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 Augustine: empirical approach to

understanding; tabla rasa approach memory
to mind
 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”

• John Watson
and the
dominance of
B. F. Skinner: only behaviorism
observable phenomena are 1900-1950
scientific
 WWII: Human/Machine interactions
• 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: problem-
solving Jerome Bruner: categorization