PSYCH255

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Cognitive Psychology Course Timeline
• Week 1: October 26 – 30, 2020
– Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
– Cognitive-Contextual Theories of Development
• Week 2: November 2 – 6, 2020
– Cognitive Neuroscience
• Week 3: November 9 – 13, 2020
– Sensation and Perception
– Attention and Consciousness
• Week 4: November 16 – 20, 2020
– Midterm Exam
• Week 5: November 23 – 27, 2020
– Memory: Structures and Processes
• Week 6: November 30 – December 4, 2020
– Language
– Problem Solving and Creativity
• Week 7: December 7 – 11, 2020
– Decision Making and Reasoning
• Week 8: December 14 – 18, 2020
– Final Exam
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Week 1: Introducing Cognitive Psychology (Part 1)
• What is Cognitive Psychology and Why it is Important?
• Early Beginnings and Conceptualization of Cognitive Psychology
• Current Trends in Cognitive Psychology
• Research Methods
• Issues in the field of Cognitive Psychology

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 What is Cognitive Psychology?
• Cognition derived from the Latin word co-
+ gnoscere, to come to know. Knowing
requires mental activity which involves
acquiring, storage, transformation and
use of knowledge (Matlin, 2002).
• Cognitive Psychology deals with how
people perceive, learn, remember and
think about information (Sternberg, 2003)
and how do they use this information
(Matlin, 2002).

• Cognition co-+ gnoscere to come to know. Knowing requires mental activity which
involves acquiring, storage, transformation and use of knowledge (Matlin, 2002).
• Cognitive Psychology deals with how people perceive, learn, remember and think
about information (Sternberg, 2003) and how do they use this information (Matlin,
2002).
Why study Cognitive Psychology?
• Cognitive psychology holds a major domain in human psychology.
• It studies the mind and how it works.
• And it has a widespread influence on other areas of psychology.

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 Dialectic
Progression of
Ideas
The dialectic is important
because we may be tempted
to think that if one view is
right, another seemingly
contrasting view must be
wrong.
Image from slideshare.net

• A thesis is proposed. After a while, however, certain individuals notice apparent

flaws in the thesis.
• An antithesis emerges. A statement that counters a previous statement of belief.
• A synthesis integrates the viewpoints. Integrates the most credible features of
each of two (or more) views.
• The dialectic is important because we may be tempted to think that if one view is
right, another seemingly contrasting view must be wrong.

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 Philosophical
Antecedents of
Psychology:
Rationalism versus
Empiricism

Image from slideshare.net

Generally speaking two approaches have been used to study the mind.
• Historically, philosophical approaches have rendered an understanding to the
workings of the mind using introspection.
• And biology, has used observational (and empirical) methods to study the mind.

Rationalism
• Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route to knowledge is
through thinking and logical analysis.
• Rene Descartes felt that one could not rely on one’s senses because those very
senses have often proven to be deceptive.

Empiricism
• Aristotle (a naturalist and biologist as well as a philosopher) was an empiricist.
An empiricist believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical evidence—
that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation.
• John Locke believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must
seek knowledge through empirical observation. Locke’s term for this view
was tabula rasa (meaning “blank slate” in Latin).

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 • the study of learning was the key to understanding the human mind. He
believed that there are no innate ideas.

Both Rationalism & Empiricism

• German philosopher Immanuel Kant, both rationalism and empiricism have their
place. Both must work together in the quest for truth. Most psychologists
today accept Kant’s synthesis.

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 Psychological
Antecedents of
Cognitive
Psychology:
Structuralism to
Functionalism

Image from slideshare.net

• Structuralism was the first major school of thought in psychology.

• seeks to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and
its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent
components (affection, attention, memory, sensation, etc.).
• Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German psychologist whose ideas
contributed to the development of structuralism.
• Introspection is a deliberate looking inward at pieces of information
passing through consciousness. The aim of introspection is to look at the
elementary components of an object or process.
• One was an American student, Edward Titchener (1867–1927) is sometimes
viewed as the first full-fledged structuralist. In any case, he certainly helped
bring structuralism to the United States.

• Functionalism seeks to understand what people do and why they do it.

• Functionalists held that the key to understanding the human mind and
behavior was to study the processes of how and why the mind works as it does
• Pragmatists believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness: What can you
do with it? (are concerned not only with knowing what people do; they also
want to know what we can do with our knowledge of what people do).

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• A leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism was William James
(1842–1910).
• John Dewey (1859–1952) was another early pragmatist who profoundly
influenced contemporary thinking in cognitive psychology. (remembered
primarily for his pragmatic approach to thinking and schooling).

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 An Integrative
Synthesis:
Associationism to
Behaviorism

Image from slideshare.net

• Associationism examines how elements of the mind, like events or ideas, can
become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning.
• contiguity (associating things that tend to occur together at about the same
time)
• similarity (associating things with similar features or properties)
• contrast (associating things that show polarities, such as hot/cold,
light/dark, day/night).
• Associationist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–
1909) was the first experimenter to apply associationist principles
systematically. (studied his own mental processes)
• Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949),held that the role of “satisfaction” is the key
to forming associations. He termed this principle the law of effect (1905): A
stimulus will tend to produce a certain response
overtime if an organism is rewarded for that response.

