Chapter 1: The Science of the Mind

Question 1

What is the primary objective of the course?

Answer 1

to answer the question what is the mind from an information processing/computational perspective

Question 2

What are some of the mental processes the mind creates and controls?

Answer 2

perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking and reasoning

Question 3

What is the purpose of the representations of the world the mind creates?

Answer 3

it allows us to act within it and ti achieve our goals

Question 4

When we say that philosophers studied the nature of the mind what does that mean? What is this phenomenon called?

Answer 4

-that they studied mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and the nature of their relationship with the physical body
- this is known as the mind body problem

Question 5

Who studied dualism and what does it assert?

Answer 5

-socrates, plato, aristotle, and descartes
-assert the separate existence of mind and body

Question 6

Who studied monism and what does it assert?

Answer 6

-spinoza, lao tse
-maintains that there is only one substance

Question 7

In this course the study of the mind is done with what measurement?

Answer 7

a quantifiable, repeatable measurement

Question 8

What distinguishes cognitive psychology from other ways of studying the mind?

Answer 8

not just the questions but also the methods

Question 9

Who is one of the first main cognitive psychologists? What was the cognitive psych experiment he did?

Answer 9

Franciscus Donders - Dutch physiologist
-in 1868 he did one of the first cognitive psych experiments
-was interested in measuring how long it takes a person to make a decision
-reaction time experiment measures the time difference between two conditions
-there is an interval between stimulus presentation and a persons response to the stimulus - this us known as simple reaction time
-interval between stimulus presentation and a selecting of one of two options - choice reaction time

Question 10

What is an interval between stimulus presentation and a persons response to the stimulus known as?

Answer 10

simple reaction time

Question 11

What is an interval between stimulus presentation and a selecting of one of two options known as?

Answer 11

choice reaction time

Question 12

When measuring simple reaction time and choice reaction time what method can you use to figure out reaction time?

Answer 12

subtraction method between the two conditions so that you can remove excess like watching attention movement etc.

Question 13

What is an example of the Donders experiment in the real world today?

Answer 13

simple RT task: participants push a button quickly after a light appears - no decision
-choice RT task: participants pushes one button if light is in the right side another if light is in the left side

Question 14

What is the stimulus, mental response, and behavioral response in the simple RT task?

Answer 14

stimulus -light flashes
mental response - perceive the light
behavioral response - press button

Question 15

What is the stimulus, mental response, and behavioral response in the choice RT task?

Answer 15

stimulus - left or right light flashes
mental response - perceive the left or right light and decide which button to push
behavioral response - press left or right button

Question 16

What is the RT (choice) minus RT (simple)?

Answer 16

how long it took to make the decision
-if choice RT is 1/10th second longer than simple RT
-it took 1/10th second to make a decision

Question 17

What did donders show in regards to the measurement of mental responses?

Answer 17

-they cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behavior
-did not measure mental responses directly but inferred how long they took from the reaction times - this subtraction methodology is still used in psychology and neuroscience today

Question 18

What did wilhelm wundt (1832-1920) do?

Answer 18

-founded the first psychology laboratory
-university of leipzig germany

Question 19

What did edward titchener (1867-1927) do?

Answer 19

-studied with wundt
-professor at cornell
-founder of structuralism and introspection method

Question 20

What is titchener’s structuralism approach?

Answer 20

-experience is determined by combining its elements called sensations
-wanted to create a periodic table of the mind consisting of all the basic sensations involved in creating experience

Question 21

What is titchener’s method of introspection approach?

Answer 21

-observing and recording your own thoughts and experiences
-participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
-participants were trained to do their description using elementary mental elements
-not a great method from the perspective of making quantifiable repeatable measurements

Question 22

What are the limitations present surrounding titchener’s method of introspection?

Answer 22

-required systematic training
-observing and recording your own thoughts and experiences
-extremely variable results from person to person
-results difficult to verify
-because they are interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes
-it is generally impossible to know if self report accurately reflects the conscious experience
-some thoughts are unconscious
-thoughts are not directly observable or meaurable

Question 23

When was structuralism abandoned as it was nt a good approach?

Answer 23

early 1900s

Question 24

What is behaviorism? Who introduced it? What did it seek to overcome?

Answer 24

behaviorism is the study of focusable behaviors and reactions to stimuli
-did not allow for the study of unobservable mentalistic notions such as beliefs, expectations, goals, preferences, and so on
-introduced by john watson (1878-1958)
-sought to overcome the limitations posed by introspection

Question 25

What is watson's goal?

Answer 25

replace the mind as a topic of study with direct observable behavior -moved from what does this behavior tell us about the mind to the relation between stimuli in the environment and behavior

Question 26

When did behaviorism dominate psychology and was did this study uncover in regards to rewards and punishments?

Answer 26

-dominated from 1900 to 1950 -uncovered principles of how behavior changes in response to stimuli such as rewards and punishments

Question 27

What was BF skinner from the 1940s to the 1960s interested in?

Answer 27

-determing the relationship between stimuli and behavior

Question 28

What is skinner's operant conditioning?

Answer 28

-shape behavior by rewards or punishments -behavior that is rewarded is more likely to be repeated -behavior that is punished is less likely to be repeated

Question 29

What are the problems which arose with behaviorism in the late 1950s?

Answer 29

-stimulus response accounts are in many cases not enough to explain behavior -in a wide range of cases we cannot hope to accurately study and explain behavior without considering the mental causes

Question 30

What did chomsky in 1959 argue?

Answer 30

that children did not only learn language and reinforcement -children said things that they have never heard and can not be imitating -children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for -language must be dertermined by inborn biological program -language is a product of the way the mind is constructed

Question 31

What did skinner in 1957 argue in regards to verbal behavior in children?

Answer 31

argued children learn language through operant conditioning -children imitate speech they hear -correct speech is rewarded

Question 32

What did tolman do in 1938?

Answer 32

trained rats to find food in a four armed maze -initially the rat explored the maze running up and down each of the alleys -then the rat was placed in A and food un B the rat learned quickly to turn right to get the food -when the rat was placed in c the rat turned left to get the food -behaviorism predicts the rat learned to turn right to get food so this did not support the behaviorism interpretation -tolman believed the rat had created a congitive map of the maze and were navigating to a specific arm

Question 33

What is the cognitive revolution that took place in the 1950s? What are its two main ideas?

Answer 33

- a new approach to the field of psychology emerged in the 1950s and the 1960s -two main ideas: 1. the mental world cannot be studied directly 2. the mental world must be studied to understand behavior

Question 34

What is the transcendental movement of immanuel kant?

Answer 34

-reason backward from observations to determine the cause -inference to best explanation -analogous to a detective using clues left behind to figure out how a crime was committed

Question 35

What is the deduction method?

Answer 35

top down approach -go from theories to specific instances

Question 36

How do cognitive psychologists study mental events?

Answer 36

-indirectly -measure observable stimuli and responses -develop hypotheses about mental events -design new experiments to test these hypotheses

Question 37

What is the process of research in cognitive psychology?

Answer 37

1. observe behavior 2. form hypotheses that explain it 3. derive predictions from these hypotheses 4. collect data to test predictions -confirm hypothesis or modify or reject the hypothesis -variations in data collection methods

Question 38

What is the diversity of methods in cognitive psychology?

Answer 38

-self report questionnaire -cognitive behavior tasks -measures of performance or accuracy -measures of response time RT -mental operations fast but not instantaneous -cognitive neuroscience -study of the brain and nervous system to understand mental functioning -lesions studies -neuroimaging techniques