-Cognition: mental process of gaining knowledge and understanding thoughts, experiences, senses. Collection of perception, memory, attention, language, decision making -Thoughts and actions (cognitive function) regulated by our brain-connections of 100B+ brain nerve cells -Aspect specific, adapts (thoughts/actions) from environment and cognition changes as result of learning -Zoom fatigue: lack of body language, social cues, eye contact. Audio out of synch so higher processing demands. Easily distracted -Cognitive function decline w/ age and from conditions, injury -Cognitive faculties can dissociate (Clive Wearing) -Models and controversies within cognitive psych research -Findings from experiments can inform models/theories -Critical thinking skills for evaluating scientific findings/articles -Carl Sagan: certainty cannot be reached. We can improve and learn from mistakes but uncertainty remains -Ancient Greek philosophers thought about sensations/memory (locus of mind) and basis of personality -Epistemology: philosophical branch, studies human knowledge -#1 Socrates: questioning everything because of uncertainty to get to truth- clarification (why you think that), seeking assumptions (laughter-something is funny), seeking alternatives (you think pizza is gross, it's probably because you didn't have the one I eat). Basis of cog psych and CBT (question assumptions that lead to thoughts). -#2 Plato: Knowledge is the result of experience and prior knowledge (reason)-innate knowledge. Rationalism. Deductive reasoning. What we see if colored by what we know (our reality). Bottom up and top-down interact. #3 Aristotle: empiricism, inductive reasoning (learn from observation). Mind and thoughts arise from associations -Experimental Psychology: structuralism (basic elements of thought and how they combine, introspection, systematic observation of elements of mind (people report thoughts/observations). Basic elements form complex cognitive processes (perception, memory, learning). Too subjective, not replicable (ex pure introspection), or too simplistic -Wilhem Wundt: structuralism, thoughts simplest units of mind followed laws to form complex thoughts. Mental periodic table of element. Empirical introspection to create thoughts-psychophysics. Mental chronometry-"thought meter" (estimating time for participant to perceive something)-delay -Psychophysics: links sensory experiences (mental process) to physical change to examine basic cognitive phenomenon (feather touch/see diff in color)
-Edward Titchener: followed on Wundt's work, practiced pure introspection (asked for interpretations) to study basic elements of thought. Assessed how a complex thought can be broken down into basic elements-thought their associations form complex thought -Functionalism: why mind works. Mind serves a function, so it adapts to current goals and environment, cognition changes but can be hard to study because of that -William James (functionalist): practical approach to studying cognition, consciousness is personal and cannot be broken down because it always changes, studied usefulness of knowledge in real world was broader -Behaviorism: 1900 psych struggling to be taken serious as a science (studying mind not applicable to scientific method), led to shift in only studying behavior (it was observable, input, output), it assumed people acted the same as animals. Issue: went too far to explain everything, could not account for complex behaviors, learning not the same for everyone, behaviorism limitation (ex language, individual mental strategies) -Classical conditioning (Pavlov): learning by making associations (cue, stimuli, natural response) -Instrumental learning (Thorndike) and Operant conditioning (Skinner): behavior is