Dr Manju Antil (Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist)

So hello and welcome to this introductory course in cognitive psychology which is titled basic cognitive processes. I am Dr. Manju Antil. I am an assistant professor of psychology. Today’s lecture is titled Introduction to cognitive psychology. We will talk about what cognitive psychology is actually about.

But before we get deeply involved in the topics of cognitive psychology and what these basic cognitive processes are let us ask more basic questions. The basic question is what is psychology? Now should take this question around and take this question to your colleagues, your family members and the people around you.

You will actually get a variety of responses. For example, some of them could tell you that psychology is about knowing and predicting people's behaviours. In this comic strip, you might see that both the rat and the lab experimenters have a sense of controlling each other’s behaviour. They seem to know that they are doing something that will actually predict the next person's behaviour.

That is one way, another response that a lot of students in psychology get and a lot of students get actually, you know really embraced by this is that a lot people would come and tell you that psychology is about reading people’s mind. But at some point, the other people would actually go out and say, ‘Yes, I am a student of psychology, but that does not mean that I can read your mind’.

Psychology is not really about reading people’s minds though it might help you in other ways. One of the last answers about what psychology you could get is that psychology could shape people’s behaviour in social situations. You might see this example here which says in there is a plank advertisement that says that you please through your letter on the ground or on the grass, but it actually gets the exact opposite effect okay.

This is also one of the examples which psychology or one of the applications that psychology has. Moving ahead, but if psychology is just about behaviour modification I would say no. It actually offers you much more, we will see what. 

What is the subject matter psychology then? Let us begin with the basic definition.

Psychology as a science, is a science which studies mental processes, experiences and behaviours in different contexts. We will visit each of these one by one. What are the mental processes we are talking about whether we are talking about just brain activity or mental activity or mental functions. That part is not really clear, but we can take some examples such as learning, remembering, perceiving feeling those kinds of things.

Those are also examples of what psychology helps you do or what psychology is actually studying. 

What are experiences?. Experiences are subjective feelings, what are you feeling at any point in time what is your awareness, let us say for example, I am in this particular room, I see people around me or I see this screen or I am seeing and talking to you guys.

Also, psychology could actually help you understand experiences whether somebody is experiencing a normal state or an altered state may be under the influence of a particular drug or something. Or say, for example, very simply put somebodies other energetic or active or some others may be feeling other passive or sad.

All of these come under the view of psychology. Coming to behaviours, what are behaviours? Behaviours most simply put our responses or reactions to the events and actions in the world. You know we are surrounded by agents, we are surrounded by people and situations and how we actually come out acting is basically what is a behaviour.

It is another definition which I am taking here. Also, behaviour includes sometimes spontaneous activity to achieve various goals or motives. You might have a goal of becoming somebody, or you might have a goal of becoming a cricketer, you will continue and you will have some behaviour which will lead to you becoming a cricketer.

All of that also forms part of what is called behaviour. Behaviours conclude in two ways. One of the ways is either simple or complex behaviour, 

what is the simple behaviour. Simple behaviour is say for example the most typical stimulus and reactions. Say, for example, if I ask you to touch the tip of a needle, you will probably try to touch it, but you will take your hand back very quickly.

It is in response to you being pricked. On the other hand, I could actually give you more complex behaviour that being I could ask you to go in and make a cup of coffee for me. That is basically a complex behaviour which will actually involve a chain of very simple behaviours. Another way in which you can actually look at behaviour is whether behaviour is covert or cowardly.

Coward behaviour is simply the behaviour that can be observed by others the actions let you do the things which you say or say, for example, the stage that you experience and which you show people. That is cowardly behaviour. Covert behaviour on the other hand is something that is typically going on in your mind think that you would experience feelings of attraction, feelings of anger, discusting all of that or for example, simply processing the world around you.

All of that processing is happening inside your head which is an example of covert behaviour. Moving ahead, this is another commonly asked question of whether psychology is a science or is just about common sense. We get asked this question a lot of times. Now if psychology were to be common sense, it would be found with a few problems.

Say, for example, confirmation bias. Now one of how you can describe a confirmation bias is that it is your internal yes man. If you say for example, develop a particular opinion or a theory about something in the world some person whom you know, you will actually look for and collect evidence that agrees with your perspective or that agrees with your point of view.

That basically is a confirmation bias okay. Another problem with common sense is basically stereotypes. Say, for example, people have particular opinions and actually look at the world through those opinions. Say, for example, the most common stereotype that you might have heard or come across of few times is the aspect of, the fact that females are bad drivers.

These are all the most common stereotypes that you will hear. So for example, if somebody comes and tells you that there has been an accident near your house and there was a woman involved automatically some of you will make the conclusion that the woman must be at fault in this accident. However, close examination and scientific observation might tell you that this might not be the case.

