Psychology 2135A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Concept Learning, Knowledge Acquisition, Mental Representation

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: Marcie Penner

Document Summary

The black box: the challenge of cognitive science. Cognitive complexity and the necessity of bias. Interested in explaining intelligent behaviours: knowledge acquisition, concept formation, problem solving, language, mathematics. The mind is an information processor: mental representations, algorithmic processes. A structure or process in the mind that stands for something. We are interested in the inner workings of the mind (representation and processes) We cannot directly observe or measure what is going on in the mind. Generally only have direct access to people"s overt behaviour. Internal representations and processes cannot be directly observed. Options: do not study the mind, instead study behaviour only, devise indirect methods to study the mind. Devise experiment to determine what"s inside the box . What types of overt behaviour do we have access to: accuracy of responses, types of errors, processing time. All are indirect measures of cognitive processing! Same problem as with other measures in cognitive psychology: indirect measure of mental processes.