History and Introduction

Chapter 1

Cognitive psychology
• A definition:

• The scientific study of mental processes such as

perceiving, remembering, using language, reasoning,
and solving problems.

• The formal discipline of “Cognitive Psychology” started

in the mid-1900s during the cognitive revolution, and
the term ‘cognitive psychology’ did not emerge until
1967.

• Its roots can be traced back much further. Intimately

intertwined with the history of experimental psychology.

History

Timeline showing early experiments studying the

mind in the 1800s and events associated with the
rise of behaviorism in the 1900s
 Donders (1868)
• Interested in how long it takes to make a decision.

• Used Reaction Time (RT) to measure decision making.

Simple Task Choice Task

Franciscus Donders
1818-1889
“subtractive method”
Simple RT = stimulus perception + response ≈ 220 ms
Choice RT = stimulus perception + decision + response ≈ 320 ms

Decision = Choice RT - Simple RT ≈ 320 ms - 220 ms = 100 ms

From philosophy to science

• Donders’ experiment is important because it illustrates
that mental process cannot be measured directly, they
must be inferred...

• from behavior.

• from biological changes.

• from behavioral differences associated with biological

differences.

• We use multiple methodologies to triangulate

answers...
Donders

Early experimental psychology:

Structuralism

• Influential figures: Wundt & Titchner

• Focused on identifying the basic building blocks

of conscious experience.

• Tried to make a “periodic table” of the mind.

Wilhelm Wundt
• Main method: “Analytic Introspection” under controlled
1832-1920
conditions.

• Contribution to Cognitive Psychology

• Emphasized systematic, controlled observation.

• Importance of the understanding the structure of the

mind and higher cognitive processes.

• Limitation

• Reliance on introspection. Too Subjective.

Edward Titchner
1867-1927

Wundt

Donders

Titchner
Early experimental psychology
(% Savings)

• Read lists of nonsense syllables

(e.g., ZIF, DAX) aloud many times
to determine number of
repetitions necessary to repeat
list without errors

• Independent Variable

• Time between tests.

• Dependent Variable
Hermann Ebbinghaus
• Savings (1850-1909)
= [(Initial repetitions)-(Relearning repetitions)]
Initial repetitions

= [(4)-(2)] = 2 = 50%
4 4

Wundt Ebbinghaus

Donders

Titchner

Early experimental psychology:

Functionalists
• Guiding Principles:

• Function of the mind, not the structure of the mind, is paramount

• Introspection still ok, but should be describing behavior

• Contribution to Cognitive Psychology

• Helped translate the relevance of experimental psychology to

other human endeavors William James
1842-1910

• William James

• wrote “Principles of Psychology”, using introspection as his

primary method, and presaged many of the things that we’ve
studied for the 100+ years since

• John Dewey

• Best known for impact on education. Popularized student-

centered, non-traditional approaches to education.
John Dewey
1859-1952
 von Helmholtz

Ebbinghaus James
Wundt

Donders
Fechner Dewey

Titchner

• Psychophysics

• Fechner color effect:

• http://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/~zawischa/ITP/benhamtop.html

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benham%27s_top

• Fechner’s Law: a subjective sensation (S) is proportional to the

logarithm of the stimulus intensity (I)
Gustav Fechner
1801-1887 • S = K Log I

• S: Psychological sensation

• I: Physical intensity of the stimulus

• I*3=S+S

• I*3*3=S+S+S

• Geometric increase in stimulus intensity leads to an additive increase

in sensation.

• Influenced Ebbinghaus, Wundt, Helmholtz

• The mind and body are different sides of one reality.

• Attempted to discover a mathematical relation

Gustav Fechner between mind and body (mathematical modeling).
1801-1887

• “Every sensation presents itself as an indivisible unit;

and it is quite impossible to read any clear meaning
into the notion that they are masses of units
combined.”

• criticism: stimuli may be composite, sensations are

not. William James
1842-1910
 • Unconscious inference (studying vision)
Hermann von Helmholtz
1821-1894
• Some of our perceptions are the result
of unconscious assumptions we
make about the environment

• We infer much of what we know about

the world

Helmholtz

Ebbinghaus James
Wundt

Donders
Fechner Dewey

Titchner Pavlov
Thorndike

• Classical conditioning (using dogs)

• CS –

• UCS –

• UCR –

• CR –
Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936)

• Law of effect (using cats)

• Puzzle box

• Precursor of ‘operant’ or
‘instrumental’ conditioning

• Alpha, Beta Tests

(ASVAB; armed forces test)

• ‘Active Learning’ Edward Thorndike

(1874-1959)
 von Helmholtz

Ebbinghaus James
Wundt

Donders
Fechner Dewey

Titchner Pavlov
Thorndike

Early experimental psychology:

Behaviorism
• Influential figures:

• John B. Watson

• B. F. Skinner

• Guiding Principles:
Burrhus Skinner
• Only focus on behavior which is observable. 1904-1990
• Explain behavior; not thought, the mind, consciousness, etc.

• Contribution to Cognitive Psychology

• Emphasis on rigorous experimentation.

