COGNITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY
 COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

• is a branch of psychology that focuses on

the study of mental processes, including
how people perceive, think, remember, and
learn. It explores the internal processes
that influence behavior, emphasizing the
role of cognition in understanding human
thought and action.
 DIALECTIC APPROACH

• THESIS - A thesis is a statement of belief.

For example, some people believe that
human nature governs many aspects of
human behavior (e.g., intelligence or
personality; Sternberg, 1999). After a while,
however, certain individuals notice apparent
flaws in the thesis
 DIALECTIC APPROACH

• ANTHESIS - 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.
 DIALECTIC APPROACH
• SYNTHESIS - debate between the thesis and the
antithesis leads to a synthesis. 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 OF
PSYCHOLOGY: RATIONALISM VERSUS
EMPIRICISM
• Philosophy seeks to understand the general nature of
many aspects of the world, in part through
introspection, the examination of inner ideas and
experiences (from intro-, “inward, within,” and -spect,
“look”);
• Physiology seeks a scientific study of life-sustaining
functions in living matter, primarily through empirical
(observation-based) methods.
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF
PSYCHOLOGY: RATIONALISM VERSUS
EMPIRICISM
• 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 and Aristotle
disagreed regarding how to investigate ideas.
• PLATO was a rationalist
• ARISTOTLE was empiricist
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF
PSYCHOLOGY: RATIONALISM VERSUS
EMPIRICISM

• 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
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF
PSYCHOLOGY: RATIONALISM VERSUS
EMPIRICISM

• 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
UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE
OF THE MIND: STRUCTURALISM
• Structuralism seeks to understand the
structure (configuration of elements) of the
mind and its perceptions by analyzing those
perceptions into their constituent components
(affection, attention, memory, sensation, etc.).
• Structuralists would analyze this perception in
terms of its constituent colors, geometric
forms, size relations, and so on
UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE
OF THE MIND: 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
Understanding the Structure of
the Mind: Structuralism
• 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
UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE
OF THE MIND: STRUCTURALISM
• 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
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESSES
OF THE MIND: FUNCTIONALISM
• An alternative that developed to counter
structuralism,
• functionalism suggested that psychologists should
focus on the processes of thought rather than on
its contents. Functionalism seeks to understand
what people do and why they do it.
• particularly interested in the practical
applications of their research
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESSES
OF THE MIND: FUNCTIONALISM
• An alternative that developed to counter structuralism,
• functionalism suggested that psychologists should
focus on the processes of thought rather than on its
contents. Functionalism seeks to understand what
people do and why they do it.
• particularly interested in the practical applications of
their research
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESSES
OF THE MIND: FUNCTIONALISM

• functionalists believed in using

whichever methods best answered a
given researcher’s questions, it seems
natural for functionalism to have led to
pragmatism
Understanding the Processes of
the Mind: Functionalism
• 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
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESSES
OF THE MIND: FUNCTIONALISM

• 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.
 AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS:
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
 AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS:
ASSOCIATIONISM
• 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).
 AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS:
ASSOCIATIONISM
• 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)
 AN INTEGRATIVE SYNTHESIS:
ASSOCIATIONISM
• 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)
• 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)
 ASSOCIATIONISM TO
BEHAVIORISM
• The “father” of radical behaviorism is John
Watson (1878–1958).
• Behaviorism focuses only on the relation
between observable behavior and
environmental events or stimuli
 ASSOCIATIONISM TO
BEHAVIORISM
• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) studied involuntary learning
behaviour
• classically conditioned learning
• Pavlov’s landmark work paved the way for the
development of behaviourism
• Behaviorism may be considered an extreme version of
associationism. It focuses entirely on the association
between the environment and an observable behavior.
 PROPONENTS OF
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 behaviour
• He dismissed thinking as nothing more than
subvocalized speech
 PROPONENTS OF
BEHAVIORISM
• 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 in
reaction to the environment. Skinner
conducted research primarily with
nonhuman animals. He rejected mental
mechanisms
 PROPONENTS OF
BEHAVIORISM
• 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 behaviour
• skinner applied his experimental analysis of behavior
to many psychological phenomena, such as learning,
language acquisition, and problem solving
 CRITICISMS OF
BEHAVIORISM
• 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.
 CRITICISMS OF
BEHAVIORISM
• 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
 BEHAVIORISTS DARING TO
PEEK INTO THE BLACK BOX
• Some psychologists rejected radical behaviorism.
They were curious about the contents of the
mysterious black box
• Behaviorists regarded the mind as a black box that
is best understood in terms of its input and output,
but whose internal processes cannot be accurately
described because they are not observable
BEHAVIORISTS DARING TO PEEK
INTO THE BLACK BOX
• edward Tolman (1886–1959), thought that
understanding behavior required taking
into account the purpose of, and the plan
for, the behaviour
• Tolman (1932) believed that all behavior is
directed toward a goal
BEHAVIORISTS DARING TO PEEK
INTO THE BLACK BOX
• Bandura (1977b) noted that learning
appears to result not merely from direct
rewards for behavior, but it also can be
social, resulting from observations of the
rewards or punishments given to others
 GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

