Class F.Y.B.

Sc (Semester I)
Subject PSYCHOLOGY
Paper No and Title PSY-101 MJ FOUNDATION OF PSYCHOLOGY
Module No PSY 101 – Paper I
Chapter 3 Basic Cognitive Processes

Paper Coordinator
Dr. Jaimala Ashok Sode
Assistant Professor
PG Department of Psychology & Research Centre
Loknete Vyankatrao Hiray Arts, Science & Commerce College,
Panchavati, Nashik
Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes

2. Introduction

3. Sensation, Attention and Perception, nature of perception, laws

of perceptual organization

4. Learning – Classical and Operant conditioning, Observational

learning

5. Memory – Processes, information processing models

6. Forgetting: Theories of forgetting

7. Questions

1. Learning Outcomes

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After studying this module students would be able to:

 Understand the nature of sensation, attention and perception.

 Learn the laws of perception.
 Know the learning process and its types.
 Learn the importance of conditioning in learning.
 Know the process of memory and different information processing
models.
 Understand the forgetting and various theories of forgetting.

2. Introduction

In this module we learn about the process of sensation, attention and

perception. There is so much information in the world outside the body and
brain. That information has to have a way to get into the brain, where it can
be used to determine actions and responses. The way into the brain is through
the sensory organs and then the process of sensation and perception is start.
We also learn about the learning process their methods and how that
learned information is store in our memory. As we know learning is a key
process in human behaviour. Learning is crucial for acquiring skills and for
understanding the world around us. It also helps us to adapt to the changing
central to the psychology as it affects personality, social behaviour and also
development.

3. Sensation, Attention and Perception, nature of perception, laws of

perceptual organization

3.1 Sensation:
Sensation means the activation of receptors in the various sense
organs. Sensation is the stimulation of a sensory receptor which produces
neural impulses that the brain interprets as a sound, visual image, taste,
odor, pain etc. Sensation occurs when sensory organs absorbs energy from a

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physical stimulus in the environments. Sensory receptors then covert this
energy into neural impulses and send them to the brain. Sensation is the
process by which our senses gather information and send it to the brain.
Sensory Receptors: The sensory receptors are specialized forms of neurons
the cells that make up the nervous system. These receptor cells are stimulated
by different kinds of energy.
Example: The receptors in the eyes are triggered by light; vibrations trigger
the receptors in ears.
Definition:
“Sensation means the passive process of bringing information from
the outside the body and to the brain”.
3.2 Attention:
Attention is the Cognitive process of selectively concentrating on respect
of the environment while ignoring other things in other words attention is the
first step in the observation attention is consider the most concrete because
it is tied so closely to perfection
Definition:
“Attention is a state of sensory clearness with a margin and focus”.
Attention is the aspect of consciousness that relates to the amount of effort
exerted in focusing on certain aspects of an experience, so that they become
vivid.
Types of Attention:
Attention is a continuous psychological process because it accompanies
all kind of mental activities and is inseparable from all cognitive processes.
Attention is divided into three types.
1) Involuntary Attention: This type of attention doesn't feature any
consciously chosen object. Involuntary attention is not directed by the
individual’s desire or motivation; it may even be against it. Sudden
change in the environment big sound, intensity of light, unique
situation etc., Less concern with motives interest and needs.
2) Voluntary Attention: Voluntary attention is directed by the desire or
motivation. This type of attention is related with interest, wishes or

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 needs. This attention is controlled by individuals. It is purposeful and
intentional type of attention.
3) Habitual Attention: This type of attention is totally depends on habits.
It attended due nature, habit, practice, education and attitude it is
called habitual attention. Depending upon the nature, need, habit,
attitude of the individuals. This attention is automatically drawn.
Determinants of Attention:
Why some people attend some objects and ignore others because some
laws or conditions attract or compel attention. Two types of law/conditions
are Internal and external conditions psychologists call them as determinants
of attention and classify them into two types:
1) Subjective Determinants: It concern with the subjective/ personal
factors. It includes:
 Personal goal
 Attitude
 Needs and Desire
 Emotions
 Habits and Practice
 Interest and mood
 Motives
2) Objective Determinants: It concern with the environmental factors
which includes the objects and its qualities and intensities. It includes:
 Changing stimulus
 Intensity of object
 Size of object
 Repetition
 Newness
 Different
Phenomena of Attention:
Two conditions/phenomena’s of attention which refers to
the duration and degree of attention are as follows:

