Cognitive psych themes and research methods

Question 1

Why did Watson object to the study of consciousness?

Answer 1

He thought consciousness could not be studied scientifically

Question 2

Functionalism scientist

Answer 2

William James

Question 3

The occipital lobe is

Answer 3

the part of the cerebral cortex where the visual cortex is located.

Question 4

After a busy day at work I got in my car to drive home. Next thing I know, I’m in my driveway, having completely forgotten to stop for milk at the dairy. My driving was most likely -

Answer 4

Automatic

Question 5

cognitive psychology is

Answer 5

the study of the mind

Question 6

The mind is

Answer 6

a set of processes that let us perceive, recognise, understand, etc.

Question 7

Franciscus Donders

Answer 7

First psych experiment. He tried to measure how psychological processes take place.

Question 8

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 8

First memory experiments (mainly on himself)

Question 9

Structuralism

Answer 9

uses introspection to figure what the basic elements (ATOMS) of thought are

Question 10

Introspection Problems

Answer 10

Hard to see what the elements are sometimes due to top down effects. Everyone has different conclusions as to what they are seeing and there is no general atom.

Question 11

Wilhelm Wudnt

Answer 11

Founded and originated introspection.

We have to look into our own introspections and mental processes to understand how we perform own mental tasks

Question 12

Edward Titchener

Answer 12

came up with name for structuralism

introspection/s made under standard conditions

Question 13

Edward Titchener critique of Wudnt

Answer 13

introspections weren’t standardised enough

made his students go through training to understand how to answer introspection questions

Question 14

Functionalism

Answer 14

unifies thought as how we experience it. We need to understand functions carried out by thought. Psychology + consciousness

Question 15

William James

Answer 15

Functionalism writer.
More philosophical - doesn’t test ideas
thought as a unified thing - forget atoms

Question 16

Behaviourism

Answer 16

Fuck the mind - don’t know what’s happening there. Let’s look at observable behaviours

Question 17

John Watson

Answer 17

The behaviourist manifesto.

It shouldn’t matter who is observing particular behaviour, should still be able to form same conclusions

Question 18

BF Skinner

Answer 18

Another influencer for behaviourism

Question 19

Cognitive Revolution

Answer 19

what happened when psychologists said fuck rats, give me some ppl and sexy brains. Wanna know bout the mind now.

Question 20

WW2 Engineers

Answer 20

Radars - people studying blips of light to see enemy aircraft but operators made errors
Engineers studied how operators made decisions about what they see

Question 21

Signal-detection theory

Answer 21

focus on perception and attention

in relation to WW2 engineers

Question 22

Information theory is

Answer 22

Information is a basic concept of the universe, things carry information

Question 23

Bit concept - who originated and what is it

Answer 23

Claude Shannon
Binary bit of information - yes or no answers only
limit our info down bit by bit
might use this technique to understand information in real life

Question 24

How does artificial intelligence relate to the understanding of the mind?

Answer 24

How would artificial mind solve problems in the real world?

Question 25

Theory of AI

Answer 25

To create programs and entities in computers that can independently make decisions.

Question 26

Linguistics - Skinner

Answer 26

Skinner believed that children learn language through operant conditioning; in other words, children receive “rewards” for using language in a functional manner.

Question 27

Linguistics - Noam Chomsky

Answer 27

Review of Skinner’s ideas

• in order for kids to generalise rules of language, there must be internal representation of those linguistic ideas.
• some internal structure that involves internal mental rules and representations

Question 28

George Miller - working memory

Answer 28

People can hold 7 +/- 2 items in working memory.

Talked about stuff held in the brain

Question 29

Top-down processing is when

Answer 29

Information is interpreted using contextual clues
relies on past experiences and expectations
brain fills in the blanks

Question 30

Bottom-up processing is when

Answer 30

we start with external stimuli and work upwards until representation of the object is formed in our mind
perceptual understanding based on incoming sensory data and how brain processes that data

Question 31

Automatic processes

Answer 31

Can’t control whether they occur in the brain or not. No effort required.

Question 32

Controlled processing

Answer 32

We can refrain them from happening. Requires effort

Question 33

Stroop task/effect

Answer 33

example of top down processing. Responses slower when word meaning and word colour incongruent. Shows reading word is top-down process and happens automatically but recognising colour takes effort

Question 34

Conscious Processes

Answer 34

Explicit - processing information with awareness of doing so

Question 35

Unconscious processes

Answer 35

Implicit - processing information without awareness.

Sometimes process of conjuring info is unconscious but the result is conscious

Question 36

Representation

Answer 36

In order for mind to function, there must be internal representation. How info is represented internally, we don’t know.

Question 37

Veridical

Answer 37

true to reality

Question 38

Non-veridical

Answer 38

not entirely true to reality

Question 39

Homunculus

Answer 39

a figurative representation, in distorted human form, of the relative sizes of motor and sensory areas in the brain that correspond to particular parts of the body.