Cognitive Psychology Beginner Notes

Cognition: collection of mental processes used in perceiving, learning, memory, and thinking...also, how we use those processes.

Memory: mental processes of acquiring and retaining information for later retrival

Aristotle: was the first empiricist.Natural Science approach to understand on observation.
In De Memoria he made a theory of memory, and considered the basic principles...he imagined the "blank slate". inquiry led him to make objective explanation of how learning and memory take place.

Sperling: said that
fewer items shown = better and more accurate performance.
better iconic visibility w/ sharper contrasts
blank page after stimulus, longer on, less to report.
Visual image of stimulus continues after shorttime after turn off. Utlizing rapidly fading image.
17-18 letters present in intial icon.

The investigation of IPS:
Span of Apprehension- # of ind. items recalled after only short display
Whole Report- only letters
Partial Report- only one of the rows were reported.
T-scope- present array of letters and digits to subjects of brief duration
Fixation- letters ,blank, question
Subject remembers what to recall, and reports from memory.