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 1) Division of Attention:
Attending more than one act at a time is known as division of
attention. In such situations we will divide our attention towards more than
one thing at one time.
Eg. A tailor will be stitching the cloths and also speaking to his customers.
In such activities the attention is not divided but it is possible to perform
more than one act because, either our attention is shifted from one act to
another rapidly or our attention is concentrated on only one act and
remaining activities are carried automatically. Such actives do not need our
attention because these are almost mechanical. But in some technical jobs
attention has to be divided to perform more than one act at a time.
2) Span of Attention:
Span refers to the number of letters or digits or sound that an
individual can grasp within a given period of time. It is prove that individuals
can grasp 4-5 digits or letters easily within a fraction of time.
3.3 Perception:

Perception can be defined as our recognition and interpretation of

sensory information. Perception also includes how we respond to the
information. We can explain perception as a process where we take sensory
information from our environment and use that information in order to
interact with our environment.
Perception allows us to take the sensory information and make it into
meaningful. Perception is also necessary for us to survive in our environment.
Definition:
“Perception is the organization, identification and interpretation of
sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment”.
“Perception is the meaningful sensation”.

Perceptual Consistencies:
Perceptual consistency refers to the tendency to perceive an object as you
are familiar with as having a constant size, shape and brightness despite the
stimuli changes that occurs.

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 1) Size Constancy:
Size constancy is the tendency to interpret an object as always being the
same size regardless of its distance from the viewer.
2) Shape Constancy:
The tendency to interpret the shape of an object as being constant, even
when its shape changes on the retina.
3) Brightness Constancy:
The tendency to perceive the apparent brightness of an object as the same
even when the light conditions changes.

Laws of Perceptual Organization:

It is also called Gestalt principles of perception which means unified as
whole. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German
Psychologists in 1920’s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend
to organize visual elements into group or as whole when certain principles are
applied. These principles are:
1) Similarity:
The law of similarity suggests that similar things tend to appear grouped
together. Grouping can occur in both visual and auditory stimuli. In the image
for example, you probably see the groupings of colored circles as rows rather
than just a collection of dots.

2) Proximity
When objects are close to each other, the tendency is to perceive them
together rather than separately. Even if the individual items do not have any

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connection with each other they will be grouped under a single pattern or
perceived as a meaningful picture.

3) Simplicity
Tendency to perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images
as the simplest.

4) Closure
The Law of Closure states that if there is a break in the object, we perceive
the object as continuing in a smooth pattern. For example, in the circle below,
we tend to see a complete circle with something over top of it.

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 5) Continuity
The Gestalt Continuity Law explains how our brain experiences visual
line of elements that are grouped together. There is a tendency to perceive a
line continuing its established direction.

6) Figure-Ground Relation
The law of Figure/Ground states that we can distinguish an object
(the figure of the rule) from background (the ground). This rule shows that
when we look at a design, we perceive the figure from the ground distinctly.

4.Learning – Classical and Operant conditioning, Observational learning

4.1 Learning

Definition:
“Learning is any relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a
result of practice and experience”.

