The rise of cognition Flashcards
(40 cards)
Key questions to consider
What do we know about thinking?
How does one remember?
Can memory be measured objectively?
How did this field emerge?
What is cognition?
What does cognitive psychology study?
What questions does it ask?
What role did the emergence of cogntive psychology play on the development of psychology as a scientific discipline?
Scientific study of mental processes like thinking, memory, attention and perception. It explores how these processes enable us to learn, remember, make decisions and solve problems. Essentially investigates the “how” and “why” behind our mental activities (Alan Zivony, 5th August 2019)
Cognition was studied in late 19th century
By two near-contemproes who took very different approached
- Hemran Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) -> Germany
- William James (1842-1910) -> the US
Early expirments on cognitive processes
Ebbinghaus (1885) tried to study memory of materials initially avoid of meaning -> ‘nonsense syllables’ such as DEV, JUP, POK
He tested himself
Typically presented discrete lists as fixed rate and times how long it took to learn lists completely
He was looking for objective measures of memory capacity but was specifically interested in how memories were formed
- today we call this encoding
Ebbinghas had similar insights about limitations of ‘short-term’ memory to William James
Noted that he could get openly about 7 syllables correct after single presentation
“A measure of the ideas of this set which I can grasp in a single unitary conscious act”
But Ebbinghaus was better known for his work on longer term learning and retention
Average time (s) to learn a lost of 16 syllables on Day 2 as functions of number repriutions (8, 16 ….. 64) when studies on day 1
Data taken from Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) was re-plotted by Baddeleey (1990)
- Extra evidence -
Studies memory by testing his own ability to recall lists if nonsense syllables after caring time intervals
This led to his groundbreaking discovery of the “forgetting curve”, which describes the exponential decay of memory over time, with the significant forgetting occurring in the first few minutes (Jonathon Hancock, 2021)
Method:
- used lists of manginess 3 letter syllables to eliminate the influence of prior knowledge and associations of memory
- he’d learn them and then recall them after varying time intervals, ranging from minutes to weeks (Kayla Armstead, 21st November 2023)
Significance:
- provided quantitative and empirical basis for understanding how learning and forgetting occur
- work laid groundwork for future research into memory (Johnathan Hancock)
Savings method:
- savings is defined as the relative amount of time saved on the second learning trial as a result of having had the first (Japan M, J Murre, Joeri Dros, July 2015)
Georg Muller (1850-1934)
Replicated Ebbinghaus’ experiments but also included a qualitative element by asking ppts what they were thinking
- asked if they used any particular strategy to remember
- learned that people;e could describe a number of cogntive strategies: assigning meaning to meaningless words and chunking of syllables to give them meaning
Inspired by Ebbinghaus’ work on the rate of forgetting, Muller’s experiments explore why we forget
Explored conditions under which learning on one task would transfer to another (transfer appropriate processing). This concept is core to cognition today
Created a device which systematically presented stimuli under the same conditions and equally spaced apart
He also coined the idea of retroactive interference, an explanation for forgetting, which is how learning new information can hinder the recall of previously learned material (Michaela T Dewar, July 2007)
Muller’s memory drum
A kymograph used to control the display of learning materials (E J Haupt, Winter 2001)
- a rotating mental drum that would resolve paper against a stylus in order to record physiological responses
- was made alongside Friedfrich Schumann
- was particularly useful since its rotation could be timed and was constant
In 1887, they turned the kymograph on its side and the material to be memories around it. A screen was placed in front of the rotating drum so that only one item was visible at any time
Through several revisions using different types of kymographs, they finally found one that suited their needs. Their article in 1894 was the first to explain the use of new lab apparatus: the memory drum
(Nick Joyce and David Baker, February 28 2011)
Carl Stumpf
1848-1936
(Also happening at the same time in Germany)
Perception and sensation were being explored beyond vision
Ebbinghaus and Muller were exploring memory and forgetting
Stumpf was exploring music, escpically how tone is perceived
Importantly, this work shows that perception is sensory and explored how combinations of different tones impacted auditory perception
Vision, memory and thinking
- Extra evidence -
1894, become director of the institute of experimental psychology at the Freidrcih-Wilhelm University in Berlin
A lot of work in ‘tone psychology’
(Encyclopaedia Britannica, April 17 2025)
William James
‘A psychologist who writes like a novelist, brother of Henry, a novelist who virtues like a psychologist’ (after Ian Hunter)
