1. Chapter 15: Cognitive Psychology
A History of Psychology
(3rd Edition)
John G. Benjafield

2. The Concept of ‘Information’
Computing machine as information-processing system
Information is the opposite of uncertainty
Any event that reduces or eliminates uncertainty provides us with information
Information theory supplied the vocabulary for a new model of the process of communication

3. Noam Chomsky (1928–) Reviewed Skinner’s Verbal Behavior
Argued that behaviourist principles could not explain any significant aspects of language
Any theory of language must explain the fact that natural language is inherently creative

4. Syntactic Structures
Surface structure: the level made up by the particular words that make a sentence
Spoken one word at a time
Each successive word does not act as a stimulus for the next word in the sentence
Deep structure: grammatical transformations from which surface structure is derived

5. Cartesian Linguistics
Chomsky considered his theory to be descended from that of Descartes
Descartes: human behaviour cannot be understood in a completely mechanical manner
Descartes: our most human capacities are innate

6. George A. Miller (1920–) 1950s: Harvard 1956:
Symposium on information theory held at MIT
Chomsky, Allen Newell, Herbert Simon
Jerome Bruner: A Study of Thinking

7. The Magical Number Seven
Channel capacity: how much information can be accurately transmitted through the participant
Span of immediate memory: amount of information we can hold in the mind at one time
Seven items, plus or minus two

8. Plans and the Structure of Behavior
One of the first attempts to give cognitive psychology a coherent theoretical framework
Drew on information theory, Chomskyian psycholinguistics, cybernetics
Feedback loop: process in which the output of one part of a system affects another part of the system, which in turn affects the first part
TOTE mechanisms: basic unit of behavioural control (test-operate-test-exit)

9. Subjective Behaviourism
Thinking aloud: technique used by psychologists interested in studying thinking
What people say when asked to think aloud is different from what they say when asked to introspect
Subjective behaviourism

10. Giving Psychology Away
Miller’s APA presidential address
Cautioned psychologists against using their expertise to act as agents of social control
Better goals: understanding and prediction
Suggested psychology be given away in order to accomplish these goals

11. Jerome S. Bruner (1915–)
Conducted seminal research on everything from perception and thinking to child development
Believes there is a consistent functionalist orientation across all his investiagtions

12. The New Look in Perception
1940s–1950s: ‘New Look’
Research program in perception
Focused on the effects of need, interest, and past experience on the manner of organization of the perceptual field
Minimax axiom: people organize the perceptual field in such a way as to maximize percepts relevant to current needs and expectations
Central axiom

13. The New Look in Perception
Events that do not fit our expectancies strike us an incongruous
Perceptual readiness: the degree to which one is prepared to perceive what is in the environment
Criticisms:
Inadequate controls
Too much emphasis on internal, personal determinants of perception

14. A Study of Thinking
Concept attainment: the process by which categories develop
Any time we do not regard an event as unique but as belonging to a particular category, we are making use of concepts
Criticism:
Concepts studied somewhat artificial

15. Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969)
Method of serial reproduction:
Giving an experimental participant something to learn and remember
What the first participant remembers is then given to a second participant to learn and remember
What the second participant remembers is given to a third participant to learn and remember, and so on

16. Sir Frederic Bartlett Ex. ‘The War of the Ghosts’
Believed that the kinds of transformations observed using the method of serial reproduction were precisely the same transformations that happen to an individual’s memory over time
Schema: an active organization of past reactions that provided a setting within which individual events were understood and remembered

17. Ulric Neisser (1928–) Undergraduate degree at Harvard
Worked with George Miller
Master’s degree at Swarthmore
Home to Gestalt psychologists
PhD at Harvard
1957: position at Brandeis University
Influenced by Abraham Maslow

18. Cognitive Psychology Became the bible of the new psychology
Neisser’s view of the relationship between cognitive processes and computer programs became standard for most cognitive psychologists

19. Cognitive Psychology Traced flow of information through the organism
Icon → Iconic storage → Pattern recognition → Attention
Reappearance hypothesis: notion that information is retrieved from memory in the form in which it is stored
Utilization hypothesis: we store traces of earlier cognitive acts, not the products of those acts

20. Influence of Cognitive Psychology
Many psychologists treated the experimental study of cognitive processes as if they existed in isolation from other psychological processes
Atkinson and Shiffrin model of memory
Sensory register
Short-term store (Working memory)
Long-term store

21. James J. Gibson (1904–1979) Distinctive approach to perception
Ecological approach
Two meanings of information:
1. Information about the external world received in the form of signals that we must encode in order to process the information contained in them
2. Information about the world can be picked up directly

22. Cognition and Reality
Ecological validity: something to say about what people do in real, culturally significant situations

23. Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) 1978: Nobel prize for economics
PhD in political science
Important contributions to cognitive psychology

24. Spurious Correlation and the Nature of Causality
Spurious correlation: occurs whenever the correlation between two variables is due to a common cause
Concept implies the existence of a true correlation
Problem: how are these distinguished?

25. Computer Simulation Turing’s Test Artificial intelligence Alan Turing
‘Can computers really think?’
Concrete situation = imitation game
Artificial intelligence
Series of computer simulations of human thinking written by Allen Newell and Herbert Simon
Ex. program to play chess

26. Criticisms of Computer Simulation
What they appear to leave out
Ex. Emotions
Computer programs do not show the kind of insightful behaviour that Gestalt psychologists believed to be characteristic of problem solving
Computer tells us nothing of how the nervous system works, therefore inadequate explanation of human behaviour

27. Amos Tversky (1937–1996) and Daniel Kahneman (1934–)
Collaborative research program
Focus: judgment and choice
Good judgment is a prerequisite for being able to make good decisions
Kahneman
Won Nobel prize for economics in 2002
Dual process theory in which judgment is the outcome of two distinct systems
System 1: intuition
System 2: reason

28. Heuristics and Biases Heuristics: rules of thumb
Biases: ways in which we are predisposed to make judgments
Tversky and Kahneman
Uncovered several biases associated with particular heuristics

29. Intuitive Statistics Law of large numbers Law of averages
Gambler’s fallacy

30. Representativeness and the Belief in the Law of Small Numbers
Belief in law of small numbers leads to use of the representativeness heuristic

31. Adjustment and Anchoring
When people make judgments of the magnitude of something, the initial value to which they are exposed will bias their judgment

32. Availability
Availability plays a central role in the way we recall previous experiences
There may be experiences we have had that do not come readily to mind

33. Do statistics courses help?
Virtually all psychology majors take courses in research methods and statistics
Undergraduate training in research methods may not automatically lead students to successfully apply what they have been taught