Cognitive

Psychology
Dr. Ezgi Tan
Istanbul Commerce University
Sep’2023
Chapter
1:
Introduction to Cognitive
Psychology
“Thinking about thinking.”
Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting
mind, research and everyday experience. Nelson Education.
Cognitive Psychology: Studying the Mind

Mind, like other concepts in psychology such as intelligence or

emotion, can be thought of in a number of different ways.
What Is the Mind?

The mind creates and controls mental functions such as

perception, attention, memory, emotions, language,
deciding, thinking, and reasoning. This definition reflects
the mind’s central role in determining our various mental
abilities

The mind is a system that creates representations of the world

so that we can act within it to achieve our goals. This definition
reflects the mind’s importance for functioning and survival, and
also pro- vides the beginnings of a description of how the mind
achieves these ends.
These two definitions of the mind are not incompatible. The first
one indicates different types of cognition—the mental
processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, which is
what the mind creates. The second definition indicates
something about how the mind operates (it creates
representations) and its function (it enables us to act and to
achieve goals). It is no coincidence that all of the cognitions in
the first definition play important roles in acting to achieve
goals.
Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes, which
includes determining the characteristics and properties of the
mind and how it operates
What is Cognitive
Psychology?
The brunch of Psychology which examines the
cognitive functions (the mind) scientifically.

Basic Cognitive Functions

• Perception
• Attention
• Memory
• Language
• Thinking and Decision Making
 Cognitive
Sciences
A
multidiscipli • Education
nary field • Linguistics
that consists • Neurosciences
of different • Artificial
disciplines Intelligence
that study • Philosophy
cognition • Anthropolo
(the mind). gy
• Psychology
Pioneering Studies of Cognitive
Psychology
• Aristotle's Empiricism
• The philosophical movement suggesting that the onlysource of
information is experience. (4th century, B.C.)

• The idea that the mind can be studied scientifically is a modern thought.
• In the 1800’s it was believed that it was impossible to examine the mind. The
main reason was that the properties of the mind were thought to be
immeasurable.

• Those who thought that the mind could be studied and moved on did
the very first experiments of cognitive psychology.
• Reaction Time experiment: Dutch Physiologist Franciscus Donders (1818 -
1889).
• Memory experiment : German Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 -
1909).
 Reaction Time Experiment - Donders,
1868
Reaction Time: The time between the presentation of a stimulus
and the response.

Instr-1: ‘Press the button when light is on.’ Instr-2: ‘Press J for light at right, K for light at
• L i g h t → Percepti on→Butt on left.’
Press • L i g ht → Percep ti on &
• Basic Reaction Time (BRS) Decision→Button Press
Choice Reaction Time (CRT)
Reaction Time Experiment - Donders,
1868
• Hypothesis: BRT must be shorter than CRT
and the difference would be due to decision
making process.

• Result: BRT was 100 msec shorter than CRT.

Donders, concluded that the difference was
due to ‘the time needed to decide which
button the participant should press.’

• Contribution to Psychology :
• The mind can be studied.
• Mental reactions can not be measured
directly, inferences must be made by
looking at behavior.
• First ‘reaction time’ measurement as a
research method.
Memory Experiment –
Ebbinghaus,
•
1885
Made a list of 3-letter words
(meaningless).
• BAC, JUT, MIF…

• Applied the list to himself and

recorded how many times he had to
repeat to remember the whole list.

• After the learning process he waited

for a variety of time periods and
recalled the list to see the effect of
time on forgetting (and relearning).
Ebbinghaus used a measure called savings, calculated as
follows, to determine how much was forgotten after a par-
ticular delay: Savings 5 (Original time to learn the list) 2 (Time
to relearn the list after the delay). Thus, if it took 1,000 seconds
to learn the list the first time and 400 seconds to re- learn the
list after the delay, the savings would be 1,000 2 400 5 600
seconds

According to Ebbinghaus, this reduction in savings pro- vided a

measure of forgetting, with smaller savings meaning more
forgetting.
Memory Experiment –
Ebbinghaus, 1885
• He found out that the recall
was better on the first two
days following learning but
forgetting was increasing
dramatically by time in this
period. Forgetting was
slowing down after day 2.