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 “Learning refers to a relatively durable change in behaviour or knowledge
that is due to experience”.
Nature of Learning:
 Learning is a change in behaviour better or worse
 It is a change that takes place through practice and experience but
change due to growth or motivation are not learning.
 This change in behaviour must be relatively permanent and it must
last a fairly long time.
 Learning is a purposeful process.
 Without motivation learning is incomplete.
 Behaviour occurs because of learning.
 All learning involves activities, these activity involve either physical or
mental. They may simple or complex.
Types of Learning:
There are three types of learning:
1) Verbal Learning
This type of learning involves the language. We speak, the communication
devices we use sighs, pictures, symbols, worlds, figures, sound etc., are the
tools used in verbal learning.
2) Motor Learning:
Learning with the help of physical actions is known as the motor learning.
Most of our day to day life refers to motor activities. The individual has to
learn them in order to their physical action.
Eg. Walking, running, skating, driving, climbing etc,
3) Problem Solving Learning:
This is a higher order learning process. This learning requires the use of
cognitive abilities such as thinking, reasoning, observation, imagination,
generalization etc. This is very useful to overcome difficult problems
encountered by the people.
Conditioning:
Definition:
“Conditioning is the learning process by which the behaviour of an
organism becomes dependent on an event occurring in its environment”.

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 Psychologists sometimes use the term conditioning to refer to learning
that occurs because of the associations between environmental events and
behaviour responses.
Two types of conditioning
1) Classical Conditioning 2) Operant/Instrumental Conditioning
1) Classical Conditioning:
A learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired a
response which is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited
by the first stimulus alone.
Ivan Pavlov he was a Russian physiologist one of the famous psychologist
first explore the process of conditioning. For exploring the classical
conditioning he worked on digestive system of dog. He developed techniques
to collect saliva from dogs. Pavlov was the first to study and write about the
basic principles of classical conditioning.
Pavlov’s Experiment on Dog:
For studying the classical conditioning Pavlov conducted a experiment on
dog’s digestive system and for that purpose he had build a device that would
measure the amount of saliva produced by the dogs when they were fed a
food. Normally when food is placed in the mouth of any animal the salivary
glands automatically start releasing saliva to help with chewing and digestion.
This is a normal involuntary response in both animals and humans. Pavlov
made a small incision on the side of the mouth of the dog, attached a tube for
collecting the saliva into a container outside.
First he ring the bell and no saliva was produce. Then he rings the bell
and present the food in front of dog, dog eat the food and produce the saliva
this saliva is collected by the tube in that outside container. This process is
repeated a few times after this whenever the bell is rings the saliva is produce.
After some times he rings the bell but never gives the food to that dog
nevertheless continues salivating.

First 1
Neutral Stimulus (NS)
Bell No Salivation

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 Second 2
Unconditional Stimulus (UCS) Unconditional Response (UCR)
Bell Food Salivation
Third 3
Conditional Stimulus (CS) Conditional Response (CR)
Bell Salivation
Elements of Classical Conditioning:
1) Unconditioned Stimulus: A naturally accruing stimulus that leads to
an involuntary response. The word unconditioned means unlearned or
naturally. In the case of Pavlov dog the food is the unconditioned
stimulus.
2) Unconditioned Response: An involuntary response to a naturally
occurring or unconditioned stimulus. The reflex response to the
unconditioned stimulus is called unconditioned response. It is
unlearned and occurs because of genetic wiring in the nervous system.
In Pavlov’s experiments Salivation is the unconditioned response.
3) Conditioned Stimulus: Stimulus that becomes able to produce a learn
reflex response by being paired with the original unconditioned
stimulus. In Pavlov’s experiments the sound of the bell is conditioned
stimulus.
4) Conditioned Response: Learned reflex response to a conditioned
stimulus/ The response that is given to the conditioned stimulus is not
usually quite as strong as the original unconditioned stimulus but it is
essentially the same response. Salivation is become a conditioned
response.
Process in Classical conditioning:
The basic process involve in classical conditioning:
1) Acquisition: Process that establishes or strengthens a conditioned
response.
2) Generalization: The tendency to response in the same way to the new
one stimuli that are in same way similar to the old ones.
3) Discrimination: The tendency to stop making generalized responses to
a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus.

