Cognitive Psychology

Paper: V
Code: PSY. 555
Credit: 3
Full Marks: 100 (Theory: 60 + Practical: 40)
Teaching Hours: 48
 Unit 1: Introduction
1. Origin of Cognitive psychology
2. Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
3. Methods: experimental, computer simulation (human
information processing), ecological validity
4. Applications of cognitive psychology
 Cognitive Processes
• Cognitive psychology has been defined as the psychology of mental
processes.
• More specifically it has also been described as the study of understanding
and knowing.
• A more precise definition of cognitive psychology is that it is the study of
the way in which the brain processes information. It concerns the way we
take in information from the outside world, how we make sense of that
information and what use we make of it.
• Cognition is thus a rather broad umbrella term, which includes many
component processes, and this possibly explains why psychologists have
found it so difficult to come up with a simple and unified definition of
cognitive psychology.
• Clearly cognition involves various different kinds of information processing
which occur at different stages.
 Cognitive Processes
• It is concerned with the internal processes involved in making sense of the
environment, and deciding what action might be appropriate.
• These processes include attention, perception, learning, memory, language,
problem solving, reasoning, and thinking.
• We can define cognitive psychology as involving the attempt to understand
human cognition by observing the behaviour of people performing various
cognitive tasks.
• Cognitive psychology is the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and
think about information. A cognitive psychologist might study how people
perceive various shapes, why they remember some facts but forget others, or
how they learn language.
• Cognitive psychology deals with topics such as perception, memory, attention,
language and thinking/decision making. Most critically it is based on the idea
that we are like a computer when processing information and have an input,
storage and retrieval function.
 Cognitive Processes
• Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of the mind as an information
processor.
• Cognitive psychologists try to build up cognitive models of the information
processing that goes on inside people’s minds, including perception,
attention, language, memory, thinking, and consciousness.
• Cognitive psychology became of great importance in the mid-1950s.
Several factors were important in this:
• Dissatisfaction with the behaviorist approach in its simple emphasis on external
behavior rather than internal processes.
• The development of better experimental methods.
• Comparison between human and computer processing of information.
• The emphasis of psychology shifted away from the study of conditioned
behavior and psychoanalytical notions about the study of the mind,
towards the understanding of human information processing, using strict
and rigorous laboratory investigation.
 Cognitive Processes
• Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mind and mental function,
including learning, memory, attention, perception, reasoning, language,
conceptual development, and decision making.
• The modern study of cognition rests on the premise that the brain can be
understood as a complex computing system.
• “Cognition" refers to all processes by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is
concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of
relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations.
• It is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might
possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive
phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all
human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a
particular point of view.
Basic Assumptions
• Cognitive psychology is a pure science, based mainly on
laboratory experiments.
• Behavior can be largely explained in terms of how the mind
operates, i.e., the information processing approach.
• The mind works in a way similar to a computer: input, storing
and retrieving data.
• Mediational processes occur between stimulus and response.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Philosophically, ruminations of the human mind and its processes have
been around since the times of the ancient Greeks.
• In 387 BC, Plato is known to have suggested that the brain was the seat of
the mental processes.
• In 1637, René Descartes posited that humans are born with innate ideas,
and forwarded the idea of mind-body dualism, which would come to be
known as substance dualism (essentially the idea that the mind and the
body are two separate substances).
• From that time, major debates ensued through the 19th century regarding
whether human thought was solely experiential (empiricism), or included
innate knowledge (nativism).
• Some of those involved in this debate included George Berkeley and John
Locke on the side of empiricism, and Immanuel Kant on the side of nativism.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• With the philosophical debate continuing, the mid to late 19th century was a
critical time in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline.
• Two discoveries that would later play substantial roles in cognitive psychology
were Paul Broca's discovery of the area of the brain largely responsible for
language production, and Carl Wernicke's discovery of an area thought to be
mostly responsible for comprehension of language.
• Both areas were subsequently formally named for their founders and disruptions
of an individual's language production or comprehension due to trauma or
malformation in these areas have come to commonly be known as Broca's
aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia.
• From the 1920s to the 1950s, the main approach to psychology was behaviorism.
• Initially, its adherents viewed mental events such as thoughts, ideas, attention,
and consciousness as unobservables, hence outside the realm of a science of
psychology.
• One pioneer of cognitive psychology, who worked outside the boundaries (both
intellectual and geographical) of behaviorism was Jean Piaget. From 1926 to the
1950s and into the 1980s, he studied the thoughts, language, and intelligence of
children and adults.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• In the mid-20th century, three main influences arose that would inspire and
shape cognitive psychology as a formal school of thought:
• With the development of new warfare technology during WWII, the need for a
greater understanding of human performance came to prominence. Problems
such as how to best train soldiers to use new technology and how to deal with
matters of attention while under duress became areas of need for military
personnel. Behaviorism provided little if any insight into these matters and it was
the work of Donald Broadbent, integrating concepts from human performance
research and the recently developed information theory, that forged the way in
this area.
• Developments in computer science would lead to parallels being drawn between
human thought and the computational functionality of computers, opening
entirely new areas of psychological thought. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon
spent years developing the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) and later worked
with cognitive psychologists regarding the implications of AI. This encouraged a
conceptualization of mental functions patterned on the way that computers
handled such things as memory storage and retrieval, and it opened an
important doorway for cognitivism.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Noam Chomsky's 1959 critique of behaviorism, and empiricism more
generally, initiated what would come to be known as the "cognitive
revolution".
• Inside psychology, in criticism of behaviorism, J. S. Bruner, J. J. Goodnow &
G. A. Austin wrote "a study of thinking" in 1956.
• In 1960, G. A. Miller, E. Galanter and K. Pribram wrote their famous "Plans
and the Structure of Behavior". The same year, Bruner and Miller founded
the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, which institutionalized the
revolution and launched the field of cognitive science.
• Formal recognition of the field involved the establishment of research
institutions such as George Mandler's Center for Human Information
Processing in 1964.
• Mandler described the origins of cognitive psychology in a 2002 article in the
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Ulric Neisser put the term "cognitive psychology" into common use through his
book Cognitive Psychology, published in 1967.
