PSYCH 240 EXAM 1 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
What is Cognitive Psychology? - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅The scientific study of the human mind. The
study of structures and processes of the mind and brain that take in, transform, and use information.
Challenge of Cognitive psychology - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅The mind is unobservable. You cannot
observe a mind. You can observe the stimulus and the products. "The mind is like a black box"
What cognitive psychologists can observe: - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Products, output of the mind:
behavior, physiology.
Three precursors to cognitive psychology - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Introspectionism (Structuralism),
Behaviorism, Functionalism
Introspectionism (Structuralism) - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Means to look inward. To understand the
mind, look inside and see the contents of the mind. What are the structures inside the mind that we can
observe by looking inward and thinking about we experience.
Wilhelm Wundt - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅German who originated the school of psychology of
Introspectionism (Structuralism)
Edward Tichener - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅(1896) Student of Wilhelm Wundt. (Introspectionist)
cataloged 42,415 sensations.
Key problem with Introspectionism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅It isn't really like empirical science like
modern science. Difficult to verify objectively. Introspection by definition deal with private events.. You
observe the end product and NOT the process itself. Hard to come up with a good detailed
understanding of what's going on in the mind.
Functionalism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅A reaction to structuralism (introspectionism) Result of people
being dissatisfied with structuralism. Natural evolution.. Arguing for scientific study of mind using
biology and physiology. Mind is evolved. Theres a reason why the mind does its things. What is the
purpose of the mind. How are we using it? What can it accomplish.
,William James - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅(1842-1910). Leader of functionalism movement. First person to
distinguish between STM and LTM.
John Dewey - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Leader of Pragmatist school. Subset of Fundamentalism.
Pragmatism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Put knowledge to use. Applied psychology. EDUCATION.
Developing a practical use in the methods and ways of thinking of functionalist psychology. attribute of
accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth
Progressive Education - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Ideas and practices with the objective to make school
teachings more effective for a democratic society.
Behaviorism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Science of understanding behavior. Forget mind, mental
processes. Trying to understand behavior. An approach to psychology that emphasizes observable
measurable behavior. Dominant school of thought for the 20th century. Emphasis on what can be
directly observed. Thirsty = "water deprived" operationally.
Ivan Pavlov - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist. Discovered classical conditioning.
John Watson - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Pioneer of developing behaviorism. Systematic way of
approaching psychology through behaviorist perspective. Behavior is all you need. You can understand
between stimuli and responses (even complicated behaviors). Thinking is subvocal speech. founder of
infomercials.
B.F. Skinner - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist. Took form of focusing on different kind of
conditioning. OPERANT CONDITIONING. Language is developed through operant conditioning.
EVERYTHING IS LEARNED. Everything can be predicted. If you know what kind of behaviors you want to
have, you can create your society by operant conditioning. (radical behaviorism). TRULY DENIED
EXISTENCE OF MIND. All stimuli and responses.
Operant conditioning - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅conditioning in which an operant response is brought
under stimulus control by virtue of presenting reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of the
operant response.
, Classical conditioning - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅conditioning that pairs a neutral stimulus with a stimulus
that evokes a reflex
Problem with behaviorism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist perspective can't account for the
Limiting 1) Science limited to observable things is a bad idea. Whos's ever seen an electron? 2) creativity
and diversity of human behaviors. can't account for someone creating something totally new. Ex.
Language: Children learning the rules of language. Can take nonsense words and put an s for plural. The
child has a rule (mental state) that links s's to words. Children make grammatical mistakes. There's no
way the child was rewarded with that. if a child learning language can only produce utterances they
have heard before, we have no explanation for why a child producing the plural version of a nonexistent
word (like 'wug') will create the plural the same way they would with an existent word (so they would
produce 'wugs' and not 'snaf'). On the other hand, if you believe that there is an underlying set of
mental states / operations that creates plurals from singulars, you can explain why the child will produce
'wugs'.Why do children make grammatical mistakes? They've never been reinforced to say it.
Cognitivism. The cognitive approach - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅After developments, (Computers, etc.)
Responses are still important. Take stimuli and responses, and infer what's going on in the mind. Use
observable data to make inferences.
Computational view of the mind - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅mainstream underlying assumption: the mind
is somehow like a computer. Broad idea .. Takes information.. stores some of it.. keeps in temporary
memory RAM and then process it. INFORMATION PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE. information, processes
information - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅1) sensory data - data receive from external world. 2)
representations - various kinds of memory.
sensory data - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅data received from external world
representations - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅1) procedural representations. (KNOWING HOW TO DO
THINGS)
2)declarative representation Knowing "that" something is true
-semantic memory
-episodic memory
What is Cognitive Psychology? - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅The scientific study of the human mind. The
study of structures and processes of the mind and brain that take in, transform, and use information.
