Summary cognitive psychology
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Metacognition: thinking about thought processes.
Cognition: mental activity, it describes the acquisition, storage, transformation and use of
knowledge.
Cognitive psychology: it can be used as a synonym for cognition or as a particular theoretical
approach to psychology.
Cognitive approach: theoretical orientation that emphasizes people’s thought processes and their
knowledge.
The behaviorist approach emphasizes our observable behaviors and the psychodynamic approach
focuses on our unconscious emotions.
Aristotle emphasized the importance of empirical evidence, or scientific evidence obtained by
careful observation and experimentation.
Wundt proposed that psychology should study mental processes using introspection; carefully
trained observers systematically analyze their own sensations and report them as objectively as
possible, under standardized conditions.
Ebbinghaus was the first person to scientifically study human memory.
Calkins reported the recency effect, which is the observation that our recall is especially accurate for
the final items in a series of stimuli.
James preferred to theorize about our everyday psychological experiences.
Behaviorism: psychology must focus on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the
environment, rather than introspection. Watson and other behaviorists emphasized observable
behavior and they typically studied animals. The emphasized the importance of the operational
definition, a precise definition that specifies exactly how a concept is to be measured.
Gestalt psychology: emphasized that we humans have basic tendencies to actively organize what we
see. The whole is greater than the sum of its part.
Gestalt: overall quality that transcends the individual elements.
Frederic Bartlett conducted his research on human memory, he used meaningful materials. He
discovered that people made systematic errors when trying to recall stories and he proposed that
human memory is an active, constructive process, in which we interpret and transform the
information we encounter.
Some factors that contributed to the increased popularity of cognitive psychology:
- Increasing disappointed in the behaviorist outlook.
- Research and theory in three content areas, for example linguistics.
- Research in human memory began to blossom.
- Research on children’s thought processes.
Information-processing approach: our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer
and information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time. For
example: external stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory (a storage system that
records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy), where it is stored for 2
seconds or less and then most of it is forgotten.
Atkinson-Shiffrin model: memory involves a sequence of separate steps. In each step information is
transferred form one storage area to another. They proposed that some material form sensory
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
Metacognition: thinking about thought processes.
Cognition: mental activity, it describes the acquisition, storage, transformation and use of
knowledge.
Cognitive psychology: it can be used as a synonym for cognition or as a particular theoretical
approach to psychology.
Cognitive approach: theoretical orientation that emphasizes people’s thought processes and their
knowledge.
The behaviorist approach emphasizes our observable behaviors and the psychodynamic approach
focuses on our unconscious emotions.
Aristotle emphasized the importance of empirical evidence, or scientific evidence obtained by
careful observation and experimentation.
Wundt proposed that psychology should study mental processes using introspection; carefully
trained observers systematically analyze their own sensations and report them as objectively as
possible, under standardized conditions.
Ebbinghaus was the first person to scientifically study human memory.
Calkins reported the recency effect, which is the observation that our recall is especially accurate for
the final items in a series of stimuli.
James preferred to theorize about our everyday psychological experiences.
Behaviorism: psychology must focus on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the
environment, rather than introspection. Watson and other behaviorists emphasized observable
behavior and they typically studied animals. The emphasized the importance of the operational
definition, a precise definition that specifies exactly how a concept is to be measured.
Gestalt psychology: emphasized that we humans have basic tendencies to actively organize what we
see. The whole is greater than the sum of its part.
Gestalt: overall quality that transcends the individual elements.
Frederic Bartlett conducted his research on human memory, he used meaningful materials. He
discovered that people made systematic errors when trying to recall stories and he proposed that
human memory is an active, constructive process, in which we interpret and transform the
information we encounter.
Some factors that contributed to the increased popularity of cognitive psychology:
- Increasing disappointed in the behaviorist outlook.
- Research and theory in three content areas, for example linguistics.
- Research in human memory began to blossom.
- Research on children’s thought processes.
Information-processing approach: our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer
and information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time. For
example: external stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory (a storage system that
records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy), where it is stored for 2
seconds or less and then most of it is forgotten.
Atkinson-Shiffrin model: memory involves a sequence of separate steps. In each step information is
transferred form one storage area to another. They proposed that some material form sensory
