Calicut University- Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (CU-FYUGP)

B. Sc. Psychology
Semester 2

Major: Science Of Mental Processes

Module 1: Cognition

Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and
think about information. A cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive
various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn
language.

History of Cognitive Psychology

Philosophical Antecedents of Psychology : Rationalism vs Empiricism
Where and when did the study of cognitive psychology begin? Historians of psychology
usually trace the earliest roots of psychology to two approaches to understanding the human
mind:
● Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the world,in
part through introspection, the examination of inner ideas and experiences.
● Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining functions in living
matter,primarily through empirical (observation-based) methods.
● Two Greek philosophers, Plato (ca. 428–348 B.C.) and his student Aristotle
(384–322 B.C.), have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology and many other
fields. Plato was a rationalist. A rationalist believes that the route to knowledge is through
thinking and logical analysis. That is, a rationalist does not need any experiments to
develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested in cognitive processes would
appeal to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.
 ● In contrast, Aristotle (a naturalist and biologist as well as a philosopher) was an
empiricist. An empiricist believes that we acquire knowledge via empirical
evidence—that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation .
In order to explore how the human mind works, empiricists would design experiments and
conduct studies in which they could observe the behavior and processes of interest to them.
Empiricism therefore leads directly to empirical investigations of psychology.
In contrast, rationalism is important in theory development. Rationalist theories without
any connection to observations gained through empiricist methods may not be valid; but
mountains of observational data without an organizing theoretical framework may not be
meaningful. Most psychologists today seek a synthesis of the two. They base empirical
observations on theory in order to explain what they have observed in their experiments.
In turn, they use these observations to revise their theories when they find that the theories
cannot account for their real-world observations.
● The contrasting ideas of rationalism and empiricism became prominent with the
French rationalist René Descartes (1596–1650) and the British empiricist John
Locke (1632–1704). Descartes viewed the introspective, reflective method as being
superior to empirical methods for finding truth. The famous expression “cogito, ergo
sum” (I think, therefore I am) stems from Descartes. He maintained that the only
proof of his existence is that he was thinking and doubting. Descartes felt that one
could not rely on one’s senses because those very senses have often proven to be
deceptive (think of optical illusions, for example).
● Locke, in contrast, had more enthusiasm for empirical observation (Leahey, 2003).
Locke believed that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek
knowledge through empirical observation. Locke’s term for this view was tabula
rasa (meaning “blank slate” in Latin). The idea is that life and experience “write”
knowledge on us. For Locke,then, the study of learning was the key to
understanding the human mind. He believed that there are no innate ideas.
● In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
dialectically synthesized the views of Descartes and Locke, arguing that both
rationalism and empiricism have their place. Both must work together in the quest
for truth. Most psychologists today accept Kant’s synthesis.
Psychological Antecedents of Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology has roots in many different ideas and approaches. The approaches
include early approaches such as structuralism and functionalism, followed by
associationism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology.
Structuralism
● Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German psychologist whose ideas contributed
to the development of structuralism.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.The
introduction of introspection as an experimental method was an important change
in the field because the main emphasis in the study of the mind shifted from a
rationalist approach to the empiricist approach of trying to observe behavior in order
to draw conclusions about the subject of study. In experiments involving
introspection, individuals reported on their thoughts as they were working on a
given task. Researchers interested in problem solving could ask their participants to
think aloud while they were working on a puzzle so the researchers could gain
insight into the thoughts that go on in the participants’ minds. In introspection, then,
we can analyze our own perceptions.The method of introspection has some
challenges associated with it. First, people may not always be able to say exactly
what goes through their mind or may not be able to put it into adequate words.
Second, what they say may not be accurate.Third, the fact that people are asked to