So psychology in that sense is slightly different from common sense. I would say much different from common sense actually. Moving ahead, let us talk about how psychology is actually structured as a discipline. As a discipline basically, psychology seeks to understand and explain how the mind works and how the different mental processes lead to different behaviours.

Psychology traces also in that sense to minimise bias and the explanation of behaviour and experience in a variety of ways. You say that psychology is different from common sense. However, psychology also recognises the importance of subjectivity in some cases, though always trying to develop a scientific understanding of those phenomena.

So psychology basically draws from two screens of knowledge. One makes use of methods in physical and biological sciences and the other uses methods of social and cultural sciences while studying a variety of psychosocial phenomena. In the first case, psychology focuses largely and biological principles to explain human behaviour thinks as how the brain functions, what the response to various neurotransmitters in the brain, and stuff like that.

On the other hand, psychology focuses on how behavioural phenomenon can be explained in terms of the interaction that takes place between the person and the social context, how the person behaves when he is alone, or compare to how the person behaves when he is confronted with the group of people when he is part of a larger group.

That is kind of phenomenal. As a science psychology applies what is called the scientific method? It emphasizes objectivity it emphasizes that your opinion should be based on facts, and your opinion should be based on measurements basically which is called empiricism. In it, psychology uses of particular method or it basically functions around a particular model which has been called the hypothetic deductive model.

 So let us have a look at this model for a while, this is what this model looks like. It basically begins with some kind of literature review, you actually look into literature, you actually see what the questions people will ask you, and actually look to see what the papers people publish. What are the topics that people have been interested in studying and to what extent they have actually studied them? What are the questions relevant to those topics and how do people approach those questions.

 Then basically move on to formulating your own research questions based on whatever literature you actually started. You move on to design in an empirical study it could be an observation study or it could be a basic experiment we will talk about these things later as we go on into the course. And then once you conduct an experiment you get some data, you get some measurements.

You analyse those data, you analyse that data and basically that helps you reach particular conclusions. Once you reach a particular conclusion you also have to say something about that particular topic. This then gets added to this body of research literature which people coming up to you might again, review to contact their own research questions.

That is what psychology broadly uses as a method when we move on we actually talk about this kind of method in more detail. Finally, let us talk about what psychology attempts to understand. So psychology basically attempts to understand two things, mind and behaviour and the questions in psychology that are asked around this dichotomy are, what is mind, and what is behaviour okay.

Let us kind of take a bit of a person and ask these questions What is the mind what are the functions of the mind or how does one really study the concept called mind. This probably is These three questions basically form the core of the topic or core of the topics in cognitive psychology that we will be focusing on in this course.

 So let us move from here and let us ask a question What is cognitive psychology? What are you going to study in this course? What am I going to talk about in the coming lectures?. Cognitive psychology is been simply defined as a science is basically defined as a branch of psychology that is devoted to the scientific study of the mind okay.

What is mind? You remember we ask this question. So let us actually move on, you know to a simple definition. Let us try to construct a simple definition of what the is mind. Please note the following instances, the use of this term called mind. I will take out I will actually say some sentences, one of them say for example, he was able to call to mind, what he was doing on the day of the accident.

In this sentence, you see that the person is referring to the mind as memory. You know the person is actually trying to bring to mind or recall what is involved in that particular accident. Let us take the second sentence, If you put your mind to it, I am sure you can solve that maths problem. In this case, you see the person is actually taking mind as a problem solver.

So the mind must be able to help you solve particular problems, the mind must be able to help you make specific decisions, have a specific algorithm take specific steps and then reach a final goal. Moving on, I have not made up my mind yet, say for example I am of two minds about this. This is basically again an instance in which the mind is being used to make decisions or consider or evaluate possibilities okay.

So this is again one of the functions of the mind. Another sentence here could be he is off sound, mind and body or when he talks about his encounter with aliens, it seems like he is out of his mind okay. Here you can see that the sense is that a healthy mind is associated with normal functioning and non-functioning is associated with abnormal functioning.

Now these are two different things parts of which we will definitely touch on in the scores, but to tell you that basically the mind then means something capable of making good decisions or saying something that helps to connect with reality. So what exactly then we know about the mind.

Let us based on the statement we actually heard let us train in constructing a basic definition of mind. A simple definition would be the mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning. Now all of these terms basically are different mental functions which we will talk about in more detail in the coming lectures.

Also, you can look at the mind as a system that creates representations of the world. So that we can act within it to achieve our particular goals. So the mind is also motivated resorts. You will probably touch on this definition as well when we go to further lectures. We talked about these different mental functions, so let us ask what these different mental functions are.

To understand what these different mental functions are let me take you to a practical example okay. So take a moment to read what is here and analyse it to be done along with you. So as Raphael is walking across the campus talking to Susan on his cell phone about meeting at the student union later this afternoon, he remembers that he left the book that she had lent him at home.

