Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition) – Summary chapter 1
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of how people and animals process information. It studies how we acquire information, store information in memory, retrieve information and work with information to reach goals. In all these cases, individuals deal with internal or mental representations.There is a long history of cognitive psychology:Ancient Greeks (500 B.C)Plato stated that there is ultimate knowledge and we only see representations of that. The ancient Greeks are also the founders of epistemology.Empiricism and associationism (17th – 19th century)Empiricists stated that all knowledge comes from experience and the followers of the associationism stated that ideas and memories were linked by associations (e.g: cow and milk are associated and thus easier remembered together).IntrospectionismThe followers of Introspectionism stated that all cognitive processes could be consciously reported by using introspection. The disadvantages of this are that it required a lot of training and could not be used with a lot of people, with children and with people with reduced mental capacities. The idea that all cognitive processes could be consciously reported was later debunked because a person is not able to report how that person perceives visual illusions. Besides that, reporting a process also has the potential to slow down the process.BehaviourismThis approach states that it is impossible to know what cognitive processes are active. The only observable things are the input and the output. It also states that all behaviour can be explained by reinforcement and punishment; all mental phenomena could be traced to behavioural activity. Behaviourists also state that language is learned by reinforcement and punishment as well.Tolman was a behaviourist but was the beginning of the end for behaviourism. He stated that rats have mental maps or mental representations of a spatial layout. Tolman partially debunked the behaviourist approach...
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