Thinking and deciding summary
Matlin book
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – An introduction to Cognitive Psychology............................................................................6
Chapter introduction.........................................................................................................................6
What is cognitive psychology?...........................................................................................................6
A historical perspective on cognitive psychology...............................................................................6
The origins of cognitive psychology...............................................................................................6
The relationship between mind, brain and behaviour.......................................................................8
Cognitive science...........................................................................................................................8
Artificial intelligence (AI)................................................................................................................8
Cognitive neuroscience..................................................................................................................9
Chapter 2 – Visual and Auditory Recognition......................................................................................10
Chapter introduction.......................................................................................................................10
Overview of visual object recognition..............................................................................................10
Visual system...............................................................................................................................10
Organization in visual perception................................................................................................11
Theories of visual object recognition...........................................................................................11
Top-down processing and visual object recognition........................................................................12
Bottom-up versus top-down processing......................................................................................12
Top-down processing and reading...............................................................................................12
“Smart mistakes” in object recognition.......................................................................................12
Specialized visual recognition processes..........................................................................................13
Recognizing faces versus recognizing other objects....................................................................13
Neuroscience research on face recognition.................................................................................13
Applied research on face recognition..........................................................................................13
Speech perception...........................................................................................................................14
Characteristics of speech perception...........................................................................................14
Theories of speech perception.....................................................................................................15
Chapter 3 – Attention and consciousness............................................................................................15
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................15
Overview of attention......................................................................................................................15
Divided attention.........................................................................................................................16
Selective attention.......................................................................................................................16
Eye movements in reading..............................................................................................................17
, Overview of eye movements in reading......................................................................................17
Selective attention in reading......................................................................................................17
Neuroscience of attention...............................................................................................................17
The orienting attention network..................................................................................................18
The executive attention network.................................................................................................18
Theories of attention.......................................................................................................................18
Early theories of attention...........................................................................................................18
Feature-integration theory (by Treisman)...................................................................................18
Consciousness..................................................................................................................................19
Thought suppression...................................................................................................................19
Blindsight.....................................................................................................................................19
Chapter 4 – Working memory.............................................................................................................20
Chapter introduction.......................................................................................................................20
Classical research on short-term memory.......................................................................................20
The “Magical number seven” (George Miller, 1956)....................................................................20
Early research on short-term capacity limits (1950s-1970s)........................................................20
Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model of information processing (1968).................................................21
The turn to working memory...........................................................................................................21
Evidence for components with independent capacities..............................................................22
Phonological loop........................................................................................................................22
Visuospatial sketchpad................................................................................................................23
Central executive.........................................................................................................................23
The episodic buffer......................................................................................................................24
Working memory effects on academic performance and relationships to mental health...............24
Working memory capacity and academic performance..............................................................24
Working memory abilities in clinical populations........................................................................24
Chapter 5 – Long-term memory..........................................................................................................25
Chapter introduction.......................................................................................................................25
Brief overview of long-term memory..............................................................................................25
Encoding in long-term memory.......................................................................................................25
Levels of processing.....................................................................................................................25
Encoding-specificity principle......................................................................................................26
Retrieval in long-term memory........................................................................................................26
Explicit versus implicit memory tasks..............................................................................................26
Individuals with amnesia.............................................................................................................27
Expertise......................................................................................................................................27
, Autobiographical memory...............................................................................................................28
Schemas and autobiographical memory......................................................................................28
Source monitoring and reality monitoring...................................................................................28
Flashbulb memories.....................................................................................................................29
Eyewitness testimony..................................................................................................................29
Special topics in long-term memory................................................................................................30
Emotions and memory.................................................................................................................30
Anxiety disorders and explicit and implicit memory tasks...........................................................30
The recovered-memory/ false-memory controversy...................................................................31
Chapter 6 – Memory strategies and metacognition............................................................................32
Memory strategies I: memory strategies informed by memory concepts.......................................32
Divided attention.........................................................................................................................32
Working memory.........................................................................................................................32
Levels of processing.....................................................................................................................32
Elaboration..................................................................................................................................32
Distinctiveness.............................................................................................................................32
Encoding specificity......................................................................................................................32
Memory strategies II: Practice and mnemonics...............................................................................33
Memory strategies emphasizing practice....................................................................................33
