The Scope of Cognitive Psychology
The Scope of Cognitive Psychology essay assignment
The Scope of Cognitive Psychology essay assignment
When the field of cognitive psychology was first launched, it was broadly focused on the scientific study of knowledge, and this focus led immediately to a series of questions: How is knowledge acquired? How is knowledge retained so that it’s available when needed? How is knowledge used—whether as a basis for making decisions or as a means of solving problems?
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These are great questions, and it’s easy to see that answering them might be quite useful. For example, imagine that you’re studying for next Wednesday’s exam, but for some reason the material just won’t “stick” in your memory. You find yourself wishing, therefore, for a better strategy to use in studying and memorizing. What would that strategy be? Is it possible to have a “better memory”? As a different case, let’s say that while you’re studying, your friend is moving around in the room, and you find this quite distracting. Why can’t you just shut out your friend’s motion? Why don’t you have better control over your attention and your ability to concentrate?
Here’s one more example: You’re looking to learn how many people have decided to vote for candidate X. How do people decide whom to vote for? For that matter, how do people decide what college to attend, or which car to buy, or even what to have for dinner? And how can we help people make better decisions- so that, for example, they choose healthier foods, or vote for the candidate who (in your view) is preferable?
Before we’re through, we’ll consider evidence pertinent to all of these questions. Let’s note, though, that in these examples, things aren’t going as you might have wished: You remember less than you want to; you can’t ignore a distraction; the voters make a choice you don’t like. What about the other side of the picture? What about the remarkable intellectual feats that humans achieve- brilliant deductions or creative solutions to complex problems? In this text, we’ll also discuss these cases and explore how people manage to accomplish the great things they do.
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The Broad Role for Memory:
The questions we’ve mentioned so far might make it sound like cognitive psychology is concerned just with your functioning as an intellectual-your ability to remember, or to pay attention, or to think through options when making a choice. As we’ve said, though, the relevance of cognitive psychology is much broader-thanks to the fact that a huge range of your actions, thoughts, and feelings depend on your cognition. As one way to convey this point, let’s ask: When we investigate how memory functions, what’s at stake? Or, to turn this around, what aspects of your life depend memory?
You obviously rely on memory when you’re taking an exam-memory for what you learned during the term. Likewise, you rely on memory when you’re at the supermarket and trying to remember the cheesecake recipe so that you can buy the right ingredients. You also rely on memory when you’re reminiscing about childhood. But what else draws on memory? Consider this simple story (adapted from Charniak, 1972):
Betsy wanted to bring Jacob a present. She shook her piggy bank. It made no sound. She went to look for her mother.
This four-sentence tale is easy to understand, but only because you provided important bits of background. For example, you weren’t at all puzzled about why Betsy was interested in her piggy bank; you weren’t puzzled, specifically about why the story’s first sentence led to the second. This is because you naturally already knew (a) that the things gives presents are often things bought for the occasion (rather than things already owned), (b) one as that buying things requires money, and (c) that money is sometimes stored in piggy banks. Without these facts, you would have wondered why a desire to give a gift would lead someone to her piggy bank. (Surely you didn’t think Betsy intended to give the piggy bank itself as the present!) Likewise, you immediately understood why Betsy shook her piggy bank. You didn’t shaking it in frustration or to find out if it would make a good suppose that she was trying percussion instrument. Instead, you understood that she was trving to determine its contents. But vou knew this fact only because vou alread knew (d) that Betsy was a child (because few adults keep their money in piggy banks). (e) that children don’t keep track of how much money is in their banks, and (f) that piggy banks are made out of opaque material (and so a child can’t simply look into the bank to see what’s inside). Without these facts, Betsy’s shaking of the bank would make no sense. Similarly, you understood what it meant that the bank made no sound. That’s because you know (g) that it’s usually coins (not bills) that are kept in piggy banks, and (h) that coins make noise when they’re shaken. If you didn’t know these facts, you might have interpreted the bank’s silence, when it was shaken, as good news, indicating perhaps that the bank was jammed full of $20 bills-an inference that would have led you to a very different expectation for how the story would unfold from there.
Of course, there’s nothing special about the “Betsy and Jacob” story, and we’d uncover a similar reliance on background knowledge if we explored how you understand some other conversation, comprehend a TV show. Our suggestion, in other words, is that many (perhaps all) of your encounters with the world depend on your narrative or follow a or supplementing your experience with knowledge that you bring to the situation. And perhaps this has to be true. After all, if you didn’t supply the relevant bits of background, then anyone telling the “Betsy and Jacob” story would need to spell out all the connections and alll the assumptions. That is, the story would have to include all the facts that, with memory, are supplied by you. As a result, the story would have to be much longer, and the telling of it much slower. The same would be true for every story you hear, every conversation you participate in. Memory is thus crucial for each of these activities.
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Amnesia and Memory Loss:
Here is a different sort of example: In Chapter 7, we will consider cases of clinical amnesia-cases in which someone, because of brain damage, has lost the ability to remember certain materials. These cases are fascinating at many levels and provide key insights into what memory is for. Without memory, what is disrupted?
