Psyc2050 (Wk 1-6)

Front 1

Learning

Back 1

(just one definition is): An adaptive process where the tendency to perform a specific behaviour, emotion and/or thought is changed by experience.

Front 2

Habituation

Back 2

- "getting used to" a novel stimuli
- first, an orientating response ("attending" to the stimulus)
- after prolonged exposure, the stimulus is no longer novel (habituation)
- is the simplest form of learning, found in every animal

Front 3

Changes in behaviour that are NOT due to associative learning

Back 3

- Habituation
- Innate responses (reflexes, instincts)
- Maturation (regular stages, unaffected by practice)
- Fatigue
- Changes due to physiological/motivational state
- Evolution

Front 4

Cognitive Psychology

Back 4

- The study of MENTAL processes such as perceiving, attending, remembering and reasoning
- Psychology as the science of the mind (the scientific approach):
1) gathering of data through experimentation and observation
2) generation of hypotheses from these data;
3) testing of hypotheses to see if they can be disproved

Front 5

The reemergence of Cognition

Back 5

- behaviorism dominated through the 20th century
- but couldn't explain language
- "Psychology as a science of behaviour is like defining physics as a science of meter reading" (Chomsky)
- computer metaphor used in an MIT conference in 1956

Front 6

Approaches to studying the mind

Back 6

- Experiments
- Neuroscientific investigations
- Modeling (computer simulations of human performance)
- Comparative %