Introduction

Langston, PSY 4040Cognitive Psychology

Notes 1

Cognitive Psychology "Cognitive Psychology refers to all

processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.”

Cognitive Psychology You have sensory

input… Questions:

What is it? Perceptual processes, attention, memory, categorization.

What can/should I do? Memory, attention, goals, reasoning.

www.desertforest.net

Cognitive Psychology You have sensory

input… Questions:

What is it? What can/should I

do? How do I feel? Does

that matter?

www.allaboutwildlife.com

Cognitive Psychology "The experimental study of human

information processing in its many manifestations.” Experimental study: Based on the experimental method,

empirical, scientific. Human information processing: People sometimes operate as

information processors. Many manifestations: Information comes from the environment,

is stored briefly, some is selected for additional processing, something is done to it, it may result in some additional behavior.

Architecture See the box model.

SensoryStore LTMSTMFilter Pattern

RecognitionSelection

Input(Environment)

Response

Questions I watched Insidious. On my way to bed I

saw old women lurking in every dark corner.Why?

Answers Mitchell, Ropar, Ackroyd, and Rajendran

(2005):Some visual illusions driven by perceptual

processes, some driven by knowledge.Two versions of the Shepard illusion:

Answers Mitchell et al.

(2005):A. Perceptual

processes.B. Since they look like

tables, top down knowledge of perspective is also used, the illusion has a larger magnitude.

Mitchell et al. (2005, p. 997)

Answers It's not a stretch to go from that to being

pre-loaded by a movie to see things that aren't there:

Answers Ditto:

Answers A lot of people think

they see something behind the man in this picture:

Cognitive? What do you see

here?

Cognitive? What do you see

here?

Cognitive? Do you see

faces in these pictures (Riekki, Lindeman, Aleneff, Halme, & Nuortimo, 2012)?

Cognitive? Here?

Cognitive? Reikki et al. (2012) asked the question:

Does belief matter? The answer was “yes.” Believers in the paranormal were more

likely to see faces than non-believers. How does belief influence perception?

Cognitive? How do emotions factor into perception?

For example, if you’re scared, do you see more things than if you aren’t?

Cognitive? Becker (2009)

Becker (2009, p. 436)

Cognitive?

Becker (2009, p. 436)

Questions I was turning right. I looked left, saw

nothing, looked right, saw nothing, started to go, and then saw a bicycle coming towards me from the right that was right there.Why didn't I see it the first time I looked?How can we avoid these kinds of problems?

Answers There are a lot of parts to the answer to

this question, we'll look at just one piece.

Summala, Pasanen, Räsänen, Sievänen (1996): Drivers are less likely to look where they don't anticipate a threat, and are more likely to overlook (look-but-not-see) things in that direction.

Answers Summala et al. (1996):

Summala et al. (1996, p. 148)

Answers Summala et al. (1996):

Summala et al. (1996, p. 150)

Cognitive? Does motivation make a difference? For

example, if I really don’t want to run over someone with my car, does that help?

(This is going to come up in baggage screening.)

Questions I have an iTunes gift card with the

following number on it:XXTG2QYBKF4289QJ

I need to type that number into iTunes to redeem my credit. How do I do it?What processes are involved?Can I make that process more efficient and

less error prone?

Questions I want to take these authors…

And turn it into this…

Answers Miller (1956): The Magical Number

Seven, Plus or Minus Two The capacity for hearing/seeing and

repeating back accurately most kinds of information is 7 ± 2. ○ The iTunes code is letters mixed with digits,

what do the data say?○ The authors are words (but maybe unfamiliar

to me), what do the data say?

Answers Miller (1956):

Hayes (1952, as cited in Miller 1956, p. 92)

Answers Miller (1956):

Hayes (1952, as cited in Miller 1956, p. 92)

Answers Miller (1956):

To improve performance, we could recode it into chunks, but this code doesn't really support that:

XXTG2QYBKF4289QJThis one might:ABCD1234EFGH5678

Still open Meta-knowledge (knowledge about

knowledge) may have an effect. (People who think they can remember

more than they can.) (Class theme connection.)

Questions How do you go through the grocery

store thinking about a recipe that you want to make and remembering which items you have and which ones you still need?

Answers Morrison & Chein (2011)

This is a classic working memory task. You have to both maintain information and process that information in a flexible way. Performance on these kinds of tasks is related to a variety of important cognitive things.

Still open Morrison & Chein (2011)

Can you train it? That is a controversial question. Most training is generalizable only to similar situations, it might be possible.