H.M. was in his mid-20s when he had brain surgery intended to control his severe epilepsy. The surgery was, in a narrow sense, a success, and H. M’s epilepsy was brought under control. But this gain came at an enormous cost, because H.M. essentially lost the ability to form new memories. He survived for more than 50 years after the operation, and for all those years he had little trouble remembering events prior to the surgery. But H.M. seemed completely unable to recall any event that occurred after his operation. If asked who the president is, or about recent events, he reported facts and events that were current at the time of the surgery. If asked questions about last week, or even an hour ago, he recalled nothing.
This memory loss had massive consequences for H. M’s life, and some of the consequences are surprising. For example, he had an uncle he was very fond of, and he occasionally asked his hospital visitors how his uncle was doing. Unfortunately, the uncle died sometime after H.M.’s surgery, and horrible shock, but because of his amnesia, H.M. was told this sad news. The information came as H.M. soon forgot about it.
Sometime later, because he’d forgotten about his uncle’s death, H.M. again asked how his uncle was doing and was again told of the death. But with no memory of having heard this news before, he was once more hearing it “for the first time,” with the shock and grief every bit as strong as it was initially. Indeed, each time he heard this news, he was hearing it “for the first time.” With no memory, he had no opportunity to live with the news, to adjust to it. As a result, his grief could not subside. Without memory, H.M. had no way to come to terms with his uncle’s death.
A different glimpse of memory function comes from some of H. M’s comments about what it felt like to be in his situation. Let’s start here with the notion that for those of us without amnesia, numerous memories support our conception of who we are: We know whether we deserve praise for our good deeds or blame for our transgressions because we remember those good deeds and transgressions. We know whether we’ve kept our promises or achieved our goals because, again, we have the relevant memories. None of this is true for people who suffer from amnesia, and H.M. sometimes commented that in important ways, he didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know if he should be proud of his accomplishments or ashamed of his crimes; he didn’t know if he’d been clever or stupid, honorable or dishonest, industrious or lazy. In a sense, then, without a memory, there is no self. (For broader discussion, see Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Hilts, 1995.)
What, then, is the scope of cognitive psychology? As we mentioned earlier, this field is sometimes defined as the scientific study of the acquisition, retention, and use of knowledge. We’ve now seen, though, that “knowledge” (and hence the study of how we gain and use knowledge) is relevant to a on our knowledge (and, in particular, huge range of concerns. Our self-concept, it seems, depends on our memory for various episodes in our past). Our emotional adjustments to the world rely on our memories. Even our ability to understand a simple story-or, presumably, our ability to supplementing that experience with some knowledge.
The suggestion, then, is that cognitive psychology can help us understand capacities relevant to virtually every moment of our lives. Activities that don’t appear to be intellectual would collapse without the support of our cognitive functioning. The same is true whether we’re considering our movements through the world, our social lives, our emotions, or any other domain. This is physical the scope of cognitive psychology and, in a real sense, the scope of this book.
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e. Demonstration 1.1: The Broad Impact of Background Knowledge
The chapter emphasizes the important role of cognition for a range of activities that don’t seem, on the surface, to be deeply “intellectual.” The chapter uses a simple children’s story to make this point -highlighting how much knowledge you have to contribute in order to understand the story. Here is different example, making a similar point.
Imagine the following bit of dialogue:
Person 1: Where were you on the night of December 4?
Person 2: Come on. You know I had nothing to do with this.
Person 1: Where were you on the night of December 4?
Person 2: I was home watching TV.
Person 1: Alone? Person 2: Of course, I was alone.
Person 1: Want to have dinner with me next week?
Think about how you understood these seven lines of dialogue. By the end of the first line, were you already making inferences about who Person 1 might be (e.g., a police detective) and who Person 2 might be (e.g., a suspect)?
Why did Person 1 simply repeat the initial question? Do you believe Person 1 has a hearing problem?
Can you catalogue some of the other inferences and assumptions you made in understanding this dialogue?
Does the last line of dialogue (the dinner invitation) make sense? Why or why not? What knowledge are you using in deciding whether the invitation makes sense?
e. Demonstration 1.2: Understanding Depends on Background Knowledge
Consider the following simple story:
Fred went to his favorite restaurant.
After the waiter took his order, Fred heaved a great sigh. Another dinner alone.
Once again, though, he slogged through the meal and then slowly returned to his lonely apartment.
Take a moment and list the things that you now believe to be true about Fred and his life circumstances.
As a way of thinking this through, ask yourself questions like these:
Would it make sense if I learned that Fred was 5 years old?
Would it make sense if I learned that Fred was in a stable, contented relationship?
You might also think through what else you know about Fred’s time in the restaurant. Did he ever see a menu? Did he eat? Did he eat standing up or sitting down? Did he “slog” through the meal in the same way that biology students might slog through a marsh as part of a field study? (In other words, did he stomp on the meal, wearing waterproof boots?) Did Fred pay the check before he left?
All of these questions are likely to be enormously easy for you; but, once more, what knowledge are you using in answering them and, more broadly, in understanding this simple story?