• Neisser's definition of "cognition" illustrates the then-progressive concept of
cognitive processes:
The term "cognition" refers to all processes by which the sensory input is
transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with
these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in
images and hallucinations. ... Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that
cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every
psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive
psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the
concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate
and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with
sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man's actions and
experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic
psychologist asks how they follow from the subject's goals, needs, or instincts.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Kohler (1925) published a book called, The Mentality of Apes. In it he
reported observations which suggested that animals could show insightful
behaviour. He rejected behaviourism in favour of an approach which
became known as Gestalt psychology.
• Norbert Wiener (1948) published Cybernetics: or Control and
Communication in the Animal and the Machine, introducing terms such as
input and output.
• Tolman (1948) work on cognitive maps – training rats in mazes, showed
that animals had an internal representation of behavior.
• Birth of Cognitive Psychology often dated back to George Miller’s (1956) “
The Magical Number 7 Plus or Minus 2.”
• In 1960, Miller founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard with
famous cognitivist developmentalist, Jerome Bruner.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Ulric Neisser (1967) publishes "Cognitive Psychology", which marks the
official beginning of the cognitive approach.
• Process models of memory Atkinson & Shiffrin’s (1968) Multi Store Model.
• Newell and Simon’s (1972) development of the General Problem Solver.
• Cognitive approach highly influential in all areas of psychology (e.g.,
biological, social, behaviorism, developmental, etc.).
• The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the late 1950’s
and early 1960’s, to become the dominant approach (i.e., perspective) in
psychology by the late 1970s.
• Interest in mental processes had been gradually restored through the work
of Piaget and Tolman.
 Origin of Cognitive Psychology (History)
• Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a
mental model of the world.
• There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Cognitive Theory:
• Schemas (building blocks of knowledge).
• Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (equilibrium,
assimilation, and accommodation).
• Stages of Cognitive Development:
• Sensorimotor (Birth – 2 years),
• Preoperational (2-7 years),
• concrete operational (7-11 years),
• formal operational (11 onwards).
• Tolman coined the term cognitive map, which is an internal representation (or
image) of external environmental feature or landmark. He thought that individuals
acquire large numbers of cues (i.e. signals) from the environment and could use
these to build a mental image of an environment (i.e. a cognitive map).
• By using this internal representation of a physical space they could get to the goal
by knowing where it is in a complex of environmental features. Short cuts and
changeable routes are possible with this model.
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology is part of broader field known as Cognitive Science.
• Cognitive Science is an inter disciplinary subject which includes its scope
field of Psychology, Philosophy, Linguistic, Anthropology, Artificial
Intelligence and Neuroscience.
• The major areas in which much research has been conducted are;
• Neuroscience
• Artificial intelligence
• Cognitive neuroscience examines how the structure and function of the
brain explains the cognitive process.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the
creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of
the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include:
Speech recognition, Learning, Planning, Problem solving.
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Brain Lesions:
• This involves the destruction of tissues, which are often caused by strokes, tumors
or accidents.
• It is one of the oldest used to examine cognitive process which has greatly
increased our understanding of the organization of the brain.
• Regional Cerebral Blood-flow Studies (RCBF):
• In this technique researchers inject a small amount of radioactive substances
which resembles glucose (brain's major metabolic fuel) and then record the
cerebral blood flow into the active part of the brain ( as the active part of the brain
requires more metabolic fuel).
• As different cognitive task increases, the regional blood flow into the different
areas of the brain. The research can give various tasks to the subject and record
the areas of the brain which are activated.
• The technique is also used to classify the distinction between different types of
memory. This technique is also known as Position Emission Tomography (PET).
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Evoked Potential Technique:
• In this technique researchers place electrodes on a person's scalp to record
electrical signals generated from a large number of neurons, located underneath
electrodes.
• Unlike RCBF technique, this technique cannot identify the response of single
neuron, but it will identify the electrical changes over very brief period of time.
• Single Cell Recording Technique:
• This technique cannot be safely used on humans. Therefore, researchers used this
technique on animals, where they insert a tiny electrode into a single neuron in
order to study characteristics of nervous system.
• Hubel and Wiesel (1965, 1975) using this technique found that some kinds of cells
in the visual cortex responded vigorously only when lines were presented in a
specific orientation. Other kinds of cells are even more specific in their preference.
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Human Mind vs Computer
• Philosophers compared human mind to a machine.
• According to computational metaphor the computer is a complex multipurpose machine
that process information quickly and accurately. Though there is physical
differences between computer and human mind, both may operate according to
similar general principals, such as;
• Computer has variety of internal mechanism. They have a central processing mechanism with limited
capacity. This resembles human's limited attention capacity.
• Computer system distinguishes between an active process and large capacity information storage.
Likewise, human memory could be distinguished between short term and long term memory.
• Both computer and human can make choices and compare symbols.
• Computer Simulation
• Computer simulation attempts to take human limitation into account.
• Computer cannot match human's sophistication in learning languages, identifying objects
or solving problems.
• In spite of these limitations of computers, artificial intelligence has
influences research theory in cognitive psychology.
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Computational models are closely akin to a branch of computer science
called artificial intelligence.
• Feeding by the information gathered through previous methods,
programmers builds computational models to represent cognitive processes.
• Although it cannot guarantee to be representative of the exact cognitive
process involved, it does allow a systematic way of investigating the
processes.
• Usually, the programmers involved use what is known as the connection
networks, where there are input links, processing units, and output links.
• Unlike computer networks where there is specific location for memories,
connection networks in psychology have memories distributed over the
network.
 Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
• Modern perspectives on cognitive psychology generally address cognition as
a dual process theory, expounded upon by Daniel Kahneman in 2011.
• Dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different
ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of
an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit
(controlled), conscious process.
• Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion
or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of
time to change with the forming of new habits.
• Kahneman differentiated the two styles of processing more, calling them intuition
and reasoning.
• Intuition (or system 1), similar to associative reasoning, was determined to be fast
and automatic, usually with strong emotional bonds included in the reasoning
process. Kahneman said that this kind of reasoning was based on formed habits
and very difficult to change or manipulate.
• Reasoning (or system 2) was slower and much more volatile, being subject to
conscious judgments and attitudes.
Current Status of Cognitive Psychology
 Stages of Cognitive Processing
• Information taken in by the sense organs goes through an initial stage of perception,
which involves the analysis of its content.
• Even at this early stage of processing the brain is already extracting meaning from the
input, in an effort to make sense of the information it contains.
