The Cognitive Perspective
Humans process information
Favorite Theory
Multi-store memory model.
Statements
- Made by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968*
Memory doesn't work like a video recorder, tape recorder, or computer.
‘remembering appears to be far more decisively an affair of construction rather than reproduction
Edward C. Tolman
Short Term memory
Long Term Memory
Sensory Memory
Can be rehearsal
Can be retrieved from Long Term Memory
Can be transferred to Long Term Memory
Auditory
Visual Information
Olfactory
Etc...
Memory receivable from Short Term Memory
Memory transferable to Short Term Memory
4 stages of cognitive development
1. The sensori-motor stage, Age: 0-2
First we start with simple reflexes and soon after we develop our first.
From four months old, we become aware beyond our own body & as we get older we learn to do things intentionally.
4. The formal operational stage, Age: 12+ :
3. The concrete operational stage, Age:7-11 :
2. The pre-operational stage, Age: 2-7 :
Capacity: 7 (+ 2) chunks of information.
We are not able to apply specific cognitive operations, Piaget calls this stage 'pre-operational'.
At around age 4, most of us become very curious and ask many questions. We can call it the birth of primitive reasoning. Piaget calls it 'the intuitive age'.
Our thinking is mainly categorized for symbolic functions and intuitive thoughts.
One of the representatives of the new behaviorism, the founder of the purpose behaviorism
He is known for his research on cognitive mapping and potential learning.
Discover logic and develop concrete cognitive operations.
The brain learns to rearrange thoughts to classify and build concrete operational mental structures.
We develop through experiences and movement our five senses.
We begin to understand that our thoughts and feelings are unique and not necessarily those of others. That means that we learn to put ourselves in someone else's shoes.
Cognition
Our brain can now do deductive reasoning. Our new mental skills allow us to plan our life systematically and prioritize and we can make assumptions about events that have no necessary relation to reality
We can also philosophize and just think about thinking itself. Our new sense for our identity now also creates egocentric thoughts.
Once we become teenagers, we become formally operational. We now have the ability to think more rationally about abstract concepts and hypothetical events
The animal’s understanding of their environment and the relationship between the means and ends of things.
A key milestone is the development of working memory or in Piaget terms 'Our realization of object permanence'.
Tolman's Cognitive Maps
Tolman discovered that if a rat was put in a maze, after a trial and error process, it managed to find the exit.
Purpose
The persistence or eagerness of an animal to find and organize certain behaviors based on a specific goal.
Tolman concluded that the rat hadn’t just learned a succession of muscle movements. In fact, the rat had made a map or a mental representation of the situation in order to get out