Questions I go into the kitchen to get something.

When I get there, I can't remember why I came to the kitchen. I try to figure it out, do what I think it must have been, then get back to my original location and realize why I went to the kitchen in the first place.What's happening there?Can we avoid these kinds of problems?

Answers This is a cue problem. The appropriate

recall cue is not in the kitchen, it's in the room I came from. So, what I need to be able to remember is not where I am (the kitchen), it is where I came from, that's why I know it when I go back.

Questions Why is study so frequently ineffective, but

then some random thing will happen and you remember it forever?

Answers Again, there are a number of parts to this

one. One possibility is processing. What you do

with the material when you learn it will have a big impact on how well you can get access to it later (Craik & Tulving, 1975).

Answers Craik & Tulving (1975):

Craik & Tulving (1975, p. 274)

Answers Craik & Tulving (1975):

Things that are important to you are processed differently, more deeply, and could be remembered better because of that.

Still open How does this relate to study skills and

performance in classes? How does this relate to long-term

learning?

General Note on Answers Keep in mind that there is more to the

answer for each of these questions. That's why we're here…

Not Cognitive? Part of the goal of defining cognitive is to

talk about what it is and also what it isn’t. Then, we’ll ask how we make that determination.

The following examples are less clearly cognitive.

What are the implications of that statement?

Questions Does priming competence affect

performance for people who are test anxious (Lang & Lang, 2010)?Test anxious = higher score on a cognitive

test anxiety measure.

Questions Priming competence = before an exam,

“imagine a person who is very successful in solving technical and scientific problems” (Lang & Lang, 2010, p. 814) and write:Abilities this person possesses.Adjectives describing personality and values

of this person.How this person felt before solving complex

problems.

Answers

Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

Answers

Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

Answers

Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

Analysis Priming is clearly cognitive. But, what is priming competence

priming?

Questions What is the effect of stereotype threat on

learning (Taylor & Walton, 2011)? The task was to learn the definitions of

rare words (canton, ephrasy, glabella, gladiolus, insouciant, ofclepe, prosody, rood, schappe, succedaneum, usufruct, and viscid) (Taylor & Walton, p. 1058).

Questions The effect of stereotype threat on test

performance is well-established. “The tests were said to include ‘carefully selected words’

that would ‘evaluate your ability to learn verbal information and your performance on problems requiring verbal reasoning ability’ and to ‘provide a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations.’ These instructions were designed to elicit stereotype threat by making negative intellectual stereotypes about African Americans seem relevant (Taylor & Walton, 2011, p. 1058).

Questions

Taylor & Walton (2011, p. 1063)

Questions

Taylor & Walton (2011, p. 1063)

Questions The red line shows the classic

stereotype-threat effect on performance on a test.

What about stereotype threat on learning?

Answers

Taylor & Walton (2011, p. 1063)

Answers The red line (sort of) shows that

stereotype threat also hurt learning. The stereotype threat was: “the word-learning task was

described so as to be relevant to negative intellectual stereotypes about African Americans, a portrayal that triggers stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Students were told that the study investigated ‘how well people from different backgrounds learn,’ that ‘different people learn differently and we are interested in how well you learn and retain new information,’ and that the task would provide ‘a genuine assessment’ of students’ ‘learning abilities and limitations’” (Taylor & Walton, 2011, p. 1058).

Answers One last thing: A values affirmation task

(choose a value you have from a list and write about it) reduced the effect of stereotype threat on learning.

Analysis Clearly, something cognitive is going on

(it’s learning word lists).What is stereotype threat (from a cognitive

perspective)?What are values affirmations doing?

Questions Does meaning threat affect cognitive

variables (Proulx & Heine, 2009)? Read The Country Dentist by Kafka.

Should create a meaning threat. A meaning threat should cause you to

find patterns (to reassert meaning).

Questions But this only for a moment, since, as if the boy’s farmyard

had opened out just before my courtyard gate, I was already there, the horses had come quietly to a standstill, the blizzard had stopped, moonlight all around, the boy’s parents hurried out of the house, his sister behind them, I was almost lifted out of the carriage, from their confused speech I gathered not a word, in their house the air was almost unbreathable, a neglected stove was smoking, I wanted to push open a window but first I had to look at the boy.

The youngster heaved himself up from under the feather bedding, threw his arms around my neck, and whispered in my ear, "Pull my tooth."  I glanced around the room. No one had heard it. The parents were leaning forward in silence

Questions waiting for my verdict. The sister had set a chair for my

handbag. I opened the bag and hunted among my instruments. The boy kept clutching at me from his bed to remind me of his entreaty. I picked up a pair of pliers, examined them in the candlelight, and laid them down again. 