• The process of perception will often lead to the making of some kind of record of the
input received, and this involves learning and memory storage.
• Once a memory has been created for some item of information, it can be retained for
later use, to assist the individual in some other setting.
• This will normally require the retrieval of the information. Retrieval is sometimes
carried out for its own sake, merely to access some information stored in the past.
• On the other hand, we sometimes retrieve information to provide the basis for further
mental activities such as thinking.
• Thought processes often make use of memory retrieval. Sometimes this involves the
rearrangement and manipulation of stored information to make it fit in with a new
problem or task. Thinking is thus rather more than just the retrieval of old memories.
 Roots of Cognitive Psychology
• Human factors research during WWII: The field of human factor research
deals with the problem in human machine interaction, particularly with
regards to improving human skills and performance.
• Computing machinery: Information processing. Shannon attempted to
define the concept of information mathematically. Shannon reasoned that
the function of information was to reduce the uncertainty.
• Linguistics: All our utterance have a purpose, i.e. to communicate
something. Linguistic is the discipline that studies the structure of language.
Psycholinguistics is the study of language from a psychological perspective.
• Neurocomputing: How nervous system could compute things? For e.g.
Learning could be defined as the succession of changes in the neurological
states that the brain could enter or compute as a function of its experience
with certain types of stimuli.
 Approaches to Human Cognition
• There have been four main approaches to the study of cognitive psychology.
• Experimental psychology:
• It involves the use of psychological experiments on human subjects to investigate the ways in
which they perceive, learn, remember or think.
• Computer modelling:
• This approach involves the simulation of certain aspects of human cognitive function by
writing computer programs, in order to test out the feasibility of a model of possible brain
function. Often used as a method of testing the feasibility of an information processing
mechanism.
• Cognitive neuropsychology:
• The study of the brain activities underlying cognitive processes, often by investigating
cognitive impairment in brain-damaged patients.
• Cognitive neuroscience:
• The investigation of human cognition by relating it to brain structure and function, normally
obtained from brain imaging techniques.
• These four approaches to cognition have all proved to be valuable, especially when
it has been possible to combine different approaches to the same cognitive
process.
 Approaches to Human Cognition
• Experimental cognitive psychology: this approach involves trying to
understand human cognition by using behavioural evidence. Since
behavioural data are of great importance within cognitive neuroscience
and cognitive neuro psychology, the influence of cognitive psychology is
enormous.
• Cognitive neuroscience: this approach involves using evidence from
behaviour and from the brain to understand human cognition.
• Cognitive neuropsychology: this approach involves studying brain-damaged
patients as a way of understanding normal human cognition. It was
originally closely linked to cognitive psychology but has recently also
become linked to cognitive neuroscience.
• Computational cognitive science: this approach involves developing
computational models to further our understanding of human cognition;
such models increasingly take account of our knowledge of behavior and
the brain.
 Methods of Cognitive Psychology
• Methods are the ways we collect information.
• All individual uses different methods to collect information.
• However, scientific methods are different and they have
systematic and objective procedures.
• Scientific methods are the principles and procedures for the
systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and
formulation of a problem, the collection of data through
observation and experiment and the formulation and testing of
hypotheses and recommendation and conclusions.
• Scientific methods are different from general methods.
 Methods of Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive psychology is a study of the internal mental processes a
person has.
• It has to do with how people mentally represent information
processing.
• Experiments in this field have to do with stimulus and response.
• Jean Piaget is one of the most famous cognitive psychologists.
• His work has to do with developmental stages in children.
• Unlike some other theories, cognitive psychology accepts the
scientific method and recognizes internal mental states such as
motivation, desire, and belief.
 Methods of Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive psychology, the school of psychology that researches internal
mental processes, employs various methods as it examines how humans
understand, diagnose, as well as solve problems and how human memory
works.
• Two widely used methods of cognitive psychology are a case study and a
controlled experiment.
• Case studies are in-depth investigations of individuals or single cases. Through
the method of case study, a detailed analysis of an individual or a case is
obtained. This is achieved through the use of certain data collection tools
including questionnaires, interviews, and observations, etc.
• The data collected provides evidence which is used to disprove or support
some theory because it incorporates highly detailed data. At the same time, a
considerable disadvantage of this method is its subjectivity and limited
generalizability.
 Methods of Cognitive Psychology
• Case study accounts in psychology, because they are based on the
qualitative approach to data collection and data analysis, risk being
affected by the researcher bias.
• In particular, researchers who work with the observed individuals often
for a long time can become biased towards the patients and manipulate
the findings to create ground for their theories.
• Sometimes, the findings reflect the researcher’s attitude to the patient,
e.g. whether he/she likes the study participant or not, and are
interpreted in the way that serve the researcher’s bias.
• Another disadvantage of the case study is difficulty of replication and
limited generalizability.
• Case studies are used to research rare cases and single individuals over a
long time in cognitive psychology and they cannot be replicated because
of the individual differences among people. Also, they use inductive
reasoning.
 Methods of Cognitive Psychology
• To compare, the experiment is also used in cognitive psychology to either
support or disprove theories.
• However, the experiment uses deductive reasoning, because it verifies a
hypothesis with the help of factual data represented through figures and
calculations.
• This method lies within the quantitative paradigm and involves comparisons of
(two or sometimes more) variables as they are manipulated under specific
conditions.
• Randomized control trials (the most valid and reliable type of experiment)
involve a highly representative sample of randomly assigned participants and
allows establishing causal relationships between studied variables.
• These findings are applicable to a larger society, and they are valid and reliable
evidence for the theory support or disproval.
• In this way, the use of experiment leads to more objective results, with greater
validity and reliability; it is applicable to the society in general and can be
replicated.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
The First Cognitive Psychologists

• The scientific study of psychology began towards the end of the nineteenth
century.
• Wilhelm Wundt set up the first psychology laboratory at Leipzig in 1879,
where he carried out research on perception, including some of the earliest
studies of visual illusions.
• In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus published the first experimental research on
memory, and many subsequent researchers were to adopt his methods
over the years that followed.
• Perhaps the most lasting work of this early period was a remarkable book
written by William James in 1890, entitled Principles of Psychology.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
The Rise and Fall of Behaviourism

• Cognitive psychology made slow progress in the early years due to the
growing influence of behaviourism, an approach which constrained
psychologists to the investigation of externally observable behaviour.
