Introduction - Cognitive Psychology

Question 0

When did the Cognitive Psychology movement start?

Answer 0

No 1 defining moment

Experimental evidence began in 19th century

Question 1

What is Cognitive Psychology?

Answer 1

Scientific study of the mind

Isolates individual processes in studies.

In “real life” these processes are integrated.

Question 2

Who is Wundt?

Answer 2

1879

Set up first psychology laboratory - with the focus on consciousness

Question 3

What role did Ebbinghaus play ‘history of CP’?

Answer 3

19th century Germany

Used experimentation to understand mental phenomena e.g. Perception

Question 4

What did James do for CP?

Answer 4

Involved in the USA roots of CP

1879

Function of the mind

Question 5

What do behaviourism and CP have in common?

Answer 5

Both thought that psychology should be scientific and objective

Question 6

Why did behaviourism fall out of favour?

Answer 6

It didn’t account for higher mental processes

Lashley at the Hixon symposium (1948) it was suggested that behaviourism faced a problem with complex action

Question 7

Chomsky reinforced Lashley view that behaviourism couldn’t explain language - how?

Answer 7

1959

Suggested language was ruled based

Supported by evidence that exposure of a child to ungrammatically correct language didn’t hinder learning… If would if the behaviourist view was correct

Question 8

The behaviourist Tohan (1948) added support to the idea that behaviourism couldn’t explain everything. What was his experiment?

Answer 8

1948

He used hungry rats and a maze

Behaviourism would suggest they could find the a food by a series of left and right turns… Each turn sequencing the next

However the rats were learned the location of the food; when their learned route was closed, rather than turning down the next open route - as expected. They head straight to the location.

The food was removed in this part of the study to take away the possibility they could smell the food

Question 9

What is contemporary CP influenced by?

Answer 9

The brain

Question 10

What did Gall (18th Century) propose?

Answer 10

That different areas of the perform different functions

This idea still exists today

Question 11

What is Phrenology?

Answer 11

Proposed by Fowler - see fowler’s brain picture

It is the idea that personality traits can be deduced by the size and the shape of the skull

This idea is now out of favour

Question 12

Which two people simultaneously reported aphasia is the cortex?

Answer 12

Broca (French Physician)… Aphasia in two cases due to damage in the cerebral cortex

Wernicke (Germany)… Reported aphasia in a different area of the cortex with slightly different symptoms

*Donker (2007) did post-mortem of the brains

Question 13

Who first suggested language was controlled by the front part of the brain?

Answer 13

Gall (1860)

Question 14

On what premise does Cognitive Neuropsychology exist?

Answer 14

That studying damage can help to understand the intact system

This informs us in 2 ways:

1. What the possible function of a particular part may be
2. The different cognitive components in cognition

Question 15

Who coined the phrase ‘Artificial Intelligence’?

Answer 15

John McCarthy - 1950 at a Dartmouth conference

Question 16

Where were John McCarty’s AI laboratories?

Answer 16

MIT in1957

Stanford in 1963

Question 17

What did John Von Neuman suggest, and to what end?

Answer 17

That computers could be implemented with reason.

This raises questions of likeness of mind and computer

Question 18

Who’s idea was it that people construct mental models of the world and these direct behaviour

Answer 18

Craik - 1943

Question 19

Alan Turing created the Turing Test in 1950, but what did he propose should be the outcome if a human was unable to identify whether they were interacting with a computer?

Answer 19

He suggested that we should concede that the computer is of equal intellect

Question 20

Marr (1982) on the matter of “computers can demonstrate intelligent behaviour”. He said they need 3 levels of analysis, what were they?

Answer 20

Computational - need to know what to output based on input

Algorithmic - to know what calculations and processes would be need to produce output

Implementation - understanding how

Question 21

At what level of Marr’s (1982) analysis do Cognitive Psychologists use to explain cognition?

Answer 21

Algorithmic

Question 22

What use are computers to Cognitive Psychologists?

Answer 22

They are an aid to understanding the mind

Question 23

What has aided the growth of understanding in cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 23

Technological advances particularly those toward the end of the 20th century and in to the 21st century

Question 24

What do MRI / PET scans tell us about the brain?

Answer 24

They detect what parts of the brain are active and in what order This was seemingly unobservable at one time

Question 25

What area the limitations of imaging?

Answer 25

At best it helps to localise function It does not improve theories of cognition, but it does increase confidence in a particular theory.