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Cognitive Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience

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Imagine the following situation: A young man, let’s call him Knut, is sitting at his deskreading some papers which he needs to complete a psychology assignment. In his right handhe holds a cup of coffee. With his left one he reaches for a bag of sweets without removingthe focus of his eyes from the paper. Suddenly he stares up to the ceiling of his room andasks himself: “What is happening here?”

Probably everybody has had experiences like the one described above. Even though at firstsight there is nothing exciting happening in this everyday situation, a lot of what is going onhere is highly interesting particularly for researchers and students in the field of CognitivePsychology.

They are involved in the study of lots of incredibly fascinating processes whichwe are not aware of in this situation. Roughly speaking, an analysis of Knut's situation byCognitive Psychologists would look like this:Knut has a problem, he really needs to do his assignment.

To solve this problem, he has toperform loads of cognition. The light reaching his eyes is transduced into electrical signalstraveling through several stations to his visual cortex.

Meanwhile, complex nets of neuronsfilter the information flow and compute contrast, colour, patterns, positions in space, motionof the objects in Knut's environment. Stains and lines on the screen become words; words getmeaning, the meaning is put into context, analyzed on its relevance for Knut's problem andfinally maybe stored in some part of his memory. At the same time an appetite for sweets iscreeping from Knut's hypothalamus, a region in the brain responsible for controlling theneeds of an organism. This appetite finally causes Knut to reach out for his sweets.

Now, let us take a look into the past to see how Cognitive Psychologists developed itsterminology and methods to interpret ourselves on the basis of brain, behaviour and theory.

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: ., 2013

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Language

English

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NONE

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Subject(s)

Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition

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agus

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