Exam 1 - L1

Question 1

Introspectionism

Answer 1

-“Look inside”
-Study the mind by looking inside yourself
-Seeks to understand the mind through internal experiences
-Structuralists took on this approach
-Limitations
-Difficult to verify
-Our internal experiences are private events
-It’s always the end product of cognitive processes

Question 2

Behaviorism

Answer 2

-“Behavior is all we need”
-Only study what can be directly observed
-Stimulus -> response
-The mind is an unobservable “black box”
-Ignores the mind completely
-Limitations
-Cannot explain the diversity of behavior (ex: language)
-Not all science is directly observable (ex: quark)

Question 3

Cognitivism

Answer 3

-For sure we cannot observe the mind, but we can infer it from behaviors
-Behaviors can be understood by understanding how people think
-Computational view: mind as an information processor; the mind is somehow like a computer program

Question 4

Mental chronometry

Answer 4

Study of the time course of mental processes

Question 5

Simple reaction time

Answer 5

The amount of time it takes for an individual to respond to a single stimulus

Question 6

Choice reaction time

Answer 6

The amount of time it takes for an individual to respond when there are 2 or more stimuli alternatives presented (leads to slower RT)

Question 7

Donder’s subtraction method

Answer 7

Infer the processing time of a stage by subtracting other stages
Choice reaction time - detection reaction time = time used by the decision-making stage
Limitations
-Assumption of pure insertion: inserting a new stage won’t affect the other stages
-Problem: adding the decision stage may influence another stage (like detection)
-Assumption of additivity: all stages add together without overlapping or parallel processing
-Problem: stages might operate in parallel
-Assumes that all stages are known
-Problem: you probably don’t know them all

Question 8

Problems with confirming evidence

Answer 8

Confirming evidence is weak
Falsifying hypothesis/eliminating alternative explanations is a much stronger source of evidence

Question 9

Huppert and Piercy amnesia experiments

Answer 9

Supported hypothesis that amnesics have an encoding deficit AND rules out storage deficit

Question 10

Encoding

Answer 10

Getting things into your mind
Ex: filling up gas tank

Question 11

Storage

Answer 11

Holding onto it over time
Ex: gas sitting in car not being used

Question 12

Retrieval

Answer 12

Pulling it out again
Ex: fuel pump getting gas back to the engine once its needed/being used

Question 13

Dialectic

Answer 13

How knowledge progresses
Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis
Thesis: current idea
Antithesis: a challenge to the current idea
Synthesis: new ideas based on the old one and the challenge

Question 14

Structuralism (Sternberg)

Answer 14

Understand the mind by dividing it into its constituent components or contents
Humans are passive receivers

Question 15

Functionalism (Sternberg)

Answer 15

Understand what people do and why they do
Humans are actively engaged in their sensations

Question 16

Behaviorism (Sternberg)

Answer 16

Only observable behavior
Criticized functionalism for being hopeless and not being replicable

Question 17

Cognitivism

Answer 17

Behavior can be understood by how we think: study the mind!

Question 18

Learning (Bjork)

Answer 18

goal of instruction or training: permanent change in knowledge and understanding

Question 19

Performance (Bjork)

Answer 19

what we can observe and measure during instruction or training