1 Cognitive Theories Kimberley A. Clow [email protected] Office Hour: Thursdays 2-3pm Office: S302.

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Cognitive Theories

Kimberley A. Clow

[email protected]://instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/257e-570

Office Hour: Thursdays 2-3pmOffice: S302

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Outline

• What is Cognition?• Schemas & Scripts• Personal Construct Theory

– Fundamental Postulate– Corollaries

• Attribution Theory• Feelings

– Depression

• Evaluation

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Cognition

• Important Terms– Structure– Encoding– Retrieval– Forgetting

• Memory is the major phenomenon involved– Different kinds of memory

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Maintenance Rehearsal

Sensory Register

Short-Term Memory

Long-Term Memory

Sensory input

Information is lost in 0.5 to 3 sec

Attention

Unrehearsed information is lost in a few minutes

Encoding

Retrieval

Some information may be lost over time

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Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts• English students told a Native Indian story• Memory for the story tested across time

– Omissions and normalization

• Results indicated that memory is reconstructive– Leveling

• making story simpler

– Sharpening• overemphasizing certain details

– Assimilating• changing details to fit what we think

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Scripts

• What is your Restaurant script?– What happens first?

– And then?

– And then?

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Personal Construct Theory

• What is a construct?

• “People’s behavior, thoughts, and feelings (their personalities) are determined by the constructs they use to anticipate or predict events”

George Kelly

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A Metaphor

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The Fundamental Postulate

• "A person's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events."

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Corollaries

• Construction– "A person anticipates events by construing their

replications."

• Experience– "A person's construction system varies as he

successively construes the replication of events."

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• Dichotomy– "A person's construction system is composed of

a finite number of dichotomous constructs. “• Submerged poles

• Core vs. peripheral constructs

GOOD BAD

QUIET LOUD

LOVELY DISGUSTING

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• Organization– "Each person characteristically evolves, for his

convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs."

• Personal not scientific

• Tight vs. loose relationships

animals -- plants               |

      flowers -- trees

        |

         deciduous -- conifers

                    |

         Christmas trees -- others

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• Range– "A construct is convenient for the anticipation

of a finite range of events only.“• Comprehensive vs. incidental

• Modulation– "The variation in a person's construction system

is limited by the permeability of the constructs within whose range of convenience the variants lie."

• Permeable vs. impermeable

• Dilation vs. Constriction

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• Choice– "A person chooses for himself that alternative

in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his system."

• Individuality– "Persons differ from each other in their

construction of events."

• Commonality– "To the extent that one person employs a

construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are similar to the other person."

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• Fragmentation– "A person may successively employ a variety

of construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other."

• Sociality– "To the extent that one person construes the

construction processes of another, he may play a role in a social process involving the other person."

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Constructive Alternativism

• " We take the stand that there are always some alternative constructions available to choose among in dealing with the world. No one needs to paint himself into a corner; no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography. "

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What About Uncertainty?

• Think about understanding behaviour, where causes are not clear or certain

• Imagine a scenario…– A young woman, Jill, carrying a stack of papers trips

and the papers fall all over the place.– A young man, Jack, helps her retrieve all of her papers.

• Why did Jack help Jill?

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Basic Terms• Attribution

– the process through which we come to understand the causes of others’ behaviour as well as the causes of our own behaviour

• Internal Attribution– inferring that a particular behaviour demonstrated by an

individual was due to dispositional causes

• External Attribution– inferring that the individual’s behaviour was caused by

some other factor than his or her dispositions (e.g., situational causes)

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Experiments

• Math Achievement– Different Training Programs

• Internal Attribution• Persuasion• Positive Reinforcement

– Influences on self-esteem and math achievement

• Health– Internal or External Manipulation– Only internals changed their health related

behaviour

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Problems with External Attributions

• Behaviour only occurs with the external incentives

• They can undermine existing habits and preferences– Overjustification Effect

• External incentives work well ONLY if people believe they EARNED the reward due to INTERNAL factors

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Covariation Principle

• Explain behaviour according to 3 factors– Consistency

• How does the person react to the same stimulus/event on different occasions?

– Distinctiveness• How does the person respond to other stimuli/events

that are similar?

– Consensus• How do other people react to the same stimulus/event?

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Attribution Principles

• Discounting Principle– the role of a given cause in producing a given

effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present

• Augmentation Principle– If both a factor that facilitates the behaviour and

a factor that inhibits the behaviour are present, we assign added weight to the facilitative factor

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Algorithms vs. Heuristics

• Algorithm– specific rule or solution procedure– guaranteed to give the correct answer if

followed correctly

• Heuristic– a "rule of thumb" procedure– quick, easy, efficient– not always appropriate

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Fundamental Attribution Error

• The tendency to– underestimate the

role of situations

– overestimate the role of dispositions

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

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FreeChoice

No Choice

Pro-CastroEssay

Anti-CastroEssay

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What About Feelings?

• Constructs of Transition– Anxiety– Threat– Guilt– Aggression

• Hostility

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Learned Helplessness

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Models of Depression

Aaron Beck

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Irrational Beliefs

• Everyone I meet should like me• I should be perfect at everything I do• Because something once affected my life, it will

always affect it• It is unbearable and horrible when things are not the

way I want them to be• I must perform important tasks competently and

perfectly• If I don’t get what I want, it’s terrible• I must have love or approval from all the significant

people in my life

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Distorted Thinking

• All or Nothing Thinking

• Overgeneralization

• Mental Filter

• Disqualifying the Positive

• Jumping to Conclusions

• Emotional Reasoning

• Personalization

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Rational Emotive Therapy

• Emotions stem from our interpretations of events, not from the events themselves– We create our problems

• Need to modify our interpretations– If we don’t interpret things in a

way that makes us feel bad, we won’t feel bad

Albert Ellis

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A-B-C Theory of Personality

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Evaluation

• Strengths– Brought cognition

into the study of personality

• How we think

• How we perceive

– Emphasis on person’s own interpretation

• Weaknesses– Important aspects of

personality denied or neglected

– Difficulty predicting behaviour

– Many unanswered questions