Week 1: Introduction to Psychology

Cognitive Psychology
 the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about
information.
 A cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive various shapes,
why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn
language.
 In cognitive psychology, the ways of addressing fundamental issues have
changed, but many of the fundamental questions remain much the same.
Ultimately, 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 thesis is proposed (thesis-statement of belief)
 An antithesis emerges (antithesis-statement that counters a previous
statement of belief)
 A synthesis integrates the viewpoints (synthesis integrates the most
incredible 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.
 For example, in the field of intelligence, there has been a tendency to believe that
intelligence is either all or mostly genetically determined, or else all or mostly
environmentally determined.

Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology: Rationalism versus Empiricism

 Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the

world, in part through introspection, the examination of inner ideas and
experiences (from intro-, “inward, within,” and -spect, “look”);
 Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living
matter, primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods.
 Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route to knowledge is
through thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need
any experiments to develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested
in cognitive processes would appeal to reason as a source of knowledge or
justification.
  In contrast, 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.
 In order to explore how the human mind works, empiricists would design
experiments and conduct studies in which they could observe the behavior
and processes of interest to them.
 Empiricism therefore leads directly to empirical investigations of
psychology.
 According to the rationalist, the only route to truth is reasoned
contemplation
 according to the empiricist, the only route to truth is meticulous
observation.
 Cognitive psychology, like other sciences, depends on the work of both
rationalists and empiricists.

Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology

 Early Dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition

 Understanding the Structure of the Mind: Structuralism
 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.).
Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology- Understanding the Structure of
the Mind: 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.
 The method of introspection has some challenges associated with it.
 First, 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.
 Second, what they say may not be accurate.
 Third, 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.
Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology- Understanding the Processes of
the Mind: Functionalism
 Understanding the Processes of the Mind: Functionalism
 An alternative that developed to counter structuralism, functionalism
suggested that psychologists should focus on the processes of
thought rather than on its contents.
 Functionalists were unified by the kinds of questions they asked but
not necessarily by the answers they found or by the methods they
used for finding those answers.
 functionalists believed in using whichever methods best answered a given
researcher’s questions, it seems natural for functionalism to have led to
pragmatism.
 Pragmatists believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness: What
can you do with it?
 Pragmatists 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.
 Although functionalists were interested in how people learn, they did not
really specify a mechanism by which learning takes place.
 This task was taken up by another group, Associationists.

Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology- An Integrative Synthesis:

Associationism
 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.
 For example, associations may result from:
 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).
 In the late 1800s, associationist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was the
first experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically.
Specifically, Ebbinghaus studied his own mental processes.
 Through his self-observations, Ebbinghaus studied how people learn and
remember material through rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material
to be learned
 he found that frequent repetition can fix mental associations more firmly in
memory. Thus, repetition aids in learning.
  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)
 Law of effect- A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time
if an organism is rewarded for that response.

Week 2: Cognition and Intelligence

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”
(Lycan, 2003).

• Some of these researchers, like Thorndike and other associationists, studied

responses that were voluntary (although perhaps lacking any conscious thought,
as in Thorndike’s work).

• Other researchers studied responses that were involuntarily triggered in

response to what appear to be unrelated external events.

• Pavlov’s landmark work paved the way for the development of behaviorism. His
ideas were made known in the United States especially through the work of John
B. Watson

• Classical conditioning involves more than just an association based on temporal

contiguity (e.g., the food and the conditioned stimulus occurring at about the
same time; Ginns, 2006; Rescorla, 1967).

• Effective conditioning requires contingency (e.g.,the presentation of food being

contingent on the presentation of the conditioned stimulus; Rescorla & Wagner,
1972; Wagner & Rescorla, 1972).

• Contingencies in the form of reward and punishment are still used today, for
example, in the treatment of substance abuse (Cameron & Ritter, 2007).

• Behaviorism may be considered an extreme version of associationism. It focuses

entirely on the association between the environment and an observable behavior.

Proponents of Behaviorism

• The “father” of radical behaviorism is John B.Watson (1878–1958).

