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Chapter Summary
The first chapter of this textbook introduces the field of cognition. Cognition is presented as the mental action of knowing. There have been three waves of scientific inquiry driving theory in cognition: psychophysics and experimental psychology; computational analysis; and, most recently, neuropsychology, animal neurophysiology, and the proliferation of neuroimaging techniques. Human cognition involves many aspects that are related to the subject of information processing, such as awareness, comprehension, intelligence, intuition, personal acquaintance, recognition, skill, and understanding.
According to the concept of information processing, uncertainty can be decreased with the acquisition of information. Information theory maintains that the less likely a signal is, the more in-formation it contains (conversely, when a signal is more probable, the amount of information it contains is reduced). Furthermore, when a signal is less likely to occur, people seem to respond more slowly to it. Information processing capacity is limited. First, information must be processed and transferred by the nervous system. Capacity limitations (amount of information handled at a given time) require humans to be active selectors of information. In an environment that provides more information than can be processed at any given time humans actively select only some of the information to process, respond to, and remember. That is, in order to complete certain overloaded tasks, people select only the pertinent information and disregard the rest.
Broadbent’s filter model is a classic theory of information processing. It states that information overload is avoided by a filter that allows only some of the available incoming information to be processed via a single limited-capacity channel. When a person is confronted with multiple inputs, information is first filtered according to basic physical characteristics, and then by form and meaning. Messages or stimuli that did not get through are held, in parallel, in the sensory buffer, where they will decay with time. Broadbent went further in stating that switching attention between two different tasks decreases performance. While Broadbent’s model fails to account for some findings, it is important to note that in everyday life it is often difficult to process multiple sources of information simultaneously (e.g., distracted driving). Another classic model of information processing was that of Waugh and Norman. This model maintained that primary memories (immediate memories) have a tendency to be forgotten unless they are rehearsed (versus secondary memories). The Brown–Peterson task (a well-known paradigm measuring memory that controls for rehearsal effects) supported this idea.
Unlike previous models that generally used impoverished stimuli and situations that were primarily focused on the processes that people use to deal with information, Gibson promoted an eco-logical approach to cognition, based on information pick-up, which focused on the stimuli that exist in everyday life scenarios as opposed to those that exist in laboratories. For Gibson, learning is about absorbing the tremendous amount of information available to us in the environment. Neisser’s perceptual cycle, on the other hand, describes learning as an active cognitive process of exploration and modification of schemas (our expectations). Cognitive ethology is an intermediate approach between standard, laboratory-based, experimental approaches and the ecological approach.
Despite its many theories and its impressive abilities to explain some human behaviours, it is important to remember that cognitive psychology is still a young and developing field of study. By studying cognition we are able to increase our metacognition (our knowledge about knowledge).
Chapter Objectives
- To identify the concepts associated with the field of cognition, beginning with information processing.
- To outline the essentials of information theory.
- To distinguish among different models of the information processing approach to cognition.
- To explain the advantages and limitations of the information processing approach.
- To review experimental evidence for the information-processing approach.
- To identify different research methods in cognitive psychology.