COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
DEFINITIONS:
1. The
cognitive means requires mental activity which involves acquiring storage
transformation and use knowledge
2. It
is mental representation and mental process. It is a mental image.
3. To
understand the human behavior.
4. Mechanism
that intervenes between a stimulus and response to promote memory for items it
interactive mental imagery that is the cognitive psychology.
METHODS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
1. NATURALISTIC
OBSERVATION:
As the name suggests, naturalistic
observation consists of an observer watching people in familiar, everyday
contexts going about their cognitive business. For example, an investigator
might watch as people try to figure out how to work a new automated teller
machine [ATM] at an air port ideally, the observer remains as unobtrusive as
possible, so as to disrupt or alter the behaviors being observed as little as
possible. In this example, for instance, the investigator might stand nearby
and surreptitiously note what people who use the ATM do and say. Being
unobtrusive is much harder than it might sound. Observational studies have the
advantage that the things studied really do occur in the real world and not
just in an experimental laboratory. Psychologists call this property ecological
validity. Furthermore, the observer has a chance to see just how cognitive
processes work in natural settings: how flexible they are, how they are
affected by environmental changes, how rich and complex actual behavior is.
Naturalistic observation is relatively easy to do, doesn’t typically require a
lot of resources to carry out, and does not require other people to formally volunteer
for study. The disadvantage of naturalistic observation is a lack of
experimental control. The observer has no means of isolating the causes of
different behavior or reactions.
2. INTROSPECTION:
We have already seen one
special kind of observation, dating
to the laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt. In the technique of
introspection, the observer observes his or her own mental process. For
example, participants might be asked to solve complicated arithmetic problems
without paper or pencil and to “think aloud” as they do so. Introspection has
all the benefits and drawbacks of other observational studies, plus a few more.
One additional benefit is that observing one’s own reactions and behavior may
give one better insight in to an experience and the factors that influenced it,
yielding a richer, more complete picture than an outsider could observe. But
observing yourself is a double edged sword. All though perhaps a better
observer in some way than an outsider, you my also be more biased in regard to
your own cognition. People observing their own mental process may be more
concerned with their level of performance and may be motivated to subtly and
unconsciously distort their observations. They may try to make their mental
process appear more organized, logical, thorough, and so forth, then they
actually are. They may be unwilling to admit when their cognitive process seem
flawed or random. Moreover, with some cognitive tasks {especially demanding
once}, observers may have few resources left with which to observe and record.
3. CONTROLED
OBSERVATION AND CLINICAL INTERVIEWS
As the term controlled observation suggest, this
method gives researchers a little more influence over the setting in which
observations are conducted. Investigators using this research method try to
standardize the setting for all participants, I many cases manipulating
specific conditions to see how participants will be affected. In clinical
interviews, the investigator tries to channel the process even more. The
investigator begins by asking each participant a serious of open ended
questions. In the introspection example cited earlier, for instance, the interviewer
might again ask the participant to think about the problem and describe his
approaches to it. With the clinical interview method, however, instead of
allowing the participants to respond freely the interviewer follows up with
another set of questions.
4.
EXPERIMENTS
AND QUASI EXPERIMENTS
The major distinction between experiments and
observational methods is the investigator’s degree of experimental control.
Having experimental control means the experimental can assign participants to
different experimental conditions so as to minimize preexisting difference
between them. Ideally, the experimenter can control all variables that might
affect the performance of free search participants other than the variables on
which the study is focusing. True experiment is one in which the experimenter
manipulates one or more independent variables {the experimental condition} and
observes how the recorded measures {depended variables} change as a result.
These techniques for studying the way the brain functions make new connections
and new questions cognitive psychology. Before the availability of these
techniques, cognitive theories did not refer to the biological mechanism that
would implement various cognitive processes. Now cognitive neuroscientists
offer us findings from studies based on a new assumption: “the mapping between
physical activity in the brain and its functional state is such that when
experimental conditions are associated with different patterns of neural
activity, it can be assumed that they have engaged distinct cognitive functions
another electrical recording technique, called event related potential, or ERP,
measures an area of the brains response to a specific event. Thus participants
in an ERP study have electrodes attached to their scalp. They are presented
with various external stimuli, such as sights or sounds. The recording measures
brain activity from the time before the stimulus is presented until some time
afterward. The brain waves recorded also have predictable parts, or components.
Second, no research design is perfect. Each has certain potential benefits and
limitations that researchers must also examine the design of studies, both
critically and appreciatively, thinking carefully about how well the research
design answer the research question posed. I hope you’ll keep these thoughts in
mind as you read in the rest of the book examples of the wide variety of
research studies that cognitive psychologists have carried out.
5. INVESTIGATIONS
OF NEURAL UNDERPINNINGS
Much work
in cognitive neuropsychology involves examining people’s brain before the latter
half of this century this kind of examination could be conducted only after a
patient died, during an autopsy. However, since the 1970’s various techniques
of brain imaging the construction of pictures of the anatomy and functioning of
the intact brains, have been developed. Some of these methods gives us
information’s about neuroanatomy- the structures of the brain one of the
earliest such brain-imaging techniques developed was x-ray computed tomography
also called x-ray CT, computerized axial tomography scans, or CAT scans, a
techniques in which a highly focused beam of x-rays is passed through the body
from many different angles. Differing densities of body organs deflect the
x-rays differently allowing visualization of the organ.
-With
reference cognitive psychology 3rd edition
Kathleen.M.Golotli
Careleton
College 19-37
No comments:
Post a Comment