• He believed that psychologists should concentrate only on the study of

observable behavior (Doyle, 2000).

• Behaviorism also differed from previous movements in psychology by shifting the

emphasis of experimental research from human to animal participants.
 • One problem with using nonhuman animals, however, is determining whether the
research can be generalized to humans (i.e., applied more generally to humans
instead of just to the kinds of nonhuman animals that were studied).

• B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), a radical behaviorist, believed that virtually all forms

of human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emitted in
reaction to the environment.

• He believed instead that operant conditioning—involving the strengthening or

weakening of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement
(rewards) or punishments—could explain all forms of human behavior.

• Largely because of Skinner’s towering presence, behaviorism dominated the

discipline of psychology for several decades.

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.

• According to this view, we cannot fully understand behavior when we only break
phenomena down into smaller parts.

• The maxim “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” aptly sums up the
Gestalt perspective.

Cognition and Intelligence

• Intelligence is the capacity to learn from experience, using metacognitive

processes to enhance learning, and the ability to adapt to the surrounding
environment.

What Is Intelligence?

• Before we discuss about how cognitive psychologists view intelligence, test your
own intelligence with the tasks in Investigating Cognitive Psychology:
Intelligence.

• INVESTIGATING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: Intelligence

• 1. Candle is to tallow as tire is to (a) automobile, (b) round, (c) rubber, (d) hollow.

• INVESTIGATING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: Intelligence

• 2. Complete this series: 100%, 0.75, 1/2; (a) whole, (b) one eighth, (c) one fourth.
 • INVESTIGATING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: Intelligence

• 3. You are at a party of truth-tellers and liars. The truth-tellers always tell the
truth, and the liars always lie. You meet someone new. He tells you that he just
heard a conversation in which a girl said she was a liar. Is the person you met a
liar or a truth-teller?

• Intelligence involves:

• 1. the capacity to learn from experience, and

2. the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment

• 24 cognitive psychologists with expertise in intelligence research were asked the same
question (Sternberg & Detterman, 1986). They, too, underscored the importance of
learning from experience and adapting to the environment.

• They also broadened the definition to emphasize the importance of

metacognition—people’s understanding and control of their own thinking
processes.

• Contemporary experts also more heavily emphasized the role of culture. They
pointed out that what is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered
stupid in another culture (Serpell, 2000).

• Cultural intelligence, or CQ is used to describe a person’s ability to adapt to a

variety of challenges in diverse cultures (Ang et al., 2010; Sternberg &
Grigorenko, 2006; Triandis, 2006).

Three Cognitive Models of Intelligence

• the three-stratum model,

• the theory of multiple intelligences, and

• the triarchic theory of intelligence

Carroll: Three-Stratum Model of Intelligence

• Stratum I includes many narrow, specific abilities (e.g., spelling ability, speed of
reasoning).

• Stratum II includes various broad abilities (e.g., fluid intelligence, crystallized

intelligence, short-term memory, long-term storage and retrieval, information
processing speed).
 • Stratum III is just a single general intelligence (sometimes called g).

• Fluid ability is speed and accuracy of abstract reasoning, especially for novel
problems.

• Crystallized ability is accumulated knowledge and vocabulary (Cattell, 1971).

• Addition to middle stratum:

• They are learning and memory processes, visual perception, auditory perception,
facile production of ideas (similar to verbal fluency), and speed (which includes
both sheer speed of response and speed of accurate responding).

Gardner: Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• Howard Gardner (1983, 1993b, 1999, 2006) has proposed a theory of multiple
intelligences, in which intelligence comprises multiple independent constructs,
not just a single, unitary construct.

• However, instead of speaking of multiple abilities that together constitute

intelligence (e.g., Thurstone, 1938), this theory distinguishes eight distinct
intelligences that are relatively independent of each other
 Sternberg: The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

• According to the triarchic theory of human intelligence, intelligence comprises

three aspects: creative, analytical, and practical.

• • Creative abilities are used to generate novel ideas.

• • Analytical abilities ascertain whether your ideas (and those of others) are good
ones.

• • Practical abilities are used to implement the ideas and persuade others of their
value.