"Yes," I thought blasphemously, "in cases like this the gods are helpful, send the missing horse, add to it a second because of the urgency, and to crown everything bestow even a groom—" And only now did I remember Rose again; what was I to do, how could I get to her, how could I pull her away from under that groom at ten miles' distance, with a team of horses I couldn't control? 

Questions These horses, now, they had somehow slipped their reins,

pushed the windows open from the outside; I did not know how. Each of them had stuck a head in at a window and, quite unmoved by the startled cries of the family, stood eyeing the boy. 

The mother stood by the boy’s bed and cajoled me toward it; I yielded, and, while one of the horses whinnied loudly to the ceiling, leaned my head to the boy's face, which shivered under my wet beard.  I confirmed what I already knew; the boy had no teeth.

Well, this should be the end of my visit, I had once more been called out needlessly, I was used to that, the whole district made my life a torment with my night bell, but that I should have to lose Rose this time as well…

Questions Copy letter strings produced by an

artificial grammar and then try to classify new strings as to whether or not they fit the grammar.

“X M X R T V T M V T T T T V M” (Proulx & Heine, 2009, p. 1128).

Answers

Proulx & Heine (2009, p. 1128)

Answers

Proulx & Heine (2009, p. 1128)

Analysis The artificial grammar task is cognitive.

But, what is meaning threat?

What good is cognitive psychology? Misinformation can be dangerous:

Vaccines cause autism.Global warming is a hoax.HIV does not cause AIDS.Smoking does not cause cancer.

What good is cognitive psychology? http://www.antivaccinebodycount.com/A

nti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html

What good is cognitive psychology? “Savannah Hyden died at 5:04 p.m. Wednesday at

Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, according to a hospital spokesman. She had not received a flu vaccination, her parents said.”

“Hyden said he didn’t get the girl vaccinated because he was worried about side effects.”

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20140110/NEWS07/301100080/11-year-old-Hendersonville-girl-dies-from-flu?odyssey=obinsite

What good is cognitive psychology? Why is misinformation so “sticky?”

Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13, 106-131. http://psi.sagepub.com/content/13/3/106.full.pdf+html?ijkey=FNCpLYuivUOHE&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi

What good is cognitive psychology? “Researchers at University of College London

asked almost 8,000 adults over 52 to take part in a test of how well they could read and understand a basic medicines label, for a mocked-up aspirin product.”

“It comprised of four simple comprehension-style questions, such as 'What is the maximum number of days you may take this medicine?’”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9146916/Misreading-medicine-labels-puts-elderly-at-risk-of-dying.html

What good is cognitive psychology? “The academics then followed the health of

the volunteers for five years, all of whom were part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing project. Over that period 621 died.”

“Specifically, 16 per cent of those who got two or more answers wrong died, nine per cent of those who got one wrong died, while only six per cent of those who answered all questions correctly did so.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9146916/Misreading-medicine-labels-puts-elderly-at-risk-of-dying.html

What good is cognitive psychology? Are there cognitive factors that affect

literacy?

What good is cognitive psychology? “’In mathematics, 29 nations and other

jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago,’ reports Education Week. ‘In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009.’”

“In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248329823/u-s-high-school-students-slide-in-math-reading-science

What good is cognitive psychology?

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/www.intellectualtakeout.org/files/PISA%20rankings-HigherQuality_0.png

What good is cognitive psychology? Can cognitive psychology help us

improve educational outcomes?

What good is cognitive psychology? Our goal here is to lay out the

foundational knowledge that might be applied meaningfully to “real-world” problems.

Keep in mind that this is out there…

Transition to a definition How can we define cognitive

psychology? We’re going to lay out the cognitive

paradigm (Lachman, Lachman, & Butterfield, 1979).

Paradigm “The central premise of this book is that

the character of a science is shaped as much by paradigmatic judgments as by the canons of scientific method. Consequently, understanding the paradigm is as much a part of learning the field as studying the experiments themselves.” (Lachman, Lachman, & Butterfield, 1979, p. 19)

Paradigm Intellectual antecedents:

A lot of what we do now is shaped by what came before.