Mnemonics using imagery...........................................................................................................33
Mnemonics using organization....................................................................................................33
Chapter 8 – General knowledge..........................................................................................................34
Background and approaches to semantic memory..........................................................................34
Network models of semantic memory.............................................................................................36
Schemas and scripts.........................................................................................................................37
Background on schemas and scripts............................................................................................37
Schemas and memory selection..................................................................................................38
Schemas and boundary extension...............................................................................................38
Schemas and memory abstraction...............................................................................................38
Schemas and memory integration...............................................................................................39
Chapter 9 – Language I: Introduction to language and language comprehension...............................39
Overview of psycholinguistics..........................................................................................................40
Relevant terminology and background on language....................................................................40
A brief history of psycholinguistics..............................................................................................40
On-line sentence comprehension....................................................................................................41
Negation and the passive voice...................................................................................................41
, Syntactic complexity....................................................................................................................42
Lexical and syntactic ambiguity....................................................................................................42
Brain and language..........................................................................................................................43
General considerations................................................................................................................43
Aphasia........................................................................................................................................43
Revisiting Broca’s area.................................................................................................................44
Hemispheric specialization..........................................................................................................44
The mirror system........................................................................................................................45
Reading............................................................................................................................................45
Comparing written and spoken language....................................................................................45
Reading words: theoretical approaches.......................................................................................46
Implications for teaching reading to children..............................................................................47
Discourse comprehension...............................................................................................................47
Forming an integrated representation of the text.......................................................................48
Drawing inferences during reading..............................................................................................48
Teaching metacomprehension skills............................................................................................48
Test anxiety and reading comprehension....................................................................................49
Chapter 10 – Language II: Language production and bilingualism.......................................................49
Speaking I: Overview of production processes................................................................................49
Producing a word.........................................................................................................................49
Speech errors...............................................................................................................................49
Producing a sentence...................................................................................................................50
Producing discourse.....................................................................................................................50
Speaking II: Language production and naturalistic communication.................................................51
Using gestures: embodied cognition............................................................................................51
The social context of language production..................................................................................51
Language production and writing....................................................................................................52
The role of working memory in writing........................................................................................52
Planning a formal writing assignment..........................................................................................52
Sentence generation during writing.............................................................................................53
The revision phase of writing.......................................................................................................53
Bilingualism......................................................................................................................................53
Background on bilingualism.........................................................................................................53
The social context of bilingualism................................................................................................54
Advantages (and minor disadvantages) of bilingualism...............................................................54
Proficiency and second language acquisition...................................................................................54
, Second-language proficiency.......................................................................................................54
Simultaneous interpreters and working memory........................................................................55
Chapter 11 – Problem solving and creativity.......................................................................................55
Understanding the problem............................................................................................................55
Paying attention to important information..................................................................................56
Methods of representing the problem........................................................................................56
Situated and embodied cognition perspectives on problem solving...........................................57
Problem-solving strategies..............................................................................................................57
Analogy approach........................................................................................................................57
Means-end heuristic....................................................................................................................58
Hill-climbing heuristic..................................................................................................................58
Factors that influence problem solving............................................................................................58
Expertise......................................................................................................................................58
Mental set....................................................................................................................................59
Functional fixedness....................................................................................................................59
Gender stereotyping and math problem solving.........................................................................59
Insight versus non-insight problems............................................................................................60
Creativity..........................................................................................................................................61
Guilford’s classic approach to creativity......................................................................................61
The nature of creativity................................................................................................................61
Extrinsic motivation and creativity...............................................................................................61
Intrinsic motivation and creativity...............................................................................................61
Chapter 12 – Deductive reasoning and decision making.....................................................................62
Deductive reasoning........................................................................................................................62
An overview of conditional reasoning..........................................................................................62
Difficulties with linguistically negative information.....................................................................63
Difficulties with abstract reasoning problems..............................................................................63
Belief-bias effect..........................................................................................................................63
The confirmation bias..................................................................................................................64
,Chapter 1 – An introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Chapter introduction
Cognitive psychology
- Investigates mental processes that give rise to perceptions and interpretations of the world
- Science of the mind
Tasks consist of:
- Internal state information
- Decision making
- Environment analysis & recognition
- Motor response execution
Cognitive psychology research aims to specify the organization and coordination of these subtasks in
the mind.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognition – the acquisition, storage, transformation and use of knowledge; mental activity
- Automatic process
- Enables things like planning, creation, interaction, thinking, sensations, emotions
- Mental processes of cognition: perception, memory, imagery, language, problem solving,
reasoning, deciding etc.
