Please answer the following questions in a 200-word response minimum. Try your best to reference the text I will message you privately for how to access the text book.
1. Compare and contrast the four major paradigms of cognitive psychology reviewed in this chapter (information processing, connectionism, the evolutionary approach, the ecological approach). Provide some examples of how, in real-life situations, the concepts behind these cognitive paradigms may be illustrated.
2. Which brain areas are likely to be most involved with the cognitive processes of perception, attention, memory, language, and problem solving. Provide a rationale for your predictions. Why is cognitive functioning crucial to everyday existence, and what part does it play in diversity?
3. Piaget asserts that children at different stages of development differ from one another cognitively in qualitatively different ways. Illustrate this assertion with some specific examples. In what ways does research on the development of reasoning abilities in middle and late childhood support or run counter to Piagetian predictions?
4. Reflect on the influence of nature and nurture on cognitive development and discuss the following:
In cognition, one major area of discussion is the influence of nature and nurture. What is the concept of nature-nurture, and why is it important in the study of cognition?
5. Reflect on the ability of the human mind and discuss the following:
Do you believe it is possible to create a computer that can surpass human cognitive abilities? Why or why not?
Please participate (respond) to the classmates answers with notable and educational input. (200 word minimum Reponses)
1. Kelly: Is it possible to create a computer that can surpass human cognitive ability? Hello classmates and facilitator. In my opinion I do not believe a computer can surpass human cognitive abilities. I do not see how a computer can surpass a human. A human will always control the computer so there for it is that person's cognitive abilities that the computer is being taught and not everyone has the same cognitive abilities. In order for this to happen a computer would have to be made to copy every person and their abilities. I also do not see a computer learning things on its own. It has to have human assistance. Another reason is because emotions of your environment is involved in cognitive abilities and computers do not have feelings and it is impossible to make a computer have feelings. They have no soul. While there are a lot of things that computers can do they will always need a human to control them and tell them what to do or program the computer to preform certain tasks. Therefore computers can never surpass a human no matter how you look at it.
2. Campbell:The nature-nurture issue is often presented as an either-or question: Is our intelligence (for example) due to our genes or to the environments in which we live? In fact, however, every aspect of development is produced by the interaction of genes and environment. At the most basic level, without genes, there would be no child, and without an environment to provide nurture, there also would be no child.
The way in which nature and nurture work together can be seen in findings on visual development. Many people view vision as something that people either are born with or that is purely a matter of biological maturation, but it also depends on the right kind of experience at the right time. For example, development of depth perception,the ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment, depends on seeing patterned light and having normal brain activity in response to the patterned light, in infancy (Held, 1993). If no patterned light is received, for example when a baby has severe cataracts or blindness that is not surgically corrected until later in development, depth perception remains abnormal even after the surgery.
3. Scott: How I interpreted the four paradigms of cognitive psychology are that information processing and connectionism are on the same principle, yet different. In comparison, they both act as a chain reaction of events in the mind of a stimuli to outcome. With information processing, this is more like a computer metaphor, in which data is received, and stored in areas (memory, i.e. short term and long term) through links of routes of processing. This has a few concepts of interest, one is that we differ in individual cognitive capacity, and that we translate stimuli into symbols or code, for memory storage. Even though connectionism is similar, it is different in that the chain of events is focused on information being used in a neural network, more of a pattern of neurons becoming excited and forming our perception and linking our memories. This is done more on a parallel level, or many excited "neurons" fire and the information is stored in the process of this (Galotti, 2014). I may be wrong, but this reminds me of spatial organization of the brain, which is how stimuli causes columns of neurons to fire and give us mental imagery.
Evolutionary and ecological paradigms seem more on the practical uses of cognition, or a functionalist approach. Both of these paradigms are based out of how our environment shapes our cognition. Evolutionary cognition is based on our cognitive abilities being handed down through the evolution of our species over long periods of time, which led to our intelligence becoming our primary defense in the world. The evolutionary approach also says a lot about how we became the social animals that we have become, especially in the form of reasoning. The ecological approach uses more of a context of our environment in to how we use cognitive abilities, and also leans on Gestalt principles. An example of this could be using experiences and common real world variables in the reasoning and thought in particular situations(2014).
Galotti, K. M. (2014). Cognitive Psychology: In and Out of the Laboratory (5th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.