Cognition, Sixth Edition, Robert J.

Sternberg
Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

Introduction to Cognitive
Psychology
Tristan Astrid A. del Rosario, RPm
 Think About It.
1. Why do we remember people whom we met
years ago, but sometimes forget something
we learned in a course right after we’re done
with it?

2. How do we manage to carry on a

conversation with one person at a party, and
simultaneously eavesdrop on another more
interesting conversation taking place near you?
 Food for Thought
Cognitive Psychology answers:

1. How does the human mind perceive what

the senses receive?
2. How do we move information from memory,
keep it there, and retrieve it when needed?
3. Why do we make the wrong decisions, even
when looking back, we knew what to do?
 In this chapter…

• What is cognitive psychology?

• How did psychology develop as a
science?
• How did cognitive psychology develop
from psychology?
• How have other disciplines contributed
to the development of theory and
research in cognitive psychology?
 In this chapter…
• What methods do cognitive psychologists
use to study how people think?
• What are three cognitive models of
intelligence?
• What are the current issues and various
fields of study within cognitive
psychology?
 Cognitive Psychology Is…
• The study of how people perceive, learn,
remember, and think about information.
Problem
Solving
Memory Decision
Making

Attention Reasoning

Perception Language
 Heuristics
Are mental shortcuts we use to process
information. When we think about an
issue and certain examples immediately
come to mind, we are using the
“availability heuristic”.
For example when, when we are thinking
about buying a new cell phone, we are
much more likely to buy a new brand and
model of a phone that is familiar.
 Dialectic

Thesis flaws/alt idea Antithesis

Synthesis:
best of both

New thesis flaws/alt idea

Dialectic. A developmental process whereby ideas evolve
over time through a back-and-forth exchange of ideas; in a
way, it is like a discussion spread out over an extended period
of time. The dialectical process looks like this:

A thesis is proposed. A thesis is a statement of belief. For

example, some people believe that human nature governs
many aspects of human behavior.
An antithesis emerges. An antithesis is a statement that
counters a previous statement of belief. For example, an
alternative view is that our nurture (the environmental contexts
in which we are reared) almost entirely determines many
aspects of human behavior.
A synthesis integrates the viewpoints. A synthesis
integrates the most credible features of each of two (or more)
views. For example, in the debate over nature versus nurture,
the interaction between our innate (inborn) nature and
environmental nurture may govern human nature.
 Philosophical Antecedents

Rationalist
• Acquire knowledge
through thinking and
logical analysis

Empiricist
• Acquire knowledge via
empirical evidence
Rationalism Empiricism
(Descartes) (Locke)

Synthesis:

Both have a role

(Kant)
 Psychological Antecedents

Structuralism
• What are the
elementary contents
(structures) of the
human mind?

Functionalism
• How and why does the
mind work?
Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German
psychologist whose ideas contributed to the
development of structuralism. Wundt is often viewed
as the founder of structuralism in psychology
(Structuralism, 2009).
Wundt used a variety of methods
in his research. One of these methods was
introspection.
Introspection is a deliberate looking inward at
pieces of information passing through consciousness.
The aim of introspection is to look at the elementary
components of an object or process.
A leader in guiding functionalism toward pragmatism
was William James (1842–1910). His chief functional
contribution to the field of psychology was a single book:
his landmark Principles of Psychology (1890/1970).

Pragmatists. Believe that knowledge is validated by its

usefulness: What can you do with it? Pragmatists are
concerned not only with knowing what people do; they
also want to know what we can do with our knowledge of
what people do. For example, pragmatists believe in the
importance of the psychology of learning and memory.
Why? Because it can help us improve the performance
of children in school. It can also help us learn to
remember the names of people we meet.
Structuralism Functionalism
(Wundt) (James)

Synthesis:
Associationism
(Ebbinghaus &
Thorndike)
 Psychological Antecedents

Associationism
• How can events or
ideas become
associated in the
mind?
Behaviorism
• What is the relation
between behavior
and environment?
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949), held that the role of
“satisfaction” is the key to forming associations.

Thorndike termed this principle the law of effect (1905): A

stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time if an
organism is rewarded for that response. Thorndike believed
that an organism learns to respond in a given way (the effect)
in a given situation if it is rewarded repeatedly for doing so (the
satisfaction, which serves as a stimulus to future actions).

Example: a child given treats for solving arithmetic problems

learns to solve arithmetic problems accurately because the
child forms associations between valid solutions and treats.
Associationism. Examines how elements of
the mind, such as events or ideas, can become
associated with one another in the mind to
result in a form of learning. For example,
associations may result from:

contiguity (associating things that tend to occur

together at about the same time);
similarity (associating things with similar
features or properties); or
contrast (associating things that show
polarities, such as hot/cold, light/dark, day/
night).
The Law of Contiguity states that we associate things
that occur close to each other in time or space. For
example, if we think of thunder, we immediately think of
lightning, since the two often occur one after the other.

The Law of Similarity states that when two things are

very similar to each other, the thought of one will often
trigger the thought of the other. For example, when we
think of coffee, we often think of tea as well.

