introspection failed (low reliability; not independently __________)
1. What is cognitive psychology?
2. Describe the history of this field, and the different philosophical approaches over time.
3. What factors led to the cognitive revolution/renaissance?
4. How is the scientific method applied in cognitive psychology?
5. What is cognitive science, and how does it relate to cognitive psychology?
6. Give the three benefits of building bridges between cognitive psychology and AI.
7. What are some common themes in cognitive psychology?
Dictionary Definitions
• cognition: Middle English cognicioun, from Latin cognitio, to learn; to ____ (Encarta, 2000)
• cognitive psychology: “a general approach to psychology emphasizing the internal, mental _________. [B]ehaviour...requires explanations at the level of mental events, mental representations, beliefs and intentions” (Reber & Reber, 2001, p.135)
- behaviour explained in terms of underlying __________
- what are these mental processes and representations?
Classic Definition
• cognitive psychology: “all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used” (Neisser, 1967, p.4)
- information may be changed or _______
- new information is connected to other information
- ____ information and get it later
- these processes have a _______
Information-Processing Definition
• cognitive psychology: the experimental study of human information processing
- assumption: the mind is “a complex system that receives, stores, retrieves, transforms, and transmits information” (Stillings et al., 1987, p.1)
- characteristics:
▸ processing capacity is _______--due to attention
▸ cognition takes ____--multiple stages inferred
▸ processing stages are ______________--processes cannot be isolated
- basic domains: attention, pattern perception, learning, memory,...
- higher-level domains: language processing, problem solving, decision-making,...
- hardware:software::_____:?
Ancient Greek Philosophers
- basic assumptions
• the world can be understood and predicted
• ______ are part of the world
• explanations should be of this world (not magical)
- Plato (b.428? - d.348? BCE):
• ___________: knowledge is obtained via thinking and logical analysis
- Aristotle (b.384 - d.322 BCE):
• __________: knowledge is acquired through experience and observation
Renaissance Philosophers
- René Descartes (b.1596 - d.1650):
• French rationalist
• “cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”)
• Cartesian dualism: mind and body are distinct entities interacting in humans
- John Locke (b.1632 - d.1704):
• British empiricist
• tablula rasa (“_____ _____”): at birth, we know nothing; we acquire knowledge through empirical observation
- Immanuel Kant (b.1724 - d.1804):
• dialectically synthesized the views of Descartes and Locke
• contended that both rationalism and empiricism contribute to understanding
The 19th Century
- psychology: the scientific study of _________ experience
Structuralism
- goals:
• analyze conscious processes into their basic ________
• discover how the elements become _________
• specify the laws of connection
- Wilhelm Wundt (b.1832-d.1920):
• opened first psychology lab, University of Leipzig (1879)
- _____________: analyze your own conscious experience into sensations, images, & affections as accurately as possible
- problems:
introspection failed (low reliability; not independently __________)
Functionalism
- goals:
• determine the ________ significance of thought processes
• find how and why the ____ works
e.g., how do people change and adapt to their environments?
• specify _____________ between stimuli and responses
- William James (b.1842-d.1910):
• published The Principles of Psychology (1890), which foreshadowed much of cognitive psychology
- problems:
not based on experimentation
theories did not make testable predictions
Associationism
- goals:
• determine how events/ideas become __________
e.g., contiguity, frequency, similarity, contrast
• understand how association produces ________
- F.C. Donders (1868):
• studied mental chronometry using reaction time (RT) and ___________ method to separate component processes
Task A (simple RT): 1 light, 1 button
RTA = stimulus detection + motor response
Task B (choice RT): 2 lights, 2 buttons
RTB = stimulus detection + stimulus discrimination + response selection + motor response
RT for stimulus discrimination + response selection = RTB - RTA
But how to separate these?
