Cognitive Chapter 1
Defining Cog Psy: Scientific study of human mental processes including: memory, language,
problem-solving, reasoning, etc.
Info Processing Approach: based on computer analogy: step by step (process) model.
Features: serial; independent, non-overlapping stages.
Connectionism or PDP approach to mind: Modeling cognitive processes based on brain
function.
Parallel processing
Context or priming effects challenge independent/non-overlapping assumptions
Cognitive Neuroscience: search for brain basis of cognition
Cognitive Science: Interdisciplinary approach to the study of the mind – cognitive
psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, ai
Three boxes of memory: Example of Information
Processing Approach (A Process Model)
Pandemonium:
early PDP
processing
model
History of Cognitive Psychology
Aristotle & Augustine
• Aristotle: empirical approach to
understanding; tabla rasa approach
to mind
Augustine: empirical approach to
memory
Wundt & Titchener
Wilhelm Wundt: introspection,
emphasized sensation,
attention, and perception
Edward Titchener: structuralism, an
objective description of mental
experience
Ebbinghaus & James
H. V. Ebbinghaus: early studies on
memory
William James: leader of functionalist
school, emphasized the adaptive nature of
cognition.
Emergence of Behaviorism: enter the
“black box”
B. F. Skinner: only
observable phenomena are
scientific
• John Watson
and the
dominance of
behaviorism
1900-1950
WWII: Human/Machine interactions
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Channel capacity: how much info can be processed?
Computer analogy: Do machines think like humans or do humans think like
machines?
Development of empirical measures of cognition, for example: reaction time
Cognitive revolution: 1956
• MIT symposium: birth of AI
George Miller:
magical #7
Noam Chomsky:
linguistics
Newell & Simon: problemsolving
Jerome Bruner: categorization