The Law of Contrast states that the thought of

something is likely to trigger the thought of its direct
opposite. For example, when we hear the word "hot,"
we often think of the word "cold."
Associationism Behaviorism
(Thorndike) (Pavlov)

Synthesis:
Radical behaviorism
(Watson & Skinner)
Behaviorism
Behaviorism focuses only on the relation between observable
behavior and environmental events or stimuli

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) studied involuntary learning

behavior of this sort. He began with the observation that dogs
salivated in response to the sight of the lab technician who fed
them. This response occurred before the dogs even saw
whether the technician had food. To Pavlov, this response
indicated a form of learning (classically conditioned
learning), over which the dogs had no conscious control.
The “father” of radical behaviorism is John Watson (1878–
1958). Watson had no use for internal mental contents or
mechanisms. He believed that psychologists should
concentrate only on the study of observable behavior (Doyle,
2000). He dismissed thinking as nothing more than
subvocalized speech.

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), a radical behaviorist, believed that

virtually all forms of human behavior, not just learning, could be
explained by behavior emitted n reaction to the environment.

He rejected mental mechanisms. He believed instead that

operant conditioning—involving the strengthening or
weakening of behavior, contingent on the presence or absence
of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments—could explain all
forms of human behavior.
 Less radical
Behaviorism behaviorist
dominated cognitive map –a
until…. thought! (Tolman)

Synthesis:
Cognitions should play
an active role in
psychology
(Gestalt, Bandura)
Gestalt psychology
states that we best understand psychological
phenomena when we view them as organized,
structured wholes. According to this view, we
cannot fully understand behavior when we only break
phenomena down into smaller parts.

The maxim “the whole is more than the sum of its

parts” aptly sums up the Gestalt perspective. To
understand the perception of a flower, for example, we
would have to take into account the whole of the
experience. We could not understand such a perception
merely in terms of a description of forms, colors, sizes,
and so on.
 Emergence of Cognitive
Psychology
Cognitivism is the belief that much of human
behavior can be understood in terms of how
people think.
• Lashley emphasized that the brain actively
processes information
• Turing test and artificial intelligence
• A cognitive revolution occurred and
increased interest in the study of mental
processes (cognitions)
 Cognition and Intelligence

• Intelligence involves
– The capacity to learn from
experience, using metacognitive
processes to enhance learning
– The ability to adapt to the surrounding
environment
Cognitive Models of Intelligence
• Three-stratum model of intelligence
(Carroll)
Stratum I:
Specific abilities
(e.g., spelling ability)

Stratum II:
Broad abilities (e.g., fluid and
crystallized intelligence)

Stratum III:
General intelligence (g)
 Cognitive Models of Intelligence
• Theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner)
 Cognitive Models of Intelligence

• Triarchic theory of intelligence (Sternberg)

– Intelligence consists of creative, analytical, and
practical abilities
 Goals of Research
• Data gathering
• Data analysis
• Theory development
• Hypothesis formation
• Hypothesis testing
• Application to real world
 Research Methods
• Controlled experiments
• Psychobiological research
• Self reports
• Case studies
• Naturalistic observation
• Computer simulations and artificial
 In an Experiment…
• Manipulate the independent variable
– Create experimental group
– Create control group
– Randomly assign participants

• Measure the dependent variable

– Same for all groups

• Control all other variables

Research Topic: Decision making and its impact on an
organization

"Decision making" influences the organization, therefore,

this is the Independent Variable

"impact in an organization" the organization is being

impacted on, therefore, this is the Dependent variable
 Typical Independent Variables
• Characteristics of the situation
– Presence vs. absence of astimulus
• Characteristics of the task
– Reading vs. listening to wordsfor
comprehension
• Characteristics of participants
– Age differences
 Typical Dependent Variables

• Percent correct/error rate

– Accuracy of mentalprocessing

• Reaction time (milliseconds)

– Speed of mental processing
 Correlational Studies
• Cannot infer causation
• Simply measure variables of interest
• Nature of relationship
– Positivecorrelation
– Negativecorrelation

• Strength of relationship
– Determined by size of“r”

Pearson’s r is a number that can range from –1.00 (a negative

correlation) to 0 (no correlation) to 1.00 (a positive
correlation).
A positive relationship indicates that as one
variable increases (e.g., vocabulary size), another
variable also increases (e.g., reading
comprehension).

A negative relationship indicates that as the

measure of one variable increases (e.g., fatigue),
the measure of another decreases (e.g., alertness).

No correlation—that is, when the coefficient is 0—

indicates that there is no pattern or relationship in
the change of two variables (e.g., intelligence and
earlobe length). In this final case, both variables
may change, but the variables do not vary together
in a consistent pattern.
 Psychobiological Studies

• Postmortemstudies
– Examine cortex of dyslexics after death
• Brain-damaged individuals and their
deficits
– Study amnesiacs with hippocampus damage
• Monitor a participant doing a cognitive
task
– Measure brain activity while a participant is
reciting a poem
 Other Methods

• Self-reports
– An individual’s own account of
cognitive processes
• Verbal protocol, diarystudy
• Case studies
– In-depth studies of individuals
• Genie, PhineasGage
 Other Methods

• Naturalistic observation
– Studies of cognitive performance in
everyday situations outside of the lab
• Monitor decision-making of pilotsduring
flights
 Computers in Research

• Analogy for human cognition

– The sequence of symbol
manipulation that underlies thinking
– The goal: discovery of the programs
in human memory
• Computer simulations of artificial
intelligence
– Recreate human processes using
computers