What is cognitive psychology? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 25
About This Presentation
Title:

What is cognitive psychology?

Description:

What is cognitive psychology? Cognitive psychology is the study of perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking in humans...how we know about the world. – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:109
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 26
Provided by: adminMtu
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: What is cognitive psychology?


1
What is cognitive psychology?
  • Cognitive psychology is the study of perception,
    attention, memory, language, and thinking in
    humans...how we know about the world.
  • ...the scientific study of the human mind and
    information processing
  • Related to other fields - linguistics, computer
    science, philosophy, development, etc.

2
Scientific Study of Info Processing...
  • Scientific study Based on the experimental
    method, empirical, scientific.
  • Human information processing People sometimes
    operate as information processors.
  • Information comes from the environment, is stored
    briefly, some is selected for additional
    processing, something is done to it, it may
    result in some additional behavior.

3
Some examples of questions of interest
  • What is the capacity of short-term memory?
  • How is short-term memory searched?
  • How long can memories last?
  • How do people understand language?
  • What is attention?

4
Why do we study it?
  • Theoretical reasons - to learn more about the
    processes that underlie our ability to represent
    information about the world in
    memory, how language works, and how we solve
    problems, how we learn things, etc
  • Practical reasons - to develop better
    human-machine interfaces, develop improved
    teaching methods, understand where things like
    stereotypes come from, etc.

5
Models of Cognition
  • Current approaches to studying cognition
  • The primary approach to cognitive psychology
    today is information processing.
  • The information processing approach assumes that
    information from the environment undergoes a
    series of transformations as it is processed by
    different cognitive systems

6
Information Processing Approach
7
Assumptions of Info Proc. Approach
  • Cognition occurs through series of sequential
    stages
  • each stage performs unique process on incoming
    info received from environment (internal
    representations) or other stages
  • Response is assumed to be the product of these
    processes

8
2 Issues Result
  • What are the stages through which information
    passes?
  • In what form is the information represented in
    the human mind?

9
Domain of Cognitive Psych
  • The field draws off research, theory and
    expertise from at least 12 different areas
  • Each of these areas are covered in dif chapters
    throughout the book

10
Areas in Domain
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Perception
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Representation of Knowledge
  • Imagery
  • Language
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Thinking and concept formation
  • Human intelligence
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Pattern Recognition

11
pre-20th century history of cognitive psychology
  • Aristotle - How do we classify objects into
    groups?
  • Descartes - What is the relationship between the
    mind and the body?
  • Locke - How much do environmental and genetic
    influences affect perception?
  • Ebbinghaus - Can we quantify how information is
    retained and retrieved from memory?
  • Bryan Harter - What happens as a task becomes
    well-learned?

12
early 20th century to late 1940' s
  • behaviorism - rely only on things that are
    observable concept of 'mind' untenable
  • SR chaining - stimulusresponse
  • verbal learning - SR chaining applied to
    language word associations
  • late 1940' s to 1950' s - dissatisfaction with
    behaviorism and verbal learning

13
Reemergence of Cognitive Psych
  • The failure of behaviorism
  • Emergence of communication theory
  • signal detection , attention, cybernetics, and
    information theory experimented
  • Modern linguistics
  • Memory Research
  • Computer Science and tech advances
  • Cognitive Development

14
Cognitive Revolution
  • The changes in American psychology have been so
    profound over the last 50 years that it has been
    called the cognitive revolution

15
Levels of description in cognitive psychology
  • Theories exist at several levels of description
  • 1.Computational theory - description of
    processing, input/output, purpose of computation
    (flowchart)
  • 2.Algorithmic level -implementation of
    computational theory exact nature of computation
    is described
  • 3.Hardware level - physical realization of
    computational and algorithmic levels i.e., the
    brain!

16
Models vs. Theories
  • theory comprehensive explanation of a cognitive
    phenomenon based on a detailed description of the
    phenomenon that is derived from experimental
    evidence.
  • a model is either a mathematical expression
    derived from a theory that can be used to
    summarize and predict empirical data, or a
    computer program derived from a theory that
    simulates and predicts empirical data.

17
Cognitive Models and Conceptual Science
  • In general, most hypotheses about the mind come
    from behavioral studies
  • i.e., seeing what people do in psychological
    experiments
  • However, cognitive psychology also considers
    information acquired through modeling cognitive
    processes, analyzing impaired systems, and
    introspection.

18
Cognitive Psychology and Conceptual Science
  • Conceptual science - very general, consequences
    of observations, metaphorical
  • Cognitive Models - abstract organizational ideas
    derived from inferences based on observations
    part of conceptual science
  • Specialized forms of scientific concepts that
    have the same purposes
  • used to describe the detection, storage and use
    of information within the system

19
Modeling -
  • makes explicit the assumptions underlying a
    theory of cognition
  • tests the theory
  • Ex.) Information Processing Model

20
Computer Modeling
  • designing a program to run on a computer to
    simulate what a human does
  • should be grounded in what humans actually do
  • caveat - there are sometimes several means to the
    same end

21
basic types of models
  • Semantic networks
  • network of interconnected nodes
  • nodes stand for characteristics
  • links between nodes describe relationships
    between nodes.
  • e.g., robin - bird - animal

22
basic types of models
  • Connectionist networks /neural networks /Parallel
    Distributed Processing models
  • attempt to simulate characteristics of
    information processing among neurons.
  • Connectionist networks can learn.
  • Cognitive Science (computer science
    neuroscience cognitive psych)

23
basic types of models
  • cognitive neuropsychology -
  • examining cognitive performance in brain-damaged
    patients
  • explain impairment in terms of theories from
    cognitive psychology
  • patterns of impairment may also be able to inform
    theories of normal cognitive functioning
  • e.g., differential impairment of long-term and
    short-term memory systems in some patients

24
Problems with cognitive neuropsychology model
  • extensive (non-local) nature of brain damage
  • individual differences among patients
  • ability of other modules to take over functioning
    of impaired modules

25
basic types of models
  • Cognitive Bionomics
  • evolutionary psychology biology cognition
  • Cognition can be best understood within the
    context of human physical and social evolution
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com