• The behaviourist position was clearly stated by Watson (1913), who
maintained that psychologists should consider only events that were
observable, such as the stimulus presented and any consequent
behavioural response to that stimulus.
• Watson argued that psychologists should not concern themselves with
processes such as thought and other inner mental processes which could
not be observed in a scientific manner.
• The behaviourists were essentially trying to establish psychology as a true
science.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
The Rise and Fall of Behaviourism
• The refusal to consider inner mental processes had the effect of restricting
experimental psychology to the recording of observable responses.
• Indeed, some behaviourists were so keen to eliminate inner mental processes
from their studies that they preferred to work on rats rather than on human
subjects.
• A human being brings a whole lifetime of personal experience to the laboratory,
which cannot be observed or controlled by the experimenter. A rat presents
rather fewer of these unknown and uncontrolled variables.
• A good example of the behaviourist approach is the classic work carried out on
learning by B.F. Skinner (1938), who trained rats to press a lever in order to
obtain a food pellet as a reward (or ‘reinforcement’).
• The work of Skinner and other behaviourists undoubtedly generated some
important findings, but they completely disregarded the cognitive processes
underlying the responses they were studying.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Gestalt and Schema Theories

• Some psychologists began to realize that a proper understanding of human

cognition could only be achieved by investigating the mental processes
which the behaviourists were so determined to eliminate from their
studies.
• Among the first of these pioneers were the Gestalt psychologists in
Germany, and the British psychologist Frederick Bartlett. Their work
returned to the study of cognitive processes and it helped to lay the
foundations of modern cognitive psychology.
• Gestalt psychology: An approach to psychology which emphasised the way
in which the components of perceptual input became grouped and
integrated into patterns and whole figures.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Gestalt and Schema Theories

• Gestalt group (Gestalt is German for ‘shape’ or ‘form’) suggested that we

add something to what we perceive, so that the perception of a whole
object will be something more than just the sum of its component parts.
• They argued that the perception of a figure depended on its ‘pragnanz’
(i.e. its meaningful content), which favoured the selection of the simplest
and best interpretation available.
• These theories were perhaps rather vague, but they did at least make an
attempt to explain the perception of complex figures such as faces.
• The behaviourist approach, which refused to consider any influence other
than the stimulus itself, could not offer any explanation at all for such
phenomena.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Gestalt and Schema Theories
• The schema theory proposed by Bartlett (1932) was another early attempt to provide a plausible
explanation for a person’s ability to make sense of their perceptual input.
• Schema: A mental pattern, usually derived from past experience, which is used to assist with the
interpretation of subsequent cognitions, for example by identifying familiar shapes and sounds in a
new perceptual input.
• The schema theory proposes that all new perceptual input is analyzed by comparing it with items
which are already in our memory store, such as shapes and sounds which are familiar from past
experience. These items are referred to as ‘schemas’, and they include a huge variety of sensory
patterns and concepts.
• The schema theory has some interesting implications, because it suggests that our perception and
memory of an input may sometimes be changed and distorted to fit our existing schemas. Since our
schemas are partly acquired from our personal experience, it follows that our perception and
memory of any given stimulus will be unique to each individual person. Different people will
therefore perceive the same input in different ways, depending on their own unique store of
experience.
• Schema and Gestalt theory had a major influence on the development of cognitive psychology, by
emphasizing the role played by inner mental processes and stored knowledge, rather than
considering only stimulus and response. However, it would take many years for this viewpoint to
take over from behaviourism as the mainstream approach to cognition.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
• Inspired by the schema theory, Neisser (1967) identified two main types of input
processing, known as top-down and bottom-up processing.
• Top-down processing involves the generation of schemas by the higher cortical
structures, and these schemas are sent down the nervous system for comparison
with the incoming stimulus.
• Topdown processing is also sometimes referred to as schema-driven or conceptually
driven processing.
• Bottom-up processing is initiated by stimulation at the ‘bottom end’ of the nervous
system (i.e. the sense organs), which then progresses up towards the higher cortical
areas.
• Bottom-up processing is also known as stimulus-driven or data-driven processing,
because it is the incoming stimulus which sets off some appropriate form of
processing.
• One obvious difference between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processing is that their
information flows in opposite directions.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
• Top-down (or schema-driven) processing: Processing which makes use of
stored knowledge and schemas to interpret an incoming stimulus.
• Bottom-up (or stimulus-driven) processing: Processing which is directed by
information contained within the stimulus.
• Bottom-up processing theories can help to explain the fact that processing is
often determined by the nature of the stimulus.
• However, bottom-up theories have difficulty explaining the perception of
complex stimuli, which can be more easily explained by top-down theories.
• Although there have been disputes in the past about the relative importance
of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processing, Neisser (1967) argues that both
types of processing probably play a part in the analysis of perceptual input and
that in most cases information processing will involve a combination of the
two.
 Bottom Up Top Down
Focus on incoming sensory Uses previous experiences
data and expectations
Takes place in real time Info is interpreted using
contextual clues
More data driven Driven by Schema
Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
• Imagine that you see a somewhat obscure shape.
• If you saw the shape on its own, using bottom-up processing, you might
immediately perceive it as a capital letter B.
• Now if someone were to place that image next to other context clues, such
as next to the numbers 12 and 14, you might them perceive it as the number
13 rather than a capital B.
• In this case, you use top-down processing to interpret the visual information
in light of surrounding visual cues.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
• The Stroop Effect: One classic example of top-down processing in action is a
phenomenon known as the Stroop effect.
• In this task, color words are printed in other colors. So, for example, the word
"Red" might be printed in blue, the word "Pink" might be printed in white, and
so on.
• Participants are asked to say the color of the word but not the actual word
itself. When reaction times are measured, people are much slower at saying
the correct color when the color and the word are not the same.
• Top-down processing explains why this task is so difficult. People
automatically recognize the word before they think about the color, making it
easier to read the word aloud rather than to say the color of the word.
 Experimental Cognitive Psychology
Top Down and Bottom Up Processing
• Typos: When you are reading a block of text, you might find yourself
not even noticing typos and other text errors.
• As you read along, the preceding words provide context about what
you can expect to read next.
• Because of this, your brain often simply fills in missing details and
corrects errors as you read so that you do not even notice such
mistakes.
 Computational Cognitive Science
• A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer
program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a
particular system to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their
behavior.
