PSY270H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Precognition, Folk Psychology, Psychophysics

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY270H1
• Professor: Michael Souza

Document Summary

Case study: what is cognition: precogs: mutated individuals with pre-cognitive abilities. Cog = cognitive: folk psychology: an umbrella term for various assumptions and theories based on the everyday behaviour of ourselves and others. Scientific psychology usually seeks to refine this: cognition: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. This definition emphasizes that cognition is the mental action of knowing. Cognitive psychology and information processing: study of human cognition has advanced in three stages. Late 1950s to early 1960s with rapid progression by the methods of traditional psychophysics and experimental psychology: psychophysics: the scientific investigation of the relationship ii. between sensation and stimulus. Bit: the most basic unit of information. Every event that occurs in a situation with two equally likely outcomes provides one "bit" of situation with two equally likely outcomes provides one "bit" of information.