1. Introduction to Cognitive Psychology
What is Cognitive Psychology?
Where did it come from?
What is Cognitive Psychology about now?

2. What is Cognitive Psychology?
Scientific study of cognition
Cognition: mental processes including perception, attention, memory, thinking, problem-solving, and language

3. Some Questions About Cognition
How did a glass slide lead to a Nobel Prize?
Why can you hear your name across a noisy room?
What would happen if you couldn’t store new information in long-term memory?

4. More Questions...
Can someone be abused as a child and not remember it until decades later?
What do fire, women, and dangerous things have in common?
Why do men and women have trouble communicating with each other?

5. Some Claims About Cognition
The Scientific Method is the best way to study how the mind works.
The mind can be thought of as an information processor.
The way we process information is influenced by context and experience.

6. The Cognitive Revolution
Success of The Scientific Method
Donders (1868) - mental chronometry
Wundt (1879) - structuralism

7. Donders - Subtractive Method
Simple Reaction Time - time it takes to press
button in response to light
Choice Reaction Time - time it takes to press
one of two buttons after deciding which light
went on
Decision Time = Choice RT - Simple RT

10. Early Memory Research
Ebbinghaus (1913) - memorizing nonsense syllables
Bartlett (1932) - memory of stories
Ebbinghaus

11. Influence of Behaviorism
Watson (1912) - the mind cannot be studied with science
Skinner (1957) - explains language in Verbal Behavior

12. Problems for Behaviorism
Tolman (1932): Cognitive maps in rats
Breland and Breland (1938): Instinctual behavior
Chomsky (1959):
review of Skinner’s book
performance - competence distinction

13. Where is Cognitive Psychology Now?
Information processing approach
Based on behavioral observations
Cognitive neuroscience
Evolutionary psychology
Cognitive science