Made significant contributions to psychology and philosophy
Range of books, including:
- The Principles of Psychology (1890)
- The Will to Belige and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
- The Varieties of Regligous Experience (1902)
- Pragmatism (1907)
The Principle of Psychology (1890)
Written version os his psychology lectures at Harvard - 12 years in the writing
James was insightful about the structure and function of attention, memory etc
He distinguihsed primary memory from secondary memory (memory proper) - ‘the knowledge of an events, or fact, … with the additional consciousness that we have thought or experienced it before’ (James 1890, p. 684)
‘An object which is recollected … is one which has been absent from consciousness altogether, and in revises anew, it is brought back, recalled, famished up, so to speak, from a reservoir in which, with countless other objects, it lay buried and lost from view. But an objects of primary memory is not Thus brought back; it was never lost; its date was never cut off in consciousness from that of the immediately present memento, In fact, it comes to us as belonging to the reward portion of the present space of time, and not to the genuine past”
Felt that Wundt, who he studied over, was too reductionist
- said the same of Titchener
Consciousness was not formed as building blocks or discrete units (structuralism), but rather act consciousness flowed as a stream, a stream of consciousness that functioned as a set of processes
- questions centred around how these processes functioned
The behaviourist era
Some 50 years from Watson (1913) to Skinner (1963)
Actions should be explained only by things observable - ‘stimuli’ and ‘responses’
‘Attention’, ‘memory’, ‘imagery’ are not observable
Skinner’s (1957) ‘verbal behaviour’ - tres to explain the things we say by reinforcement history and associations between words
- some exceptions during behaviourist era -
Barlett’s remembering (1932)
Criticised Ebbinghuas: - list of nonsense syllables set up mass of associations which may be more esoteric that real world meangnings
- to offset this, must train the leaner to an automatic attitude - but this means we are studying special lab habits, not remembering
- Extra evidence -
Considered a foundational work in psychology and explores a wide range of topics including consciousness, emotions and the self
Interdicted the concept of store,s of consciousness, a key idea in understanding how thought processes flow, according to the APA (Charlotte Ruhl, August 3 2023)
The term ‘ streams of consciousness’ was first coined by William James in his book “The principles of psychology’. He described it: consciousness as an uninterrupted flow, a river, a stream
Sometimes described in terms of an interior monologue
He emphasised the subjective, personal nature of the flow, where individuals experience the world and their own thoughts in a continuous streams
(Jane Hu, October 1 2016)
Bartlett’s studies
Used real, sometimes quite unusual, passages, pictures etc
Used methods such as serial reproduction
Examined qualitative aspects of recall to deduce some general principles
e.g. ‘the war of the ghosts’
Mental schema
- a method of organising incoming information with past experiences/concepts
- a cogntive framework to explain mental processes (including memory)
The constructed mind
- memory was not merely about associations
- memory was an active processes that was constructed based on incoming information
- argues that the mind was involved in construction, not just reconstruction
- Extra evidence -
Bartlett’s war of the ghost (1932) study - aimed to measure the accuracy of reconstructive memory and identify how schemas influence them
- basis was that the reconstructive memory and screams are essential for comprehending, assimilating and remembering information
- collected 20 English college students
- read a Native American folk tale called “war of the ghost’ because it was unlikely ppts were familiar with it
- revealed that ppts created new information more frequently when there was a longer duration between when the story was last heard, and the more times the story was told
- Barlett suggested that ppts added new detailed as a results of intrusions that occurred during recall
- revealed ppts recalled disordered information regarding the folk-tale
- there number of distortions increased in the related and the serial reproduction tests, although this was less evident in the repeated reproduction test
- overall, three processes occurred in the study: assimilation, rationalisation, shortening
- ppts assimilated stories into their own cultural contexts, rationalised areas that made less sense, and shortened it to remember better where necessary
- concluded people are prone to making errors during reconstructive memory processes. people rcan recall schemas that include information that gives you a gist or overview of the memory, however these tend to not be detail orientated over time, remembered details are forgotten, and people tend to ass new information using their existing wknwoledge to make sense of schemas and lack contextual details
(Lily Hulatt, July 7 2022)
The cognitive revolution… was there one?