- Stored knowledge/ knowledge of the world combined with the information retrieved from
our senses enables interpretation and experience of surroundings
Cognitive psychology:
- Either a synonym for cognition
- Or a reference to a specific theoretical approach to psychology: cognitive approach
Cognitive approach – theoretical orientation emphasizing thought processes and knowledge
A historical perspective on cognitive psychology
This paragraph describes the historical developments that lead to first the emergence of
experimental psychology, and cognitive psychology. Also, cognitive psychology as viewed nowadays
will be considered.
The origins of cognitive psychology
Already the ancient Greeks were wondering about thought processes.
Aristotle:
- Began with emphasizing the need for empirical evidence: scientific evidence based on
observation and experimentation
- Viewed as first cognitive psychologist
Late 19th century: emergence of psychology as a discipline
- Wilhelm Wundt: founder of experimental psychology
, o Advocates introspection as a means of research
Introspection – analysing own sensations and objectively reporting these
Nowadays often viewed as subjective and inaccurate
- Mary Calkins: researched recency effect (among others)
o Recency effect – observation that recall is more accurate for the last few items of a
stimuli series
o Emphasized need to research real world cognitive processing, instead of in artificial
contexts
- William James
o Researched everyday experiences
20th century:
- Gestalt psychology emerged
o Emphasizes basic tendencies of perception
o The whole is greater than the sum of parts
o Gestalt laws were set up
- Behaviourism as the most prominent theoretical perspective
o View: psychology must focus on objective, observable reactions to stimuli
o Rejects introspection
o Watson: important behaviourist
o Main focus: learning
Changes in environment changes in behaviour
o Did a lot of research on animal behaviour
o Quantifiable manipulations were done, and quantifiable (changes in) results were
acquired
o Pure behaviourists refused to acknowledge or even consider the possibility that
information was stored and represented internally, which enables learning
Lead to opposition
Not a modern view anymore
o Emphasized operational definition: methods should be precise
Cognitive revolution (1930s-1940s-1950s):
- Behaviourism failed to explain complex human behaviour and does not attempt to explain
numerous processes, like thinking and problem solving
- Also Piaget’s developmental psychology promoted cognitive research, along with Noam
Chomsky’s linguistic research
- This growing support for a cognitive approach is known as the cognitive revolution
o Shift from behaviourism to focus on internal processes
- Birth of cognitive psychology: 1956
o Neisser: father of cognitive psychology (first user of the term)
Cognitive psychology in present times:
- The importance of mental processes is widely recognized
- Cognitive psychology is implemented in all areas of psychology
- Critics: cognitive psychology studies are low in ecological validity:
o The research setting is not alike to a natural setting
o Very controlled experiments
, o Advancements in research need to be made
The relationship between mind, brain and behaviour
This section will discuss the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, its contributors from different
fields, theoretical questions of the relation between the mind and the brain, and cognitive
neuroscience methodologies.
