PSYC 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Information Theory, Empiricism, Wilhelm Wundt
16 Jan 2016
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Psyc 213 1 and 2 cognition and cognitive neuroscience. Cognition: study of the mind and mental processes. History: philosophical roots, plato and aristotle (structuralism functionalism behaviourism) Late 1800s understanding configuration of elements of mind by studying components of percepts used introspection (wundt) but not armchair introspection; studying reaction time etc. Analyze consciousness into basic elements and study how they are related. Investigate function of mental processes not just relations. Mid 1900s: focus on stimulus response relationships. Problems with behaviourism: complex human brains/interspecies differences. Stages of advance in cogpsy: human experimental psyc 1970s=computer analogies and simulation 1980s cog neurosci (mind and brain) Information theory: world contains info we process, store and change. Basic assumptions: the mind=general purpose system performing and processing computations, mind carries out tasks as programmed steps, processing these steps takes time and resources. Info theory: function of info is to reduce uncertainty: the less likely info is to occur the more info it conveys.
