PSY200 1st Edition Lecture 1 Outline of Current Lecture I. What is Cognitive Psychology? II. The First Cognitive Psychologists III. The Rise of Behaviorism IV. The Decline of BehaviorismV. The Cognitive RevolutionVI. Researching the Mind Current LectureI. What is Cognitive Psychology? Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes (or cognition) using the scientific method.It involves the following ideas; Perception, Attention, Memory, Representation of knowledge, Language, Problem-solving, Reasoning and decision-making. Many of these ideas also include hidden processes that we are not aware of. When we think about the subject, here are a few questions psychologists consider: How is cognitive psychology relevant to everyday experiences? Are there any practical implications of cognitive psychology? How is it possible to study the inner workings of the mind when we can’t really see the mind directly? What is the connection between computers and the study of the mind? A. The Scientific Method is a procedure used to investigate, acquire new knowledge, and correct/integrate current knowledge. - Characterization involves observing or measuring a phenomenon.- Hypotheses are theoretical explanations of the observations.- Predictions are the reasoning based on the hypothesis. - Experiment- Independent variable (factors): What is being manipulated by the experimenter;-Dependent variable: What is being measured. II. The First Cognitive PsychologistsFranciscus Donders (1868) and the subtractive method. Mental chronometry is measuring how long a cognitive process takes. The Reaction-time (RT) experiment measures interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus. Donders’ experiment had people choose between two things, a Simple RT task where the participant pushes a button quickly These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.after a light appears or a Choice RT task where the participant pushes one button if the light is on the right side, another if light is on the left side. So in conclusion the Choice RT – Simple RT= the time it takes to make a decision. Choice RT is 100 msecs longer than Simple RT. It takes 100 msecs to make a decision. From Donders’ experiments psychologists concluded that mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participants behaviors. Herman von Helmholtz coined unconscious inference, which is basically the idea that some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about the environment. We infer much of what we know about the world. Herman Ebbinghaus pioneered the experimental study in memory in the 1860s. He read a list of nonsense syllables aloud many times to determine number of repetitions necessary to repeatlist without errors. After a while, he relearned the list and found out that short intervals = fewer repetitions to relearn. He learned many different lists at many different retention intervals. Ebbinghaus concluded that savings = 100 x [(initial repetitions) – relearning repetitions)] / (initial repetitions). The savings were a function of retention interval. Wilhelm Wundt had the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany doing RT experiments. His approach was Structuralism, the experience is determined by combining elements of experience called sensations. His method to this was analytic introspection which isparticipants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to