• Computer simulations vary from computer programs that run a few minutes, to network-
based groups of computers running for hours, to ongoing simulations that run for days. The
scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible
(or perhaps even imaginable) using the traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical
modeling.
• Computer simulation modeling is a discipline gaining popularity in both government and
industry.
• Computer simulation modeling can assist in the design, creation, and evaluation of complex
systems. Designers, program managers, analysts, and engineers use computer simulation
modeling to understand and evaluate ‘what if’ case scenarios.
• It can model a real or proposed system using computer software and is useful when changes
to the actual system are difficult to implement, involve high costs, or are impractical.
• Some examples of computer simulation modeling familiar to most of us include: weather
forecasting, flight simulators used for training pilots, and car crash modeling.
 Computational Cognitive Science
• Computer simulation, the use of a computer to represent
the dynamic responses of one system by the behaviour of another system
modeled after it.
• A simulation uses a mathematical description, or model, of a real system in the
form of a computer program.
• This model is composed of equations that duplicate the functional
relationships within the real system.
• When the program is run, the resulting mathematical dynamics form
an analog of the behaviour of the real system, with the results presented in the
form of data.
• A simulation can also take the form of a computer-graphics image that
represents dynamic processes in an animated sequence.
 Computational Cognitive Science
• Computer simulations are used to study the dynamic behaviour of objects or systems
in response to conditions that cannot be easily or safely applied in real life.
• For example, a nuclear blast can be described by a mathematical model that
incorporates such variables as heat, velocity, and radioactive emissions. Additional
mathematical equations can then be used to adjust the model to changes in certain
variables, such as the amount of fissionable material that produced the blast.
• Simulations are especially useful in enabling observers to measure and predict how
the functioning of an entire system may be affected by altering individual
components within that system.
• More advanced simulations, such as those that emulate weather patterns or
computer models of newly designed structures undergo simulated tests to
determine their responses to stress and other physical variables. Simulations of river
systems can be manipulated to determine the potential effects of dams and irrigation
networks before any actual construction has taken place. Other examples of
computer simulations include estimating the competitive responses of companies in
a particular market and reproducing the movement and flight of space vehicles.
Computational Cognitive Science
 Computational Cognitive Science
• An approach that involves constructing computational models to understand human
cognition. Some of these models take account of what is known about brain
functioning as well as behavioural evidence.
• Computational modelling involves programming computers to model or mimic some
aspects of human cognitive functioning.
• Artificial intelligence involves constructing computer systems that produce
intelligent outcomes but the processes involved may bear little resemblance to those
used by humans.
• Computational cognitive scientists develop computational models to understand
human cognition. A good computational model shows us how a given theory can be
specified and allows us to predict behaviour in new situations.
• Mathematical models were used in experimental psychology long before the
emergence of the information-processing paradigm.
• These models can be used to make predictions, but often lack an explanatory
component. A major benefit of the computational models developed in
computational cognitive science is that they can provide an explanatory and
predictive basis for a phenomenon.
 Computer Models of information Processing
Computer Analogies and Computer Modelling
• A major shift towards the cognitive approach began in the 1950s, when the introduction of
the electronic computer provided a new source of inspiration for cognitive psychologists.
• Computer systems offered some completely new ideas about information processing,
providing a helpful analogy with possible brain mechanisms.
• Furthermore, computers could be used as a ‘test-bed’ for modelling possible human brain
functions, providing a means of testing the feasibility of a particular processing mechanism.
• By separating out the various component stages of a cognitive process, it is possible to
devise a sequential flow chart which can be written as a computer program and actually put
to the test, to see whether it can process information as the brain would.
• Among the first to apply computers in this way were Newell et al. (1958), who developed
computer programs which were able to solve simple problems, suggesting a possible
comparison with human problem-solving and thought.
• More recently programs have been developed which can tackle far more complex problems,
such as playing a game of chess.
• Computer programs were also developed which could carry out perceptual processes, such
as the recognition of complex stimuli.
 Computer Models of information Processing
Feature Detectors
• Selfridge and Neisser (1960) devised a computer system which could identify shapes and
patterns by means of feature detectors, tuned to distinguish certain specific components of the
stimulus such as vertical or horizontal lines.
• Feature detectors: Mechanisms in an information processing device (such as a brain or a
computer) which respond to specific features in a pattern of stimulation, such as lines or
corners.
• Hubel and Weisel (1959) found simple feature detector cells when carrying out microelectrode
recordings in the brain of a cat, and more recently Haynes and Rees (2005) have used functional
imaging techniques to identify similar feature detector cells in the human brain.
• The discovery of feature detectors can be regarded as an example of different approaches to
cognition being combined, with contributions from both neuroscience and computer modelling.
• The concept has also had a major influence on cognitive psychology, as feature detectors are
thought to operate as ‘mini-schemas’ which detect specific shapes and patterns.
 Computer Models of information Processing
The Limited Capacity Model
• Broadbent (1958) carried out experiments on divided attention, which showed that people
have difficulty in attending to two separate inputs at the same time. Broadbent explained
his findings in terms of a sequence of processing stages which could be represented as a
series of stages in a flow chart.
• Certain crucial stages were identified which acted as a ‘bottleneck’ to information flow,
because of their limited processing capacity. This was an approach to information
processing which owed its inspiration to telecommunications and computing technology.
• There is a clear parallel between the human brain faced with a large array of incoming
information, and a telephone exchange faced with a large number of incoming calls, or
alternatively a computer whose input has exceeded its processing capacity.
• In each case many inputs are competing with one another for limited processing resources,
and the inputs must be prioritized and selectively processed if an information overload is to
be avoided. Broadbent referred to this process as ‘selective attention’, and his theoretical
model of the ‘limited-capacity processor’ provided cognitive psychology with an important
new concept.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Cognitive neuroscience is concerned with the relationship between brain function
and cognition, and normally makes use of brain imaging techniques.
• Cognitive neuropsychology is also concerned with the brain mechanisms
underlying cognition, by studying individuals who have suffered brain damage.
• Both of these related approaches are now accepted as important components of
cognitive psychology.
• The outer shell of the brain is known as the cerebral cortex, and it is responsible
for most of the higher cognitive processes. The various lobes of the cortex are
extensively interconnected, so that a single cognitive process may involve many
different cortical areas.
• Damage to a certain part of the brain can often cause quite specific impairments.
