COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

JAVERIA NASIR
Reference Material
 Cognitive Psychology 6th edition (Sternberg)- Course Book
 Cognitive Psychology 6th edition (Solso)
 Cognitive Psychology 2nd edition (Reynolds & Flagg)
What is Cognition?
• It is the collection of mental processes and activities used in perceiving,
learning, remembering, thinking, and understanding, and the act of using those
processes. (Ashcraft, 2002)
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

The term 'cognitive psychology' was first used by Ulric Neisser

in 1967.

Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on

the way people process information.

It involves the study of internal processes such as perception,

attention, language, memory, and thinking.
 How do we receive information about the outside world?
 How do we store and process information?
 How do we solve problems?
 How does a breakdown in our perceptions cause errors in our thinking?
 How do errors in our thinking lead to emotional distress and negative
behaviors?
 COGNITIVE SCIENCE
(an interdisciplinary approach to mind)

Cognitive
Psychology

• (Cognitive) Psychology
• Neuroscience Philosophy Neuroscience

• Artificial intelligence
• Anthropology Cognitive
• Linguistics Science
• Philosophy
Artificial
Linguistics
Intelligence

Anthropology
 Domains of Cognitive Psychology

Attention Memory Intelligence Problem Perception Consciousness

Solving

Language Imagery
Philosophical Antecedents Of
Psychology:

Rationalism versus Empiricism

 Historical Roots- 17th and 18th Centuries
Plato - The Rationalist Aristotle – The Empiricist

 Knowledge is acquired through  Knowledge is acquired through

thinking and logical analysis. empirical evidence.

 Contemplation and Reasoning.  Observation and experimentation.

 Introspection.  Experiments and Studies.

 Rationalism is important for theory  Empiricism is important for

development empirical investigations
 René Descartes - French rationalist
(1596–1650)
 Descartes viewed the introspective, reflective
method as being superior to empirical
methods for finding truth.
 The famous expression “cogito, ergo sum”
(I think, therefore I am) stems from Descartes.
 He maintained that the only proof of his
existence is that he was thinking and
doubting.
John Locke - British empiricist
(1632–1704)
 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).
 He believed that there are no innate ideas
and that the study of learning was the key
to understanding the human mind.
 Immanuel Kant (1724–
1804), a German Philosopher,
dialectically synthesized the
views of Descartes and Locke,
arguing that both rationalism
RENE and empiricism have their
JOHN LOCKE
DESCARTES
place. Both must work
together in the quest for
truth.
Most psychologists today
accept Kant’s synthesis.
• Cognitive psychologists hope to learn how people think by studying how
people have thoughts about thinking.
• The progression of ideas often involves a dialectic.
• A dialectic is a developmental process where ideas evolve over time
through a pattern of transformation.

What is this pattern?

In a dialectic:

A synthesis
A thesis is An antithesis
integrates the
proposed emerges
viewpoints.
 PSYCHOLOGICAL
ANTECEDENTS OF
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
 Understanding the Structure of the Mind:
“Structuralism”

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–

Structuralism seeks to Wundt is often viewed
1920) was a German
Structuralism was the understand the as the founder of
psychologist whose
first major school of structure structuralism in
ideas contributed to the
thought in psychology. (configuration of psychology
development of
elements) of the mind. (Structuralism, 2009).
structuralism.
Introspection
• Wundt used a variety of methods in his research. One of these methods
was “Introspection”.
• 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.
• The introduction of introspection as an experimental method was an
important change in the field because the main emphasis in the study of
the mind shifted from a rationalist approach to the empiricist approach of
trying to observe behavior in order to draw conclusions about the subject
of study.
• In experiments involving introspection, individuals reported on their
thoughts as they were working on a given task. Researchers interested in
problem solving could ask their participants to think aloud while they
were working on a puzzle so the researchers could gain insight into the
thoughts that go on in the participants’ minds. In introspection, then, we
can analyze our own perceptions.
CRITICISM OF INTROSPECTION
The method of introspection has some challenges associated with it.
 People may not always be able to say exactly what goes through their mind or
may not be able to put it into adequate words.
 What they say may not be accurate.
 The fact that people are asked to pay attention to their thoughts or to speak out
loud while they are working on a task may itself alter the processes that are
going on.
 Understanding the Processes of the Mind:
“Functionalism”

Functionalism suggested The key to understanding

that psychologists should the human mind and Pragmatists believe that
focus on the processes of behavior was to study the knowledge is validated by
thought rather than on its processes of how and why its usefulness
contents. the mind works as it does

A leader in guiding John Dewey(1859–1952) is

functionalism toward remembered primarily for
pragmatism was William his pragmatic approach to
James (1842–1910). thinking and schooling.
Edward Lee Thorndike
- Another influential associationist, Edward Lee Thorndike
(1874–1949), held that the role of “satisfaction” is the key
to forming associations.
- Thorndike termed this principle the law of effect (1905):
A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over
time if an organism is rewarded for that response.
- Thus, a child given treats for solving arithmetic problems
learns to solve arithmetic problems accurately because the
child forms associations between valid solutions and treats.
These ideas were the predecessors of the development of
behaviorism.
 Behaviorism
Behaviorism may be considered an extreme version of associationism. It focuses entirely on
the association between the environment and an observable behavior.

