Introduction To Cognitive Psychology (Test Your Self Question & Answer)

1. Why could we say that Donders and Ebbinghaus were cognitive psychologists, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology? Describe Donders's experiment and the rationale behind it, and Ebbinghaus's memory experiments. What do Donders's and Ebbinghaus's experiments have in common?

Cognitive psychology is the field of psychological study about the cognition of mind. The cognition refers to the mental processes, such as perception, memory, attention and other processes of the mind. Cognitive psychology was not derived until 1967. However, there were some experiments by researchers in the 19 th century, which paved way for the modern day cognitive psychology field of study. These early experiments were the ‘Reaction time experiment’ by Donder and ‘Memory experiment’ by Ebbinghaus. These researchers first attempted to study the mind and the mental processes, scientifically.

Donder’s experiment dealt with the mental process of decision making and the time taken for it. This was determined by calculating the time taken to respond to the perception of a given stimulus. In the first part of the experiment, simple reaction time task, his participants were asked to press the button upon presentation of light. In the second part, he presented the participants with a light on the right and other on the left, and asked them to press the left or right button, accordingly. This was a choice reaction time task. The difference between the reaction time taken for the conditioned response and the simple response was the actual time for decision making. Thus, the mental response was calculated based on the inference of the behavior response.

The experiment performed by Donder proved that it is possible to study the mind and mental processes. The time taken for any mental response, that is perception of a stimulus and response to it, has to be determined from the behavior. The rationale behind Donder’s experiment is that, upon presentation of the light (stimulus), a mental response occurs (perception of light). This leads to the behavior response (pressing of button). The time taken for a mental response is the reaction time that is the time from the stimulus presentation to the behavior response.

The memory experiment by Ebbinghaus dealt with the mental process of forgetting a learned thing in the course of time, and the pertaining memory of what had been learned. In the first part of the experiment of initial viewing, he went through a list of non-sense syllables for the first time, using a memory drum device. Then, in the learning process, he read the list various times until he could predict each syllable from the one before. He, thus, noted the repetitions required for the learning of the list. After a certain time, he again went through the list of syllables and tried to relearn by prediction of the correct order. Ebbinghaus, then, calculated the savings score by removing the number of trials required to predict the list after a delay from the trials number required to predict them when learned for the first time. From this experiment, he determined that memory could be quantified from the retention time interval and that forgetting was the function of the mind.

The early pioneers of cognitive psychology, Donder and Ebbinghaus, proved through their experiments, that the study of cognition or the property of mind could be inferred from the measurement of the behavior

2. When was the fi rst laboratory of scientifi c psychology founded? How important was the study of mental functioning in psychology at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th?

The first lab of scientific psychology was founded in 1897 in Germany, at the University of Leipzig. The founder of this lab was Wilhelm Wundt, who was associated with the mind study. The theoretical approach of this lab, which was dominant, was structuralism. It states that the overall experience of an individual is determined by combinations of basic sensations or elements of experiences. Wundt’s major method of collecting data was by analytical introspection, which was based on the experiences and thought processes of the participants.

Pioneer researchers like Donder, Ebbinghaus, Wundt and others in the 19 th century and early 20 th century had scientifically studied the mind and mental processes as a determinant of cognitive psychology. It was important to study the mental functioning, during the early research, and it was during this time that relationship between mental response time and behavior response was stated. The mental process of learning, perception, memory and forgetting was established by the study of mind. Also, the application of mental sensations, based on experiences, was used in psychology by the researchers.

By the beginning of 20 th century, the study of mind was losing its importance and was overcome largely by the study of behaviorism. The researches of mental processes were being rejected, and there was a negative response and criticism towards the technique of analytical introspection for study of psychology.

3. Describe the rise of behaviorism, especially the influence of Watson and Skinner. How did behaviorism affect research on the mind?

The study of mind and the approach of analytical introspection in psychology, as described by Wundt, were met with negative response, during the early 20 th century. The earlier approaches of studying mental process were losing its emphasis and were overcome with the behaviorism approach in psychology.

In the early decades of 20 th century, behaviorism was founded by John Watson, a researcher of psychology. According to Watson, hidden mental processes were to be replaced by measurement of observable behavior. The focus on this new approach was supplemented by the question as to what was the relationship between stimulus in the environment and the outcome as behavior. Watson’s experiment, based on classical conditioning, was named “Little Albert”. It was observed through this experiment that the pairing of one stimulus to another previously neutral stimulus affected behavior.

In the beginning of 1930’s and 1940’s, B.F. Skinner worked on operant conditioning to study stimuli-response relationship. It dealt with the strengthening of behavior by withdrawal of negative reinforcers (social rejection and shock) or by presentation of positive reinforcers (social approval and food). Behaviorism is the dominant tool for the study of psychology. This was assured by Skinner. Apparently, with the rise in behaviorism, the research on the mind suffered a setback.