In recent years the introduction of brain scanning equipment has provided an
additional source of knowledge to supplement the findings of brain lesion studies.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• It has been established that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have particular
specializations.
• In right-handed people the left hemisphere is normally dominant, and the left
hemisphere also tends to be particularly involved with language and speech.
• The right hemisphere seems to be more concerned with the processing of non-verbal
input, such as the perception of patterns or faces. These functions may be reversed in
left-handed people, though most have left hemisphere specialization for language.
• But in addition to these specializations of the right and left hemispheres, it has been
argued that the front and the rear halves of the brain also have broadly different
functions.
• Luria (1973) points out that the front half of the brain is primarily concerned with
output, such as for example the control of movements and speech. In contrast the rear
half of the brain (the parietal, temporal and occipital lobes) tend to be more concerned
with the processing of input, as for example in the analysis of visual and auditory
perception.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• The frontal lobes include the motor region of the cortex, which controls
movement. Damage to this area is likely to cause problems with the control of
movement, or even paralysis.
• Also in the frontal lobes is Broca’s area, which controls the production of speech,
and it is normally in the left hemisphere of the brain. It was Broca, who first noted
that damage to this region caused an impairment of speech production.
• Other parts of the frontal lobes are involved in the central executive system
which controls conscious mental processes such as the making of conscious
decisions. Recent neuro-imaging studies have shown that activation of the
prefrontal cortex (the front-most region of the frontal lobes) is associated with
intelligent reasoning and prefrontal activation is also linked with the selective
retrieval of memory items.
• The occipital lobes at the back of the brain are mainly concerned with the
processing of visual input, and damage to the occipital lobes may impair visual
perception.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• The parietal lobes are also largely concerned with perception. They contain the
somatic sensory cortex, which receives tactile input from the skin as well as
feedback from the muscles and internal organs.
• This region is also important in the perception of pain, and other parts of the
parietal lobes may be involved in some aspects of short-term memory.
• Recent studies using brain scans suggest that the parietal lobes are activated
during the retrieval of contextual associations of retrieved memories.
• The temporal lobes are so called because they lie beneath the temples, and
they are known to be particularly concerned with memory. Temporal lobe
lesions are often associated with severe amnesia.
• The temporal lobes also include the main auditory area of the cortex, and a
language centre known as Wernicke’s area, which is particularly concerned
with memory for language and the understanding of speech.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• In order to operate as an information-processing system, the brain must
obviously have some way of representing information, for both processing and
storage purposes.
• Information must be encoded in some representational or symbolic form.
• There have been many theories about the way information might be
represented and stored in the brain, including early suggestions that
information could be stored in magnetic form (Lashley, 1950) or in chemical
form (Hyden, 1967).
• However, neither of these theories was very plausible because such
mechanisms would be unable to offer the necessary storage capacity,
accessibility, or durability over time.
• The most plausible explanation currently available for the neural basis of
information storage is the proposal by Donald Hebb (1949) that memories are
stored by creating new connections between neurons.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• The entire nervous system, including the brain, is composed of millions of neurons, which
can activate one another by transmitting chemical substances called neurotransmitters
across the gap separating them, which is known as the synapse.
• All forms of neural activity, including perception, speech, or even thought, work by
transmitting a signal along a series of neurons in this way.
• These cognitive processes are therefore dependent on the ability of one neuron to activate
another.
• Hebb’s theory postulated that if two adjacent neurons (i.e. nerve cells) are fired off
simultaneously, then the connection between them will be strengthened. Thus a synapse
which has been frequently crossed in the past will be more easily crossed by future signals.
• Hebb suggested that this mechanism of synaptic strengthening would make it possible to
build up a network of interconnected neurons, which could represent a particular pattern of
input. Hebb called this a cell assembly.
• Cell assembly: A group of cells which have become linked to one another to form a single
functional network. Proposed by Hebb as a possible biological mechanism underlying the
representation and storage of a memory trace.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• When Donald Hebb first proposed the cell assembly theory in 1949, it was still largely
speculative. However since that time a great deal of evidence has been gathered to
confirm that the synapse does indeed change as a result of frequent firing of the
neuron.
• Perhaps the most convincing evidence is the discovery that when electrical stimulation
is applied to living tissue taken from the brain of a rat, the neurons do actually change in
a lasting way, with their threshold of firing becoming much lower so they can be more
easily activated by subsequent stimuli. This phenomenon is known as long-term
potentiation (LTP).
• Long-term potentiation (LTP): A lasting change in synaptic resistance following the
application of electrical stimulation to living brain tissue. Possibly one of the biological
mechanisms underlying the learning process.
• It has also been found that rats reared in a stimulating and enriched environment, with
plenty of sensory input, develop more synaptic connections in their brains than rats
reared in an impoverished environment where there is little to stimulate them
(Greenough, 1987).
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• More recent research has shown that short-term storage involves the
strengthening of pre-existing synaptic connections, whereas long-term storage
involves the growth of new synaptic connections between the neurons (Bailey
and Kandel, 2004).
• Brain-imaging techniques such as PET scans have also confirmed that memory
storage and retrieval do in fact coincide with the activation of large-scale
neural networks spread diffusely through the brain (Habib et al., 2003).
• There is now plenty of evidence to confirm that memory storage depends on
the growth and plasticity of neural connections (De Zeeuw, 2007), and recent
reviews conclude that activity-dependent modification of synaptic strength has
now been established as the probable mechanism of memory storage in the
brain.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Some of the activities of the brain are under our conscious control, but many
take place automatically and without our conscious awareness or intervention.
• Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) made a distinction between controlled cognitive
processes, which are carried out consciously and intentionally, and automatic
cognitive processes, which are not under conscious control.
• They suggested that because controlled processes require conscious attention
they are subject to limitations in processing capacity, whereas automatic
processes do not require attention and are not subject to such processing
limits.
• Automatic processing will therefore take place far more rapidly than controlled
processing, and will be relatively unaffected by distraction from a second task
taking up attention.
• Another feature of automatic processing is that it is not a voluntary process,
and it will take place regardless of the wishes and intentions of the individual.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• The study of brain and cognition obviously overlap, and in recent years
cognitive psychologists and neuropsychologists have been able to learn a lot
from one another.
• Cognitive psychology has arisen from the interaction between experimental
cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive neuropsychology, and
computer modelling.
