PSYC 3580 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Connectionism, Cognitive Psychology, Ecological Validity
30 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Introduction to themes & issues in cognitive psychology. Cognition is mental activity including the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. Writing and reading are some of the most complex cognitive processes. Cognitive processes are active rather than passive. Cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate. Cognitive processes tend to handle positive information better than negative information in the emotional sense (pleasant to the experiencer) and they handle presence better than absence. Cognitive processes are interrelated with one another. There is no test that solely assesses memory problems. attention, hearing, etc. , must also be tested alongside memory. Many cognitive processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processing. 3 historical trends in cognitive psychology: ecological validity: studying individuals in natural environments, cognitive neuroscience: not limiting ourselves to the particular discipline we are working in or coming from.
