PSYC 213 Chapter 1: Chapter 1 from Cognition (4th edition).docx

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 213
• Professor: Jelena Ristic

Document Summary

Scientific psychology looks to redefine folk psychology (a set of assumptions and theories based on everyday behaviours of ourselves and others) Miller (1986) - one of the founders of cognitive psychology. Info-processing is the subject matter of cog psy. Idea came from communication engineering - all communication can be broken down into 3 major stages: Receiver - decodes (translates) signals to get message. Information reduces uncertainty in the mind of the receiver. The amount of information provided by a message is proportional to the probability of that message occurring. The information provided by a particular message is not determined solely by the signal itself but rather by the whole array of possible messages of which this particular signal is just one. Info provided is inversely related to its probability of occurring - the less likely a signal is, the more info it conveys. Amount of info provided by occurrence of event is quantified by bits - "binary digit"