Pretheoretical ideas: “…guide research, motivate scientists, and

sometimes constrain their efforts.” (L, L, & B, p. 29)

“…conception of the reality underlying his subject matter.” (p. 30)

Suggest what to study, how to study it, what it means, etc. “slant”

Paradigm Subject matter:

The paradigm influences what to study. For example (p. 31) personality people might be more interested in individual differences than cognitive people.

Analogies:Borrow ideas from more well-established

areas to make sense of new research (e.g., Freud and hydraulics, p. 32).

Paradigm Concepts and language:

“…the terms that scientists use reflect their beliefs about the basic properties of the system they are studying.” (p. 32)

Research methods:Particular independent and dependent

variables, apparatus, methods, etc. go with a paradigm.

Intellectual Antecedents Continuity comes from:

Methodological preferences. As new ideas arise, a lot of the same practices are still used.

People: As people shift, their interests stay similar, just new way of thinking about them.

Facts: The data don't change, just the interpretation of the data.

Discontinuity comes from:“…anomalies, absurdities, omissions, and

perceived stagnation…” (p. 38)Other fields.

Intellectual Antecedents Early experimental psychology (e.g.,

structuralism):Incorporated through their influence on

behaviorism.Questions about “…the relationship of mind

and body…the fundamental nature of sensation and thought processes” (p. 40)

Primary method was introspection (“systematic reporting of internal mental states”, p. 40).

Intellectual Antecedents Early experimental psychology (e.g.,

structuralism):Introspection was a problem. It wasn't

productive and scientific.○ Arbitrary.○ Introspecting changes what you're

introspecting about.Behaviorists rejected this method, but also

rejected as unscientific the questions as well.

Intellectual Antecedents Aside on introspection: (Locke, 2009,

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01090.x)Introspection frowned upon because:

○ Can't be “consensually validated” because we can't see other people's consciousness.

○ Narrow use to refer to sensory qualities only.○ Freud's emphasis on the unconscious and the

inability to know your own mind.○ Behaviorists' environmental determinism

(mind has no role in action).

Intellectual Antecedents Aside on introspection: (Locke, 2009)

Introspection frowned upon because:○ Don't have methods or training.○ Pretheoretical ideas suggest that it isn't

possible.

Intellectual Antecedents Aside on introspection: (Locke, 2009)

But: We accept data from self report measures that are basically introspection.○ Personality.

Problems from not thinking about it:○ Don't understand accuracy of introspective

reports, how to improve it, or how it affects data.

○ Limits understanding.○ Discourages thinking about psychology and

using the products of that thinking.

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

Response to the problems of early psychology.

Change to more empirical, lab-based methods.

Focus on observables (behavior).Reject mentalism (and with it things like

thoughts, images, ideas). Note the implication for us.

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

The idea can be captured in this example:○ You don't drink for a while.○ You see water and take a drink. Why?

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

The idea can be captured in this example:○ You don't drink for a while.○ You see water and take a drink. Why?○ “I was thirsty” is not an acceptable answer.

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

Why do you need a path through an unobservable concept like thirst?

No water

Thirst

Drink

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

This relationship is more direct and observable.

No water

Thirst

Drink

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

2 methods:○ Classical conditioning:

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Conditioned Response (CR)

Pre-existing Food Salivate

Training (1-N trials)

Food Salivate Bell

Test Bell Salivate

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

2 methods:○ Classical conditioning: Psychology example

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Conditioned Response (CR)

Pre-existing Slap hand Pull hand back

Training (1-N trials)

Slap hand Pull hand back “No!”

Test “No!” Pull hand back

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

2 methods:○ Operant conditioning: S-R Psychology

Responses that are reinforced tend to be repeated.Responses that are not reinforced tend to extinguish.

Stimulus Response Outcome

Intellectual Antecedents Neobehaviorists:

From them we keep:○ Nomothetic explanation: Explain people in

general rather than individuals.○ Empiricism.○ Laboratory research.

We reject:○ Animal experimentation.○ Learning as the problem.○ Environmental determinism.○ Anti-mentalism.○ Philosophical underpinnings.

Intellectual Antecedents Aside on idiographic research (Barlow &

Nock, 2009, doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01088.x)Can nomothetic results generalize to

individuals?Ignoring the individual may be a mistake,

and it may make the research enterprise take longer.

Intellectual Antecedents

Desirable outcome

Undesirable outcome

Intellectual Antecedents Aside on idiographic research (Barlow &

Nock, 2009)If I average, I get something that reflects a

lot of different kinds of performance. We might consider that as we go forward.