I cannot believe it he thinks, I can see it sitting there on my desk, where I left it. I should have put it in my backpack last night when I was thinking about it. As he finishes his call with Susan and makes a mental note to be on time for their appointment, his thoughts shift to how he is going to survive after Wednesday when his car is scheduled to go into the shop.

Rending a car offers the most mobility, but is expensive. Bumming rides from his roommate is cheap but is rather limiting. Perhaps if he picks up a bus schedule at the student union, he thinks, as he puts his cell phone back in his pocket. Entering his anthropology class, he remembers that an exam is coming up soon.

Unfortunately, he still has a lot of reading to do, so he decides that they will not be able to take Susan to the movies tonight as they had already planned. Because he needs time to study, as a lecture begins, Raphael is anticipating, with some anxiety his meeting with Susan. And how he is going to tell her about this decision.

Now you see this is a description of a lot of small little things that are happening at one particular moment in somebody’s mind. You can actually put yourself in the situation at any point in time or throughout the day you can pick up yourself and just examine one such instance you will realise that at one particular point in time a lot of different things are going on through your mind.

So let us try and see what all is happening here, what all the mental functions are taking place. This is the figure of what different things Raphael is doing as he is walking across the campus, so we will see that is understanding the conversation because he is on the phone. He is visualizing his book on the desk that he left, he is thinking that he has to be on time for the appointment because that will lead to complications.

He is also remembering Susan’s book. By the way, he is walking on the campus. So he is actually presuming the camp as well to avoid bumping into people and falling off Also you saw that he was thinking about his car problem. So he is doing a variety of things, he is doing, he is basically engaged and we call complex behaviour at this point in time.

So what all is Raphael doing actually let us boil out to that. He is presuming his environment, he is basically seeing people on campus walking. He is also listening to Susan talking on the phone. He is paying attention to one thing after the other person approaching is left what Susan is saying and how much he is left for the class.

So he is actually paying attention to these different facts at the same time while he is involved in this conversation on the phone. Also, Raphael is remembering, he is remembering things from the past when he told Susan that he was going to return her book today, he is thinking of how he will get the book back or say for example, how he left the book on his table.

Those kinds of things he is actually going through in his memory. He is also doing something interesting, he is distinguishing different items in a category. When he thinks about different possible forms of transportation, he actually is comparing these possibilities to whether he should take a rental car, whether he should take help get a ride with his roommate or for example, he should go on the bus.

He is actually also evaluating possibilities in here also he is visualizing. He is basically thinking of where he had left the book on his desk, he can actually see Okay I left the book there, I just forgot to keep it in my backpack while I slept in the last night. He is understanding and producing language something very complex is actually thinking to himself understanding what Susan is saying and also answering her back.

) So he is doing these three things at the same point in time. He understands whatever Susan saying, and whatever he is thinking and he is actually producing language when talking about Susan. Also, you saw that Raphael is working to solve a problem as he thinks about how to get to places while he is car is in the shop.

He actually has a problem attending and while to conversation is definitely going on, he also needs to evaluate these different possibilities. Finally, he actually comes to a decision, so decision-making is also involved here. He has decided to postpone and he is going to the movies with Susan tonight because he has to prepare for the exam that is going to come afterwards.

So you will see in a particular moment in time, we are involved in a variety of mental functions. We are involved in a variety of these different decisions we have to take, and we are also doing a lot of things at the same point in time. While you watching this lecture on your laptop or your computer, you are actually doing the same thing as Raphael is doing in this particular example.

You are remembering something, you are pursuing the video you are listening to the audio trying to understand what I am saying also thinking to yourself, You were also making decisions on whether say, for example, to continue where you like the course or whether you do not like it. Those different kinds of things you are doing at this same moment.

This basically is what is the crux of cognitive psychology. This is basically what we are going to study in the coming lectures. So if this interests you it might actually help to hang on. Now let us come to the end, let us try and talk about whether and what cognitive psychology actually does. Let us take into account the earlier definition of cognitive psychology 

The definition of what the mind is and the definition of mental functions and we can conclude that cognitive psychology is the study of mental functions okay. Is the study of mental functions for example, attention, learning, memory, visualization or mental imagery, it is a study of language, it is a study of problem-solving when you have a problem at hand.

It is also the study of decision-making. So in cognitive psychology, these are the different topics, these are basically the names of the different chapters Actually we are starting in more and more detail okay. Each of these are specific cognitive function and we will actually look into how de study these different cognitive functions, what are the different ways of understanding these cognitive functions and so on.

So with this in mind, we will actually go on to the next lecture next time which is basically going to be about the history of cognitive psychology. We will talk about what is the history of thought which basically called cognitive psychology. We will actually look into a bit of the history of psychology, and how psychology develop from philosophy.

We will also look into how cognitive psychology or this cognitive perspective of psychology emerged from the earlier schools of psychology.

Summarize the following in bullet points

That is all we will see you in the next class.