Introduction to Approaches in Psychology Cognitive Psychology

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Introduction to Approaches in Psychology
Cognitive Psychology

• Erica Lucas
• email e.j.lucas_at_derby.ac.uk
• office Psychology Block 1

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Overview of session

• By the end of this session and through your own
  independent learning you should be able to
• understand what cognitive psychology is
• understand its basic approach
• be able to describe models and evidence for the
• Functional Model of Face Processing (Bruce and
  Young, 1986)
• Modal Model of memory (Atkinson Shiffrin, 1968)

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Where does cognitive psychology come from?

• Developed over past 40-50 years
• Out of behaviourism
• observable, measurable events
• Post world war II
• new concepts - skill attention
• Influence from other domains - Information Theory
• people are processors of information meaning
• cognitive processes rely on feedback and control

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Information Processing

• The basic idea

STIMULUS
ATTENTION
PERCEPTION
THOUGHT PROCESSES
2 assumptions made.
DECISION
RESPONSE OR ACTION
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• One..

PARIS IN THE THE SPRING
Bottom-up Processing or Top-down Processing?
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TwoSerial Processing

• Serial processing
• one process is completed before the next starts
• Parallel processing
• some or all of the processes occur at the same
  time
• Some processes can occur together but others have
  to wait for the completion of other processes
• Depends on
• the type of problem
• how good someone is at the task

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The Computer Analogy

• Digital computer liberated old-fashioned ways
• Good way to think about the mind?
• Mind likened to programmes
• Mind now set of procedures/processes for
  operating on symbols

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• Cognitive psychology used experiments to collect
  behavioural data
• Differ from behaviourist because they make
  inferences from the behavioural data about
  internal mental processes.
• Experiment

chair apple tree cat orange table dog
sofa window banana hamster fern desk peach
banana apple peach orange cat hamster dog
sofa window chair table desk tree fern
People remember more words from different
categories when theyre in ordered lists than
when theyre jumbled up
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• Behaviourist concludes ordered verbal material
  produces better subsequent memory than
  unorganised material.
• Cognitive psychologist concludes human memory
  system is internally organised and the full power
  of the system can be exploited when its internal
  structure is supported by the organisation of the
  material to be remembered.

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So.What is Cognitive Psychology?

• Interested in structures and functions of mind
• Assumption - mind is a set of processes that rely
  on the brain
• Assumption - mental processes are linked with
  observable behaviour
• Takes a scientific perspective
• Perform controlled experiments testing theories
  about inner mental processes. Observe the effects
  of these processes on outward measurable
  behaviour
• Mind can not be directly studied - but observable
  effects can be
• Cognitive Psychology the study of mental
  processes via measurable behaviour

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• Typical questions
• What are the information processing mechanisms
  responsible for a given human cognitive behaviour
  such as learning, memory, language, reasoning?
• Methodology
• experimental design that looks at how an
  independent variable effects a dependent
  variable.
• Typical dependent variables include
• choice reaction time (e.g. make a decision, press
  a button
• recognition task
• recall task

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Contemporary Cognitive Psychology

• Growing interest in constructing models and
  simulations of theories
• Mimicked using artificial information-processing
  devices e.g. computers
• Cognitive Science - uses experimental techniques
  of cognitive psychology and computer modeling
  methods of artificial intelligence to explore
  mind
• Cognitive Neuropsychology - the study of
  brain-damaged patients

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Face Processing

• Why study faces?
• A face contains wealth of social signals
• Biological functions
• What are Psychologists interested in?
• How do we recognise something as a face even if
  weve never seen it before?
• How do we recognise a face as familiar?
• How do we sometimes fail to recognise someone we
  know?
• What information do we use?
• Information about the features (eg.eyes)
• Information about configuration (overall
  arrangement of face).

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• However - need to consider the configuration of
  these features
• Young, Hellawell and Hay (1987)
• Constructed faces from photos by combining top
  halves and bottom halves of famous people
• When halves were closely aligned, problems with
  naming the top halves of the photos
• Performance much better when two halves were not
  closely aligned
• Why?
• Close alignment produced new configuration,
  interfering with face recognition

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Structural encoding
Expression analysis
Facial speech analysis
Face recognition units
Directed visual processing
Person identity nodes
Rest of the cognitive system
Name retrieval unit
Functional model for Face Processing (Bruce and
Young, 1986).
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• Evidence for the model
• Key assumption made is familiar and unfamiliar
  faces are processed in different ways
• Good evidence for this would be 2 brain-damaged
  patients
• 1 showing good recognition of familiar faces and
  poor recognition of unfamiliar faces
• 1 showing opposite - poor recognition of familiar
  faces and good recognition of unfamiliar faces
• Malone, Morris, Kay Levin (1982) found two
  patients showing these exact patterns of
  performance.

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Evaluation of model

• Adequacies
• evidence for different components
• evidence of different processing of familiar and
  unfamiliar faces
• predictions about sequential processing
• Inadequacies
• cognitive system is vague
• processing of unfamiliar faces is vague

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Short-Term MemoryThe Modal Model(Atkinson and
Shiffrin,1968)
SHORT-TERM MEMORY
SENSORY REGISTERS
LONG-TERM MEMORY
Retrieval
INPUT
Visual Auditory
Rehearsal
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• Capacity and duration of each store
• Information in the sensory stores lasts for a
  very short period of time (1-2 seconds)
• Information not selected decays rapidly
• Short-term store has limited capacity, about 7
  items (Miller, 1956 Magic No. 7/ or - 2)
• Unrehearsed items are forgotten
• Long-term store has unlimited capacity contains
  very diverse information
• Key contribution of model
• there are separate kinds of memory store
• the stores differ in their storage capacity in
  the way information is forgotten

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Evaluation of model

• Assumption that the longer information stays in
  STS the more likely it is to enter the LTS
• Morton (1967)
• Participants asked to reproduce a pattern of
  numbers on British telephone codes
• Out of 50 nobody produced any correct numbers
• Assumption that both STS LTS were unitary
• LTS Later found this not to be true
• Tulving (1972) made distinction between
• episodic memory for autobiographical events
• semantic memory memory for organised knowledge
  we possess about language, the world

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Summary

• Cognitive Psychology
• interested in structures and functions of mind
• takes scientific perspective
• makes inferences from measurable behaviour
• Face Processing
• Functional model for Face Processing (Bruce and
  Young, 1986).
• You need to be able to evaluate this model
• Short-term memory
• The Modal Model (Atkinson and Shiffrin,1968)
• You need to be able to evaluate this model

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• Useful reading
• Eysenck, M.W. (1998). Psychology and integrated
  approach. Longman Essex.
• Eysenck, M.W. Keane, M.T. (1995). Cognitive
  Psychology A students handbook, Third Edition.
  LEA Hove.
• Roth, I. Bruce, V. (1995). Perception and
  represenatation, current issues, Second Edition.
  Open University Press Buckinghamshire.
• Useful websites
• A History of Cognitive Psychology
• http//cc6.cumber.edu/psych/w/History20of20CogPs
  ych.htm
• http//fates.cns.muskingum.edu/psych/psycweb/hist
  ory/cognitiv.htm
• An on-line example of the sort of task a
  cognitive psychologists may use
• http//www.philosophers.co.uk/cgi-local/wason2.cgi
  ?num1