• 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
 GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
• The maxim “the whole is more than the sum of its
parts” aptly sums up the Gestalt perspective
• Gestaltists, in contrast, studied insight, seeking to
understand the unobservable mental event by
which someone goes from having no idea about
how to solve a problem to understanding it fully in
what seems a mere moment of time
 EMERGENCE OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
• In the early 1950s, a movement called the
“cognitive revolution” took place in
response to behaviourism
• Cognitivism is the belief that much of
human behavior can be understood in
terms of how people think.
 EMERGENCE OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
• 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..
 EARLY ROLE OF
PSYCHOBIOLOGY
• Karl Spencer Lashley (1890–1958), brashly
challenged the behaviorist view that the human
brain is a passive organ merely responding to
environmental contingencies outside the
individual
• Lashley considered the brain to be an active,
dynamic organizer of behavior
 EARLY ROLE OF
PSYCHOBIOLOGY
• the same vein, but at a different level of analysis,
Donald Hebb (1949) proposed the concept of cell
assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain.
• Cell assemblies are coordinated neural structures
that develop through frequent stimulation. They
develop over time as the ability of one neuron (nerve
cell) to stimulate firing in a connected neuron
increases
 EARLY ROLE OF
PSYCHOBIOLOGY
• Behaviorists did not jump at the opportunity to
agree with theorists like Lashley and Hebb
• In fact, behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1957) wrote an
entire book describing how language acquisition
and usage could be explained purely in terms of
environmental contingencies
 EARLY ROLE OF
PSYCHOBIOLOGY
• Linguist Noam Chomsky (1959) wrote a scathing
review of Skinner’s ideas. In his article, Chomsky
stressed both the biological basis and the creative
potential of language
• He pointed out the infinite numbers of sentences we
can produce with ease. He thereby defied behaviorist
notions that we learn language by reinforcement.
 COGNITION AND
INTELLIGENCE
• What Is Intelligence?
• intelligence is a complex and multifaceted concept
that generally refers to the ability to learn,
understand, and apply knowledge and skills. It
encompasses various cognitive processes such as
reasoning, problem-solving, planning, abstract
thinking, comprehension, and learning from
experience.
 DIFFERENT THEORIES OF
INTELLIGENCE
• Gardner's Multiple Intelligences:
Proposes that there are various types of
intelligence, such as linguistic, logical-
mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-
kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and
naturalistic.
 DIFFERENT THEORIES OF
INTELLIGENCE
• Sternberg's Triarchic Theory: Suggests
that intelligence consists of three parts:
analytical (problem-solving abilities),
creative (ability to deal with new
situations), and practical (ability to adapt to
everyday life).
 DIFFERENT THEORIES OF
INTELLIGENCE
• Emotional Intelligence: Refers to the ability to
recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions
and the emotions of others
• overall, intelligence can be viewed as a combination of
cognitive abilities, emotional understanding, and social
capabilities, allowing individuals to navigate their
environment effectively.
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory:
• Proposed by Charles Spearman, this model
suggests that intelligence consists of two
components:
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Spearman’s Two-Factor Theory:
• General Intelligence (g): A single underlying factor that
influences performance across various cognitive tasks.
• Specific Abilities (s): Unique skills that pertain to
specific tasks or subjects. According to this theory,
individuals may possess strengths in certain areas while
still having a general level of intelligence.
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
• Howard Gardner’s theory expands the concept of
intelligence beyond traditional metrics, proposing
that there are multiple types of intelligences, each
representing different ways of processing
information. These include:
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
• Linguistic Intelligence: Sensitivity to spoken and
written language.
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: Ability to analyze
problems logically and carry out mathematical
operations.
• Spatial Intelligence: Capacity to think in three
dimensions.
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
• Musical Intelligence: Skill in performance, composition,
and appreciation of musical patterns.
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: Using one’s body to
solve problems or create products.
• Interpersonal Intelligence: Understanding and
interacting effectively with others.
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of
Intelligence:
• Proposed by Robert Sternberg, this
model divides intelligence into three
interconnected components
 THREE COGNITIVE MODELS
OF INTELLIGENCE
• Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:
• Analytical Intelligence: Involves problem-solving abilities and
the capacity to analyze and evaluate ideas, arguments, and
evidence.
• Creative Intelligence: Refers to the ability to deal with new
situations and generate novel ideas or solutions.
• Practical Intelligence: Encompasses the ability to adapt to
everyday life and apply knowledge to real-world scenarios, often
referred to as "street smarts."
 RESEARCH METHODS IN
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
• Research methods in cognitive
psychology are essential for
understanding how individuals process
information, think, and behave
 GOALS OF RESEARCH

• Understanding Phenomena:
• Research aims to gain a deeper understanding
of specific phenomena, behaviors, or cognitive
processes. This involves identifying patterns,
relationships, and underlying principles.
 GOALS OF RESEARCH

• Hypothesis Testing:
• A primary goal is to test hypotheses derived from
theories. Researchers manipulate variables to
examine the effects and determine whether their
predictions hold true under different conditions.
 GOALS OF RESEARCH

• Theory Development:
• Research contributes to the development and
refinement of theories that explain cognitive
processes. This involves integrating findings
from various studies to create comprehensive
frameworks.
 DISTINCTIVE RESEARCH
METHODS
• (a) laboratory or other controlled
experiments, (b) psychobiological
research, (c) self-reports, (d) case
studies, (e) naturalistic observation,
and (f) computer simulations and
artificial intelligence.