Influenced by
- rise of computers, within which ‘processing speed’, ‘memory’ were concrete
- computers become a natural metaphor for mind
- ‘flow charts’ used to describe human cognitive processing
- stirking observations of language, memory and attention
Language
Skinner’s verbal behaviour (1957)
- viewed language acquisition as a process of learning through interactions with the environment. Just like behaviour verbal responses are strengthened or weakened by their consequences
- he was less interested in the mental structures like knowledge or language competence but rather than the fictional relationships of the behaviour in the environment in which it occurs
- the child’s response is conditioned by its consequences in a specific situation or what Skinner called antecedent-behaviour-consequence (ABC) structure
Chomsky’s (1959) critique and the rise of psycholinguists
- colourless Green ideas sleep furiously vs the cat put the last out thing we at night
Surface structure - ‘ the cat was cased by the dog’ ‘the dog chased the cat’ vs deep structure
- Extra evidence -
- wrote a negative review on Skinner’s attempt to account language in behaviourist terms, and he was successful in convincing the scientific community that adult language use cannot adequately be designed in terms of sequences or behaviour response (David C Planer, Fall 2006)
- according to Chonksy, the child uses language with the ability which is an inborn talent. People ar born with the inner language capacity and they discover and internalise the language spoken in their surrounding with the innate language skills (Isamil CELIK, 2017)
Information processing and short term memory
The magical number 7, plus or minus two (Miller)
‘My problem is that I have been persecuted by and integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded into my most private data, and has assaulted me from the page of our most public journals’
Limited number, approx 7, of items can be stored in short-term memory -> items can be any size ‘chunks’
This limit of a central feature of developing cogntive models of attention and memory in 1950s-70s
The Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
3 systems that differ in terms of:
- storage capacity
- persistence of information
- Extra evidence -
- also known as the multi store model of memory
- comprised of 3 components: the sensory store, short-term memory and long-term memory
- information (environmental input) picked up by our sensory organs foes into the sensory store, where it stays from 1/4 to 1/2 a second
- if we pay attention to this information, it is then encoded into STM
- STM comprises the information we are thinking about consciously at any given taker
- stored in STM as acoustic
- duration of 18 seconds, magic number
- then if rehearsed, information is encoded into ltm that has an unlimited capacity
- however, it has been criticised for being too simplistic too fully explain the complexity of STM and LTM (Raquel C)
Selective attention
Broadbent’s filter model (1958)
Selection into a limited capacity channel
- Extra evidence -
- selective attention is the process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment
- important process as there is a limit to how much information can be processed at any given time, and selective attention allow us to tune out insignifcasnrt derails and focus on what is important
- Braodbent’s and Treinsman’s models of attention are all bottleneck models because they predict we cannot consciously attend to all our sensory input at the same time
- the Broadbent’s filter model posits that attention is a bottleneck through which only a limited amount of information can pass at any given time
- the theory suggest that an internal “filter” selects which stimuli to process based on their physical properties, while the remaining information is either ignored or stored temporarily in short-term memory (Saul McLeod, June 11 2023)
Baddeley and Hitch
Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch (1974 and later) developed a revised framework for short term memory, the Working Memory Model
- Extra Evidence -
Working memory - explanation for how short-term memory works
- two main types → visual and auditory
- can imagine how things look and how things sound
- “a brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cogntive tasks as language comprehension, learning and reasoning” (Baddeley, 1992)
Slave systems
- visuospatial sketchpad: controls visual; information
- visual working memory is rambling what things look like
- spatial working memory is remembering where things are, like getting to a new place e
- phonological loop → system that controls auditory information
- (originally called articulatory loop)
- any time trying to remember verbal words or sounds, this is the system you’re using
- called slave systems because controled by a “boss” → the central executive and they have the basic function of storing information
Central executive
- responsible for brining images and sounds too are trying to remember into the STM from LTM
- in original model it was “assumed to be capable of attentional focus, storage and decision making” (Baddeley, 2011)
- two main jobs
1. controlling slave systems - we have all our long term memories stored
- when we start thinking about them, it’s the central executive that directs slave systems to bring those memories into our current thoughts
- also controls prolonged rehearsal
1. selective attention - ability to block our distractions and focus attention on the relevant information is a key job of the central executive
Episodic buffer
- temporary store of information
- holds information until its needed
(Travis Dixon, 2020)
Ultric Neisser
Sometimes referred to as the “father of congitve psychology”
Through his books, we can chart the refinement of the cogntive approach, e.g:
