Summary
Matlin - Cognitive Psychology
Eindhoven University of Technology
0HV60 – Thinking and Deciding
,THEMES
Theme 1: The cognitive processes are active, rather than passive.
Theme 2: The cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate.
Theme 3: The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.
Theme 4: The cognitive processes are interrelated with one another; they do not operate in isolation.
Theme 5: Many cognitive processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processing.
,1 AN INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Cognition describes the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. Cognitive
psychology is a particular theoretical approach to psychology; or a synonym for the word cognition.
The cognitive approach is a theoretical orientation that emphasises people’s thought processes and
their knowledge.
Metacognition refers to the act of thinking about your thought processes.
A brief history of cognitive psychology
● 384 BC: Aristotle examined perception, memory, and mental imagery.
● 1832-1920: Wilhelm Wundt (the founder of cognitive psychology) proposed that psychology
should study mental processes using introspection, i.e. by analysing your own sensations and
reporting them as objectively as possible.
● 1850-1909: Ebbinghaus was the first to study human memory.
● 1863-1930: Mary Whiton Calkins discovered the “recency effect”, i.e. the idea that our recall is
especially accurate for the final items in a series of stimuli.
● 1878-1958: According to the behaviourist movement, psychology must focus on objective,
observable reactions to stimuli in the environment. Behaviourists emphasise the importance
of the operational definition (i.e. a precise definition that specifies exactly how a concept is to
be measured).
● 1890: Gestalt psychology emphasises that we have basic tendencies to actively organise what
we see; and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A gestalt is an overall quality
that transcends the individual elements.
The emergence of modern cognitive psychology
The information-processing approach argues that (1) our mental processes are similar to the
operations of a computer; and (2) information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of
stages, one step at a time.
The Atkinson-Shiffrin model proposes that memory involves a sequence of separate steps; in each
step, information is transferred from one storage area to another.
A common concern is the ecological validity of cognitive psychology. A study is high in ecological
validity if the conditions in which the research is conducted are similar to the natural setting where the
results will be applied.
, Cognitive neuroscience techniques
Cognitive neuroscience combines the research techniques of cognitive psychology with various
methods for assessing the structure and function of the brain. Social cognitive neuroscience explores
the kinds of cognitive processes that we use in our interactions with other people.
Brain lesions are areas of destruction in the brain. People with brain lesions are often the subjects of
research with the goal of establishing the function of the area where their lesion occurred.
In a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, researchers measure blood flow in the brain by injecting
the participant with a low dose of radioactive chemical just before the person works on a cognitive
task.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is based on the principle that oxygen-rich blood is an
index of brain activity.
Event-related potential (ERP) technique records the very brief fluctuations in the brain’s electrical
activity in response to a stimulus.
Additional areas contributing to cognitive psychology
● Artificial intelligence (AI) seeks to explore human cognitive processes by creating computer
models that show “intelligent” behaviour.
○ The computer metaphor states that our cognitive processes work like a computer; i.e.
a complex, multipurpose machine that processes information quickly and accurately.
○ Pure AI is an approach that designs a program to accomplish a cognitive task as
efficiently as possible, even if the computer’s processes do not correspond to the
processes used by humans.
○ Computer simulation /weak AI attempts to take human limitations into account. The
goal is to perform tasks in the same way humans do.
○ The connectionist approach/parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach/neural
network approach argues that cognitive processes can be understood in terms of
networks that link together neuron-like units; also, many operations can proceed
simultaneously.
● Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field that tries to answer questions about the mind.
According to cognitive scientists, thinking requires us to manipulate our internal
representations of the external world. The focus is on these internal representations, in
contrast to the behaviourist movement, which focuses only on observable stimuli and
responses to the external world.
Matlin - Cognitive Psychology
Eindhoven University of Technology
0HV60 – Thinking and Deciding
,THEMES
Theme 1: The cognitive processes are active, rather than passive.
Theme 2: The cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate.
Theme 3: The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.
Theme 4: The cognitive processes are interrelated with one another; they do not operate in isolation.
Theme 5: Many cognitive processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processing.
,1 AN INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Cognition describes the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. Cognitive
psychology is a particular theoretical approach to psychology; or a synonym for the word cognition.
The cognitive approach is a theoretical orientation that emphasises people’s thought processes and
their knowledge.
Metacognition refers to the act of thinking about your thought processes.
A brief history of cognitive psychology
● 384 BC: Aristotle examined perception, memory, and mental imagery.
● 1832-1920: Wilhelm Wundt (the founder of cognitive psychology) proposed that psychology
should study mental processes using introspection, i.e. by analysing your own sensations and
reporting them as objectively as possible.
● 1850-1909: Ebbinghaus was the first to study human memory.
● 1863-1930: Mary Whiton Calkins discovered the “recency effect”, i.e. the idea that our recall is
especially accurate for the final items in a series of stimuli.
● 1878-1958: According to the behaviourist movement, psychology must focus on objective,
observable reactions to stimuli in the environment. Behaviourists emphasise the importance
of the operational definition (i.e. a precise definition that specifies exactly how a concept is to
be measured).
● 1890: Gestalt psychology emphasises that we have basic tendencies to actively organise what
we see; and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A gestalt is an overall quality
that transcends the individual elements.
The emergence of modern cognitive psychology
The information-processing approach argues that (1) our mental processes are similar to the
operations of a computer; and (2) information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of
stages, one step at a time.
The Atkinson-Shiffrin model proposes that memory involves a sequence of separate steps; in each
step, information is transferred from one storage area to another.
A common concern is the ecological validity of cognitive psychology. A study is high in ecological
validity if the conditions in which the research is conducted are similar to the natural setting where the
results will be applied.
, Cognitive neuroscience techniques
Cognitive neuroscience combines the research techniques of cognitive psychology with various
methods for assessing the structure and function of the brain. Social cognitive neuroscience explores
the kinds of cognitive processes that we use in our interactions with other people.
Brain lesions are areas of destruction in the brain. People with brain lesions are often the subjects of
research with the goal of establishing the function of the area where their lesion occurred.
In a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, researchers measure blood flow in the brain by injecting
the participant with a low dose of radioactive chemical just before the person works on a cognitive
task.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is based on the principle that oxygen-rich blood is an
index of brain activity.
Event-related potential (ERP) technique records the very brief fluctuations in the brain’s electrical
activity in response to a stimulus.
Additional areas contributing to cognitive psychology
● Artificial intelligence (AI) seeks to explore human cognitive processes by creating computer
models that show “intelligent” behaviour.
○ The computer metaphor states that our cognitive processes work like a computer; i.e.
a complex, multipurpose machine that processes information quickly and accurately.
○ Pure AI is an approach that designs a program to accomplish a cognitive task as
efficiently as possible, even if the computer’s processes do not correspond to the
processes used by humans.
○ Computer simulation /weak AI attempts to take human limitations into account. The
goal is to perform tasks in the same way humans do.
○ The connectionist approach/parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach/neural
network approach argues that cognitive processes can be understood in terms of
networks that link together neuron-like units; also, many operations can proceed
simultaneously.
● Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field that tries to answer questions about the mind.
According to cognitive scientists, thinking requires us to manipulate our internal
representations of the external world. The focus is on these internal representations, in
contrast to the behaviourist movement, which focuses only on observable stimuli and
responses to the external world.
