The Scope of Cognitive Psychology

The Scope of Cognitive Psychology

The Scope of Cognitive Psychology

chapter 1

The Science of the Mind

 

The Scope of Cognitive Psychology

When the field of cognitive psychology was first launched, it was broadly focused on the scientific study of knowledge, and this focus led immediately to a series of questions: How is knowledge acquired? How is knowledge retained so that it’s available when needed? How is knowledge used—whether as a basis for making decisions or as a means of solving problems?

These are great questions, and it’s easy to see that answering them might be quite useful. For example, imagine that you’re studying for next Wednesday’s exam, but for some reason the material just won’t “stick” in your memory. You find yourself wishing, therefore, for a better strategy to use in studying and memorizing. What would that strategy be? Is it possible to have a “better memory”? As a different case, let’s say that while you’re studying, your friend is moving around in the room, and you find this quite distracting. Why can’t you just shut out your friend’s motion? Why don’t you have better control over your attention and your ability to concentrate? The Scope of Cognitive Psychology

ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPERS

Here’s one more example: You’re looking to learn how many people have decided to vote for candidate X. How do people decide whom to vote for? For that matter, how do people decide what college to attend, or which car to buy, or even what to have for dinner? And how can we help people make better decisions- so that, for example, they choose healthier foods, or vote for the candidate who (in your view) is preferable?

Before we’re through, we’ll consider evidence pertinent to all of these questions. Let’s note, though, that in these examples, things aren’t going as you might have wished: You remember less than you want to; you can’t ignore a distraction; the voters make a choice you don’t like. What about the other side of the picture? What about the remarkable intellectual feats that humans achieve- brilliant deductions or creative solutions to complex problems? In this text, we’ll also discuss these cases and explore how people manage to accomplish the great things they do.

 

The Broad Role for Memory:

 

The questions we’ve mentioned so far might make it sound like cognitive psychology is concerned just with your functioning as an intellectual-your ability to remember, or to pay attention, or to think through options when making a choice. As we’ve said, though, the relevance of cognitive psychology is much broader-thanks to the fact that a huge range of your actions, thoughts, and feelings depend on your cognition. As one way to convey this point, let’s ask: When we investigate how memory functions, what’s at stake? Or, to turn this around, what aspects of your life depend memory?

You obviously rely on memory when you’re taking an exam-memory for what you learned during the term. Likewise, you rely on memory when you’re at the supermarket and trying to remember the cheesecake recipe so that you can buy the right ingredients. You also rely on memory when you’re reminiscing about childhood. But what else draws on memory? Consider this simple story (adapted from Charniak, 1972):

 

Betsy wanted to bring Jacob a present. She shook her piggy bank. It made no sound. She went to look for her mother.

 

This four-sentence tale is easy to understand, but only because you provided important bits of background. For example, you weren’t at all puzzled about why Betsy was interested in her piggy bank; you weren’t puzzled, specifically about why the story’s first sentence led to the second. This is because you naturally already knew (a) that the things gives presents are often things bought for the occasion (rather than things already owned), (b) one as that buying things requires money, and (c) that money is sometimes stored in piggy banks. Without these facts, you would have wondered why a desire to give a gift would lead someone to her piggy bank. (Surely you didn’t think Betsy intended to give the piggy bank itself as the present!) Likewise, you immediately understood why Betsy shook her piggy bank. You didn’t shaking it in frustration or to find out if it would make a good suppose that she was trying percussion instrument. Instead, you understood that she was trving to determine its contents. But vou knew this fact only because vou alread knew (d) that Betsy was a child (because few adults keep their money in piggy banks). (e) that children don’t keep track of how much money is in their banks, and (f) that piggy banks are made out of opaque material (and so a child can’t simply look into the bank to see what’s inside). Without these facts, Betsy’s shaking of the bank would make no sense. Similarly, you understood what it meant that the bank made no sound. That’s because you know (g) that it’s usually coins (not bills) that are kept in piggy banks, and (h) that coins make noise when they’re shaken. If you didn’t know these facts, you might have interpreted the bank’s silence, when it was shaken, as good news, indicating perhaps that the bank was jammed full of $20 bills-an inference that would have led you to a very different expectation for how the story would unfold from there.

Of course, there’s nothing special about the “Betsy and Jacob” story, and we’d uncover a similar reliance on background knowledge if we explored how you understand some other conversation, comprehend a TV show. Our suggestion, in other words, is that many (perhaps all) of your encounters with the world depend on your narrative or follow a or supplementing your experience with knowledge that you bring to the situation. And perhaps this has to be true. After all, if you didn’t supply the relevant bits of background, then anyone telling the “Betsy and Jacob” story would need to spell out all the connections and alll the assumptions. That is, the story would have to include all the facts that, with memory, are supplied by you. As a result, the story would have to be much longer, and the telling of it much slower. The same would be true for every story you hear, every conversation you participate in. Memory is thus crucial for each of these activities.

Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100
Use the following coupon code :
NURSING10