• Contributinon to
Psychology:
• He showed that the memory
could be quantified
• First ‘accuracy’ measurement
as a research method.
First School of Psychology – Wundt,
1879
Structuralism: Asks questions about the
structure of the mind.
• Try to understand the elements of
perception, and how these elements come
together to form the complex mind.
• Elements of Perception
• Apple: Red, small, round, juicy…

• First school of psychology.

• German Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt
(1832–1920) is the founder.
Wundt’s Psychology Laboratory: Structur- alism and Analytic
Introspection

Wundt’s approach, which dominated psychology in the late

1800s and early 1900s, was called structuralism. According to
structuralism, our overall experience is de- termined by
combining basic elements of experience the structuralists called
sensations. Thus, just as chemistry developed a periodic table of
the elements, which combine to create molecules, Wundt
wanted to create a “periodic table of the mind,” which would
include all of the basic sensations involved in creating
experience.
Wundt thought he could achieve this scientific description of the
components of experience by using analytic introspection, a
technique in which trained participants described their
experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.
Analytic introspection re- quired extensive training because the
participants’ goal was to describe their experience in terms of
Structuralism -
Method Introspection method:
• Trained pariticpants were expected to
describe their percepts of an object in
detail (elements of perception).

Contribution:
• The method of studying the mind moved
from pure rationalist thought to empirical
method. We started to 'ask‘

Problems:
• You dont knowif the participant can find
the
words s/he needs or tells the truth.
• Talking about the perception can alter the
perception and makes the experiment
complex.
Behaviorism – Watson,
1913
Watson: analytical introspection is
problematic.
• Results vary from one person to another.
• Talks about mind looking at the bevaviour.
Behaviorism :
• Rejects analytical introspection
• Claims that psychology cannot study
cognitive processes as thinking or decision
making but only the behavior itself.
• The aim was to remove «mind» from the
focus of psychology and put «behaviour»
there since it is the only observable thing
• The question psychology should ask should
not be ‘what behaviourr tells us about the
mind?’ but ‘What is the relation btw
peripheral stim and behaviour?’
Watson & Skinner –
Conditioning
• Watson: Classical conditioning wasn’t interested şn what was
• The Little Albert (1920) happening in the mind but only
• Pavlov’s dog (1890) focusing on the relation btw
stim and response.
• Skinner: Operant conditioning
• Reinforcement of behavior by • The influence of the
reward or punishment. behaviorism lasted until the
1960s

• As well as Watson, Skinner

Surprising results of behavioral
experiments
Maze experiment: Edward Chane Tolman (1938)
• The mouse is always released at point A, and the food is at B.
The mouse must be learning (conditioned) to turn right to reach
food.
• When the mouse is released at point C, it finds food by turning
left rather than right.
• “The mouse develops a 'cognitive map’ .of the maze.”
(Tolman,
1948)
Behaviorism becomes
Inadequate
• Skinner ‘Verbal Behavior’ (1957): The language
development in children occurs by operant
conditioning.

• Linguistics : Noam Chomsky (Language

acquisition device)
• What determines language development is not a
reward or imitation, but a biological program that is
valid in all cultures and is innate.
• Chomsky's notion that language development is
not the product of conditioning but a product
of mind structure led to the idea that the mind
should be addressed to understand complex
behaviors.
Towards the Cognitive
Revolution
The emergence of digital computers and information-
processing approach :
• Could the human mind be working in a way similar to the
information-processing principles of computers?
• Flow diagrams vs. cognitive models

Artificial Intelligence
• Can computers be programmed to mimic the functioning
of
the human mind?
• Although two fruitful conferences on these issues were held
in 1950s, transition from behaviorism to cognitive psychology
was not very rapid.
Cognitive Psychology –
Since1960s ...
‘The father of cognitive psychology: Ulrich Neisser, 1967.

‘Meta Theories' (or preliminary assumptions):

• Cognitive functions exist.
• They can be scientifically investigated.
• People are active information processors.

Method
• Investigates normal cognition using experimental methods.
• Establishes theories that are testable and consistent with the data obtained.
• Cognitive psychology models are the design of the way in which information is treated in the
mind.
• Cognitive Neuroscience research began in the 1990s and has gradually
increased.
Be sure you’ve
learnt…
• Reaction time Basic Cognitive Functions :
• Perception
• Attention
•Behaviorism vs • Memory
Cognitive PSY • Language
• Thinking and Decision
Making