Psychology 2135A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Henry Molaison, Immanuel Kant, Cognitive Revolution

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: Eriko Matsuki

Document Summary

Scientific study of acquisition, retention, and use of knowledge. The cognitive revolution: the limits of introspection. Ideas: cannot study mental world directly, must study mental world to understand behaviour: wundt and titchener: focus largely on study of conscious mental events (feelings, thoughts, perceptions, recollections) Introspection: look within to observe and record content of our own mental lives and the sequence of our own experiences: needed specific vocabulary that would minimize interpretation. Subjective entities play pivotal role and must be considered. Stimuli that are physically different can have similar effects, stimuli that is physically similar can have different effects: the roots of the cognitive revolution. Research in cognitive psychology: the diversity of methods. Similar logic that underlies research, but very diverse methods: working memory: some initial observations, working memory: holds information in an easily accessible form so that information is instantly available when you need it, hypothesized to have small capacity.