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Cognitive Psychology, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Full Summary

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For the course Cognitive Psychology in Liberal Arts and Sciences, major in Cognitive Neuroscience. Full summary covering book/lecture slides

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  • September 4, 2023
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  • 2022/2023
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Tuesday, 30 August 2022


Lecture 1

Experimental Psychology
Experiment: a technique of establishing a causal rel. between variables

Experimental Psychology: the scienti c study of mind and behavior by means of
experiments
- Study Psychology by focusing on cognitive functions
Cognition: mental processes leading to thought, knowledge, and awareness
- Cognitive processes govern Cog. Functions include attention, memory, learning,
language, mental processing, motor skills, and imagination.
- CF are “building blocks” of all complex behavior (like eating peas) > This task
requires attention, perception, decision-making, motor skills
- Patients with (local) brain damage allow for more speci c and reliable inferences
about brain functioning.

e.g. Patients with

• Neglect (hemi spatial/unilateral inattention)

• Aphasia (trouble producing or understanding)

• Dyslexia (trouble with reading)

• Prosopagnosia (inability to recognise faces)

• Visual agnosia (inability to recognise objects)



Cognitive Neuroscience attempts to understand the biological foundation of
cognition > the main idea is that cog.process can be tracked and measured



Rationalists (Knowledge is innate or inborn: Nativism):
- Benedict de Spinoza
- Gottfried Leibniz



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, - Rene Descartes: Believed in Dualism. That the mind and body are separate
entities that interact via the pineal gland. (Bc. The bodily re exes do not involve
the mind/free will, the body and mind must be distinct)

Empiricists (Knowledge is acquired through senses):
- John Locke
- George Berkeley
- David Hume


In the 19th Century, Psychology started to evolve into a science
- Hermann von Helmholtz conducted experiments on the conduction velocity of
the nerve impulse
- Franciscus Donders: Mental Chronometry “How much time do you need to
decide”

1) Simple reaction time

2) Di erential/choice reaction time

3) Go/No go reaction time

-> This additive factor logic is still widely used today in modern-day research where
brain activity (EEG or fMRI) in an experimental condition is subtracted from a control
condition or when two experimental conditions are subtracted



- Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner introduced the Just Noticeable Di erence (JND),
which is still used in psychophysics

- Wilhelm Wundt - Structuralism: consciousness should be the focus of study via
analyses of the basic elements that constitute the mind

> achieved by breaking down consciousness into sensations and feelings via
analytical introspection

- Further developed by Edward Titchener and proposed 3 elementary states of
consciousness: Sensations (sight, sound, taste), Images (components of
thought), and A ections (components of emotions)




2


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,Behaviorism (John Watson): The mind cannot be studied and behavior should be
studied instead because
- The only way to understand learning and adaptation is by focusing on behavior
- Behavior can be observed by anyone and measured objectively
- The goal is to predict and control behavior to bene t society


Behaviorism was a part of the logical positivism movement that introduced the
operational de nition: Description of an abstract property in terms of a concrete
condition that can be measured

> allow for precise measurements and direct comparisons between studies

But, operational def. are not always good de nitions. Clear measurable conditions
can still be quite useless
- Happiness is the number of smiles during a speci c episode
- Age is the response that participants provide on a questionnaire


IVAN PAVLOV: CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

US (Unconditioned Stimulus) that produces an UR (Unconditioned Response)

When the US is repeatedly paired with another stimulus, the other stimulus
becomes a CS (Conditioned Stimulus) that produces a CR (Conditioned Response)
which is the same as the UR but now occurs with our the original US.



SKINNER: OPERANT CONDITIONING

Learning occurs through reinforcement and punishment, that can be positive
(means sth is added) or negative (sth is removed).



GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY:
- KEY PRINCIPLE: The whole is more than the sum of its parts
- They rejected Wundt’s structuralism > because experience is more than a
function of sensation




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, - They rejected Behaviorism > because complex behavior (‘the whole’) is more than
the sum of its components
- Gestalt psychologists use apparent motion to prove their point
- Perception is a construction, not a re ection of the sensation


EMPIRICIS

= Acquiring knowledge through observation

Scienti c Method: Observations can lead to mistakes, false conclusions and
illusions, so we need a set of rules and techniques to avoid those.

1- Theorize/generate idea

=> Often based on literature/previous experience

=> Use principle of Ockham’s razor



2- Formulate falsi able hypothesis

=> if…is true, we should observe… (speci c, veri able)



3- Collect and analyse data

=> observations in a lab or in the real world, using speci c techniques

=> operationalism should be concrete



4- Draw conclusions regarding hypothesis

=> Results align with hypothesis? Con rm theory

=> Results do not align with hypothesis? Theory is wrong (falsi cation) or mistakes
in operationalisation



Deduction: Drawing inferences based on premises (assumptions). General =>
Speci c

Problem: We cannot observe ALL premises so we must use Induction. Speci c =>
General


4



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