- cogntive psychology (1967) → brought together research concerning perception, pattern recognition, attention, problem solving and remembering (Association for psychological science, April 27 2012)
- cognition and relatiy: principles and implications of cognitive psychology (1976)
- Memory observe: remembering in natural contexts (1982)
He revolutionised the discipline by challenging behaviourism ad endeavouring to discover how the mind thinks and works
1986, conducted a famous experiment while working st Emory University. Day following Challenger space shuttle explosion, he asked students to write an account. three years later, he had them do the same thing. Supported his theory that the mind distorts and reshapes the past drawing on the layered memories rather than actual events (Paige Parvin, March 1 2012)
Selective looking, Ulric Neisser and Robert Becklen (1975) sought to understand how a stimulus’s visual presentation and optical distance can influence selection, attention, and perception. They presented two types of episodes in binocular and dichotic views. Both eyes see two overlapping episodes in binocular vision. In the dichotic vision, each eye sees a different episode . Asked 24 undergraduates to watch two superimposed events (a hand game and ballgam) happening fat once on a video screen. They conducted 10 trials. first four ere fast episodes, which meant 40 passes. Subjects either watched one or two episodes simultaneously , pressing buttons the something important happened in one episode and leaving there second episode unattended. Last 6 trials were slow episode, which meant 20 ball passes or hand slaps. Asked to push buttons when a significant event happened on either of the simultaneous games. They then added odd events to the ignored episode during the trials. The results showed that subjects can still say attention to a given episode even in the presence of a superimposed irrelevant episode. Performance dropped significantly when monitoring the two episodes occurred simultaneously. Those assigned to binocular view perfumed better in missing fewer targets. Suggested that selective attention results from visual perception regarding the ability to follow visual events.
The perceptual cycle → idea that perception is a cycle, where activation of schemata through perceptual information directs our attention and activity in pursuit of further information
Neisser defined schemata as an internal knowledge framework that is part of the perceptual cycle but actively accepts information about what is observed. The schema also leads to perceptual inquiry, allowing new information to be perceived, which modified thm
(Lily Hulatt, StudySmater, January 2023)
Cognition was studied in late 19th century
By two near-contemporaries who took very different approaches
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) -> Germany
- structuralism. interested in the structure of consciousness
William James (1842-1910) -> US
- functionalism. interested in the function of consciousness
However, this contradicted behaviourism
- rejected both of these perspectives by abandoning the pursuit of the objectively examined consciousness
The cogntive revolution -> was there one?
Influenced by
- rise of computers within which ‘processing speed’ and ‘memory’ were more concrete
- computers become a natural metaphor for mind
- ‘flow charts’ used to descale cognitive processing
- striking observations of language, memory and attention
However, it is hard to put an exact date on the start of the revolution
Important historical cogntive neuropsychology cases
Paul Broca (1824-1880) - patient ‘Tan’ who lost the ability to speak after history of epilepsy. Autopsy revealed damaged to region in LHemis - ‘Broca’s area’
‘Wernicke’s area’ adjacent, needed for comprehension of speech
Famous case of Phineas Gage, who incurred frontal lobe indy following accident
Single case methods
Particular strength in UK and Italy in the 1970s and 80s
- cogntive Neuropsychology started in 1986
Patterns of cognitive deficit following brain injury to help unravel the ‘logic’ of cognition
Help explain how different parts of the Brin contribute to cognitive functions
Dissociations and double dissociations
Dissociation -> patient A can do task x but not task y (e.g. can recognise expressions but not recognise faces)
Double dissociation -> patient A can do task x but not y; parent B can do task t but not x (e.g. patient B can recognise faces but not expressions)
E.g. distinction between short and long term memory
- HM vs KF
Karl Lashley (1890-1958)
Famous for unsuccessfully hunting for a memory ‘engram’
An engram is the localised memory trace for an event
A neutral trace of representation (location) of a specific memory for a specific event
Proposed the principle of “mass action” in which learning is distributed across all parts of the Bain rather than stored in na single region with the degree of impairment proportional to the amount of brain that was damaged
Pioneered experimental wrk conducted on rats with surgically induced brain lesions
Made several fundamental discoveries about how the brain stores and processes information
- by implanting insulating chips of mica in rats’ cortexes and showing that they had few effects on learning and behaviour, he established that the cortex processed information in the pattern of activity and connectivity among neurones, not in global field and wave effects propagating through a medium
His famously unsuccessful search for an ‘emgram’ (the localised trace if the memory for a maze in a rat’s brain) led him to propose the principle of “mass action”, in which learning is distributed acrosss all parts of the brain rather than stored in a single region, with the degree of impairment proportional to the amount of the brain that was damaged
(Havard University, 2025)
