IBP: Introduction to cognitive psychology

Chapter 1: Introduction

Cognitive psychology: the study of the way in which the brain processes information

Stages of cognitive processing:

1. Perception: analysis of the information taken in by the sense organs
2. Learning and memory storage: recording the input received
3. Retrieval: being able to recall stored information
4. Thinking: in addition to recalling, it involves the rearrangement and manipulation of stored information to make it ft in with a new problem or task

Approaches to the study of cognition:

• Experimental cognitive psychology: involves the use of psychological experiments on human subjects to investigate the ways in which they perceive, learn, remember or think
• Computer modelling of cognitive processes: the simulation of human cognitive processes by computer. Often used as a method of testing the feasibility of an information processing mechanism

IBP: Introduction to cognitive psychology

Chapter 2:  Perception

Perception: The subjective experience of sensory information after having been subjected to cognitive processing

1. Visual perception

Theories of visual perception:

• Template theory: a system which uses information from past experience to make sense of a new stimulus
  • Template: Stored representations of objects enabling object recognition
• Gestalt theory (1): if we are to recognise objects, we need to be able to tell them apart from everything else
  • Reversible figure: a figure in which the object perceived depends on what is designated as‘figure’ and what is designated as ‘(back)ground’. (illustration: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/This-picture-of-a-vase-or-alternatively-of-two-faces-illustrates-how-solids-and-voids_fig8_47046864)
• Gestalt theory (2): laws are needed to group parts of a visual scene into objects:
  • Laws of perceptual organisation:  Principles (such as proximity) by which parts of a visual scene can be resolved into different objects
• Feature extraction

IBP: Introduction to cognitive psychology

Chapter 4: Disorders in perception and attention

Synaesthesia: A condition in which individuals presented with sensory input of one modality consistently and automatically experience a sensory event in a different modality

• For example: seeing colour on hearing musical notes
• Illustration of how a synaesthete would see numbers compared to how non-synaesthetes see them: http://www.scielo.br/img/revistas/dn/v9n1//1980-5764-dn-09-01-00016-gf02.jpg
• Inducers: The triggers of synaesthetic experience
• Synaesthesia is usually a unidirectional process; the letter A may give rise to the perception of red but not vice versa.
• Synaesthetes are usually highly consistent – e.g.: Monday is always the smell of cheese
• Even when blind, synaesthetes see colours on hearing or thinking about letters or numbers
• Brain-imaging studies of synaesthesia:
  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
  • Electroencephalography