• According to the theory, cognition is at the center of intelligence.

• Information processing in cognition can be viewed in terms of three different

kinds of components.

• First are metacomponents—higher-order executive processes (i.e.,

metacognition) used to plan, monitor, and evaluate problem solving.

• Second are performance components—lower-order processes used for

implementing the commands of the metacomponents.

• And third are knowledge-acquisition components—the processes used for

learning how to solve the problems in the first place.

• The components are highly interdependent.

 Week 3: Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

 Researchers employ a variety of research methods. These methods include

laboratory or other controlled experiments, psychobiological research, self-
reports, case studies, naturalistic observation, and computer simulations and
artificial intelligence.

Goals of Research

 include data gathering, data analysis, theory development, hypothesis

formulation, hypothesis testing, and perhaps even application to settings outside
the research environment.

 Data gathering reflects an empirical aspect of the scientific enterprise. Once

there are sufficient data on the cognitive phenomenon of interest, cognitive
psychologists use various methods for drawing inferences from the data.

 most cognitive psychologists want to understand more than the what of cognition;
most also seek to understand the how and the why of thinking.

 That is, researchers seek ways to explain cognition as well as to describe it.

 To move beyond descriptions, cognitive psychologists must leap from what is

observed directly to what can be inferred regarding observations.

 A theory is an organized body of general explanatory principles regarding a

phenomenon, usually based on observations.

 our thought process is, “If our theory is correct, then whenever x occurs, outcome
y should result.”

 A hypotheses, a tentative proposals regarding expected empirical consequences

of the theory, such as the outcomes of research.

 Even if particular findings appear to confirm a given hypothesis, the findings must
be subjected to statistical analysis to determine their statistical significance.

 Statistical significance indicates the likelihood that a given set of results would be
obtained if only chance factors were in operation.

 Once our hypothetical predictions have been experimentally tested and

statistically analyzed, the findings from those experiments may lead to further
work.
 many cognitive psychologists hope to use insights gained from research to help
people use cognition in real-life situations. Some research in cognitive
psychology is applied from the start.

 It seeks to help people improve their lives and the conditions under which they
live their lives.

Distinctive Research Methods

 Distinctive Research Methods- Experiments on Human Behavior

 In implementing the experimental method, experimenters must use a

representative and random sample of the population of interest.

 They must exert rigorous control over the experimental conditions so that they
know that the observed effects can be attributed to variations in the independent
variable and nothing else.

 The experimenter also must randomly assign participants to the treatment and
control conditions.

Distinctive Research Methods- Psychobiological Research

 techniques generally fall into three categories:

 techniques for studying an individual’s brain postmortem (after the death of an

individual), relating the individual’s cognitive function prior to death to observable
features of the brain;

 techniques for studying images showing structures of or activities in the brain of

an individual who is known to have a particular cognitive deficit;

 techniques for obtaining information about cerebral processes during the normal
performance of a cognitive activity.

 Postmortem studies offered some of the first insights into how specific lesions
(areas of injury in the brain) may be associated with particular cognitive deficits.

 Such studies continue to provide useful insights into how the brain influences
cognitive function.

 Recent technological developments also increasingly enable researchers to

study individuals with known cognitive deficits in vivo (while the individual is
alive).

 Psychobiological researchers also study normal cognitive functioning by studying

cerebral activity in animal participants.

 Researchers often use animals for experiments involving neurosurgical

procedures that cannot be performed on humans because such procedures
would be difficult, unethical, or impractical.
 Distinctive Research Methods- Self-Reports, Case Studies, and Naturalistic
Observation

 self-reports (an individual’s own account of cognitive processes);

 case studies (in-depth studies of individuals); and

 naturalistic observation (detailed studies of cognitive performance in everyday

situations and nonlaboratory contexts).

Distinctive Research Methods- Computer Simulations and Artificial Intelligence

 In computer simulations, researchers program computers to imitate a given

human function or process.

 Examples are performance on particular cognitive tasks (e.g., manipulating

objects within three-dimensional space) and performance of particular cognitive
processes (e.g., pattern recognition).