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Cognitive Processes
PSY 334
Chapter 1 – The Science of
Cognition
Study Aids
 On reserve at the library:

An old edition of the textbook – page
numbers on the syllabus correspond to the
current edition, not this one.
 See pgs 5-6, Chapter 1: How to study
this book.

Pay special attention to the summary
statements highlighted between lines in the
textbook.
Early History
 Empiricism vs nativism (nurture vs
nature)
 Famous empiricists:

Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Mill
 Famous nativists:

Descartes, Kant
 Lots of philosophical speculation but no
use of the scientific method to answer
questions.
Scientific Psychology
 Scientific study began in 1879:


Structuralism – Wundt, Titchener and
systematic, analytic introspection.
Functionalism -- William James’ armchair
introspection.
 Behaviorism (1920):


Thorndike – consciousness as excess
baggage.
Watson – consciousness as superstition.
Early Mentalists
 Gestalt psychologists (German):
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Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler
 Critics of behaviorism:
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Tolman
 European psychologists:
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Bartlett
Luria
Piaget
Mind for Behaviorists
Input:
Sensation
Output:
Behavior
What happens inside the “box” to
produce the observed behavior?
Mind for Cognitive Theorists
Mental
Representations:
Input:
Sensation
Goals, Expectations,
Cognitive Maps
Processes
What happens inside the “box” to
produce the observed behavior?
Output:
Behavior
Three Important Influences
 Human performance studies in WWII –
information needed to train military.
 Artificial intelligence – thinking about
how machines accomplish things leads
to more analytical thinking about how
humans do.
 Linguistics – behaviorist principles could
not account for the complexities of
language use.
Pioneers of Cognitive
Psychology
 Information theory
 Donald Broadbent
 Artificial Intelligence
 Newell & Simon
 Linguistics
 Chomsky
 Miller
 Neisser’s book “Cognitive Psychology”
Sternberg’s Paradigm:
396
Is “9” part of this number?
Concerns about Cognitive
Models
 Relevance – do lab-task processes
operate in the same manner in real life?
 Sufficiency – can simple theories explain
complex processes?

Cognitive architectures
 Necessity – does the mind actually work
as described by specific theories?

Cognitive neuroscience
Other Approaches to Cognitive
Psychology
 Connectionism (neural net models) –
can higher level functions be
accomplished by connected neurons?

Parallel distributed processing (PDP) -Rumelhart & McClelland
 Situated cognition – the ecological
approach

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Gibson’s affordances
Do we explain cognition in terms of the
external world or internal mind?
Cognitive Neuroscience
 Pages 16-31 review basic concepts
about the brain.

If you have not taken PSY 210 and find
this material confusing, come see me.
 New methods permit study of normal
human functioning in more complex
tasks:


EEG
Imaging techniques – PET & fMRI