OUTLINE FOR CHAPTER 1

I. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED

• A. Dialectic (Hegel's idea that intellectual progress develops through thesis and antithesis)
  • First swing: the Renaissance
  • Second swing: the Reformation and Counter Reformation
  • Third swing: the Enlightenment
• B. Thesis
• C. Antithesis
• See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/ for more information

II. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTECEDENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY: RATIONALISM VERSUS EMPIRICISM

• A. Rationalist
  • the active mind vs. the passive mind
  • reasons vs. causes
    • moral behavior (act for a reason not a cause)
  • deductions vs. inductions
    • rationalists emphasized deduction
  • Descartes is father (Bacon father of empiricism)
    • Cartesian coordinates
    • Existence proof
• B. Empiricist
  • Reaction to Descartes's rationalism (innate ideas)
  • Stressed importance of experience
  • Skeptical of absolute certainty
  • Accepted Bacon's view of starting with observations
  • Followed Newton in creating laws of nature
  • Became major source of American psychology
    • colonization
  • Royal Society (1662)
• C. Tabula rasa
  • Locke's metaphor for empiricism

III. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTECEDENTS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• A. Early Dialectics in the Psychology of Cognition
  • 1. Structuralism
    • study parts of the mind
  • 2. Introspection
    • scientific study of mind by "looking inside"
    • problematic
• B. Functionalism: An Alternative to Structuralism
  • 1. Functionalism
    • study uses of the mind
  • 2. Pragmatists
    • usefulness is criterion for study of knowledge
• C. Associationism: An Integrative Synthesis
  • Old philosophical idea
  • Ebbinghaus and memory
  • Thorndike and trial and error learning
• D. Behaviorism
  • Response to introspection
  • John B. Watson pioneered behaviorism
  • B. F. Skinner developed it
• E. Gestalt Psychology
  • Successor of structuralism in Europe
  • Much research in perception (and learning too)

IV. EMERGENCE OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• A. Early Role of Psychobiology
  • Karl S. Lashley
    • location of memory
  • Donald Hebb
    • cell assemblies
  • Noam Chomsky
    • LAD
• B. Add a Dash of Technology: Engineering and Computation
  • Re-emergence of cognitive psychology after 1955
  • How do people THINK?
• C. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Allen Newell and Herbert Simon (Carnegie-Mellon University)
    • Thinking as computation

V. RESEARCH METHODS IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• A. Goals of Research
  • 1. Theory
    • Explain the data
    • Point to new research
  • 2. Hypothesis
    • Tentative prediction to be tested
    • Pass test: Keep
    • Fail test: Modify
  • 3. Statistical Significance
    • To make decisions (.05 and .01)
• B. Distinctive Research Methods
  • 1. Experiments on human behavior
    • a) Experimental Designs
      • 2 group minimum
      • Permit cause and effect conclusions
    • b) Experimental Method
    • c) Independent variable (IV)
      • reason for the research
    • d) Dependent variable (DV)
      • measurement of IV
    • e) Correlation
      • measure relationship between two or more variables
      • CANNOT make cause and effect statement
  • 2. Psychobiological research
    • a) Techniques for studying the brain
      • i) postmortem
      • ii) techniques for studying images showing structure & function
        • CAT scan uses X rays
        • PET scan uses metabolic activity
        • MRI uses magnetism
      • iii) obtaining information during normal performance of cognitive activity
    • b) Postmortem (anatomical)
    • c) Lesions
      • cut parts of brain in animals experimentally
      • study accident victims post traumatically
    • d) In vivo
  • 3. Self-Report, Case studies, and naturalistic observation
    • a) Ecological validity can be high
      • Because you are in its environment
  • 4. Computer Simulations and Artificial Intelligence
    • a) Computer simulations
      • For complex phenomena where variables are well known
  • 5. Putting It all together
    • a) Cognitive Science
      • "Cognitive science is the study of intelligence and intelligent systems, with particular reference to intelligent behavior as computation. .... Cognitive science can be approached in several ways. .... The principal contributing disciplines are experimental and cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence (within computer science), linguistics, philosophy (especially logic and epistemology), neuroscience and some others (anthropology, economics, and social psychology ...)" [Simon, H. A., & Kaplan, C. A. (1989). Foundations of cognitive science. In M. Posner (Ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science [pp. 1-47]. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press].

VI. KEY ISSUES AND FIELDS WITHIN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• A. Nature vs. Nurture
  • Where does behavior come from?
• B. Rationalism versus empiricism
  • Both are necessary
• C. Structures (contents, attributes, and products) versus Processes (of human thinking)
  • Both are necessary
• D. Domain generality versus domain specificity
  • How broadly does research apply?
• E. Validity of inferences versus ecological validity
  • Both are necessary
• F. Applied versus basic research
  • Both are necessary
• G. Biological versus behavioral methods
  • Both are necessary

VII. KEY IDEAS IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• A. Explanatory theory AND empirical data
  • Theory and data are useless without each other
• B. Cognition is generally adaptive but not in all specific instances
  • Not all cognitions are adaptive (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky)
• C. Cognitive processes interact with each other and with noncognitive processes
  • Isolating individual cognitive processes are useful, but misleading and simplistic
• D. Cognition needs to be studied through a variety of scientific methods
  • There is no one method that is better than all others
• E. All basic research may lead to applications and all applied research may lead to basic understanding
  • The distinction between applied and pure research is fuzzy