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 4) Extinction: The tendency disappearance or weakening of a learned
response.
5) Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance of a learned response after
extinction has occurred.
6) Higher-order conditioning: Strong conditioned stimulus is paired with
a neutral stimulus causing the neutral stimulus to become a second
conditioned stimulus.

2) Operant/Instrumental Conditioning:

Operant conditioning defines as a form of learning in which responses

comes to be controlled by their consequences. The response itself is called an
operant response or simply an operant. Operant means any behaviour that is
voluntary.
B. F. Skinner’s work laid out many of the principles of operant
conditioning.
Skinner’s Experiment on Rat:
He performed his experiment on rat and used box it is known as skinner
box it contains one or more lavers that animal can press so that reinforce like
food can be delivered and one or more stimulus lights. The rat had to perform
a specific act to escape and reach the food. It was seen that the rat would
initially engage in a series of random behaviours till it eventually press the
lever he get the food but if the rat press the wrong lever he get the punishment
in the form of electrical shock and if he press the right lever he get the food in
the form of reward.
The presses on the levers by the animal can be detected and recorded. It is
also to deliver reinforces. Such as food, water or to deliver punishment like
electric shock through the floor of the chamber. Other responses that can be
measured are nose poking at a moving panel or hopping on treadle.
The primary principle of operant conditioning is simple organisms tend to
repeat those action/responses that are followed by favorable consequences.
This principle forms the essence of skinner’s concepts of reinforcement.

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Concepts related with operant conditioning:
1) Reinforcement:
It is a stimulus or event that increases the probability of a recurrence of the
response that will occur again. Reinforcement is not necessarily a reward and
the experience of pleasure. The fundamental process in reinforcement is the
strengthening of the response tendency. There is two types of reinforcement.
 Positive reinforcement: Rewarding stimulus that strengthening the
good behaviour.
 Negative reinforcement: Stimulus that removal of weakens the bad
behaviour.
2) Shaping:
Instead of rewarding only the target, or desired, behaviour, the process of
shaping involves the reinforcement of successive approximations of the target
behaviour.
3) Punishment:
Punishment can be effective in reducing or weakening behaviour, it has
several drawbacks.

Observational Learning:

Observational learning is a method of learning that consists of observing

and modeling another individual’s behavior, attitudes, or emotional
expressions. Although it is commonly believed that the observer will copy the
model, American psychologist Albert Bandura stressed that individuals may
simply learn from the behavior rather than imitate it. Observational learning
is a major component of Bandura’s social learning theory. He also emphasized
that four conditions were necessary in any form of observing and modeling
behavior: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.
 Attention
If an organism is going to learn anything from a model, he or she must be
paying attention to it and the behavior it exhibits

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  Retention
The second requirement of observational learning is being able to remember
the behavior that was witnessed. How well the behavior is remembered.
 Reproduction
This requisite of behavior concerns the physical and mental ability of the
individual to copy the behavior he or she observed. This is the ability to
perform the behavior that the model has just demonstrated.
 Motivation
The will to perform the behavior. If the human or animal does not have a
reason for imitating the behavior, then no amount of attention, retention, or
reproduction will overcome the lack of motivation.

5. Memory – Processes, information processing models

Memory:

Memory is an active system that receives information from senses,

organizes and alters it as it stores away and then retrieves the information
from storage.
Definition:
“Memory means the retention of information over time through encoding,
storage and retrieval”.
Memory operates in the form of three basic processes:

Encoding Storage Retrieval

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 • Get sensory information into a form that the brain can
use.
• Translat the information into neural code that the brain
proceses.
Encoding
• Store the information in different memory codes

• Retaining information in memory

• Retain information for long time
Storage

• Recall: Remembering something that previously learned

• Recognition: Identifying information that previously
Retrieval learned

Types of Memory: There are three basic types of memory as follows:

1) Sensory Memory
2) Short Term Memory
3) Long Term Memory

1) Sensory Memory:
Sensory memory is the shortest-term element of memory. It is the ability
to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have
ended. It acts as a kind of buffer for stimuli received through the five senses
of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which are retained accurately, but
very briefly.

