Week 1 Flashcards
(35 cards)
Desirable difficulties
Need to engage in material fully to understand it = deeper learning
Introspectionism
Introspection, ‘qualities’ of mental experience
- Think about your thinking (feelings)
- Importance of intentionality and volition (conscious thought)
- Must look within / introspect because we can’t experience others’ thoughts
- Must be trained to report experiences without interpretation
Introspectionism issues
- Can’t tell us about unconscious events
- Introspection is hard to scientifically prove or quantify
Introspectionism - scientists
Wundt and Titchener (his student), William James
Psychophysics
- gave credibility to mechanism
- Looks for regular and measurable relation btwn thinking and environment
- “Just noticeable differences”
Psychophysics - scientists
Ernst Weber; the amount of physical energy necessary to produce a change in sensation is proportional to the original level of physical energy
Gustav Fechner; physical energy and the psych experience are related by a logarithmic function
Kant-ian logic
- determine underlying causes that lead to observed effects
- morality = rationality = universal (all are fundamentally rational)
Behaviourism
- Only looks at observables
- “Subjective experience is unverifiable = unreliable”
Stimulus -> response
- lots of reward/punishment
Behaviourism issues
We must consider both stimuli AND a subjects knowledge and understanding of the stimulus (personal interpretation)
= subjective
Behaviourism - scientists
BF Skinner, John Watson
Cognitive psych revolution
Moving away from behaviourism
Tolman rat mazes
= cognitive maps
= internal thought is necessary
Chomsky grammar rules
= innate mechanisms and rules
Kant’s transcendental method
= Start with observable effects then look for the underlying causes
= Sometimes called “inference to best explanation”
= Visible effects from an invisible cause
= Then hypothesize and test what the mental processes were
Computer metaphor for the mind
Input
cogpsych and memory
+ storage
Output
The computer model of the mind
Environmental energy
–> information
Psychological processes
–> coding, representation
Memory
–> storage and retrieval
Storage capacity
- Donald Broadbent used compsci to theorise how ppl focus their information when working in complex environments
Tenets of cog psych
knowledge is…
- acquired (perception, attention,
categorization) - retained (memory encoding and retrieval)
- used (decision making, judgement, inference)
NOT just a copy of sensory input
Brodmann brain areas
- based on cytoarchitectural organization of neurons
- used nissl and golgi stains
= brain is specialized
MRI vs. fMRI
MRI
- structural image
fMRI
- functional
- must pay attention to tasks done during scan (task analysis)
fMRI
- best for spatial localization, bad for temporal (has to wait for blood)
- functional
- magnetize hemoglobin iron, see where blood recruited
- coloured parts are lit up because of SUBTRACTION when you compare different types of tasks (look at brain differences)
EEG (electroencephalography)
- sticker cap
- good for temporal, bad for spatial
- looks at patterns in brain waves
ERP (event-related potentials)
- good for temporal, bad for spatial
- subtraction used
PET scan
- bad temporally, good spatially
- old MRI where radioactive contrast is injected
CAT scan
- good for structural, bad for functional
Single-cell recordings
- not really used for humans
- sometimes used during brain surgery
- used for sensation more than cognition
MEG
- Good spatially AND temporally
- Electrical current across scalp = magnetic field around you head
- Only for brain close to scalp
ECT (electroconvulsive therapy)
Used for depression