pay attention to their thoughts or to speak out loud while they are working on a task
may itself alter the processes that are going on.
● Wundt had many followers. One was an American student, Edward Titchener
(1867–1927). Titchener (1910) is sometimes viewed as the first full-fledged
structuralist.
In any case, he certainly helped bring structuralism to the United States. His experiments
relied solely on the use of introspection, exploring psychology from the vantage point of
the experiencing individual. Other early psychologists criticized both the method
(introspection) and the focus (elementary structures of sensation) of structuralism. These
critiques gave rise to a new movement—functionalism.
Functionalism
● Functionalists held that the key to understanding the human mind and behavior was
to study the processes of how and why the mind works as it does.They were
particularly interested in the practical applications of their research.Functionalists
 were unified by the kinds of questions they asked but not necessarily by the answers
they found or by the methods they used for finding those answers. Because
functionalists believed in using whichever methods best answered a given
researcher’s questions, it seems natural for functionalism to have led to pragmatism.
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.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). Even today,cognitive psychologists
frequently point to the writings of James in discussions of core topics in the field,
such as attention, consciousness, and perception.
● John Dewey (1859–1952) was another early pragmatist who profoundly influenced
contemporary thinking in cognitive psychology. Dewey is remembered primarily
for his pragmatic approach to thinking and schooling.Although functionalists were
interested in how people learn, they did not really specify a mechanism by which
learning takes place. This task was taken up by another group, Associationists.
Associationism
Associationism examines how elements of the mind, like 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).
● In the late 1800s, associationist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was the first
experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically. Specifically,
Ebbinghaus studied his own mental processes. He made up lists of nonsense
syllables that consisted of a consonant and a vowel followed by another consonant
 (e.g., zax). He then took careful note of how long it took him to memorize those
lists. He counted his errors and recorded his response times. Through his self-
observations, Ebbinghaus studied how people learn and remember material through
rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material to be learned. Among other things, he
found that frequent repetition can fix mental associations more firmly in memory.
Thus, repetition aids in learning .
● Another influential associationist, 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). Thus, a child given treats for solving arithmetic problems learns to
solve arithmetic problems accurately because the child forms associations between
valid solutions and treats. These ideas were the predecessors of the development of
behaviorism.
Behaviorism
● 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. Behaviorism also
differed from previous movements in psychology by shifting the emphasis of
experimental research from human to animal participants. Historically, much
behaviorist work has been conducted (and still is) with laboratory animals, such as
rats or pigeons, because these animals allow for much greater behavioral control of
relationships between the environment and the behavior emitted in reaction to it
(although behaviorists also have conducted experiments with humans). One
problem with using nonhuman animals, however, is determining whether the
research can be generalized to humans (i.e., applied more generally to humans
instead of just to the kinds of nonhuman animals that were studied).
● B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), a radical behaviorist, believed that virtually all forms of
human behavior, not just learning, could be explained by behavior emittedin
reaction to the environment. Skinner conducted research primarily with non-human
animals. 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. Skinner applied his experimental analysis of behavior
to many psychological phenomena, such as learning, language acquisition, and
problem solving. Largely because of Skinner’s towering presence, behaviorism
dominated the discipline of psychology for several decades.
● Behaviorism was challenged on many fronts like language acquisition,
production,and comprehension. First, although it seemed to work well to account
for certain kinds of learning, behaviorism did not account as well for complex
mental activities such as language learning and problem solving. Second, more than
understanding people’s behavior, some psychologists wanted to know what went on
inside the head. Third, it often proved easier to use the techniques of behaviorism
in studying nonhuman animals than in studying human ones. Nonetheless,
behaviorism continues as a school of psychology, although not one that is
particularly sympathetic to the cognitive approach, which involves metaphorically
and sometimes literally peering inside people’s heads to understand how they learn,
remember, think, and reason.