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 Sensory memory holds sensory information less than one second after an
item is perceived. There are two types of sensory memory:
1) Iconic (visual) Memory:
2) Echoic (auditory) Memory:
2) Short-term Memory:
Short term memory is also known as working memory. Information moves
from sensory memory to the next stage of memory called STM through the
process of selective attention or the ability to focus only on one stimulus from
among all sensory input. In this stage the information is held for only a short
period of time a few seconds or minutes.
Sensory memory holds the complete image; STM stores only the
interpretation of the image. If the sentence is spoken sensory memory retains
the sounds while STM holds the words formed by these sound. STM is a
limited capacity store that can maintain on unrehearsed information for about
20 - 30 seconds. Without rehearsal information in STM decays with the
passage of time. STM is limited in its capacity or the number of items that it
can hold. STM can hold only 7+-2chunks at a time.
A chunk is a group of information like a digit, letter or a word that is a
stored as a single unit. The two major concepts for retaining information in
STM seem to be organization and repetition or rehearsal. The information in
STM is either lost through decay or displacement. Decay occurs when
information that is not rehearsed disappeared as time passes. Displacement
is most likely to occur when capacity limit of SYM has been reached about 7
units of information.
3) Long-term Memory:
The third stage of memory is long term memory the system into which all
the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently. In terms of
capacity LTM is unlimited. LTM can store information indenfinitily. One
viewpoint holds that all information can be held permanently in LTM. This
holds that forgetting occurs permanetly when a person cannot retrieve
information from LTM. Information that is maintained in STM through
rehaearsal is transferred to LTM. Organization is an important aspect of LTM
as without it there would be utter confusion. Elaborative rehearsal is a way

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of tranferring iformation from STM into LTM by making that information
meaningdul in some way.

Types of Long term Memory:

1) Explict (Declarative) Memory:
Memory of facts is called declartive memory. This type of memory contaning
information that is conscious and known. It is about all the things that people
can known the facts and information that make up knowledge.
There are two sub types of declarative memory:
i) Semantic: It contains general knowledge such as knowledge of
language and information learned in formal education.
ii) Episodic: The other kind of factual memory is the personal
knowledge that each person has of his or her life and personal
history.A kind of autographical memory. Memory of even
happened in life.
2) Implicit (Procedural) Memory:
This type of memory involves a series of steps or procedures. Memories
for skills that people know how to do like tying a shoes & riding a bicycle are

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a kind of LTM called procedural. It also includes emotional associatios, habits
and simple conditioned reflexes that may or may not be in conscious
awarness.
Procedural memory is often called implicit memory because memories for
these skills, habits and learned reflexes are not easily retrieved into conscious
awarness. (motor skills, reflexes and habits).
Information Processing Model

The multistore model of memory (also known as the modal model) was
proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) and is a structural model. They
proposed that memory consisted of three stores: a sensory register, short-
term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).
Information passes from store to store in a linear way, and has been
described as an information processing model (like a computer) with an input,
process and output.

Information is detected by the sense organs and enters the sensory

memory. If attended to this information enters the short term memory.
Information from the short-term memory is transferred to the long-term
memory only if that information is rehearsed (i.e. repeated).If maintenance
rehearsal (repetition) does not occur, then information is forgotten, and lost
from short term memory through the processes of displacement or decay.

The Memory Stores

Each store is a unitary structure and has its own characteristics in terms
of encoding, capacity and duration.

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Encoding is the way information is changed so that it can be stored in the
memory. There are three main ways in which information can be encoded
(changed):
1. visual (picture),
2. acoustic (sound),
3. semantic (meaning).
Capacity concerns how much information can be stored.
Duration refers to the period of time information can last in the memory
stores.

