EXP3604C Cognitive Psychology Intro to Cognitive Psychology The Science Game 01 10 2013 The primary goal is to arrive at an understanding of reality and the people and minds in it that is true The way in which you go about formulating this understanding makes the endeavor scientific or not Playing the Science Game How can we tell if someone is lying 3 Non Scientific and arguably more natural ways to answer this question 1 We can consult our experience o What seems to have been true for me in the past 2 We can consult intuition o What feels like the true answer 3 We can consult tradition and authority o What does my culture believe to be true o What do trusted and knowledgeable people claim to be true What s the problem Most people for most of history used these methods to come to now what was true about people and the world So what s wrong with beliefs and knowledge based on experience intuition tradition and authority The Problem with Experience Experience is confounded Experience does not allow systematic comparison Most cognitive processes are automatic and unconscious The Problem with Intuition and reasoning We are prone to making a number of cognitive biases in judgment o Ex The availability heuristic more memorable more likely o Ex Rank these causes of death in terms of frequency Homicide Suicide Flu Heart Disease Our beliefs are shaped and reinforced in our interpersonal relationships and group memberships called Social Reality o Asch s 1951 conformity studies and Branscombe and Wann s 1994 pledge studies Once our beliefs are formed they tend to be reinforced through confirmation biases o Ex What does Stephen Colbert really believe The Problem with Authority and Tradition Authorities themselves may be just as prone to these biases Sometimes we are unaware at how extensively our culturally learned assumptions influence our worldview and its facts Ex The case of English Playing the Science Game What is our alternative What do we have to do if we want to scientifically answer the question How do we know when people are lying Scientific claims must be subject to empirical tests that produce The Golden Rule of Science empirical evidence Empirical evidence is o An observation or measurement that contributes to either verifying or falsifying a claim about what s true o Independent of the observer the evidence will be the same no matter who observes it Empirical testing is o Any situation or procedure that creates empirical evidence which allows a claim on truth to be verified or falsified o Empirical tests must be replicable and verifiable The Golden Assumption of the Science Game If an object of study exists in nature it is knowable o In other words it s possible to fully describe and explain even highly complex things like brains beliefs time memory and love The object of study is lawful o If we could perfectly control all of the input variables we could perfectly predict and control the outcome Two Types of Causal Explanations in Cognitive Psychology Ultimate Causes vs Proximate Causes Ultimate causes are concerned with the Evolutionary reasons why a cognitive process or phenomenon exists o What adaptive value did it have o How does it function to increase the fitness of an organism Steven Pinker o Survival and reproduction is a series of subtasks o The mind is a system of organs and computation that allowed our ancestors to outsmart objects animals plants and each other o The mind is a Kluge Two Types of Causal Explanations in Cognitive Psychology Proximate causes focus less on the WHY and more on the HOW o Ex What causes you to read and understand this sentence Proximate explanations in cognitive psychology largely take an Information Processing perspective o Cognitive processes happen in a series of sequential stages o At each stage a unique process takes place on incoming o An eventual response is the outcome of this series of stages information and operations We often use metaphors and models to describe information processing though it is simultaneously a biological process High Stakes Emotion Deception Examined an international sample of videos frame by frame 70 000 frames of people pleading to have missing family members returned o were genuinely distressed o were later convicted of murdering the missing person The presence of 4 cues of insincere sadness distress predicted guilt or innocence at a 90 accuracy rate o Eyebrows raised but not pulled down toward nose looked more like surprise o Microexpressions of smirks o Shorter verbal statements o Less fluid verbal rhythm stilted tentative Our Starting Point Insight Through Deficits Like is so often true in psychology we gain insight into how something works by studying what happens when it stops working Jill Bolte Taylor What is Consciousness The AWAREness Framework o Attention o Wakefulness o Architecture neuroscience supporting consciousness o Recall of knowledge o Emotive o Each exists on a continuum o Attention Theater metaphor and Global Workspace Theory o Both external stimuli and internal stimuli compete for our attention and working memory o But attentional processing is limited o Behind the scenes unconscious cognitive processes work to prioritize what gets into the spotlight and thus what gets distributed to the audience Memory centers Language centers Motor centers The central executive and experience stimulations Debunking the 10 Myth The theater metaphor helps us see why the 10 myth is wrong o Ex Talking on the phone at the airport o Ex The Zeigarnik Effect Unconscious reminders of incomplete goals that spontaneously pop into attention o Ex Why don t we listen to the neural signals telling our lungs to breathe fingers to type etc Wakefulness Cortico thalamic complex may work to integrate and bind sensory perceptual memory autobiographical and affective information together into a unified conscious experience Wakefulness varies on a continuum as well The Reticular Formation and the Pons regulate electrical activity in the brain especially the Cortico Thalamic complex Low amplitude high frequency beta waves produce wakefulness and arousal Recall of Knowledge High amplitude low frequency delta waves produce deep sleep Damage to parts of the pons results in coma One aspect of consciousness is the ability to call up recall stored memories and knowledge especially self knowledge Part of conscious experience is recognizing that I am the one having the experience Emotion Some would call this sentience We are able
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