Monday, October 29, 2012

METHODS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY




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  

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