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 An Integrative
Synthesis:
Behaviorism to
Cognition

Image from slideshare.net

It’s Only What You Can See That Counts: From Associationism to Behaviorism
• Behaviorism focuses only on the relation
between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli.
• The idea was to make physical whatever others might have called
“mental.” In Russia, Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–
1936) studied involuntary learning behavior of this sort.
Pavlov’s landmark work paved the way for the development of
behaviorism.
• Behaviorism may be considered an extreme version of associationism. It
focuses entirely on the association between the
environment and an observable behavior. According (“radical”) behaviorists,
any hypotheses about internal thoughts and ways
of thinking are nothing more than speculation.
• The “father” of radical behaviorism is John Watson (1878–1958). he had no use for
internal mental contents or mechanisms. He believed that psychologists should
concentrate only on the study of observable behavior.
• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), aradical behaviorist, believed that
virtually all forms of human behavior,not just learning, could be explained by
behavior emitted in reaction to the environment.

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• Behaviorists regarded the mind as a black box that is best understood in terms
of its input and output, but whose internal processes cannot be accurately
described because they are not observable.

Less Radical Behaviorist Cognitive Map

• Edward Tolman (1886–1959), a forefather of modern cognitive psychology,
thought that understanding behavior required taking into account
the purpose of, and the plan for, the
behavior. He (1932) believed that all behavior is directed toward a goal.
• Bandura (1977b) noted that learning appears to result not merely from
direct rewards for behavior, but it also can be social, resulting from
observations of the rewards or punishments given to others.

The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Gestalt Psychology
• Gestalt psychology states that we best understand psychological phenomena
when we view them as organized, structured wholes.

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 Is the debate over?

Certainly not! Understanding mind and its reality has its adherents belong both to
nurture (acquired mind) or nature (innate mind) or both domains.

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Early Beginnings of Cognitive Psychology?
• Lashley’s research showed that large
amounts of the brain could be destroyed
without affecting learning.
• Hebb, Lashley’s student proposed
stimulation (learning) led to forming strong
connections among neurons called cell
assemblies.

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Early Beginnings of Cognitive Psychology?
• In 40s and 50s, electronic engineering and
computer sciences started developing machines
and programs that mimicked human learning
and thinking.
• Turing developed a test (Turing test)for a
computer to think like a human.
• In 1960s, several sciences and disciplines like
psychobiology, linguistics, anthropology,
computer sciences and artificial intelligence
started gathering data that developed the
strong foundations of cognitive psychology.

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 Birth Date of Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive psychology was born on Sep. 11,
1956, when Neisser, Miller, and Simon read
seminal papers at a symposium at MIT.
• Neisser wrote the first book of Cognitive
Psychology (1967).
• Defined how people learn, structure, store
and use knowledge.

• According to Neisser, cognition involves "all processes by

which the sensory input is transformed, reduced,
elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.
• Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that
cognition is involved in everything a human being might
possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a
cognitive phenomenon."

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 Its loosely associated disciplines in
psychology, philosophy, computer
COGNITIVE SCIENCE

CURRENT TRENDS IN COGNITIVE

science, linguistics, anthropology,
neuroscience.

Brain Lesions, Brain Angiography, CT Scan

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( MRI)
PSYCHOLOGY

COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(fMRI), and Event-related Potential

Computers and Mind

COMPUTER SCIENCES Artificial Intelligence (AI)

EXPERIMENTAL COGNITIVE Memory, Attention, Problem-solving,

PSYCHOLOGY Language, and among others!

Current Trends in Cognitive Psychology

• Cognitive Science
• Cognitive science is a broad category of loosely associated disciplines that include
psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience
and of course cognitive psychology is also a part of its domain.
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• The field of cognitive neuroscience expanded around the 1980s when
neuroscientists started using imaging techniques on people performing different
cognitive functions.

• Neuroscientific Methodology
• History of Brain Lesions: Human brain damage (gladiators) and its
consequences were noted by Hippocrates who wrote that people’s
behavior changed after such damage.
• Brain Lesions: Lesion studies provide clues to the organization of the brain.
Which brain region engages in what kind of cognitive function.
• Brain Angiography: Is an X-ray method to look at arteries of the brain.
• CT Scan: Is also another X-ray method that images the brain and makes use
of multiple X-ray photos taken with a moving X-ray device.