Emergence of Cognitive Psychology

● In the early 1950s, a movement called the “cognitive revolution” took place in
response to behaviorism. Cognitivism is the belief that much of human behavior can
be understood in terms of how people think. It rejects the notion that psychologists
should avoid studying mental processes because they are unobservable. Cognitivism
is, in part, a synthesis of earlier forms of analysis, such as behaviorism and
Gestaltism. Like behaviorism, it adopts precise quantitative analysis to study how
people learn and think; like Gestaltism, it emphasizes internal mental processes.

Reasoning and Types of reasoning

Reasoning is the process of drawing conclusions from principles and from evidence
(Leighton & Sternberg,2004; Sternberg, 2004; Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972). In
reasoning, we move from what is already known to infer a new conclusion or to evaluate a
proposed conclusion.Reasoning is often divided into two types: deductive and inductive
reasoning.
1.Deductive Reasoning
Deductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from one or more general statements
regarding what is known to reach a logically certain conclusion (Johnson-Laird,2000;Rips,
1999; Williams, 2000). It often involves reasoning from one or more general statements
regarding what is known to a specific application of the general statement.
Deductive reasoning is based on logical propositions. A proposition is basically an
assertion, which may be either true or false. Examples are “Cognitive psychology students
are brilliant,” “Cognitive psychology students wear shoes,” or “Cognitive psychology
students like peanut butter.”

❖ One of the primary types of deductive reasoning is conditional reasoning, in which

the reasoner must draw a conclusion based on an if-then proposition. For example,
“If students study hard, then they score high on their exams.”
❖ The other key type of deductive reasoning is syllogistic reasoning, which is based
on the use of syllogisms. Syllogisms are deductive arguments that involve drawing
conclusions from two premises .

2. Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning is the process of reasoning from specific facts or observations to reach
a likely conclusion that may explain the facts. The inductive reasoner then may use that
probable conclusion to attempt to predict future specific instances (Johnson-Laird, 2000).
The key feature distinguishing inductive from deductive reasoning is that, in inductive
reasoning, we never can reach a logically certain conclusion. We only can reach a
particularly well-founded or probable conclusion. With deductive reasoning, in contrast,
reaching logically certain—deductively valid—conclusions is possible.
For example, suppose that you notice that all the people enrolled in your cognitive
psychology course are on the dean’s list (or honor roll). From these observations, you could
reason inductively that all students who enroll in cognitive psychology are excellent
students (or at least earn the grades to give that impression). However, unless you can
observe the grade-point averages of all people whoever have taken or ever will take
cognitive psychology, you will be unable to prove your conclusion. Furthermore, a single
poor student who happened to enroll in a cognitive psychology course would disprove your
conclusion. Still, after large numbers of observations, you might conclude that you had
made enough observations to reason inductively.
Psychological Theories of Reasoning
There are a wide variety of theoretical approaches to the psychology of human reasoning.
The main theoretical approaches are : mental logic,mental models and the probabilistic
approach. These are all general theories of reasoning in that they are intended to apply to
most reasoning tasks.
1. Mental Logic
The mental logic group of theories (there are several different versions of the basic account
[Braine and O’Brien, 1998; Rips, 1994]) are also known as formal rule theories. As the
name suggests, these accounts are close in spirit to Piaget’s view that adult human thought
is the operation of formal logic (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958). The idea behind these theories
is that people possess a system of formal mental logic that contains inference rules.Without
a particular rule, some inferences will be more difficult to make than others.
2.Mental Models
Mental models theory (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991) shares the
intuition with mental logic that people are in principle capable of logical reasoning.
However, rather than applying formal rules, mental models theory argues that people
reason over pictorial representations of what sentences mean. These representations
concern the different possibilities that a logical expression may allow.However, the limited
capacity of working memory ,people may not be able to represent all of the possibilities at
once. Rather, there may be a preferred initial representation or interpretation. This idea is
the core of the mental models theory. In this account each possibility is referred to as a
‘mental model’. How people manipulate these mental models explains their reasoning
performance.
3.The probabilistic Approach
According to the probabilistic approach, logic simply does not provide the right framework
for understanding people’s everyday inferences (Oaksford and Chater,1994,1998).The
probabilistic approach to reasoning suggests that people's reasoning is influenced by their
everyday, uncertain reasoning strategies, leading to biases and errors.
Reference
Sternberg, J.R., Sternberg, K,. & Mio,J. (2012). Cognitive psychology. 6th edition.
Wordsworth Cengage Learning

Prepared By

Sahla Sherin K

Assistant Professor

PG Department of Psychology

Al Shifa College of Arts & Science

Perinthalmanna