PSYC 213 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Air Traffic Control, Information Theory, Cognitive Psychology
25 Apr 2012
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Not easy to give a precise definition of cognition, cognition means different things to different people. Solution: examine ways in which cognition is used in everyday life. Folk-psychology: a set of assumptions and theories based on everyday behaviours of ourselves and others. One meaning for cognition= faculty of knowing. G. a miller (1986) is one of the founders of cognitive psychology. We take in and act on information in countless ways. Everyday activities such as attending, comprehending, remembering, problem-solving = thinking for most people. Information-processing came into psych from telephone and radio engineering. Shannon (1948), shannon and weaver (1949): all forms of communication can be broken down into a sequence of events with at least 3 major stages. Information theory: sender encodes message through signals, communication channel transmits the message, receiver decodes the signals to get the message. Information reduces uncertainty in the mind of the receiver.