Intellectual Antecedents Verbal learners:

Grew out of neobehaviorists.Language-like materials.Less theoretical commitment, many became

early cognitive psychologists.From them we keep:

○ Memory as a problem.○ Laboratory techniques.○ Some data.

Intellectual Antecedents Human engineering:

World War II highlighted the problem of a psychology devoted to running rats in mazes and teaching people nonsense syllables (p. 56).

Why do people crash planes, shoot at their own forces, make poor decisions, miss important targets on radar screens? How do we help people do these tasks better?

Intellectual Antecedents Human engineering:

Classic example: Pilots retract landing gear when landing instead of applying brake.○ Behaviorist: Don't reinforce that, reinforce

successful performance. But, the pilots are already highly motivated not to kill themselves.Consider this: You accidentally leave your headlights

on.○ The real problem: The levers were close

together and similar.

Intellectual Antecedents Human engineering:

A number of wartime problems, plus working with scientists from other disciplines, changed the ways psychologists were thinking.

From them we keep:○ Person as decision maker and information

processor.○ Information processing limits.○ Concepts.○ Problems (e.g., attention).

Intellectual Antecedents Information processing:

Efforts to quantify information and improve information transmission borrowed by psychologists.○ A channel is a conduit for information (e.g.,

astronomer looking through a telescope, the telescope is the channel).

○ People can be communication channels: If you're taking notes, you are gathering information from the environment, passing it through you, and outputting it into your notes.

Intellectual Antecedents Information processing:

Efforts to quantify information...○ Coding is the translation of information from

one medium to another.○ Channel capacity reflects how much

information you can pass through a channel (e.g., read one book at a time).

Intellectual Antecedents Information processing:

Efforts to quantify information…○ We can measure channel capacities and

information thusly:N messages will require log2N bits of information to

encode. So, if I have 16 messages, I need 4 bits to transmit them.

N bits can transmit 2N messages. So, if I have 10 bits I can do 1,024 messages.

Intellectual Antecedents Information processing:

From them we keep:○ Communication channels.○ Limited capacity.○ Coding.○ Information.

Intellectual Antecedents Mental chronometry: How we measure

the time it takes to perform cognitive work:Subtractive logic (Donders):

○ Identify stages that differ by one process.○ Subtract times for various stages to get times for each

process.

Intellectual Antecedents Mental chronometry:

Simple RT (Type A reaction): See something, respond. (Detect stimulus and execute response.)

Go-no go RT (Type C reaction): Respond to some subset of stimuli, not to other stimuli. (Identify stimulus.)

Choice RT (Type B reaction): Respond one way to some, another way to others. (Select response.)

Intellectual Antecedents Mental chronometry:

To compute RT for components:○ Identify stimulus = Go-no go RT - simple RT.○ Select response = Choice RT - go-no go RT.

Problem: This only works for stages that aren't interactive. Each stage has to include all of the others plus an independent amount more.

Intellectual Antecedents Linguistics

The study of language presented problems for behaviorists and helped usher in the notion of representation and the cognitive revolution.

Synthesis

Pretheoretical Ideas Symbol manipulation Representation Innateness Processing takes time

Subject Matter Table of contents

PerceptionAttentionMemory processesShort term memoryMemory schemas and errorsImageryLanguageConcepts and knowledgeProblem solvingReasoning and decision making

Analogies Information processing devices Computer metaphor

Concepts and Language In a minute…

Methodology Convergent techniques Computer simulation Reaction time

Stroop“John pounded in the nail.”

○ Naming○ Lexical decision○ Item recognition

Methodology Example Double dissociation:

Task 1 Task 2

Secondary Task 1 Interference No interference

Secondary Task 2 No interference Interference

Methodology Example Question: Are mental simulations of

language specific to the kinds of perceptual hardware that would be used to perceive those things?Task 1: Representation of static location

(e.g., cowboy-hat).Task 2: Representation of movement (e.g.,

The smoke rose).

Methodology Example Secondary task 1: Letter location (a

letter appears top or bottom, you say where).

Secondary task 2: Letter movement (a letter moves up or down you say direction).

Methodology Example Double dissociation:

Word (hat) Sentence (smoke rose)

Letter appears Interference No interference

Letter moves No interference Interference

Architecture See the box model.

SensoryStore LTMSTMFilter Pattern

RecognitionSelection

Input(Environment)

Response

Architecture Three stages:

InputProcessingOutput

The Middle Part Representation

Physical symbol systemStoragePropositionsImagesProcessesWorking memory

The Middle Part Process

Goal satisfactionImage manipulationAutomatizationInterpretationMemory