Ψ COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY/ PSYC 105, MIDTERMS to help individuals fulfill their potential and maximize their well-being.

Key figures in humanistic psychology include Carl Rogers, who

Psychology as a Science developed client-centered therapy, and Abraham Maslow, known for
- Empirical study of human behavior and cognition. his hierarchy of needs.

Early “isms” of Psychology

Grand Issues of Psychology
Structuralism: Founded by Wilhelm Wundt and his student Edward
Titchener, structuralism aimed to break down mental processes into → Stability vs. Change
their most basic components. It used introspection as a method to → Nature vs. Nurture
explore the structure of the mind → Rational vs. Irrational
Functionalism: Influenced by William James, functionalism focused Cognitive psychology in perspective
on the purpose of consciousness and behavior. It emphasized how
mental activities helped an organism adapt to its environment Cognitive Psychology is otherwise known as the psychology of
cognition.
Behaviorism: Pioneered by John B. Watson and later expanded by B.F.
Skinner, behaviorism rejected introspection and focused on observable The study of cognition is the study of knowledge: what it is, and how
behaviors. It emphasized the role of environmental stimuli in shaping people understand, communicate, and use it.
behavior
Cognition is essentially “everyday thinking.”
Gestalt Psychology: Founded by Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and
Cognitive Psychology Defined
Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt psychology emphasized that the whole of
anything is greater than its parts. It focused on patterns and context in The study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think.
perception
The collection of mental processes and activities used in perceiving,
Psychoanalysis: Developed by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis learning, remembering, thinking, and understanding, and the act of
emphasized the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior. It using those processes.
introduced concepts like the id, ego, and superego, and techniques
such as dream analysis Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology

Humanistic psychology: is a perspective that emphasizes the study of  PLATO (ca. 428-348 B.C)
the whole person and the uniqueness of each individual. It focuses on
Rationalism
concepts such as free will, self-efficacy, and self-actualization, aiming
Nature of reality: Reality resides not in the concrete objects we Empiricism
perceive but
“Tabula rasa” (“blank slate”)
in the abstract forms that these objects represent
Learning
How to investigate reality: (1) Observation is misleading, (2) The route
Humans are born without knowledge
to knowledge is through logical analysis
No innate ideas
 ARISTOTLE (ca. 384-322 B.C)
Both sighted and blind people ought to be able to learn the meanings of
Empiricism
words like statue and feel but the blind ought to be unable to acquire
Nature of reality: Reality lies only in the concrete world of objects that words like picture and see…
our bodies sense
Structuralism
How to investigate reality: (1) The route to knowledge is through
Goal: to understand the structure of the mind and its perceptions by
empirical evidence, obtained through experience and observation (2)
analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components
Observations of the external world are the only means to arrive at truth
Method: Introspection – looking inward at pieces of information
 RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)
passing through consciousness
Rationalism
Proponents: Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener
“Cogito ergo sum”
Functionalism–
Mental representations
Goal: to study the processes of mind rather than its contents
Innate ideas
Method: introspection, observation, experiment
Descartes raised, directly or indirectly, virtually all the significant issues
Proponent: William James
related to the foundations of the science of the mind
Behaviorism
He had taken the principles from his writings on meteors, optics,
mathematics, and mechanics and considered their applicability to Goal: to study observable behavior
human phenomena
Any hypotheses about internal thoughts and ways of thinking
 JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
are nothing more than speculation
We cannot say anything meaningful about cognition in Europe by two years– Analogy between computers and human
minds
Method: Animal experiments, conditioning experiments
Hardware (brain), Software (mind)
Proponents: John Watson, B.F. Skinner
Thinking can be described in terms of algorithmic manipulation of
Emergence of Cognitive Psychology some information
 Karl Lashley (1890-1958)– Psychobiological arguments against These ideas gave rise to the information processing paradigm in
behaviorism psychology
On a behaviorist, stimulus response account, an activity such as Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology
rapidly playing a correct sequence of notes from memory on an
instrument would involve an associative chain of stimuli and responses 1. Data without a theory is meaningless, theory without data is empty.

Such associative chains cannot explain the behavior; input is never put A theory provides:
into a static system, but always into a system which is actively
→ An explanation of data
organized
→ Basis for prediction of other data
 Noam Chomsky – Linguistic arguments against behaviorism;
Arguments from language acquisition
2. Cognitive processes interact with each other and with noncognitive
Behaviorists cannot explain how children can produce novel sentences processes.
they never heard
Even though cognitive psychologists often try to study specific
Infinite number of sentences we can produce cannot be learned by cognitive processes in isolation, they know that cognitive processes
reinforcement there must be a cognitive algorithmic structure in our work together.
mind underlying language
3. Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods
 Alan Turing – Development of first computers
There is no one right way to study cognition
His “Colossus” computer helped break the German “Enigma” codes
during the World War II Cognitive psychologists need to learn a variety of different kinds of
techniques to study cognition
It has been estimated that this work shortened the war
4. Basic research in cognitive psychology may lead to application,
applied research may lead to basic understanding.
Basic research often leads to immediate application  N-back Task: Tests working memory by requiring participants to
identify if the current item matches the one from n steps earlier in a
Applied research often leads to basic findings
sequence.
In Perspective…  Digit Span Task: Assesses short-term memory by having
participants repeat a sequence of numbers in the same order or in
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: The study of cognitive processes, including reverse.
attention, language, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity,  Mental Rotation: Evaluates spatial visualization by asking
and reasoning. participants to determine if objects are the same or mirror images
when rotated.
In contrast to behaviorism, which claimed from the 1920s to the 1950s
 Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST): Measures cognitive
that unobservable mental processes were outside the purview of
flexibility by having participants match cards based on changing
empirical science, cognitive psychology emerged in the 1960s.
rules (e.g., color, shape).
This pause occurred while models of mental processes were employed  Flanker Task: Tests attentional control by requiring participants to
by researchers in applied psychology, linguistics, and cybernetics to focus on a target stimulus while ignoring distracting flanking stimuli.
understand human behavior.
Key Domains of Cognitive Function
Numerous modern disciplines, including cognitive science, linguistics,
THE BRAIN
and economics, have incorporated much of the work that emerged
from cognitive psychology. Incredible and complex organ

