PSYCH211 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Memory, Audio Mastering, Hippocampus
12 Oct 2018
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Department
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PSYCH211
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
PSYCH 207 – Fall 16
1
Module 1 – History, Methods and Paradigms
What is Cognitive Psychology?
• Key Cognitive Processes
o Memory
o Perception and pattern recognition
o Communication/language (complex lexicon)
o Decision making
• The Task of a Cognitive Psychologist
o Find ways to examine the key mechanisms underlying these complex cognitive
processes
Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology
• Discussion of mind dates back to Aristotle and Plato
• Two philosophical traditions emerged in the 17th – 18th century:
o Empiricism
▪ Supported by David Locke, John Hume and Stuart Mill
▪ Individuals own experience → knowledge
▪ Humans born as a blank state
▪ All the knowledge one has is acquired from the observation and analysis of
events we experience
o Nativism
▪ Biologial + geeti fators deterie oe’s ogitie abilities
▪ Supported by René Descartes and Immanuel Kent
▪ Innate abilities people are born with → individ. differences in cognitive abilities
▪ cognitive processes are difficult to modify with experience
Different Schools of Cognitive Psychology
o field of cognitive psychology was found in 1979
School
Tenets
Structuralism
o William Wundt
o Discover building blocks of conscious experience
o Create a table of mental elements
o Determine how these elements are combined to produce
complex mental phenomena
o Basic elements → perceptual elements
o Wundt + Baldwin used the method of introspection to study
structuralism
o Limitations of structuralism:
- Many aspects of human cognition that occur
w/o conscious awareness is not avail. to
conscious introspection techniques
o Primary methodology → laboratory (introspection)
Functionalism
o Explain the fns of the mind (i.e. how and why it works the way
it does)
o Diff. methods then structuralism
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
PSYCH 207 – Fall 16
2
o Primary methodology → out of the lab, study the mind in real
life situations
Behaviourism
o Focus on observable overt behaviour
o Opposes mental states + representations and consciousness
o Responsible for development of research methods that
allowed researchers to examine the mind w/o relying on
subjective measures (i.e. introspection)
Gestalt Psychology
o Physiological phenomena cannot be reduced to simple
elements, rather studied in their entirety
o Experiences were perceived as a whole; top down process
o Focus on holistic aspects of conscious experience
o Perceptual experience → basic elements
o Primary methodology → introspection
Individual Difference
o Inspired by Charles Darwin on theories on evolution
o Intellectual abilities subject to natural selection and can be
inherited
o Invented a # of cognitive ability tests (i.e. study of mental
image, conjured by the mind differently by people)
o Study of genetic bias of cognitive abilities
The Cognitive Revolution
• Changes in the middle of the 20th century due to:
1. Engineering
- During WW1
- Needed to understand how the mind worked to design a machine for optimal
human use
- Person machine system: machinery operated by a person must be designed to
interact w/ the operators physical and cognitive capacities + limitations
- Individuals were described as limited capacity processors of information
➢ i.e. cognitive apparatuses are NOT built to do too many things
simultaneously
2. Linguistics
- Noam Chomsky → studying how people acquire, understand and produce language
- Behaviourism could NOT adequately explain language
- Argued that humans have an innate capacity to acquire language; development is
NOT a product of conditioning
3. Neuroscience
- Donald Hebb → fns and perceptions were constructed over time by building cell
assemblies
- David Hubel & Torsten Weisel – early experience shaped brain development and
specific cells respond to specific kinds of stimuli
- Showed that cognitive fns can be localized to specific kinds of stimuli
4. Computers and AI Systems
- Copariso of people’s ogitie ailities to a operatig computer
- Computers feed data = people acquiring info through their senses
- Computers and people have structures that store info
- Hard drive = cerebral cortices
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
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