4. Describe the events that helped lead to the decline in importance of behaviorism in psychology and the events that led to the “cognitive revolution.” Be sure you understand what the information-processing approach is.

The re-emergence of mind in the study of psychology was brought about by Edward Charles Tolman in the 20 th century, who used the behaviorist approach to study mental processes. Tolman was the first to use the term cognitive psychology. According to his experiment, there is a cognitive map-like thinking process in our mind, which is distinct from the stimulus-response connection. Although this idea violated the behaviorism approach, research in this field continued for many decades leading to the decline in importance of behaviorism in psychology.

The year 1950 is referred to as the beginning of cognitive revolution, which emphasized the study of mind and mental operations more than the behaviorist stimulus-reaction response. An important event that led to such revolution was Chemosky’s criticism of the book ‘Verbal behavior’ written by B.F. Skinner. Chemosky argued that the concept of operant conditioning as cited by Skinner was not always applicable for the language development in children. Chemosky observed that language development was not by imitation or reinforcement, but due to an inborn biological program in all human beings. Thus, it was concluded that language and other complex psychology (for example; problem solving, and reasoning) were influenced not only by behavior, but also by how the mind works.

An important outcome of the cognitive revolution was a new approach of studying the mind, the information processing approach. It dealt with the sequences of mental operations involved in cognition. Based on this approach of psychologists, the development of digital computers took place.

5. Describe the behavioral and physiological approaches to the study of cognition. How are they different, and what do they have in common? Give some examples of how both approaches have been used to study the phenomenon of memory consolidation.

In the early researches on cognitive psychology proposed by Donder, the relationship between mental processes and behavior has been established and this fact still guides present day research. Memory consolidation research was initiated during the early researches on cognition, by Georg Muller and AlfonsPilzecker. It deals with the study of formation of a stable memory. 

In order to study consolidation by measuring behavior, the following experiment was performed: 

i. Two groups of participants were made to learn a list of non-sense syllables. 

ii. The first ‘immediate’ group was made to learn another list of syllables immediately after. The second ‘delay’ group was made to learn another list of syllables after a delay of 6 minutes. 

iii. The two groups were made to recall the list of syllables. It was shown that, the ‘delay’ group could recall a higher percentage of syllables from the first list, than the ‘immediate’ group. The reason being that the ‘immediate’ group was interrupted from forming a stable memory of the first list of syllables, hence could not efficiently recall they syllables.

With the advent of modern day techniques to measure physiological processes, memory consolidation can be inferred from a physiological perspective. To study memory consolidation by measuring physiology, the experiment was performed by Gais and coworkers as follows: 

i. Two groups of participants were made to learn a list of word pairs initially. 

ii. The ‘sleep’ group went to sleep after learning the words, whereas the ‘awake’ group did not go to sleep immediately. 

iii. Both the groups were made to recall the words two days later and their brain activity was measured. It was shown that participants of the sleep group remembered more words than the awake group. 

The reason being, the activity of hippocampus, a structure in the brain, which is responsible for storing memories, is increased in participants of the sleep group than the participants of the awake group.

6. Why are models important in cognitive psychology? Do the boxes in models like Broadbent’s model of memory correspond to structures in the brain?

Models are representations of any object in study and aids in research. In cognition psychology, models play an important role in organizing data of different experiments and represents how information flows via the various components of ones mind.

For the purpose of such representations, models often take the form of flowchart and makes complicated processes easier to understand. For example, Broadbent’s model of flowchart explains how processing of information takes place, in order to attend to one message out of many. This is a model representation of selective attention in terms of psychology. In Broadbent’s flow diagram model, the mind is represented as a processing unit of information, which filters the ‘input’ stimuli (like messages). It selects the message only to which the person attends and passes out the unattended message. The attended message is then processed by a ‘detector’, that is, structure in brain which stores the message in memory.

The boxes in models like Broadbent’s flow diagram model, might seem to you like the different parts of the brain, but it is not always so. The reason is that, the operation of the mind is distributed throughout the brain. Although, the filter that selects only the attended message is represented by a single box, in reality the filtering method is controlled by different structures in different parts of the brain.

7. What are two suggestions for improving your ability to learn from this book?

Chapter one of this book, named Introduction to cognitive psychology, will orient one to the field of study of mind, that is, psychology. As one will go through the book, in the next chapters, he/she will be able to apply the principles of cognitive psychology to study this book.

There are two suggestions to improve one’s learning ability more efficiently in the book. The suggestions are as follows: 

1. Before going further, first lookup Chapter 7 of this book and go through the study hints. These hints are based on some aspects of our memory research. 

2. To realize that the construction of this book is such that, the concepts are presented as story format. The supporting evidence follows principles or basic ideas in the form of descriptive experiments.