Challenge of Cognitive psychology - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅The mind is unobservable. You cannot
observe a mind. You can observe the stimulus and the products. "The mind is like a black box"
What cognitive psychologists can observe: - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Products, output of the mind:
behavior, physiology.
Three precursors to cognitive psychology - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Introspectionism (Structuralism),
Behaviorism, Functionalism
Introspectionism (Structuralism) - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Means to look inward. To understand the
mind, look inside and see the contents of the mind. What are the structures inside the mind that we can
observe by looking inward and thinking about we experience.
Wilhelm Wundt - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅German who originated the school of psychology of
Introspectionism (Structuralism)
Edward Tichener - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅(1896) Student of Wilhelm Wundt. (Introspectionist)
cataloged 42,415 sensations.
Key problem with Introspectionism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅It isn't really like empirical science like
modern science. Difficult to verify objectively. Introspection by definition deal with private events.. You
observe the end product and NOT the process itself. Hard to come up with a good detailed
understanding of what's going on in the mind.
Functionalism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅A reaction to structuralism (introspectionism) Result of people
being dissatisfied with structuralism. Natural evolution.. Arguing for scientific study of mind using
biology and physiology. Mind is evolved. Theres a reason why the mind does its things. What is the
purpose of the mind. How are we using it? What can it accomplish.
,William James - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅(1842-1910). Leader of functionalism movement. First person to
distinguish between STM and LTM.
John Dewey - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Leader of Pragmatist school. Subset of Fundamentalism.
Pragmatism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Put knowledge to use. Applied psychology. EDUCATION.
Developing a practical use in the methods and ways of thinking of functionalist psychology. attribute of
accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth
Progressive Education - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Ideas and practices with the objective to make school
teachings more effective for a democratic society.
Behaviorism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Science of understanding behavior. Forget mind, mental
processes. Trying to understand behavior. An approach to psychology that emphasizes observable
measurable behavior. Dominant school of thought for the 20th century. Emphasis on what can be
directly observed. Thirsty = "water deprived" operationally.
Ivan Pavlov - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist. Discovered classical conditioning.
John Watson - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Pioneer of developing behaviorism. Systematic way of
approaching psychology through behaviorist perspective. Behavior is all you need. You can understand
between stimuli and responses (even complicated behaviors). Thinking is subvocal speech. founder of
infomercials.
B.F. Skinner - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist. Took form of focusing on different kind of
conditioning. OPERANT CONDITIONING. Language is developed through operant conditioning.
EVERYTHING IS LEARNED. Everything can be predicted. If you know what kind of behaviors you want to
have, you can create your society by operant conditioning. (radical behaviorism). TRULY DENIED
EXISTENCE OF MIND. All stimuli and responses.
Operant conditioning - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅conditioning in which an operant response is brought
under stimulus control by virtue of presenting reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of the
operant response.
, Classical conditioning - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅conditioning that pairs a neutral stimulus with a stimulus
that evokes a reflex
Problem with behaviorism - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅Behaviorist perspective can't account for the
Limiting 1) Science limited to observable things is a bad idea. Whos's ever seen an electron? 2) creativity
and diversity of human behaviors. can't account for someone creating something totally new. Ex.
Language: Children learning the rules of language. Can take nonsense words and put an s for plural. The
child has a rule (mental state) that links s's to words. Children make grammatical mistakes. There's no
way the child was rewarded with that. if a child learning language can only produce utterances they
have heard before, we have no explanation for why a child producing the plural version of a nonexistent
word (like 'wug') will create the plural the same way they would with an existent word (so they would
produce 'wugs' and not 'snaf'). On the other hand, if you believe that there is an underlying set of
mental states / operations that creates plurals from singulars, you can explain why the child will produce
'wugs'.Why do children make grammatical mistakes? They've never been reinforced to say it.
Cognitivism. The cognitive approach - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅After developments, (Computers, etc.)
Responses are still important. Take stimuli and responses, and infer what's going on in the mind. Use
observable data to make inferences.
Computational view of the mind - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅mainstream underlying assumption: the mind
is somehow like a computer. Broad idea .. Takes information.. stores some of it.. keeps in temporary
memory RAM and then process it. INFORMATION PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE. information, processes
information - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅1) sensory data - data receive from external world. 2)
representations - various kinds of memory.
sensory data - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅data received from external world
representations - CORRECT ANSWER✅✅1) procedural representations. (KNOWING HOW TO DO
THINGS)
2)declarative representation Knowing "that" something is true
-semantic memory
-episodic memory
