What does cognitive psychology scientifically study?
Mental processes that allow people to take in, interpret, store, retrieve, and use information to guide behavior.
What is cognition?
The acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge.
Which mental processes does cognitive psychology study?
Perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking.
How does cognitive psychology study mental processes?
Through controlled experiments, precise measurements, and brain-imaging techniques.
What are examples of precise measurements in cognitive psychology?
Reaction time and accuracy.
What does the mind create and control in mental functions?
Representations of the world and mental functions like perception and decision-making.
What does cognition involve compared to emotion and motivation?
Thinking and remembering, unlike emotion's affective states and motivation's drives.
Which mental functions did Aristotle consider in his studies?
Learning, memory, motivation, emotion, perception, and personality.
What was a limitation of Aristotle's proposals on mental functions?
They were not scientifically tested over time.
How did Aristotle believe knowledge is acquired?
Through experience.
What are the four laws of association Aristotle identified?
Similarity, contrast, contiguity, and frequency.
Who established the first scientific psychology lab in 1879?
Wilhelm Wundt.
Which author showed the first psychology lab and structuralism in 1879?
Wundt, 1879.
What does structuralism analyze conscious experience into?
Basic elements like sensations, images, and feelings.
What method did Hermann Ebbinghaus use to quantify forgetting?
The savings method comparing original and relearning times.
What type of syllables did Ebbinghaus use in his forgetting experiments?
Nonsense syllables.
When does forgetting occur most rapidly according to Ebbinghaus?
During the first 1 to 2 days after learning.
What did William James develop that focused on adaptive mental purposes?
Functionalism.
What does Behaviorism study instead of mental processes?
Observable and measurable behavior.
What caused fear in the infant in Watson's Little Albert experiment?
Repeated pairing of a rat with a loud noise.
When does classical conditioning occur?
When a neutral event is repeatedly paired with a natural outcome until it produces that outcome alone.
What is operant conditioning?
A process shaping behavior through rewards and punishments.
What happens to behavior that is rewarded in operant conditioning?
It becomes more likely to occur.
What happens to behavior that is punished in operant conditioning?
It becomes less likely to occur.
Which author is associated with operant conditioning?
B.F. Skinner.
What does the Gestalt approach emphasize about perceptual information?
People organize perceptual information and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Which laws are included in Gestalt perceptual organization?
Proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, Prägnanz, common fate, and figure–ground organization.
What did Edward Tolman's 1938 maze experiment suggest about rats?
Rats form cognitive maps to navigate to previously rewarded locations from new starting points.
Who argued children learn language through imitation and reinforcement?
Skinner.
Who argued children produce novel sentences due to an innate language program?
Chomsky.
When did the cognitive revolution begin?
In the 1950s.
What shift marked the start of the cognitive revolution?
From behaviorism’s stimulus–response focus to studying the mind’s operation.
How does the information-processing approach explain behavior?
By modeling the mind as a system that receives input, transforms it, and produces output.
Who published the first cognitive psychology textbook?
Ulric Neisser.
What is the title of the first cognitive psychology textbook?
Cognitive Psychology.
In which year was the first cognitive psychology textbook published?
1967.
What does Broadbent's filter model propose about unattended information?
It is blocked by a filter before further processing and transfer to short-term memory.
According to Atkinson and Shiffrin, how long does sensory memory last?
Less than 1 second.
What is the capacity and duration of short-term memory in Atkinson and Shiffrin's model?
Short-term memory lasts a few seconds with limited capacity.
What are the characteristics of long-term memory in Atkinson and Shiffrin's model?
It has long duration and high capacity.
Which types of memory did Endel Tulving distinguish in 1972?
Episodic, semantic, and procedural memory.
What does episodic memory store according to Tulving?
Life events.
What type of information does semantic memory hold according to Tulving?
Information.
What does procedural memory represent in Tulving's model?
How to perform physical actions.
What does the connectionist approach model cognition as?
Simultaneous activation spreading across many interconnected nodes.
Where is knowledge stored in connectionist systems?
Distributed across connection weights, not as explicit rules in one location.
How does learning occur in connectionist systems?
Through gradual adjustment of connection weights.
What is cognitive neuroscience?
The interdisciplinary study of brain activity linked with mental activity.
What is cognitive science?
An interdisciplinary project studying the mind through multiple fields.
What knowledge does neuroscience contribute to cognitive science?
Knowledge of neurons, brain structures, and neural circuits.
Which fields contribute to cognitive science besides neuroscience?
Linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and anthropology.
In which practical areas does cognitive research apply?
Health care, driving, education, and criminal justice.
What is metacognition?
Thinking about one’s own thought processes.
How do cognitive processes operate and interact?
They work continuously, interact, and enable strategic responses to stimuli.
Why is understanding cognition relevant to various psychology fields?
Because cognitive abilities influence everyday functioning and psychological symptoms.
Why was the historical study of mental processes difficult?
Because mental processes cannot be directly observed like physical reactions.
What did analytic introspection require from participants?
To describe their experiences and thought processes to stimuli.
Why did John B. Watson reject analytic introspection?
Its results varied between people and were difficult to verify.
Who described scientific revolutions as paradigm shifts?
Thomas Kuhn.
In which work did Thomas Kuhn describe scientific revolutions as paradigm shifts?
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).
What does graceful degradation in connectionist models mean?
Damage or noise causes gradual and partial performance decline, not total failure.
What does neuropsychology study?
People with brain damage.
What does electrophysiology study?
Electrical responses of the nervous system.
What do brain imaging methods like PET and fMRI identify?
Active brain regions during cognition.
How do virtual and augmented reality aid cognitive research?
They simulate real-world environments to increase generalizability.
Test your knowledge with 31 questions on Cognition and Brain: Cognitive Approach.
1. What does cognitive psychology scientifically investigate?
2. Which description best defines cognition?
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