Cognitive science
Fields within cognitive science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Computer science
- Philosophy
- Linguistics
- (sociology, anthropology, economics)
Views:
- Thinking: manipulating internal representations of the external world
- Cooperation and interaction between the fields enable to gain insights on this enormous
field of knowledge
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Branch of computer science
- Goal: explore cognitive processes by modelling them into intelligent computers
Distinction:
- Pure artificial intelligence (pure AI): the aim is to let a computer complete a cognitive task as
efficient as possible, possibly using very different tactics than the human brain
- Weak artificial intelligence (weak AI): using computer simulation or modelling, it is
attempted to make the computer act similarly to humans
o Same correct responses, but also same errors
Computer metaphor of the mind and information processing
- Computer metaphor: the human mind is seen as a computer, as its cognitive processing
works similar
- Similarities:
o Processing principles
o Limited capacity (memory and attention)
- Information-processing approach: model of cognitive system processing based on the views
that:
o Mental processes are similar to computer operations
o Processing happens in a series of stages (serial processing)
o Assumptions of these theories:
Stimuli are perceived through sensory receptors to take in information,
which is similar to computer input
This information is decoded and processed in several stages and combined
with existing knowledge
, After stimulus processing, decision making about the response happens
If decided to respond, an action is initiated using motor commands, which is
similar to computer respondence/ output
- Limitations of the metaphor:
o Models were intended to mimic human information processing, but do not explain
the actual workings of the brain
Connectionist approach:
- View: cognitive processes are like networks linking together processing units (neurons)
o Accounts better for the fast processing speed of the human brain than serial
processing
o Proposes parallel processing
o A knowledge item is not stored at one place, but distributed throughout the
network
- Synonyms: parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach & neural-network approach
- Emerged due to improved neuro-imaging techniques
o Imaging of cerebral cortex showed structure links between neurons
- Other than the information processing approach, this approach was actually intended to
model the workings of the brain
o The brain itself is taken as a basis
Cognitive neuroscience
Field that combines cognitive psychology techniques with various methods to research the brain
structure and function
Social cognitive neuroscience: specifically researches the cognitive processing required for
interactions
Neuroscience techniques:
- Brain lesions
o Destruction of an area in the brain, due to accidents or diseases, has helped to
understand the organization of the brain
o Downside: not controllable method
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan)
o Brain-imaging technique that measures brain activity using the blood flow, tracking
inserted radioactive chemicals
o Comparing activity of the brain during a baseline measurements and a specific task
gives information about functionality of brain regions
o Downsides:
Inaccurate temporal resolution
Expensive
Exposure of patients to radioactive chemicals
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
o Brain-imaging technique that measures brain activity by tracking the oxygen flow (of
the blood)
o Based on regular MRI
o Comparison to PET scan:
Less invasive
, Better temporal resolution
More accurate image better spatial resolution
Both mainly provide information about location (not time-course)
- Event-Related Potential (ERP) Technique
o Brain-imaging technique that measures the (changes in) the brain electrical activity
in response to a stimulus using electrodes on the scalp
o Measures response of neuron populations (not individual neurons)
o Provides time-course information (better temporal resolution)
Chapter 2 – Visual and Auditory Recognition
Chapter introduction
Visual and auditory perception and recognition happens fast, accurately and automatically.
Perception is, however, a very complex process.
This chapter focuses on different aspects of perceptual processing.
Overview of visual object recognition
Perception:
- Previous knowledge and signals of the senses enables interpretation of stimuli
o External (stimuli) and internal (knowledge) worlds are combined
- Combines top-down and bottom-up processing
- Perception is a very important, broad and intensively researched topic within cognitive
science
- This chapter mainly focuses on a specific part of perception: object (or pattern) recognition
o Object recognition enables detection and interpretation of objects in a context
o Sensory signals provide the bottom-up process: stimuli components are visually or
auditorily perceived
o Memory provides the top-down process: the sensory signals are compared to our
knowledge of the world
o Match between memory and sensory input recognition is achieved
Discussed topics of visual processing:
- Visual system
- Organization in visual perception and its working
- Three theories of object recognition
Visual system
Two terms of perceptual stimuli:
- Distal stimulus: stimulus in the environment
- Proximal stimulus: information of stimulus portrayed on the senses (retinal image of the
object)
o Using this, the identity of the distal stimulus can be recognized
