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PFoMH > Foundations of cognitive psychology: from Plato to Pavlov > Flashcards

Foundations of cognitive psychology: from Plato to Pavlov Flashcards

1
Q

What does cognition refer to in everyday use vs. in psychology

A

> Everyday use: an individual thought

> In psychology: all forms of mental processes

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2
Q

What is cognitive psychology, as a dominant branch of the 20th and 21st century?
What does it seek to identify?

A

Scientific study of mental processes

> Seeks to identify: internal representations and structures that underlie our conscious and unconscious cognitions

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3
Q

What are the two aims of cognitive psychology - what does it seek to provide?

A
  1. Provide theoretical descriptions or models of cognitive structures and processes
  2. Provide experimental and quantitative evidence regarding mental functioning
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4
Q

What are the four fields that make up cognitive science?

A
  1. Cognitive neuroscience
  2. Human experimental cognitive psychology
  3. Artificial intelligence and computer science
  4. Psycholinguistics
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5
Q

What are the origins of modern cognitive psychology?

A

Ancient Greek philosophy

  • Plato
  • Aristotle
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6
Q

What was the psyche associated with in Ancient Greek philosophy?

A

The soul -> mind

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7
Q

What are the 2 complementary schools of thought in Ancient Greek philosophy that still influence modern psychological theories?

A

> Rationalism (Plato)

> Empiricism (Aristotle)

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8
Q

Who founded rationalism, and what are its the underlying principles?

A

Plato: rationalism
- thinking itself: examining personal experience and mental processes -> intuition and deduction

  • knowledge is innate -> nature view
  • there is a core human nature that cannot be altered or manipulated
  • > you’re either ‘good’ or ‘bad’
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9
Q

Who founded empiricism, and what are its underlying principles?

A

Aristotle: empiricism
- we are shaped by experience -> nature view

  • humans can be controlled and manipulated to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’
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10
Q

Which interplay is involved in the modern scientific method?

A

Reasoning and abstract thinking

  • generalisations from deductive processes
  • induction from empirical methods
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11
Q

How is the nature vs. nurture debate now considered?

A

As sterile and fundamentally inaccurate as a dichotomy

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12
Q

What was Immanuel Kant’s idea of psychology?

Why?

A

Psychology is not an empirical science:

  • there’s only introspection -> alters what it observes
  • no general law
  • reductionism
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13
Q

How did Immanuel Kant define the mind?

A

As a set of different abilities working together to produce individual experience
-> cognitive architecture

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14
Q

Which method did Immanuel Kant present in his work ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1781)?

A

Transcendental method:

  • without observing the mind, we can infer the conditions that must be present in the mind to explain conscious experience
  • > philosophical method

=> the mind and its functions are not amenable to direct study

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15
Q

What is the development of Psychology after Immanuel Kant’s work (1781)?

A

It continued to develop over early half of the 19th century in Europe and later on in the US
- all schools of psychology over that time have contributed in part to modern cognitive psychology

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16
Q

What was the work of Wilhelm Wundt on Psychology (1879)?

A

Father of Experimental Psychology
- first laboratory in 1879

> Introspection:

  • thought it was the most direct way to study conscious mind (like Kant)
  • based on perception and its percepts -> visual images
  • warning + stimuli systematically varied to measure its effect on resultant internal cognitive event
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17
Q

Why was Wundt’s school of thought sometimes referred to as ‘voluntarism’?

A

Those doing the introspection were highly trained to manage and describe their experiences without interpretation

  • understand how initial exposure lead to automatic passive associations
  • leading to conscious thoughts
  • and finally Apperception: mental images

-> resulting from an active voluntary process

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18
Q

How did Wundt approach the conscious experience?

A

Conscious experience as a whole

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19
Q

What is Wundt’s principle of structuralism?

A

In a typical experiment:

  • stimuli word ‘apple’ presented to subject
  • would evoke a set of properties defining its structure
  • > preceding conscious awareness of the apple itself, before the mental image

-> Wundt concluded our thoughts have structure

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20
Q

Which apparatus did Wundt develop to measure the processes of the conscious experience?

A

Chromoscope:
- record reaction times from presentation of stimulus to introspective reponse

  • subtractive procedure: time difference between 2 introspective products
  • > estimate time reader for apperception to take place

=> mental chronometry

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21
Q

Why didn’t Wundt attempt to study the core aspects of cognition (e.g. learning, memory, language)?

A

They were less accessible to his experimental methods and to introspection
(not because he denied their existence or felt they were unimportant)

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22
Q

What was the relationship between Wilhelm Wundt and Edward B. Titchener?

A

Titchener studied with Wundt in Leipzig, before moving to Cornell University (US)

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23
Q

What was the work and approach of Edward B Titchener (1901)?

A

> Structuralism approach

  • he wasn’t interested in holistic processes
  • ‘Experimental Psychology’ (1901)

> Standardisation of Experimental Method of introspection

  • to improve its accuracy and reproducibility
  • focus on immediate and mental experience
  • > science of sensation
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24
Q

How did Titchener’s approach differ from Wundt’s?

