PSYCH207 : Psych 207.docx

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH207
• Professor: Jonathan Fugelsang

Document Summary

A cognitive psychologist finds way to examine the key mechanisms to understand cognitive processes. Dates back to aristotle and plato both working on memory. Supported by john locke, david hume, and stuart mill. Recognize individual differences in genetics but emphasize human natures changeable aspects. Humans are born with a blank slate and knowledge is acquired through interactions. Mental association of ideas: john locke believed that two distinct ideas having nothing to do with each other could become joined in the mind simply because they happened at the same time. Role of biological factors in determining ones cognitive abilities. Comes from philosophical traditions of rene descartes and immanuel kant. They attribute individual cognitive differences to innate abilities. Hardware in the brain and difficult to modify with experience short term memory. Wilhelm wundt 1879 wanted to discover the building blocks to conscious experience. Once identified wundt believed that psychologists could determine how these units combined to produce complex mental phenomena: called structuralism.