PSYC 341 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Connectionism, Wilhelm Wundt, Gestalt Psychology
16 Feb 2018
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Antecedents to cognitive psychology: introspection thinking about one"s own mental processes. Wilhelm wundt (1832-1920: elementary structures of mind, basic building blocks of consciousness. William james (1842-1910: important american psychologist, discovered short term and long term memory, gestalt psychology. Whole > sum of its parts: behaviorism only interested in observable behavior, not the cognitive processes behind the decision-making. Skinner free will is an illusion. Behavior > mental processes because mental processes can"t be directly studied. The what" is more important than the why". Tollman"s maze learning experiments (involving rats) Rats have an internal map because they take shortcuts, even after learning the maze without the shortcuts. Cognitive psychology: stimulus what is going on in the mind?" response, cognitive revolution" after the failure" of behaviorism. Technological advancements: information processing model series of processes operating on internal representations. Reductionist approach understanding larger processes by breaking them into smaller processes.
