PSYC 213 Lecture 1: Introduction

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 213
• Professor: Signy Sheldon

Document Summary

Cognition is about processing external and internal information. Cognitive activities can dissociate: clive"s episodic memory is impaired, but other functions are spared. Cognition = studying the act of thinking and how it affects out behaviors. Cognition as a research discipline has a history. From early philosophy to experimental psychology to the birth of cognition psych in 50s-60s. Structuralism and functionalism - determining how to study mental processes, the how and why of experience. Behaviorism- study stimulus-response relationships and ignore mental processes. Cognitive psych - making inferences abt mental processes. Thinking abt thinking goes back to ancient greece [plato and aristotle] - studied how human personality/characteristics were linked to mental processes. Plato: 1st philo to consider the human mind, the psyche. The world is a reflection of our reality. Rationalism: knowledge comes from observation but is also a priori and there is an innate nature of our minds. Aristotle: combined philosophical and scientific approaches to thinking.