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1
Cognitive Theories
Kimberley A. Clow
[email protected]://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/257e-570
Office Hour: Thursdays 2-3pmOffice: S302
2
Outline
• What is Cognition?• Schemas & Scripts• Personal Construct Theory
– Fundamental Postulate– Corollaries
• Attribution Theory• Feelings
– Depression
• Evaluation
3
Cognition
• Important Terms– Structure– Encoding– Retrieval– Forgetting
• Memory is the major phenomenon involved– Different kinds of memory
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Maintenance Rehearsal
Sensory Register
Short-Term Memory
Long-Term Memory
Sensory input
Information is lost in 0.5 to 3 sec
Attention
Unrehearsed information is lost in a few minutes
Encoding
Retrieval
Some information may be lost over time
5
Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts• English students told a Native Indian story• Memory for the story tested across time
– Omissions and normalization
• Results indicated that memory is reconstructive– Leveling
• making story simpler
– Sharpening• overemphasizing certain details
– Assimilating• changing details to fit what we think
7
Personal Construct Theory
• What is a construct?
• “People’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings (their personalities) are determined by the constructs they use to anticipate or predict events”
George Kelly
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The Fundamental Postulate
• "A person's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events."
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Corollaries
• Construction– "A person anticipates events by construing their
replications."
• Experience– "A person's construction system varies as he
successively construes the replication of events."
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• Dichotomy– "A person's construction system is composed of
a finite number of dichotomous constructs. “• Submerged poles
• Core vs. peripheral constructs
GOOD BAD
QUIET LOUD
LOVELY DISGUSTING
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• Organization– "Each person characteristically evolves, for his
convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs."
• Personal not scientific
• Tight vs. loose relationships
animals -- plants |
flowers -- trees
|
deciduous -- conifers
|
Christmas trees -- others
13
• Range– "A construct is convenient for the anticipation
of a finite range of events only.“• Comprehensive vs. incidental
• Modulation– "The variation in a person's construction system
is limited by the permeability of the constructs within whose range of convenience the variants lie."
• Permeable vs. impermeable
• Dilation vs. Constriction
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• Choice– "A person chooses for himself that alternative
in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his system."
• Individuality– "Persons differ from each other in their
construction of events."
• Commonality– "To the extent that one person employs a
construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are similar to the other person."
15
• Fragmentation– "A person may successively employ a variety
of construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other."
• Sociality– "To the extent that one person construes the
construction processes of another, he may play a role in a social process involving the other person."
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Constructive Alternativism
• " We take the stand that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose among in dealing with the world. No one needs to paint himself into a corner; no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography. "
17
What About Uncertainty?
• Think about understanding behaviour, where causes are not clear or certain
• Imagine a scenario…– A young woman, Jill, carrying a stack of papers trips
and the papers fall all over the place.– A young man, Jack, helps her retrieve all of her papers.
• Why did Jack help Jill?
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Basic Terms• Attribution
– the process through which we come to understand the causes of others’ behaviour as well as the causes of our own behaviour
• Internal Attribution– inferring that a particular behaviour demonstrated by an
individual was due to dispositional causes
• External Attribution– inferring that the individual’s behaviour was caused by
some other factor than his or her dispositions (e.g., situational causes)
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Experiments
• Math Achievement– Different Training Programs
• Internal Attribution• Persuasion• Positive Reinforcement
– Influences on self-esteem and math achievement
• Health– Internal or External Manipulation– Only internals changed their health related
behaviour
20
Problems with External Attributions
• Behaviour only occurs with the external incentives
• They can undermine existing habits and preferences– Overjustification Effect
• External incentives work well ONLY if people believe they EARNED the reward due to INTERNAL factors
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Covariation Principle
• Explain behaviour according to 3 factors– Consistency
• How does the person react to the same stimulus/event on different occasions?
– Distinctiveness• How does the person respond to other stimuli/events
that are similar?
– Consensus• How do other people react to the same stimulus/event?
22
Attribution Principles
• Discounting Principle– the role of a given cause in producing a given
effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present
• Augmentation Principle– If both a factor that facilitates the behaviour and
a factor that inhibits the behaviour are present, we assign added weight to the facilitative factor
23
Algorithms vs. Heuristics
• Algorithm– specific rule or solution procedure– guaranteed to give the correct answer if
followed correctly
• Heuristic– a "rule of thumb" procedure– quick, easy, efficient– not always appropriate
24
Fundamental Attribution Error
• The tendency to– underestimate the
role of situations
– overestimate the role of dispositions
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Es
tim
ate
d P
ro-C
as
tro
A
ttit
ud
es
FreeChoice
No Choice
Pro-CastroEssay
Anti-CastroEssay
28
Irrational Beliefs
• Everyone I meet should like me• I should be perfect at everything I do• Because something once affected my life, it will
always affect it• It is unbearable and horrible when things are not the
way I want them to be• I must perform important tasks competently and
perfectly• If I don’t get what I want, it’s terrible• I must have love or approval from all the significant
people in my life
29
Distorted Thinking
• All or Nothing Thinking
• Overgeneralization
• Mental Filter
• Disqualifying the Positive
• Jumping to Conclusions
• Emotional Reasoning
• Personalization
30
Rational Emotive Therapy
• Emotions stem from our interpretations of events, not from the events themselves– We create our problems
• Need to modify our interpretations– If we don’t interpret things in a
way that makes us feel bad, we won’t feel bad
Albert Ellis