Cognition Lectures: 1,2,3,4 & 5 Q: What is cognition? => The mental actions or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through experience e and the sense. => Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. Q: Why research Cognition? => To learn why we think the way we think and so the things we do => To make discoveries about conditions that's effect cognition processes o Aging o Mood Illness o Brain injury Lessons from Clive Wearing: = Cognition activities can dissociate o Clive's episode memory is impaired, but other function are spared. => Cognition is a collection of different abilities/processes: o Perception o Attention o Memory o Language o Decision making
A Lecture: " Perception: Perceive the sounds and view slides " Attention: pay attention to what the person is saying · Memory: Use you memory of a lecture: try to encode new information · Decision making: deciding to stay awake The history of cognitive psychology: Q: How to study the mind: Four Major Stops 1. Philosophy a. Thinking about mental processes 2. Structuralism and functionalism a. Determining how to student mental process; the how and why of experience 3. Behaviorism a. Study stimulus-response relationships, ignore mental processes 4. Cognitive psychology a. Making inferences about mental processes · Philosophical Antecedents => Thinking about thinking goes back to Ancient Greece => They studied how human personality and characteristics were linked to mental processes => Plato and Aristotle 2
1. Philosophical roots of psychology: + Plato (428 BCE) o First Early a Philosopher to consider the human mind = What did he think? We use logic to understand the world The world is a "reflection of our reality" = Rationalism: · Knowledge comes from observation but is also a priori · There is an innate of our minds · Aristotle (384 BCE) o Combines philosophical and scientific approaches to thinking = Empiricism: · All knowledge comes from experiences and observation The basis of thought is forming association bases on observations · The mind is nothing before forming association · Foundation of many psychological theories Key debates between these philosophers are still around: · Rationalism vs. Empiricism · Innate vs. Acquired abilities · Nature vs. Nurture Influence sin Cognitive Psychology: Rationalism: Logical Analysis Empiricism: Observation 3