A

Both on experimental introspection:

  • Wundt: whole conscious experience
  • Titchener: studied the elemental parts of conscious experience, by breaking them down
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25
Q

How did Titchener approach the science of sensation?

A

Reductionist classification

> Sensation has 4 independent properties, each subclassified:

  • intensity
  • quality
  • spatial extent
  • duration

> Over 40 000 elemental properties

26
Q

What characterises structuralism and Titchener’s psychology?

How are they limited?

A

> Feature analysis as a means of object identification
= the first step of cognitive and independent stages of analysis and decision making
-> fundamentally limited by its focus on sensation

> Titchener’s psychology:

  • defined by what we can see and measure
  • > neglected whole areas now considered part of cognitive science
27
Q

What was the work of William James in the US (1891)?

A

> ‘The principles of Psychology’ (1891)

  • no experimental processes
  • his writings included consciousness, instinct, emotion

> First university course in Psychology in the US at Harvard

28
Q

What was William James’s approach of functionalism?

A

Functional introspection:
- from Darwin’s theory, he explained how the mind adapts to met the needs of the organism

  • mental processes (purpose of consciousness) rather than mental structures (constituents)
  • > use of experience to understand how the constituent parts of the mind work together for the functioning of the organism
29
Q

What is the place of functionalism today?

A

Remains a core part of modern psychology, focusing on cognitive processes and how they serve adaptive behaviour
- it emerged with other aspects of structuralist tradition to form an overarching framework: cognitive psychology

30
Q

What was the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885)?

A

Pioneer of Experimental Cognitive Psychology

> 1885 paper ‘Memory: a contribution to experimental psychology’

  • control over conditions
  • impact of extraneous factors interfering with out process of interest

> Statistical approaches

  • estimate effects
  • obtaining estimates of measurement error
  • > fundamentally different from what came before
31
Q

What is the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve?

A

Time course over which we forget information

> Some info. carries a complex set of associations, images, meanings, allowing us to recall the info.

(e. g. poetry)
- learning by repetition a standard set of nonsense syllables

> “saving score”: difference between the original and the late learning

> Average over many individual trials with different attention intervals = classic Ebbinghaus forgetting curve

-> most forgetting happens in the first minutes ;
forgetting slows down to very little forgetting of material after 4 days - even with intervals of a month

32
Q

Which did Ebbinghaus’ statistical work offer?

A

Fundamental insights into memory processes, inaccessible to the introspection method
-> started experimental cognitive psychology of memory

33
Q

When was the period of the (temporary) decline of cognitivism and the growth of behaviourism?
Why did that happen?

A

Late 19th - early 20th

  • all psychology was cognitive
  • dissatisfaction with introspection
34
Q

What was the nature of the criticism against introspection (limitations of the method)?

A

Limitations raised by proponents of introspection, such as Wundt himself:

  • Unreliable: inter- and intra-individual differences
  • Unrepresentative: introspection by experts in the field
  • Limited in use
  • Limited in areas of application
    e. g. can’t study unconscious processes
  • Wider issue: animal psychology ignored
35
Q

What was the danger when the study of animal or comparative psychology started to emerge during late 19th and early 20th century?

A

That people would start to apply human constructs of the human mind to other animal species, without the ability to confirm their existence empirically.

36
Q

Who responded to the preoccupations regarding the emerging animal and comparative psychology in the early 20th century?
How?

A

C. Lloyd Morgan (English psychologist)

‘Morgan’s Canon’: constraints on theories of animal behaviour:
> We need the simplest possible explanation to what can be observed without invoking higher - human -psychological processes

-> principle of Parsimony: between 2 alternative explanations, choose the simplest one

37
Q

What was the implications of C. Lloyd Morgan’s Canon for human psychology?

A

If we don’t need human processes to explain behaviour in animals, why do we need to explain our own behaviour

-> Do we need cognition as explanatory factor?

38
Q

Did C. Lloyd Morgan deny the existence of internal (cognitive) events in animals?

A

No, he was cautioning against invoking/inferring animal cognitive events as explanations for animal behaviour
- when simpler explanations existed, not requiring those internal events

39
Q

Who is thought to have founded behaviourism?

With what event (1913)?

A

J. B. Watson (American psychologist)
- lecture given at Columbia University in 1913: “Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It”
= behaviourist manifesto

40
Q

What were the ideas of J. B. Watson regarding introspection and mental states?

A

> Rejects introspection method, structuralism and functionalism

> Denies the need to evoke consciousness, perception, …

=> The study of mental states is fundamentally unscientific and needs to be abandoned

41
Q

What is the most fundamental ‘unit’ for behaviourists?

A

Association: how animal/human makes links between

  • stimuli-response
  • response-outcome / adaptive behavioural goal: learning
42
Q

What was the origin of the learning theory? What is it?

A

Birth of behaviourism -> learning theory:

- an area of psychology that continues to flourish, albeit in the context of a wider cognitive framework

43
Q

What was the radical shift in approach advocated by Watson?

