UNIT 2:

1. UNIT 2: Approaches to Cognitive Psychology

2. Cognitive Psychology • According to McMillan • Cognitive Psychology is the scientific study of human thoughts and the mental process that underlie behavior  which includes memory, problem solving, perception and language. • i.e. Cognitive Psychology focuses on internal psychological processes that involves in understanding human thoughts and mental processes that defines human behavior.

3. Cognitive Psychology • Cognitive Psychology …. • Help us to understand our environment more, & • What internal process that are involved in making appropriate decision in life. • These internal processes includes: • Attention • Perception • Learning • Memory • Language • Problem solving, • Reasoning • Thinking

4. Approaches…. • Cognitive scientist have difficulties in studying cognitive process in human being because… mental process cannot be seen, unlike overt behavior. • Scientists need a general framework to guide them, a set of assumptions that tells them where to start, what to look for, what to be aware of. • Thus, various approaches to study human cognitive process were developed: • Experimental cognitive psychology • Cognitive science • Cognitive neuropsychology • Cognitive neuroscience

5. Experimental cognitive psychology • Experimental cognitive psychology – foundation for all the approaches in cognitive psychology • Involves: • Conducting experiments on normal individuals under laboratory studies. • Scientific method – system of established principles and processes of scientific inquiry • Identifying a problem • Formulating hypotheses • Collecting data • Analyzing the data • Disseminating findings

6. Experimental cognitive psychology • Experimental Cognitive Psychologist would usually…. • Identifying a problem (define a question of study). • Gather information and resources • Formulate hypotheses • Conduct scientific experiment • Collect data • Analyze data • Interpret data • Make conclusion (in order to build a starting point for new hypothesis) • Results (findings) will be disseminate

7. Experimental cognitive psychology • Sample  normal individuals under laboratory conditions • Controlled environment – to understand human cognition/thinking process better

8. Limitation of Experimental cognitive psychology • People tend to behave differently when they are in the lab situation (when involved in experiment)  resulting in inaccurate findings because it does not represent the true process of human cognition. • Normally setting or design of the experiments is carried out in advance according to scientists needs/ requirement  little emphasize on respondent’s response. • Measurement on the speed and accuracy of performance provide only indirect evidence about the internal process involved in cognition. • Experimenter have the tendency to ignore the differences in respondents background (IQ, SES etc)  could affect the experiment result.

9. Cognitive science • Cognitive Science… • Focus on the relationship between artificial intelligence and Cognitive Psychology by developing computational models in order to understand human cognitions. • Artificial Intelligence is the study of human intelligence such that it can be replicated artificially. i.e. AI:- • Systems that think like humans (focus on reasoning and human framework) • Systems that think rationally (focus on reasoning and a general concept of intelligence) • Systems that act like humans (focus on behavior and human framework) • Systems that act rationally (focus on behavior and a general concept of intelligence)

10. …Cognitive science • A good computational model can:- • show us how a given theory can be specified in detail  allow us to predict behavior in new situations. • Help to stimulate better specification of cognitive theories and generates new predictions. • 3 main types of computational models:- • Semantic networks • Production system • Connectionist network

11. …Limitation of Cognitive science • Normally computational models are used for/as prop for a theory, rarely used to make prediction  because often they have no real predictive function. • Connectionist models  claim to have neuro plausibility, do not really resemble the human brain. • Most computational model has been design to stimulate human performance on single task.

12. Cognitive Neuropsychology • Cognitive neuropsychology is a branch of cognitive psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes. • Emphasize on  study the cognitive effects of brain injury or neurological illness  by inferring to models of normal cognitive functioning (in order to understand the normal human cognition). • Evidence is based on case studies of individual brain damaged patients who show deficits in brain areas

13. …..OTAK • Setiap bahagian otak sangat penting dalam mempengaruhi perkembangan bayi  berintegrasi juga dengan integrasi dengan emosi dan tingkahlaku sosial. • Otak Luar: Cortex & neocortex berlipat-lipat, disinilah letaknya ‘intelligence’ (tempat berfikir), kawasan yang mengawal penglihatan, pendengaran, rekacipta, percakapan dan pemikiran. Ia terbahagi kepada bahagian-bahagian (lobes) Otak Tengah: Limbic System mengawal emosi, ingatan, motivasi, t/l agrasif, kawal suhu badan, lapar, aktiviti sistem saraf, rembesan hormon, dan pusat kepuasan Pangkal Otak: Brain stem Kawal proses-proses hidup,spt bernafas, pergerakan jantung, proses ginjal, tidur, arousal, attention & keseimbangan badan (balance/movement), dll.

14. Cognitive Neuropsychology • Cognitive neuropsychologist assume that cognitive system consists of several modules or cognitive processors within the brain. • i.e. the cognitive processors involved in understanding speech is different from actual talking. • So, some brain damage patients are good at language comprehension but poor at talking (or vice-versa) . • From these studies researchers infer that different areas of the brain are highly specialized.

15. Cognitive Neuropsychology • Cognitive neuropsychology also uses many of the same techniques and technologies from the wider science of neuropsychology and fields such as cognitive neuroscience (neuroimaging – e.g. PET scan/MRI/CT scan; electrophysiology & neuropsychology test) to measure either brain function or psychological performance

16. Limitations: Cognitive Neuropsychology • Assume that the cognitive performance of a brain damage patients provide direct evidence of the impact of brain damage (of previously normal cognitive system). • The whole cognitive neuropsychological approach is very complex because every individual are different (in age, size, SES, educational background) , but they have similar kind of brain damage. So???? • The study of brain damage patients can lead to underestimates of brain areas involved in performing any given cognitive functioning

17. Cognitive Neuroscience • Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological component underlying cognition  with specific focus on the neural component of mental processes. • It addresses the questions of how psychological/ cognitive functions are produced by the brain  focused on uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes. • Includes studying about perception, attention, motor control, language, learning, memory, spatial and social cognition

18. Cognitive Neuroscience • Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and neuroscience, overlapping with disciplines such as biology, physiology, physiological psychology, cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. • Therefore, the Cognitive neuroscientists comes from various backgrounds, such as….. • cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, Bioengineering, • Psychiatry, neurology, physics, computer science, linguistics, philosophy and mathematics.

19. Cognitive Neuroscience • Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include experimental paradigms from psychophysics and cognitive psychology, functional neuro imaging, electrophysiology, cognitive genomics and behavioral genetics. • Scientist tried to understand the relationship between the brain and mind  from various aspects. • Studies of the human brain are done scientifically  in controlled environment (lab) • Studies of patients with cognitive deficits due to brain lesions constitute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience • Theoretical approaches include computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology. • Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science, plus evidence from neuropsychology and computational.

20. …Limitation 0f Cognitive Neuroscience • Relating to the validity of the data collected (results from the study). • Can the result be generalized to other situation  since each individual (respondents) participated in the study have significant individual differences???