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A-level/ University Comprehensive overview of cognitive psychology
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All lecture notes and partial readings from Psych111 on cognitive psychology suitable for 1st-year university and A-level students
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What is thinking? Thoughts = Representations
Thought is a mental 'state'
Representations can be processed/transformed
Thinking = activation / transformation of representations
Thoughts as ‘mental states or representations
Analogue representations = Mental pictures
Symbolic representations = Concepts and Ideas
What is Cognitive Psychology?
The study of mental operations that support people’s acquisition and use of knowledge
Cognitive psychology = aiming to understand human cognition by observing the behaviour of people performing
various cognitive tasks
Cognitive processes (especially cognitive biases)
Can be used more broadly to include brain activity and structure as relevant understanding for human
cognition
Play an essential role in the development and successful treatment of mental health problems
Social psychologists assume that cognitive processes help to explain social communication
Cognitive neuroscience uses information about behaviour and the brain to understand human cognition
fMRI etc, or electrophysiological techniques to record electrical signals generated by the brain
Patterns of cognitive impairment by brain-damaged patients can inform us about normal cognitive
functioning and the areas of the brain responsible for various cognitive processes
Thinking About the Mind
Rene Descartes (1956-1650)
Dualism
The mind-body problem:
The relationship between mental and physical properties
David Hume (1711-1776)
Account of the mind as machinery
William James (1842-1910)
The principles of psychology
The “thought stuff”
The First Cognitive Psychologists
Franciscus Donders (1818-1889)
First cognitive psychology experiment (1868)
Response time (RT) experiment on mental chronometry
Simple RT vs choice RT
Quantified mental effort
Hermann Von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
Unconscious inference
Prior experience shapes unconscious processes
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
Quantified memory decay as a ‘forgetting curve’ (1885)
Proportion savings = (initial repetitions) − (relearning repetitions)
(Initial repetitions)
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
Established the first laboratory of scientific psychology in Leipzig
Studied mental imagery, consciousness, basic properties of the senses (RT measures)
Structuralism
Analytic introspection = Participant’s description of their experience to a given stimuli
Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)
Gestalt theory (with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler)
Perceptual experience occurs holistically, E.g., WWF, NBA, NBC
The Birth of Modern Cognitive Psychology
A meeting at MIT in 1956
Noam Chomsky presented his theory of language
George Miller discussed the magic number 7 +/- 2 in short term memory
What are Key Concepts in Cognitive Psychology
,Modularity = Clusters of processes that are functionally independent from other clusters
Domain-specific and domain-general
Bottom-up processing = Processing which is directly affected by a stimulus
Top-down processing = Influenced by an individual’s knowledge (past experiences and expectations)
Serial processing = Only one process occurs at any moment in time; one process must be finished before another
can start
Parallel processing = Processing in which two or more cognitive processes occur at the same time
More likely to use this when performing a highly practised task than a new one, E.g., dual task & executive
function
What are Task Processes
Miyake et al (2000)
Studied:
Stroop task (name the colour in which words are presented)
Anti-saccade task (visual cue – not looking at the cue and inhibiting the response and looking in the opposite
direction)
Atop-signal task (categorising words as rapidly as possible but inhibit their response when a tone sounds)
Found that all three tasks involved similar processes
They used complex statistical techniques to extract what was familiar to the three tasks (inhibitory
process)
Approaches to Study Cognition
Behavioural approach = relationship between stimuli and behaviour
Measures:
Reaction time
Response error
Verbal protocol
Behavioural observation
Measures of cognitive processes = Mental rotation, Mental scanning, and imagery
Physiological approach = relationship between physiology and behaviour
Measures:
Neural activity (e.g., fMRI, EEG, PET, MEG)
Eye movement
ANS (autonomic nervous system)
Mental Processes = Aspects of Cognition
Perception
Attention
Memory
Language
Reasoning and decision making/problem solving
Cognitive Psychology = understanding human cognition using behavioural evidence
Since behavioural data is also crucial in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, the influence of
cognitive psychology is large
Cognitive Neuropsychology = Studying brain-damaged patients to understand normal cognition
Cognitive Neuroscience = Using evidence from behaviour and the brain to understand human cognition
Computational Cognitive Science = Developing computational models to further our understanding of human
cognition
These models increasingly consider our knowledge of behaviour and the brain
The Complexity of Cognition
Attention = only attend closely to some of your surroundings; you do not notice the person next to your friend.
Even though both are in the visual view, what causes you to know the other person hardly?
Techniques for Studying the Brain
Single-unit recording/ single-cell recording
Insert a micro-electrode 1/10,000th of a mm in diameter into the brain to study the activity of single
neurons
Very sensitive, like electrical charges of one-millionth of a volt can be detected
Invasive technique for studying brain function, permitting the study of activity in single neurons
Event-related potentials (ERPs)
The same stimulus is presented repeatedly, and the pattern of electrical brain activity is recorded by scalp
electrodes (averaged to produce a single waveform)
Allows us to work out the timing of various cognitive processes
Poor spatial resolution
, Positron emission tomography (PET)
Brain scanning technique based on the detection of positrons; it has reasonable spatial resolution but poor
temporal resolution
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
A technique based on imaging blood oxygenation using an MRI machine
Provides information about the location and time course of brain processes
Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI)
Form of fMRI in which patterns of brain activity associated with specific events (e.g., correct vs incorrect
responses on a memory test) are compared
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Non-invasive brain-scanning technique based on recording the magnetic fields generated by brain activity
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
The coil is placed close to the participants head, and a very brief pulse of current is run through it
This produces a short-lived magnetic field that inhibits processing in the brain area affected
Early Definition of Attention
In clear and vivid form, taking possession by the mind of one of many possible simultaneous thoughts.
Focalisation, the concentration of consciousness, are of its essence.
Implies withdrawal from some things to deal effectively with others” (James, 1890)
Control things through attention
Attention is invaluable in everyday life
Focused attention = Studied by presenting individuals with two or more stimuli inputs at the same time and
instructing them to respond to only one
Divided attention = Studied by presenting at least two stimuli at the same time
Differs from focussed attention as individuals are instructed to respond to all stimuli, e.g., multitasking, a
skill which is increasingly important in today "24/7" world
Studies of divided attention provide helpful information about our processing
limitations and the capacity of attentional mechanisms
External attention = The selection and modulation of sensory information
Internal attention = The selection, modulation, and maintenance of internally generated information such as task
rules, responses, long term memory, or working memory (Chun et al, 2011)
Connection to Baddeley’s working memory model is important
The central exclusive component of working memory is involved in attentional control and plays a
significant role in internal and external attention
Most attentional research suffers from 3 limitations:
Emphasis is placed on external attention rather than internal attention
Participants focus on most laboratory studies is determined by the experimenters' instructions
We attend to in the real world is determined by our current goals and emotional states
Modern Definitions of Attention
The mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus or mental event
Limited mental resource
The complex, multifaceted phenomenon
Involves multiple brain areas
Involves both selective attention (or focused attention) and divided attention
Strongly related to memory, inhibition, and consciousness
Cocktail Party Effect = Focused Auditory Attention
Cherry (1953) and Moray (1959)
Reported real-life examples of attention capture
How can we follow just one conversation when several people are talking at once?
Sound segregation = The listener decides which sounds belong together and which do not
After segregation has been achieved, the listener must direct attention to the sound source of interest and
ignore the others
McDermott (2009) stated that auditory segmentation is much more complex than visual segmentation
There is a considerable amount of overlap of signals from different sound sources in the cochlea, whereas
visual objects tend to occupy different regions of the retina
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