Task C (go/no go RT): 2 lights, 1 button (ignore one light)
RTC = stimulus detection + stimulus discrimination + motor response
RT for stimulus discrimination = RTC - RTA
RT for response selection = RTB - RTC
• assumed “____ _________”: time to complete each stage is independent of the other stages
• problems:
RTC not always shorter than RTB
motor response times may be different in different tasks
novice performance not comparable to expert performance
- Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885):
• used 2,000 3-letter ________ syllables to measure his memory
• this removed familiarity effects (e.g., bat vs. cat)
• found forgetting was rapid at first, then more gradual (the “forgetting curve,” which is actually a “retention curve”)
• problem:
it’s hard to remember ________
Psychoanalysis
- goals:
• develop psychological understanding of psychopathologies
• apply psychotherapeutic _________
- Sigmund Freud (b.1856-d.1939):
• proposed different levels of awareness--some items unavailable to consciousness
• methods included introspection, dream analysis, hypnosis
- problems:
criticized as unscientific, unfalsifiable, and not based on experimental evidence
The Early 20th Century
- psychology: the science of __________ behaviour
Behaviourism
- goals:
• study (describe, quantify) __________ behaviours
• how they are _______
• how they are modified by the environment
- J.B. Watson (b.1878-d.1958):
• shifted study of mind to study of behaviour
• saw the mind as a “_____ ___”
- B.F. Skinner (b.1904-d.1990):
• we are shaped by our environment, not by free will
- problem:
criticized for ignoring mental processes
Gestalt approach
- goals:
• ________ approach that emphasized consciousness
• described how the whole is different than the sum of its parts
- Max Wertheimer (b.1880-d.1943):
• founded Gestalt psychology (“form”, “configuration”)
- problems:
described--but did not explain--consciousness
The Mid-20th Century
- psychology: science of behaviour and ______ processes
The cognitive revolution/renaissance:
• limits of ____________
Edward Tolman (1932):
- trained rats in a maze to get food via direct route to food box
- when forced to take roundabout pathway, rats successfully reached the food box--despite lack of reinforcement for this route
- rats must be using a cognitive map
- this contradicted basic behaviourist principles of learning
Karl Lashley (1951):
- argued that behaviourist explanations of language, using stimulus-response ______, were inadequate
e.g., spoonerisms (“our queer old dean” instead of “our dear old Queen”) are novel, nonhabitual recombinations
- organization in language comes from within the organism (not from outside)
• advances in ___________
Noam Chomsky (1959):
- published criticism of Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior
- concluded that behaviourist accounts of language were lacking
- language is not merely imitation
• emergence of _____ _______/cognitive engineering/applied cognitive psychology
- rapid technological advances in WWII led to problems with skills and performance
- engineering perspective on human information processing applied
- important factors include: alertness, sensitivity to environmental conditions (e.g., heat, noise, sleep loss), distinguishing relevant vs. irrelevant information, multiple task performance
• rise of ______________
Jean Piaget (1923):
- explained children’s cognitive development via _______: mental structures that provide the basis for thought
- schemes organize experience and knowledge
- contain information about actions one can perform on objects
- change through developmental stages
• contributions from _________ _______
- artificial intelligence (AI) related to cognition
• new conceptualizations of (and research on) ______
e.g., “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” (Miller, 1956)
• ___________ of Ulric Neisser’s (1967) Cognitive Psychology
Goal of psychology: describe, _______, predict, and control behaviour and mental processes
• ______: set of related principles that simplify and organize some aspect of the world
e.g., Gestalt theory, Psychoanalytic theory
- typically represented as ______ statements
- helps to describe, explain, predict, and control behaviour and mental processes
• _____: representation of a specific phenomenon that predicts and simulates empirical data
- derived from a theory; narrower in focus
- typically employs an _______ or metaphor for a psychological process (analogy: logical inference, based on the assumption that if two things seem similar in some respects, then they may be alike in other respects)
e.g., filter model of attention
- analogies may be useful--even if ultimately __________, by definition
e.g., Locke: newborn is a tabula rasa--but is not literally a “blank slate”
- models often represented as a mathematical expression or computer program; “boxes and arrows” in cognitive psychology
- although descriptive, may not be explanatory
The scientific method:
1. ask questions/make observations/describe the phenomenon
2. develop an explanation (a theory or model)
3. generate a __________: testable prediction derived from a theory
4. design the research study; select methodology
5. collect relevant information
6. _______ the data; compare results with the hypothesis
7. solicit peer reviews and ______ findings:
• provide facts
• test theories
• give insight into research methods
- _________________ field, which includes anthropology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, computing science
- based on tri-level hypothesis (Marr, 1982):
1. _____________ Theory
What is the system doing?
e.g., multiplication is the product of two numbers; repeated addition: the sum of X groups of Y items
2. ______________ and _________
How is the problem symbolized?
What steps are being used to solve the problem?
e.g., 9+9+9+9+9, or 5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+5, or digital bit shifting, or Karatsuba algorithm, or...
3. Hardware ______________
What physical components carry out these operations?
e.g., fingers, or brain, or abacus, or calculator, or computer, or...
(Almost exclusively, cognitive psychology focuses on the ______ level.)
Application: consider a person playing _____ against a computer
How are they the same? How are they different?
- employs the _____________ metaphor in a simulation of behaviour or mental process
- what can we learn by comparing the human mind to a computer?
- a lot, if they’re both doing the same thing (level 1) in the ____ way (level 2)
- this functionalist approach can lead to “______ equivalence” (vs. “____ __”: looking for the best solution) and escapes the problem of analogy
Benefits of building bridges between cognitive psychology and AI (Reed, 2019):
• computational programs in AI can serve as potential theoretical ______ in cognitive psychology
e.g., hierarchical network model of semantic memory
• both share common interests that may lead to greater reciprocal understanding
e.g., pattern classification is studied by both fields: human visual object categorization and AI image processing
• the integration of AI into everyday life requires a better understanding of human-AI _______
e.g., IBM's WatsonPaths AI system analyzes medical data to give physicians the most likely diagnosis or most appropriate treatment
Cognitive processes:
• are (inter-)______
- the mind is constructive; internal processes change information
• are efficient and (generally) ________
- errors often byproducts of otherwise accurate processes
• better handle ________ information
- biased towards retaining information that fits with our beliefs
• are interrelated
- but often studied __________
• rely on two processes
- bottom-up (based on low-level sensory processes) and top-down (based on higher-level cognitive processes)
• can be ___________
- much depends on automatic processing, priming, and implicit memory
- also called “system 1” (Stanovich & West, 2000)