
Cognitive science
the interdisciplinary approach to the study of cognition; empirical and verifiable (scientific method)
Automatic Processes
very quickly; outside of conscious awareness or control; measured in milliseconds, all processes involve an automatic part and some are fully automatic
Cognition
the collection of mental processes and activities used in percieveing, remembering, thinking, and understanding as well as the act of using those processes
Meta theory
overarching theory everyone agrees to and is guided by
Information processing meta theiry
we are information processors beacuse we takein, manipulate, and produce output; inspiried by a computer model; assumes output can be used to infer the inner workings
metacognition
the degree to which we are aware of our own thinking processes
Bottom-up processing
AKA data-driven ; input from the environment
Top-down Processing
AKA conceptual processing; prior or high level knowledge guides perception
Measures of cognition
behavior, reaction time, accuracy
Information Processing Approach
framework used to describe a structure or a specific process; ex: how we recognize a word or memory processes
Akron and Shiffrin Model
Input –> sensory storage –> ST storage (coding, rehearsal, retrieval) –> LT storage
Characteristics of Info Processing Approach
seperate stages, fixed order, serial processing, independent/discrete, non-overlapping
Fixed order
order is not flexible; it is stable
serial Processing
always same order and one at a time
Independent stages
a later stage can not influence an earlier one
non-overlapping stages
each stage must finish before the next can begin
Strict model for Info Processing Characteristics
discrete, active processing, serial, independent, primarily bottom up processing
sensation
stimulation of the sense organs
perception
the psychological interpretation of sensory input
Sensory Memory
A brief memory store that temporarily houses raw sensory information for further processing (buffer memory )
Sperling and Collegues
assessed visual memory by oresenting letters quickly then participants would report the rows; shows limitation of whole report method; so moved to partial report which empirically confirmed that there is a short duration of sensory memory
Interference
memory lost due to competing information
