What is Cognitive Psychology ?
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of the mind as an information processor. Cognitive psychologists try to build up cognitive models of the information processing that goes on inside people's minds, including perception, attention, language, memory, thinking, and consciousness.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Article 1
Summary 1
Article 2
Summary 2
MIND MAP
Human thought and action is fundamentally shaped by a small set of cognitive categories such as
Time
Space
. Causality or possession
Mental Representations
The mental imagery of things that are not currently seen or sensed by the sense organs.
- Example : If you were asked to recall a birthday party, you could probably remember the people, the place where it was held, and things that you saw and maybe even the things you smelled. You cannot actually smell and see those things but you can imagine them.
The propostion is the most basic unit of meaning in a representation.
•Propositional Networks
It is the smallest statement that can be judged either true or false.
Mental Imagery
Can be defined as pictures in the mind or a visual representation in the absence of environmental input.
- The best way to make imagery more vivid is to imitate the conditions of sleep.
Long-term memory
Long-term memory is the storage of information for a long time. Long-term memory is the final stage in the processing of memory. The Information stored in long-term memory lasts longer than that is short-term memory. Long-term memory decays very little with time and it is easier to recall.
Example: Include recollection of an important day in the distant past (early birthday, graduation, wedding, etc), and work skills you learned in your first job out of school. Long term memory is generally well preserved in early and mid-stage Alzheimer's disease.
Episodic memory
Episodic memory is defined as the ability to recall and mentally reexperience specific episodes from one's personal past and is contrasted with semantic memory that includes memory for generic, context-free knowledge. From: Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 2011. Episodic memory is a category of long-term memory that involves the recollection of specific events, situations, and experiences.
Example: Your memories of your first day of school, your first kiss, attending a friend's birthday party, and your brother's graduation are all examples of episodic memories.
Memory
Short-term memory
A system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. Short-term memory is involved in the selection, initiation, and termination of information-processing functions such as encoding, storing, and retrieving data.
Example: Include where you parked your car this morning, what you had for lunch yesterday, and remembering details from a book that you read a few days ago.
Semantic memory
Semantic memory (SM) is a term used for the long-term memory store in which conceptual information is represented, including semantic (meaning) and lexical (word) information, as well as facts about the world (Bayles & Kaszniak, 1987; Tulving, 1972).
Example: Knowing that football is a sport.
QUESTIONS
1) How do we store and process information?
2) How do we solve problems?
3) How do errors in our thinking lead to emotional distress and negative behaviors?
ANSWERS
1) Information processing starts with input from the sensory organs, which transform physical stimuli such as touch, heat, sound waves, or photons of light into electrochemical signals. The sensory information is repeatedly transformed by the algorithms of the brain in both bottom-up and top-down processing.
2) 1. Perceptually recognizing a problem.
2. Representing the problem in memory.
3. Considering relevant information that applies to the current problem.
4. Identify different aspects of the problem.
5. Labeling and describing the problem.
3) Cognitive distortions are the ways in which our mind convinces us of the truth of something that isn't true. Cognitive distortions cause mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. By learning how to identify and refute inaccurate thinking, we can find more rational and balanced thinking.