A

> Private events / cognitive faculties were pushed to the margins
Thought to be explained by simpler, observable public events

44
Q

What is the concept of Watson’s behaviourism?

A

> Avoid psychological explanations that go beyond inputs and outputs

> Rejects the use of unobserved events in explanations
-> study of “private” events is unscientific and should remain private

45
Q

How did later behaviourists differ from Watson?

A

Sought to apply the principles to explain complex behaviours (e.g. language, social behaviour) that would seem to require acceptance of an inner state

46
Q

What is the behaviourist meaning of an input, an output,, and intervening variables?

A

> Input

  • stimulus: experimental condition
  • antecedent: natural event

> Intervening variables

  • Watson’s private events (inner state)
  • > link between input and output

> Output

  • response
  • behaviour
47
Q

What is Pavlov’s idea of the physiological reflex?

A

Behaviours and reactions that aren’t learned, but can be explained by ‘built-in’ - innate - properties of the nervous system

  • automatic response to stimuli, seen in all animals, preserved even with major damage to central nervous system
    e. g. eye blink, salivation reflex
48
Q

Which work lead Pavlov to be awarded a Nobel Prize in 1904?

A

Study of digestive reflex reactions in dogs

  • he wanted to measure digestive fluids without getting food in the way of accurate measurement
  • > systematically trained the dogs to make their reflex digestive secretions without the need for food at all
49
Q

How did Pavlov train the dogs to make their reflex digestive secretions without the need for food at all?

A

By systematic and gradual pairing of natural stimulus (food) with neutral stimulus (bell ringing)

  • this association got dogs to salivate only in response to the neutral stimulus (now conditioned)
  • > “psychic secretion”
50
Q

What is Pavlov’s method of classical conditioning?

A

Relies on temporal pairing of 2 stimuli so the natural properties of one (unconditioned stimulus) transfer to the other (neutral stimulus)

  • > neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus
  • > induces a conditioned response
51
Q

What did Pavlov’s classical conditioning paradigm become?

A

A crucial method to study the mechanisms of associative learning

52
Q

What are the 3 phenomenons observable in the classical conditioning paradigm?

A
  1. Acquisition
  2. Extinction
  3. Spontaneous recovery
53
Q

In a classical conditioning paradigm, what does the acquisition phenomenon reflect?

A

The amount of saliva secreted increases with the number of pairings, up to a physiological limit
-> the bell acquiring strength as a conditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response

54
Q

In a classical conditioning paradigm, what does the extinction phenomenon reflect?

A

Amount of saliva secreted decreases

  • bell no longer serves as signal of imminent arrival of food
  • > bell becomes again a neutral stimulus

=> the conditioned response doesn’t last forever

55
Q

In a classical conditioning paradigm, what does the spontaneous recovery phenomenon reflect?

A

Reactivation of a dormant learned association:

  • not all learning is gone, just no longer has useful function
  • if dog is exposed to bell a few hours after extinction, animal may show reemergence of the conditioned salivation response
  • > no new learning
56
Q

What is the strength of a new conditioned response related to?

A

To how similar the new conditioned stimulus is to the original stimulus
- e.g. animal trained to a tuning fork at specific frequency will show a systematic reduction in saliva secretion for higher or lower frequencies

57
Q

How does Morgan’s Canon intervene into classical conditioning?

A

The simple ability of a stimulus to produce a response -however complex - does not necessarily mean there’s a cognitive meditational process / conscious knowing

  • a change in strength of the conditioned response to a similar conditioned stimulus indicates the animal has discriminated between the original and new stimulus
    BUT does not necessarily imply it is conscious

=> don’t invoke cognitions if there are simpler explanations

58
Q

How does Aplysia californica, the California sea slug, demonstrate that classical conditioning does not require cognitive explanations?

A

It has a very simple central nervous system, of only about 10,000 neurons (vs. 100 billion in human brain)
- yet, it still shows the ability to learn through classical conditioning

=> even the simplest of animals can be conditioned and learn new stimulus-stimulus pairings

59
Q

What did Watson show using Pavlov’s principles with ‘Little Albert’?

A

It is possible to condition fear in a baby simply and quickly
- during infancy experience and associations made to stimuli could shape and evoke patterns of emotional response

  • rat (neutral stimulus) paired with sound of hammer striking steel bar -> rat became a conditioned stimulus
  • ‘Little Albert’ developed a conditioned fear response
60
Q

What makes Watson’s study with ‘Little Albert’ unethical by today’s standards?

A

> The conditioned fear response extended from rat to other white furry objects (e.g. rabbit)

> Watson noted that contact with ‘Little Albert’ was lost at that point before they could undo the learned fear by a process of deconditioning
- he expressed concern that the learned fear would persist indefinitely

> ‘Little Albert’ hasn’t been found

61
Q

What did Watson’s study with ‘Little Albert’ trigger?

A

Subsequent work in the development of positive therapeutic uses f conditioning principles
- a key step in the evolution of modern CBT

PFoMH (18 decks)

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