Cognitive Psychology -> study of intelligent behaviour (thinking) -> how people learn, think, speak, attention, problem solve, decision making - Observe behaviour to infer thought; much of cognition is unconscious and complex History of Cognitive Psychology Wilhelm Wundt - > Structuralism -> interested in studying structure of thought - Investigated experiences by analytic introspection (observation of internal events) - Described focus attention vs divided attention -> described attention spans William James -> Functionalism - Studied the purpose of thought rather than its elements - Wanted to study the prediction and control of behavior through observation of thought Assumptions of the study of the mind The Scientific Study of the Mind The scientific method has 4 key principles: 1. Empiricism 2. Determinism 3. Testability 4. Parsimony 1. Knowledge is gained through observation -> mind cannot be directly observed -> so we study the effects of the mind 2. Assume things have a cause 3. Any theory related to testability is false 4. Calls researchers to go with the simplest explanation to a problem Behaviourism -> Watson -> concerned with behavior as a series of stimuli and responses - Shows that something unobservable is causing something important and observable; so it should be studied - Pavlov's classical conditioning - stimulus in the env leads to response - Principle: - US -> UR - US + NS -> UR x repeated tries will lead to NS -> UR - Watson believes brain processes are unimportant to behavior Skinner -> behaviourist -> operant conditioning - a reward/punishment behaviour can also lead to a response Tolman -> rat maze exp -> latent learning (w/o reward or punishment) exists
Themes in Cognitive Psychology 1. Representationalism describes how the unobservable mind can act on the real world 2. Computation assumes the mind is an information processor 3. The biological perspective believes information is represented as patterns of activity between interconnected neurons in a way similar to the brain 4. Embodied cognition is the study of cognition as we intera with the world Representationalism - Cognition is caused by the brain but is not about the brain - thought is something special and different from the physical world - There is intentionality about our thought - they are representations about possible real situations Computation - The mind is a type of computer as it processes information - Input -> store -> manipulate -> output - - the goal is to discover the rule based operator (function) that allows input -> output - Symbol systems are representations (about a possible situation) and computational (can be manipulated) - Grounding problem in symbol system; continuous questioning just keeps replacing symbols with one another so the base is never reached -> only by sensing the real thing as humans do as we have bodies would we actually know what a symbol represents -> so would AI be able to solve the grounding problem? Modern cognitive psychology is all based on the assumptions that the mind operates by manipulating symbols that represent thoughts