PSYC85H3 Chapter 15: Chapter 15 Cognitive Psychology
Document Summary
Chapter 15: cognitive psychology: emerged as a reaction to behaviourism. Wanted to replace it with an approach that integrated aspects of psychology that behaviourism left out and that was scientific: post-wwii emergence of information theory and computer science provides a framework for cognitive psychology. Also influenced by chomsky"s theory of language: cognitive psychology investigates those processes by which we understand ourselves and our environment. Ebbinghaus nonsense syllabus + forgetting curve (after you"ve memorized something, memory for that declines and then levels off: war of hosts (barlett) kind of like the telephone game to see how story changes. Said that memory decayed in predictable ways. Found that people added details that weren"t in the original story. Information is encoded, stored, recalled in terms of individual"s previously held conceptions and attitudes (schemas) The concept of information: computing machine as information-processing system, application of concepts of psychology. Any event that reduces or eliminates uncertainty provides us with information.