• The science of cognitive psychology has generated new concepts and theories,
such as the distinction between top-down and bottom-up processing, and the
distinction between automatic and controlled processing.
• The study of consciousness has yielded some interesting findings but at
present we have no real understanding of what consciousness is, or how it
arises from neural activity.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Technological advances mean we have numerous exciting ways of obtaining
detailed information about the brain’s functioning and structure.
• Such information allows us to determine the order in which different parts of
the brain become active when someone performs a task. It also allows us to
find out whether two tasks involve the same parts of the brain in the same way
or whether there are important differences.
• There is no single (or best) technique. Each technique has its own strengths
and limitations, and so researchers focus on matching the technique to the
issue they want to address.
• At the most basic level, the various techniques vary in the precision with which
they identify the brain areas active when a task is performed (spatial
resolution), and the time course of such activation (temporal resolution).
• Thus, the techniques differ in their ability to provide precise information
concerning where and when brain activity occurs.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Single-unit recording: This technique (also known as single-cell
recording) involves inserting a micro-electrode one 110,000th of a
millimetre in diameter into the brain to study activity in single
neurons. This is a very sensitive technique, since electrical charges of
as little as one-millionth of a volt can be detected.

• Event-related potentials (ERPs): The same stimulus is presented

repeatedly, and the pattern of electrical brain activity recorded by
several scalp electrodes is averaged to produce a single waveform.
This technique allows us to work out the timing of various cognitive
processes.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Positron emission tomography (PET): This technique involves the detection
of positrons, which are the atomic particles emitted from some radioactive
substances. PET has reasonable spatial resolution but poor temporal
resolution, and it only provides an indirect measure of neural activity.
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): This technique involves
imaging blood oxygenation using an MRI machine. fMRI has superior spatial
and temporal resolution to PET, but also only provides an indirect measure
of neural activity.
• Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI): This is a
type of fMRI that compares brain activation associated with different
“events”. For example, we could see whether brain activation on a memory
test differs depending on whether participants respond correctly or
incorrectly.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• Magneto-encephalography (MEG): This technique involves measuring the
magnetic fields produced by electrical brain activity. It provides fairly detailed
information at the millisecond level about the time course of cognitive
processes, and its spatial resolution is reasonably good.
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): This is a technique in which a coil is
placed close to the participant’s head and a very brief pulse of current is run
through it. This produces a short-lived magnetic field that generally inhibits
processing in the brain area affected. It can be regarded as causing a very brief
“lesion”, a lesion being a structural alteration caused by brain damage.
• The effects of TMS are sometimes more complex than our description of it
would suggest.
 Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
• None of the brain techniques provides magical insights into human cognition.
• Most brain-imaging techniques reveal only associations between patterns of brain
activation and behavior. Such associations are basically correlational, and do not
demonstrate that the brain regions activated are essential for task performance.
• Most functional neuroimaging research is based on the assumption of functional
specialization, namely, that each brain region is specialized for a different
function.
• There is the issue of whether functional neuroimaging research is relevant to
testing cognitive theories.
• A given brain region is active during the performance of a task, they mean it is
active relative to some baseline. What is an appropriate baseline?
• Much research in cognitive psychology suffers from a relative lack of ecological
validity (applicability to everyday life).
 Ecological Validity
• Although cognitive psychologists usually bring their subjects to the laboratory for
study, during the 1970s a movement was afoot to increase the ecological validity
of research in cognition.
• This term was popularized by Neisser (1976), refers to the quest for theories of
cognition that describes people’s use of knowledge in real everyday life and
culturally significant situations.
• For e.g, memorizing a list of words when done in a laboratory, may not tell us
much about some of the really interesting capabilities of human memory, because
memorizing a list of words is a kind of task that humans do only in highly
constrained or unnatural situation.
• Thus, a cognitive psychologist may be much more interested in how a person goes
about trying to study, learn and remember a textbook chapter than he or she
would be in learning how many words a subject can remember from a list that
was presented once.
 Ecological Validity
• In spite of cognitive psychology’s enormous contributions to our knowledge of
human cognition, the approach has various limitations.
• The concern is that laboratory research lacks ecological validity – the extent to
which the findings of laboratory studies are applicable to everyday life.
• Ecological validity: The extent to which the conditions of a research
experiment resemble those encountered in real life settings.
• Research in cognitive psychology suffers from a relative lack of ecological
validity (applicability to everyday life) and paradigm specificity (findings do not
generalize from one paradigm to others).
• The same limitations apply to cognitive neuroscience since cognitive
neuroscientists generally use tasks previously developed by cognitive
psychologists.
• Indeed, the problem of ecological validity may be greater in cognitive
neuroscience.
 Ecological Validity
• Gutchess and Park (2006) investigated whether participants performing a task in the distracting
conditions of the fMRI environment are disadvantaged compared to those performing the same task
under typical laboratory conditions.
• Long-term recognition memory was significantly worse in the fMRI environment. This is potentially
important, because it suggests that findings obtained in the fMRI environment may not generalize to
other settings.
• Research on human memory should ideally possess ecological validity (i.e., applicability to real life).
• Kvavilashvili and Ellis (2004) argued that ecological validity consists of two aspects: (1)
representativeness; and (2) generalizability.
• Representativeness refers to the naturalness of the experimental situation, stimuli, and task,
whereas generalizability refers to the extent to which a study’s findings are applicable to the real
world.
• Generalizability is more important than representativeness. It is often (but mistakenly) assumed that
everyday memory research always has more ecological validity than traditional laboratory research.
• Research possessing high ecological validity can be carried out by devising naturalistic experiments in
which the task and conditions resemble those found in real life, but the experiment is well-
controlled.
• Ecological validity refers to the extent to which the findings of a research study are able to
be generalized to real-life settings.
• Suppose that you were interested in studying how people respond to life-threatening
situations, so you create a virtual simulation of a plane crash.
• You take ten participants and record their behaviors, pulse, and adrenaline levels as they go
through the virtual simulation.
• You find that heart rate and adrenaline increase during the simulation. You also notice that
during the final moments of the plane crash simulation, a majority of the participants were
able to accurately follow the safety instructions that were given in the beginning of the
flight.
• You want to know if your study is valid, which means the study measures what it is
supposed to measure.
