Biological and cognitive psychology
Lecture 1
Wilhelm Wundt:
Father of experimental psychology
First psychology lab
Scientific psychology should study a person’s subjective experience
Method: introspecting: looking inward -> participants trained to describe experiences
and thought processes in response to stimuli
John Watson:
Cannot know/control whether they describe correctly, and everybody responds
differently -> cannot verify
Different experiences or different descriptions of the same experience?
New approach: Behaviorism: eliminate the mind as topic of study and study
observable behavior
Behaviorism:
Pair a neutral event with an event that naturally produces some outcome -> eventually
neutral event will also produce the outcome
Pavlov’s discovery: classical conditioning
Learning by pairing stimuli
Watsons ‘Little Albert’ experiment
Little Albert:
Classical conditioning of fear
9-month-old became scared of a rat after a loud noise was paired with every
presentation of the rat
Skinner:
Operant conditioning
Stimulus response
Punishment and reward
‘The skinner box’ experiment (pigeon)
Children learn language through operant conditioning
Chomsky (linguist): complex cognitive operations cannot be explained in terms of
behaviorism
Language must be determined by inborn biological program
Children say things they have never heard before and make errors they have never heard
before
-generating language is a creative process
-computer as information processor: start of cognitive psychology
,Edward Tolman: research with rats
They did NOT learn a behavioral response, but a cognitive map
Human as information processor (computer)
Input processing response
= metaphor for the mind
Broadbent’s filter model of attention
Cognitive psychology model
Scanning short-term memory
Experiment with letters, yes/no trials
Understanding complex cognitive behaviors:
-measure observable behavior
-make inferences about underlying cognitive activity
-consider what this behavior says about how the mind works
A shift:
From behaviorists stimulus-response to explain behavior in terms of the mind
Cognitive psychology:
Mental processes exist
Mental processes can be studied in a scientific way (behaviorists disagree)
Information processing approach: humans are active information processors
Flourens: ablation method: removing a part of the brain to see which function is impaired
Ethical problems, animals
Object discrimination (difficult without temporal lobe) vs landmark discrimination (difficult
without parietal lobe) -> double dissociation
Purkinje cells: neurons in the cerebellum
Darwin: evolution theory
Fritsch and Hitzig: effect of electrical stimulation of the brain
Broca’s area: production of language
Wernicke’s area: comprehension of language
Aphasias
Patient HM
, Epilepsy -> removal of medial temporal lobe -> split brain -> no new long-term memories
and loss of long-term memories from period prior to the brain surgery
So, medial temporal lobe = ltm
Direct electrical stimulation of cortex: produces mental sensation of thinking, perceiving etc
rather than a sense of the brain being stimulated
Johannes muller: never conduction velocity is infinitely fast -> spiritual lebenskraft
Von Helmholtz: nerve conduction velocity 30 ms in a frog and 60 ms in humans
Mental chronometry: nerve conduction takes time so mental processes take time
Donders: Donders subtraction method
Can measure how long mental processes take (duration)
Create 2 almost identical tasks
The difference in reaction time is how long the difference in tasks takes
Problems Donders subtraction method:
-depends on assumption about stages
-and strong assumption that these stages are independent
Long-time dominance of body-mind dualism. Now: “the mind is what the brain does”
Technological developments: fMRI (and PET).
Lecture 2
Lecture 2
Neural and glial cells
Structure and function of nerve cells
From chemical elements to cell membrane
Bonding elements:
-ionic bond: electrostatic force between two ions of opposite charge, one atom loses valence
electrons and gains them from another
-covalent bond: sharing of electrons from molecules
Carbon chains: unique property of a carbon atom that allows it to form covalent bonds to as
many a s four different atoms
Amino acids: molecules that combine to form proteins
Lecture 1
Wilhelm Wundt:
Father of experimental psychology
First psychology lab
Scientific psychology should study a person’s subjective experience
Method: introspecting: looking inward -> participants trained to describe experiences
and thought processes in response to stimuli
John Watson:
Cannot know/control whether they describe correctly, and everybody responds
differently -> cannot verify
Different experiences or different descriptions of the same experience?
New approach: Behaviorism: eliminate the mind as topic of study and study
observable behavior
Behaviorism:
Pair a neutral event with an event that naturally produces some outcome -> eventually
neutral event will also produce the outcome
Pavlov’s discovery: classical conditioning
Learning by pairing stimuli
Watsons ‘Little Albert’ experiment
Little Albert:
Classical conditioning of fear
9-month-old became scared of a rat after a loud noise was paired with every
presentation of the rat
Skinner:
Operant conditioning
Stimulus response
Punishment and reward
‘The skinner box’ experiment (pigeon)
Children learn language through operant conditioning
Chomsky (linguist): complex cognitive operations cannot be explained in terms of
behaviorism
Language must be determined by inborn biological program
Children say things they have never heard before and make errors they have never heard
before
-generating language is a creative process
-computer as information processor: start of cognitive psychology
,Edward Tolman: research with rats
They did NOT learn a behavioral response, but a cognitive map
Human as information processor (computer)
Input processing response
= metaphor for the mind
Broadbent’s filter model of attention
Cognitive psychology model
Scanning short-term memory
Experiment with letters, yes/no trials
Understanding complex cognitive behaviors:
-measure observable behavior
-make inferences about underlying cognitive activity
-consider what this behavior says about how the mind works
A shift:
From behaviorists stimulus-response to explain behavior in terms of the mind
Cognitive psychology:
Mental processes exist
Mental processes can be studied in a scientific way (behaviorists disagree)
Information processing approach: humans are active information processors
Flourens: ablation method: removing a part of the brain to see which function is impaired
Ethical problems, animals
Object discrimination (difficult without temporal lobe) vs landmark discrimination (difficult
without parietal lobe) -> double dissociation
Purkinje cells: neurons in the cerebellum
Darwin: evolution theory
Fritsch and Hitzig: effect of electrical stimulation of the brain
Broca’s area: production of language
Wernicke’s area: comprehension of language
Aphasias
Patient HM
, Epilepsy -> removal of medial temporal lobe -> split brain -> no new long-term memories
and loss of long-term memories from period prior to the brain surgery
So, medial temporal lobe = ltm
Direct electrical stimulation of cortex: produces mental sensation of thinking, perceiving etc
rather than a sense of the brain being stimulated
Johannes muller: never conduction velocity is infinitely fast -> spiritual lebenskraft
Von Helmholtz: nerve conduction velocity 30 ms in a frog and 60 ms in humans
Mental chronometry: nerve conduction takes time so mental processes take time
Donders: Donders subtraction method
Can measure how long mental processes take (duration)
Create 2 almost identical tasks
The difference in reaction time is how long the difference in tasks takes
Problems Donders subtraction method:
-depends on assumption about stages
-and strong assumption that these stages are independent
Long-time dominance of body-mind dualism. Now: “the mind is what the brain does”
Technological developments: fMRI (and PET).
Lecture 2
Lecture 2
Neural and glial cells
Structure and function of nerve cells
From chemical elements to cell membrane
Bonding elements:
-ionic bond: electrostatic force between two ions of opposite charge, one atom loses valence
electrons and gains them from another
-covalent bond: sharing of electrons from molecules
Carbon chains: unique property of a carbon atom that allows it to form covalent bonds to as
many a s four different atoms
Amino acids: molecules that combine to form proteins