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 • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): A strong magnetic pulse and moves
molecules in the brain. Motion of these molecules are picked up as radio
frequencies and reconstructed in 3-D images.
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET): Increased radio-labeled glucose
activity is scanned in the brain while subjects engage in different cognitive
processes.
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Detects changes in blood
flow to particular areas of the brain when these areas are active.
• Event-related Potential: Event-related potential measures the brain's
electrical activity (potentials) as it corresponds to impinging stimuli
(events).
• Event-related Potential: Single-Cell recordings in non-human subjects
provide a wealth of information on the functioning of a single or multiple
neurons.
• Computer Sciences
• Computers and Mind
• Parallels between human mind and machines have been made since
ancient times. Computer analogy is recent. There are number of
attributes that are similar between computers and humans.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Machines or programs using intelligence to solve complex
problems, the way humans solve problems.
• Application will include computers doing medical diagnoses, flying
jet planes, being the senses of the disabled.
• AI involves making programs or devices that are efficient, flexible,
and learn through experience. They may or may not mimic human
consciousness.
• Computer simulation involves designing a system that simulates
human performance on a selected cognitive task.
• Cognitive Sciences
• Serial Processing involves processing of information or data in a stage by
stage format. Time consuming.
• Parallel Processing involves processing information or data simultaneously.
Much faster.
• Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP)
• McClelland and Rumelhart (1986) proposed that cognitive
processes must be understood in terms of networks that process
information in parallel.

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 Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology
Goals of Research
• Data Gathering
• Data Analysis
• Theory Development
• Hypothesis Formulation
• Hypothesis Testing
• Application to settings outside
the Research Environment or
Ecological Validity
Distinctive Research Methods
• Laboratory Or Other
Controlled Experiments
• Psychobiological Research
• Self-reports
• Case Studies
• Naturalistic Observation
• Computer Simulations And
Artificial Intelligence

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

▪ Controlled laboratory experiments
▪ Characterization: An experimenter conducts research in a laboratory
setting in which he controls as many aspects of the experimental situation
as possible
▪ Advantages: Enables isolation of causal factor, Excellent means of testing
hypothesis
▪ Disadvantages: Often lack of ecological validity
▪ Psychobiological research
▪ Characterization: Studies the relationship between cognitive performance
and cerebral events and structures
▪ Examples: postmortem studies, animal studies, studies in vivo (PET,
fMRI, EEG)
▪ Advantages: “hard” evidence of cognitive functions by relating them to
physiological activity
▪ Disadvantages: Often very expensive; risk of making inferences about
normal functions based on abnormal brain functioning
▪ Self-reports
▪ Characterization: Participant’s reports of own cognition in progress or as

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 recollected
▪ Advantages: Introspective insights from participant’s point of view, which
may be unavailable via other means
▪ Disadvantages: Inability to report on processes occurring outside conscious
awareness, Data gathering may influence cognitive process being reported,
Try reporting aloud the various steps involved in grasping a pen. Now,
actually grasp your pen, reporting aloud the steps you take. Do you notice
any differences between the first task and this task? Can you report exactly
how you pulled the information into conscious awareness?
▪ Case studies
▪ Characterization: Intensive study of a single individual
▪ Advantages: Richly detailed information about individuals, including
information about historical and current contexts, Very good for theory
development
▪ Disadvantages: Small sample; questionable generalization to other case
▪ Naturalistic observation
▪ Characterization: Observing real-life situations, as in classrooms, work
settings, or homes
▪ Advantages: High ecological validity
▪ Disadvantages: Lack of experimental control
▪ Computer Simulations and Artificial Intelligence
▪ Characterization:
▪ Simulation: Attempt to make computers simulate human cognitive
performance
▪ AI: Attempt to make computers demonstrate intelligent cognitive
performance (regardless of its resemblance to human cognitive
processing)
▪ Advantages: Clear testing of theoretical models and predictions
▪ Disadvantages: Limits of hardware and software

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 Issues in Cognitive Psychology
• Nature or Nurture?
• Rationalism or Empiricism?
• Structures or Processes?
• General or Specific Domains?
• Causal or Ecological Validity?
• Applied or Basic Research?

Nature or Nurture?
If we believe in nature affects our cognitive functions then we should design our
experiments looking at environmental factors as the cause cognitive phenomena. On
the other hand if we believe in nurture then our experiments need to look at
innate/inborn processes.
Today cognitive psychologists believe that both the nature and nurture interact to
affect cognitive phenomena.

Rationalism or Empiricism?
What kind of methodology should we use to study cognitive phenomena? Should we
use logical reasoning to explore cognitive phenomena or should we engage in
observation and experimentation to do the above?

Structures or Processes?
Should we study the structure(contents, attributes, and products) of the mind or
should we study the processes of our mind (thinking)?

General or Specific Domains?

Do cognitive processes limited to singular domains or do they apply to multiple

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domains in our minds? Do processes/functions in a single domain similar to other
domains?

Causal or Ecological Validity?

Should we study cognitive processes using controlled [but artificial] experiments to
make valid causal inferences –or develop experiments [resembling life] that provide
us with ecologically valid findings but at the cost of losing some experimental
control?

Applied or Basic Research?

Should we study cognitive processes for the sake of simply understanding them or
should we study them to help people make use of them for practical considerations?

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Thank you!
Any questions?

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