• Powerful theories of learning

• Classical Conditioning (from Ivan Pavlov)

• e.g., Pavlov’s dog learned relationship between bell

and food.

• Operant Conditioning (from Edward Thorndike)

• e.g., A dog learns to sit for a treat.

John Broadus Watson
1878-1958
• “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-
formed, and my own specified world to bring
them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one
at random and train him to become any type
of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer,
artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even
beggar-man and thief, regardless of his
talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am
going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so
have the advocates of the contrary and they
have been doing it for many thousands of
years.” [Behaviorism (1930), p. 82]

John Broadus Watson

1878-1958

The Decline of Behaviorism

• A controversy over language acquisition

• Skinner (1957)

• Argued children learn language through operant

conditioning

• Children imitate speech they hear

• Correct speech is rewarded

• Opposition from Chomsky (linguist).

 The Decline of Behaviorism
• Noam Chomsky (1959)

• Argued children do not only learn

language through imitation and
reinforcement, they generate.

• Children say things they have never

heard and can not be imitating

• Children say things that are incorrect

and have not been rewarded for

• Language must be determined by inborn

biological program (LAD)

• “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”

• Syntax vs. semantics

• What happens when the rats are placed

Edward Chace Tolman in a different arm of the maze?
1886-1959

• The rats navigated to the specific arm

where they previously found food

• Supported Latent Learning, not

stimulus-response learning
 Tolman (1938)

• (a) Rat initially explores the maze

• (b) Learns to turn right to obtain food at B when it starts at A

• (c) when placed at C, the rat turns left to reach the food at
B.

Limitations of Behaviorism
• Failures to account for aspects of human behavior

• Over-emphasis on animal experimentation

• Language

• Skinner suggested language was learned through basic

principles of operant conditioning (1957).

• i.e., we learn to say what is rewarded

• Fails to account for Generativity of language.

• The creation of novel utterances

that have never been rewarded in the past.

• e.g., Chomsky (1959; linguist)

Failure to consider intervening mental

processes
Behaviorism:
S"muli Responses

Cognitive Psychology:
S"muli Mental0Processes Responses

• Stimulus (memorize this list)

• lion, onion, Bill, firefighter, carrot,

zebra, John, clerk, Tom, nurse, cow

• Response (recall)

• lion, zebra, cow, onion, carrot,

firefighter, clerk, nurse, John, Bill, Tom

• Mental Processes

• Strategies, grouping, reorganization, etc.

 The Cognitive Revolution

• Throughout the 1950s there was a shift in emphasis

from behaviorist’s stimulus–response relationships to
an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms
of the mind

Overview of Different Approaches

S"muli Mental0Processes Responses

• Philosophy

• Think about mental processes

• Structuralism (Introspection)

• Try to directly tap into mental processes

• The What of experience

• Behaviorism

• Study stimulus-response relationships

• Ignore mental processes

• Cognitive Psychology

• Study stimulus-response relationships

• Make inferences about mental processes

• The How of experience

The rebirth of the study of the mind

• The digital revolution

• Information Processing: inputs are transformed in

stages to generate outputs.

• Flow diagrams for digital computers.

• Flow diagrams for the mind

• Colin Cherry (1953): selective attention.

• Broadbent’s information processing model of

attention.

Broadbent’s filter model for

selective attention (1958)
• How can you stay focused on
your conversation?

• You must filter out extraneous

information.

• “Hey Matt!”

• Attention can still be broken

into (we will explore these
ideas more in chapter 4).

• Cocktail party (Cherry, 1953)

Inputs Detector To memory

Filter (semantic)

Studying the Mind

• To understand complex cognitive behaviors:

• Measure observable behavior.

• Make inferences about underlying cognitive activity.

• Consider what this behavior says about how the

mind works.
 Researching the Mind

• Behavior approach measures relationship between

stimuli and behavior.

• Physiological approach measures relationship

between physiology and behavior.

• Both contribute to our understanding of cognition.

Researching the Mind:

Memory Consolidation

• Memory for recent events is fragile.

• If processing is disrupted, recent memories can fail to

be consolidated.

• New information can interfere with memory

consolidation.

• Muller & Pilzecker (1900)

• Two different groups learned 2 lists of items.

• “Immediate” and “delay” groups.

Interference!

Consolidation!
• Gais et al. (2007)

• Tested memory for word pairs in two groups: “Sleep” and “awake”

• “Sleep” slept immediately after studying. “Awake” studied, stayed up for

10 hours, then slept. Equally rested before testing.

• Sleep group remembered more.

Memory consolidation:
Physiology
• Injecting rats with protein synthesis inhibitors prevents
the formation of memories (Flexner et al., 1963).

• The effect of sleep on memory consolidation in the

hippocampus (Gais et al., 2006, 2007).

Hippocampus

Synthesis essay
• Memory impairment

• Korsakoff’s

• Anterograde/retrograde amnesia

• Neural processing

• Mirror neurons

• Disorders

• Phantom limb syndrome

• Prosopagnosia

• Athletes and, e.g., memory disorders (TBI)

• Memory savants

• Autism

• Attention

• Cell phones and driving

• ADHD

• Language

• Acquisition

• Disorders (e.g., Broca’s aphasia)