Sensory Memory
• Duration: ¼ to ½ second
• Capacity: all sensory experience (v. larger capacity)
• Encoding: sense specific (e.g. different stores for each sense)

Short Term Memory

• Duration: 0-18 seconds
• Capacity: 7 +/- 2 items
• Encoding: mainly auditory

Long Term Memory

• Duration: Unlimited
• Capacity: Unlimited
• Encoding: Mainly Semantic (but can be visual and auditory)
7. Forgetting: Theories of forgetting

Ebbinghaus was the first person to study forgetting scientifically. The

first research on forgetting was conducted by him. The information that has
been stored in memory is not always retrievable. Sometimes the information
is losses from storage that loss of information known as forgetting.
Definition:
“The inability to retrieve previously stored information is called forgetting”.
“Failure to retaining the information is forgetting”.
“The loss of information from storage is forgetting”.

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Causes of Forgetting/ Theories of Forgetting:
Trace Decay Theory:
The trace decay theory of forgetting states that all memories fade
automatically as a function of time. Under this theory, you need to follow a
certain pathway, or trace, to recall a memory. If this pathway goes unused for
some amount of time, the memory decays, which leads to difficulty recalling,
or the inability to recall, the memory. Rehearsal, or mentally going over a
memory, can slow this process. But disuse of a trace will lead to memory
decay, which will ultimately cause retrieval failure. This process begins almost
immediately if the information is not used: for example, sometimes we forget
a person’s name even though we have just met them.
Interference Theory:
It is easier to remember recent events than those further in the past. ”
Transience” refers to the general deterioration of a specific memory over time.
Under interference theory, transience occurs because all memories interfere
with the ability to recall other memories. Proactive and retroactive interference
can impact how well we are able to recall a memory, and sometimes cause us
to forget things permanently.

Memory interference: Both old and new memories can impact how well we are able to recall a memory.
This is known as proactive and retroactive interference.
Proactive Interference
Proactive interference occurs when old memories hinder the ability to
make new memories. In this type of interference, old information inhibits the
ability to remember new information.

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Retroactive Interference
Retroactive interference occurs when old memories are changed by new
ones, sometimes so much that the original memory is forgotten. This is when
newly learned information interferes with and impedes the recall of previously
learned information.
Cue-Dependent Forgetting
When we store a memory, we not only record all sensory data, we also
store our mood and emotional state. Our current mood thus will affect the
memories that are most effortlessly available to us, such that when we are in
a good mood, we recollect good memories, and when we are in a bad mood,
we recollect bad ones. This suggests that we are sometimes cued to remember
certain things by, for example, our emotional state or our environment. Cue-
dependent forgetting, also known as retrieval failure, is the failure to recall
information in the absence of memory cues.
Childhood Amnesia
Do you remember anything from when you were six months old? How
about two years old? There’s a reason that nobody does. Childhood amnesia,
also called infantile amnesia, is the inability of adults to retrieve memories
before the age of 2–4. This is because for the first year or two of life, brain
structures such as the limbic system (which holds the hippocampus and the
amygdala and is vital t0 memory storage) are not yet fully developed. Research
has shown that children have the capacity to remember events that happened
to them from age 1 and before while they are still relatively young, but as they
get older they tend to be unable to recall memories from their youngest years.
Encoding Failure
Encoding Failure refers to the brain's occasional failure to create a
memory link. Encoding refers to the brain's ability to store and recall events
and information, either short or long-term. This faculty can fail for a number
of reasons; trauma or substance use being the most common. When this
happens, it can prevent the brain from creating and storing memories. Many
of us can identify times in our lives where, due to an accident, traumatic event
or substance use, we are unable to remember specific events or actions.

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7. Questions for revision

1) Explain the gestalt principles of perception.

2) What is attention describe the types of attention.
3) Discuss the various determinants of attention.
4) Explain in details the types of memory.
5) Explain the process of sensation.
6) Describe the process of memory.
7) Discuss the information processing model.
8) Define Forgetting and describe the various causes of forgetting.
9) What is learning?
10)Explain the classical conditioning and its principles.
11) Describe the operant conditioning and its important concepts.

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