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.
Edward Tolman (1886–1959), thought that understanding behavior required taking into
account the purpose of, and the plan for, the behavior.

Tolman (1932) believed that all behavior is directed toward a goal. For example, the goal of a
rat in a maze may be to try to find food in that maze. Tolman is sometimes viewed as a
forefather of modern cognitive psychology.
Criticisms of Behaviorism
Behaviorism was challenged on
many fronts like language
acquisition, production, and
comprehension.
Second, more than understanding
people’s behavior, some
psychologists wanted to know
what went on inside the head.
First, although it seemed to work
well to account for certain kinds of
learning, behaviorism did not
account as well for complex
mental activities such problem
solving.
Third, it often proved easier to use
the techniques of behaviorism in
studying nonhuman animals than
in studying human ones.
The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts:
Gestalt Psychology
Of the many critics of behaviorism, Gestalt psychologists may have been
among the most avid.

Gestalt psychology states that we best understand psychological

phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes.

According to this view, we cannot fully understand behavior when we

only break phenomena down into smaller parts.

They studied insight, seeking to understand the unobservable mental

event
Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
• In the early 1950s, a movement called the “cognitive revolution” took place in
response to behaviorism. Cognitivism is the belief that much of human behavior
can be understood in terms of how people think. It rejects the notion that
psychologists should avoid studying mental processes because they are
unobservable.
• Cognitivism is, in part, a synthesis of earlier forms of analysis, such as
behaviorism and Gestaltism. Like behaviorism, it adopts precise quantitative
analysis to study how people learn and think; like Gestaltism, it emphasizes
internal mental processes.
Karl Spencer Lashley
- Karl Spencer Lashley (1890–1958), brashly challenged
the behaviorist view that the human brain is a passive
organ merely responding to environmental contingencies
outside the individual (Gardner, 1985).
- Instead, Lashley considered the brain to be an active,
dynamic organizer of behavior.
- Lashley sought to understand how the macro-
organization of the human brain made possible such
complex, planned activities as musical performance, game
playing, and using language. None of these activities were,
in his view, readily explicable in terms of simple
conditioning.
Ulric Neisser
- In 1967, Ulric Neisser published his book "Cognitive
Psychology", which marked the official beginning of
the cognitive approach.
- With his publication, Neisser brought together
research concerning perception, pattern recognition,
attention, problem solving, and remembering. He
emphasized both information processing and
constructive processing.
- Neisser described Cognitive Psychology as an assault
on behaviorism.
 THE COMPUTER METAPHOR
• The first artificial intelligence program (the first program
specially engineered to mimic the problem-solving skills of a
human being) was created in 1955-56 by Herbert Simon,
Allen Newell and John Shaw.
• They realized that a machine that could manipulate symbols
could just as well simulate decision making and possibly
even the process of human thought. They then invented
what they called a “thinking machine”
• Cognitive psychology sees the individual as a processor of
information, in much the same way that a computer takes in
information and follows a program to produce an output.
 Central Arithmetic
Input: Output:
Processing Logic Unit Memory
Keyboard Monitor
Unit (CPU) (ALU)

Frontal
Senses Brain Memory Behavior
Cortex
Information Processing
APPROACH
Basic Assumptions
1. Information made available by the environment is
processed by a series of processing systems (e.g.,
attention, perception, short-term memory).
2. These processing systems transform or alter the
information in systematic ways.
3. The aim of research is to specify the processes and
structures that underlie cognitive performance.
4. Information processing in humans resembles that in
computers.
 Demonstrates how internal processes are the subject matter
of psychology

Drawing on neurobiology, information processing and other

comparable models to illustrate how the mind works
Aims of
Studying mental processes to enhance functioning
Cognitive
Psychology Applying advancements in the study of the mind and its
processes to describe, explain and predict

Using empirical research to provide support and develop

newer models of mental processing
 FUTURE OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
Empirical - Laboratory methods, observation, operationalism, complete with mental processes
Mentalism and language

Cognitive
- Exploring the brain and neural networks
Neuroscience

Evolutionary
- Psychological processes rooted in evolution; not a result of social interaction but a
Cognitive
product of evolved and adaptive psychological mechanisms
Psychology

Interaction with - Cognitive-Behavior models

other domains in
psychology - Eclecticism
 Cognitive Psychology Theories

Albert Ellis' Rational

Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) Aaron Beck's Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
• The framework for REBT was developed by Albert Ellis.
Previously called rational therapy or rational emotive therapy,
REBT is one of the first cognitive therapies.
• Today it continues to be a major approach in the field of
cognitive psychology. It makes the basic assumption that you
contribute to your own psychological problems and symptoms
through your interpretations.
• Rational emotive behavior therapy focuses on uncovering
irrational beliefs that may lead to unhealthy negative emotions.
It examines this relationship through what is called the A-B-C
framework.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-
term, structured form of psychotherapy that
focuses on the client's dysfunctional and distorted
thoughts and beliefs, and both challenge and
modify those thoughts and attitudes. Using this
model, the client is educated on the relationship
between his or her thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors.
• Thoughts, feelings, behaviors – all impact each
other.