Cognitive Psychology

1. Cognitive Psychology Introduction to the field

2. Why Cognitive Psych? • Fun • Applications • Both fun & applications are fueled by basic research questions

3. Fun • Deep Blue = 1/2 million moves per second. What goes on in Kasparov’s head?

4. Fun • Deep Blue = 1/2 million moves per second. What goes on in Kasparov’s head? • Why is it you can’t remember what you just got up to do, but you can’t forget commercials from childhood?

5. Look at the rabbit.

6. This is the problem of reference • Reid had the same problem w/ “I sleep all right!!!”

7. Fun • What goes on in Kasparov’s head? • Why can’t you forget commercials from childhood? • Parents say “Rabbit.” • “Why did John roller skate to McDonald’s last night?”

8. Fun • What goes on in Kasparov’s head? • Why can’t you forget commercials from childhood? • Parents say “Rabbit.” • “Why did John roller skate to McDonald’s last night?” • Dragon illusion

9. Dragon Illusion

10. Applied • Pilots make errors. Why? Why can’t they be perfect? Kish Airlines crash, Feb. 11, 2004

12. From http://baddesigns.com

13. Applied • Why do pilots make errors? • Is it possible for repressed memories to be recovered?

14. Applied • Why can’t pilots be perfect? • Can repressed memories be recovered? • What’s the best way to make memories long-lasting? And 2,018 others on Amazon

15. Applied • Why can’t pilots be perfect? • Can repressed memories be recovered? • What’s the best way to make memories long-lasting? • Document translation

16. Document translation Jingle bells, Jingle bells, jingle all the way Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh Into German, then back into English

17. Document Translation Jingle bells, Jingle bells, jingle all the way Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh Into German, then back into English Jingleglocken, jingleglocken, jingle completely. Oh which fun it is to ride into a horse-opened sleigh.

18. Document Translation Rudolph the red-nose reindeer had a very shiny nose And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows. Into Italian, then back into English

19. Document Translation Rudolph the red-nose reindeer had a very shiny nose And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows. Into Italian, then back into English Rudolph the red-nose reindeer has had a nose a lot polishes, And if you never saw it, you would even say that she emits light.

20. Document Translation You better not shout ,You better not cry, You better not pout I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town. Into Spanish, then back into English

21. Document Translation You better not shout ,You better not cry, You better not pout I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town. Into Spanish, then back into English You would improve the clock towards the outside, You would improve not the shout, You would improve not the codfish. I is saying to him Papa Noel is coming to the city.

23. Applied Why can’t pilots be perfect? Can repressed memories be recovered? What’s the best way to make memories long-lasting? Document translation How can we make virtual reality displays look natural?

25. Basic • Pilots make errors. Why? Why can’t they be perfect? • Deep Blue can examine more than 1/2 million moves per second. What is going in Kasparov’s head? • What is the nature of expertise?

26. Basic • Is it possible for repressed memories to be recovered? • Why is it you can’t remember what you just got up to do, but you can’t forget commercials from childhood? • How does forgetting work?

27. Basic • What’s the best way for memory to be long-lasting? • Small child sees a rabbit hopping by, and parents say “Rabbit.” • At any given moment there are many things that we might learn. How does the mind pick one (or more) of them?

28. Basic • How can we make virtual reality displays look natural? • Shape constancy illusion. • Why does vision sometimes break down?

29. Goal of Cognitive Psychology: to explain basic processes of thought Simple example:

30. Cognitive perspective • Think about what had to happen in order for you to answer that question.

31. Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?”

32. Speech interpretation • Segmentation--where are the breaks between words? • Where are the breaks between phonemes? • Variability in phoneme production between speakers

33. Interpretation of question Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?”

34. Interpretation of question • Word order dramatically changes sentences. Compare “John wished he had jumped higher” and “He wished John had jumped higher” • Surrounding context also matters: Compare “He smiled” and “He slowly took out the gun. He smiled.”

35. Interpretation of question Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?” Find answer in memory

36. Find answer in memory

37. Interpretation of question Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?” Find answer in memory Make decision: answer or not?

38. Answer or not How confident am I that I know the answer? What happens if I don’t answer? Is this a trick? (Psych. Classes are full of tricks.)

39. Interpretation of question Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?” Find answer in memory Make decision: answer or not? Phrase the answer

40. Phrase the answer • *Two • He had two hands • I’m not sure, but I’m guessing two • Two--what’s it to you?

41. Interpretation of question Speech Interpretation “How many hands did Aristotle have?” Find answer in memory Make decision: answer or not? Create motor commands to lips, tongue, etc Phrase the answer

42. Create motor commands • Degrees of freedom problem • Serial order problem

43. Summary: this shows basics of cognitive perspective • Emphasizes information and how it is transformed • Think in terms of stages in which information is transformed • Stages communicate with one another, but one stage doesn’t know what the other is doing.

44. Where did this approach come from?

45. Greek philosophy • How you acquire knowledge (perception) • How you maintain knowledge (memory) • Whether knowledge is innate or learned

46. Good questions! • Answers were pretty bad • Democritus: perception = small particles fly into your eye. • Aristotle agreed. Also thought women have fewer teeth then men, mice die if they drink in the summer. • Socrates: all knowledge is innate. • Plato: perception is unreliable, therefore only logic is reliable and experiments are pointless.

47. Assumptions Greeks Made • The world can be understood & predicted • Human are part of this world • Explanations should be of this world

48. Dark Ages • Almost nothing happened--decline of intellectualism • Rise of feudalism • Greeks dominated by Romans • Increasing emphasis on the soul, not the intellect.

49. Renaissance • Philosophers consider the mind again, mostly in the nativist/empiricist debate • Other topics taken up, but usually in service of this debate • Memory (for the empiricists to show the mechanism by which experience is the teacher) • Perception (to show that perception, which feels innate, is actually learned).

50. Introspectionism • First attempt to apply scientific method to thought (1880s).