Control virtually every aspect of our existence

Key Cognitive Tasks Used in the Domain of Cognitive Psychology Often looked at solely as the center of memory
Research
The brain controls much more than just our memory; it controls both
 Stroop Task: Captures the phenomenon where there is a delay in cognitive and functional aspects of our brain
reaction time when stimuli are incongruent (e.g., the word “RED” in
blue ink) as opposed to congruent (e.g., the word “RED” in red ink). Due to the high complexity of the brain, there are many different ways
 Navon Task: Measures the ability to process global (big picture) to categorize its functions.
versus local (small details) information by identifying large letters
made up of smaller letters.
 DSM -5 FRAMEWORK on impulses, express empathy, recognize social cues, read facial
expressions, and motivate ourselves.
Key Domains of Cognitive Function
Bloom’s Taxonomy
1. Complex Attention
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of the different outcomes and
Complex attention is our ability to focus on multiple things at once and
skills that educators set for their students (learning outcomes).
our ability to choose what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an
2. Executive Function
educational psychologist at the University of Chicago.
Executive functions refer to high-level cognitive abilities required to
The terminology has been recently updated to include six levels of
control and coordinate other cognitive abilities and behaviors.
learning.
3. Learning and Memory
Like other taxonomies, Bloom’s is hierarchical, meaning that learning at
Learning and memory, which is the most well-known aspect of the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite
cognitive function, is our ability to record information, such as facts or knowledge and skills at lower levels.
events, and
Cognitive Domains
retrieve it when needed.
1. Remember: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant
4. Language knowledge from long‐term memory.

Language links strongly with our ability to communicate, whether 2. Understand: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic
through writing, reading, or speaking.
messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing,
5. Perceptual-Motor Control
inferring, comparing, and explaining.
Perceptual-motor control is our ability to coordinate our bodies’
3. Apply: Carrying out or using a procedure for executing, or
movements in response to what is happening around us.
implementing.
6. Social Cognition
4. Analyze: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how
Social cognition is how we process, remember, and use information in the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose
social contexts to explain and predict our behavior as well as the through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.
behavior of others. This includes our ability to control our desires to act
5. Evaluate: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through Memory Encoding
checking and critiquing.
How Do We Form Memories?
6. Create: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional
whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through Each of the three memory stages encodes and stores memories in a
generating, planning, or producing. different way, but they work together to transform sensory experience
into a lasting record that has a pattern of meaning
Human memory is an information processing system that works
constructively to encode, store, and retrieve information The Three Stages of Memory

Memory 1. Sensory Memory - Preserves brief sensory impressions of stimuli

Any system – human, animal, or machine – that encodes, stores, and 2. Working Memory - Preserves recently perceived events or
retrieves information experiences for less than a minute without rehearsal, also called short-
term memory Working memory consists of
Cognitive psychologists see human memory more as an interpretive
system, such as an artist, rather than a system that takes an accurate → A central executive
recording, such as a video recorder → A phonological loop
→ The sketchpad
Human Memory is Good at:
Encoding and Storage in Working Memory
✓ Information on which attention is focused
✓ Information in which we are interested Chunking - Organizing pieces of information into a smaller number of
✓ Information that arouses us emotionally meaningful units
✓ Information that fits with our previous experiences
Maintenance rehearsal - Process in which information is repeated or
✓ Information that we rehearse
reviewed to keep it from fading while in working memory
Memory’s Three Basic Tasks
Elaborative rehearsal - Process in which information is actively
✓ Encoding reviewed and related to information already in LTM
✓ Storage
Acoustic encoding - Conversion of information to sound patterns in
✓ Retrieval
working memory
3. Long-term Memory - Stores material organized according to meaning

Procedural memory - Division of LTM that stores memories for how

things are done

Semantic memory Includes memory for: language, facts general

knowledge Episodic memory Includes memory for: events, personal
experience

Declarative memory - Division of LTM that stores explicit information

(also known as fact memory)

Includes memory for: motor skills, operant and classical conditioning

The Biological Basis of Long-Term Memory

Engram: The physical trace of memory

Anterograde amnesia (forget the new): Inability to form memories for

new information

Retrograde amnesia (forget the past): Inability to remember information

previously stored in memory