• One way for us to examine the study's validity is to look at ecological validity, which is the
extent to which the conclusions of your research study can be generalized to the settings
and situations in which the phenomenon that you are studying would naturally occur.
• If your research study has high ecological validity, then you can generalize the
findings of your research study to real-life settings. If your study has high ecological
validity, you would expect that people who are in actual plane crashes would
experience increased heart rate and adrenaline. You would also expect them to be
able to follow all of the safety instructions.
• Let's say that you researched people who have been in plane crashes and survived
and found out that they did experience increased heart rate and adrenaline.
However, the increase during the real-life situation was much higher than during the
virtual simulation. In addition, you also found that none of the survivors were able
to recall or follow the safety instructions during the actual plane crash. In this
example, your study has low ecological validity. This means that you cannot
generalize your findings to real-life plane crash situations.
• Generally speaking, when you conduct research in settings that are realistic,
meaning they're done in a natural environment, your study has high ecological
validity. When you conduct research in artificial settings that lack realism and have
very little in common with real-life settings, such as a virtual simulation of a life-or-
death experience, you will likely have low ecological validity.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive psychology is not only centered to everything what happens in
everyday life, it is even central to psychologist's quest to understand how of the
behaviour.
• Abnormal psychology:
• Following the cognitive revolution, and as a result of many of the principle
discoveries to come out of the field of cognitive psychology, the discipline of
cognitive therapy evolved.
• Aaron T. Beck is generally regarded as the father of cognitive therapy.
• His work in the areas of recognition and treatment of depression has gained
worldwide recognition.
• In his 1987 book titled Cognitive Therapy of Depression, Beck puts forth three
salient points with regard to his reasoning for the treatment of depression by
means of therapy or therapy and antidepressants versus using a
pharmacological-only approach:
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Despite the prevalent use of antidepressants, the fact remains that not all
patients respond to them. Beck cites (in 1987) that only 60 to 65% of patients
respond to antidepressants, and recent meta-analyses show very similar
numbers.
• Many of those who do respond to antidepressants end up not taking their
medications, for various reasons. They may develop side-effects or have some
form of personal objection to taking the drugs.
• Beck posits that the use of psychotropic drugs may lead to an eventual
breakdown in the individual's coping mechanisms. His theory is that the
person essentially becomes reliant on the medication as a means of improving
mood and fails to practice those coping techniques typically practiced by
healthy individuals to alleviate the effects of depressive symptoms. By failing to
do so, once the patient is weaned off of the antidepressants, they often are
unable to cope with normal levels of depressed mood and feel driven to
reinstate use of the antidepressants.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Social psychology
• Many facets of modern social psychology have roots in research done within the field of
cognitive psychology. Social cognition is a specific sub-set of social psychology that
concentrates on processes that have been of particular focus within cognitive psychology,
specifically applied to human interactions.
• Gordon B. Moskowitz defines social cognition as "... the study of the mental processes
involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the
people in our social world".
• The development of multiple social information processing (SIP) models has been influential
in studies involving aggressive and anti-social behavior. Kenneth Dodge's SIP model is one of
empirically supported models relating to aggression.
• Among his research, Dodge posits that children who possess a greater ability to process
social information more often display higher levels of socially acceptable behavior. His
model asserts that there are five steps that an individual proceeds through when evaluating
interactions with other individuals and that how the person interprets cues is key to their
reactionary process.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Many of the prominent names in the field of developmental psychology base
their understanding of development on cognitive models.
• One of the major paradigms of developmental psychology, the Theory of
Mind (ToM), deals specifically with the ability of an individual to effectively
understand and attribute cognition to those around them.
• This concept typically becomes fully apparent in children between the ages of
4 and 6. The development of ToM is a matter of metacognition, or thinking
about one's thoughts. The child must be able to recognize that they have their
own thoughts and in turn, that others possess thoughts of their own.
• One of the foremost minds with regard to developmental psychology, Jean
Piaget, focused much of his attention on cognitive development from birth
through adulthood.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Educational psychology
• Modern theories of education have applied many concepts that are focal points of cognitive
psychology. Some of the most prominent concepts include:
• Metacognition: Metacognition is a broad concept encompassing all manners of one's thoughts
and knowledge about their own thinking. A key area of educational focus in this realm is related
to self-monitoring, which relates highly to how well students are able to evaluate their personal
knowledge and apply strategies to improve knowledge in areas in which they are lacking.
• Declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge: Declarative knowledge is a persons
'encyclopedic' knowledge base, whereas procedural knowledge is specific knowledge relating to
performing particular tasks. The application of these cognitive paradigms to education attempts
to augment a student's ability to integrate declarative knowledge into newly learned
procedures in an effort to facilitate accelerated learning.
• Knowledge organization: Applications of cognitive psychology's understanding of how
knowledge is organized in the brain has been a major focus within the field of education in
recent years. The hierarchical method of organizing information and how that maps well onto
the brain's memory are concepts that have proven extremely beneficial in classrooms.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Personality psychology
• Cognitive therapeutic approaches have received considerable attention in the
treatment of personality disorders in recent years. The approach focuses on
the formation of what it believes to be faulty schemata, centralized on
judgmental biases and general cognitive errors.
• Organizational Psychologists:
• Cognitive psychology plays its role in industrial or organizational set up where
in organizational psychologists are insisted to know how cognitive processes
such as remembering and decision making strategies work out in
organizational or industrial workplace.
 Applications of Cognitive Psychology
• Moral development - This includes how moral dilemmas change your moral reasoning in the stages of moral
development.
• Eyewitness testimony - Study of how a witness's testimony is affected by stress, focusing on a weapon, or leading
questions.
• Forgetting - This area covers long and short term memory.
• Selective attention - Humans have limited capacity for paying attention so this studies the selection of what
deserves our attention.
• Perception - This covers the processing of sensual inputs and how the brain turns them into sensual perceptions.
• Child development - This deals with the process of cognitive processes as we grow.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy - This uses the fact that thought patterns can affect behavior and tries to help people
with mental health problems.
• Learning styles - This investigates the different ways in which people learn.
• Information processing - Compares humans to computers in the way we process information.
• Cognitive interview - This is way of asking questions that help an eye witness remember better.
• Education - Cognitive psychology can help with more effective learning techniques.
• Face Recognition - An example of this is the fact that we still recognize a friend's face even if one aspect of it
changes, like a hair cut.
Thank You