What are the ways of information processing in information processing psychology?

Studying cognitive process from the perspective of information processing is the mainstream of modern cognitive psychology, which can be said to be equivalent to information processing psychology. It regards people as an information processing system, and thinks that cognition is the whole process of information processing, including encoding, storing and extracting sensory input. According to this view, cognition can be decomposed into a series of stages, each stage is a unit that performs a certain operation on the input information, and the reaction is the product of this series of stages and operations. All components of an information processing system are interrelated in some way. With the development of cognitive psychology, this view of sequential processing is increasingly challenged by parallel processing theory and related theories of cognitive neuropsychology.

Cognitive psychologists pay attention to the psychological mechanism as the basis of human behavior, and its core is the internal psychological process between input and output. But people can't directly observe the internal psychological process, and can only speculate by observing what is input and output. Therefore, the method used by cognitive psychologists is to infer unobservable psychological processes from observable phenomena. Some people call this method convergence proof, that is, data with different properties are gathered together and a conclusion is drawn. At present, cognitive psychology research usually needs the support of experiments, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive neuropsychology and computer simulation, and this kind of multi-faceted research is increasingly favored. Cognitive psychologists hope to reveal the essential process of cognitive activities by studying the brain itself, rather than just speculating on its process. The most commonly used is to study the cognitive differences between patients with brain injury and normal people to prove the existence and specific mode of cognitive processing.

Cognitive psychology often divides the information processing process into several stages, that is, the whole process from stimulus input to response. They often use the reaction time method. That is to say, by measuring the time required for a process, we can determine the nature of this process and its relationship with other processes.

Suppose a person looks at the letter E projected on the screen. If the projection time is short, such as one millisecond, then this person can't see anything, which means that perception is not instantaneous. If the projection time is longer, such as five milliseconds, then this person will see something, but he doesn't know what it is, which means that perception has been produced, but discrimination has not yet been produced; If the projection time is long enough for people to see that the letters are not O or Q, but E, F or K, then this person has partial discrimination. From this, people can determine the time required to completely distinguish, partially distinguish or just see something. All this shows that perception is cumulative, and it includes several specific stages.

Reaction time research method is also a convergence proof method. Cognitive psychologists use selective reaction time more than simple reaction time. Because the selective reaction can provide more information about the internal state.

Computer simulation and analogy is a special method adopted by cognitive psychologists. To make computers think like people, computer programs should conform to the mechanism of human cognitive activities, that is, to some cognitive theory or model. Representing cognitive theory as a computer program is called computer simulation. Therefore, computer simulation can be used to test a theory, find its defects and improve it.

The output provided by computer simulation can be compared with human behavior. If the theory is correct, then this output should be similar to that given by human beings when solving the same problem; If the output of the program is different from that of human beings, then finding out the difference will find the basis for correcting the theory. Computer simulations can also predict complex behaviors. Although we understand some concepts and can turn them into programs step by step, when this series of steps is long and complicated and requires a lot of connections, we often can't predict the results. In this case, computer simulation can sometimes get amazing results.

Some cognitive psychologists often use information sequence flow charts to describe the main features of computer programs. However, this flowchart does not have the details of the actual operation of the computer, but only provides an outline of the computer program, which can be further transformed into a computer program, and this part of the work is often realized by computer software experts.

Oral recording (thinking aloud) is also a common method used by cognitive psychologists, especially those who study thinking. This method can produce good results when combined with other objective methods.

Cognitive psychology is the result of psychological development. It is also related to western traditional philosophy. Its main feature is to emphasize the role of knowledge, which is the main factor that determines people's behavior. This idea can be traced back at least to British empirical philosophers such as Bacon and Locke. Descartes emphasized the role of deduction, while cognitive psychology attached importance to hypothetical deduction. Kant's schema concept has become a major concept in cognitive psychology.

Cognitive psychology also inherited the tradition of early experimental psychology. The research method of reaction time put forward by Helmholtz and Donders in19th century is widely used by cognitive psychologists today and has made new progress.

Feng Te is the founder of modern experimental psychology, and the view of cognitive psychology on the object and method of psychology is very close to his view. He believes that the object of psychology is the content of experience and consciousness, and the method is introspection under controlled conditions. Some psychologists say that cognitive psychology has returned to Feng Te's consciousness psychology, but the difference is that the method is more reliable and precise. James's formulation of two kinds of memory, primary memory and secondary memory, has become the basis of memory research in cognitive psychology today.

Gestalt psychology has obvious influence on cognitive psychology. It is famous for its research on perceptual and advanced psychological processes, emphasizing the organization and structural principles of gestalt, and opposing the view that behavioral psychology regards people as passive stimulus reactors. These viewpoints have great influence on cognitive psychology. For example, cognitive psychology defines perception as the organization and interpretation of sensory information, and emphasizes the initiative of information processing.

In terms of methods, Gestalt psychology advocates the study of direct life experience and the combination of direct life experience materials and experimental data, such as attaching importance to the observer's direct description of his own perceptual content, and calls this method phenomenological method. This view is different from that of Feng Te and Tichner, who only admit the introspection of strictly trained subjects, and from that of behaviorism, which only attaches importance to laboratory experiments, but it is consistent with the basic view of cognitive psychology.

Cognitive psychology opposes behaviorism, but it is also influenced by it. Cognitive psychology has accepted behaviorism's strict experimental methods and operationalism. In recent years, cognitive psychology no longer pays attention to the study of internal psychological processes, but also begins to pay attention to the study of behavior. It is generally believed that people use information from the environment, combined with things stored in memory, to guide future behavior and shape the living environment.

Cognitive psychology is also the product of cross-infiltration between psychology and adjacent disciplines. First of all, linguistics has a great influence on the development of cognitive psychology. Psycholinguistics founded by Chomsky combining linguistics with psychology can be said to be a branch of cognitive psychology.

Cybernetics, information theory and computer science have far-reaching influence on the development of cognitive psychology. The combination of computer science and psychology has produced a frontier discipline artificial intelligence. There is a close relationship between artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, and the appearance of computers makes people find a new method to analyze people's inner psychological process and state.

The psychological direction of early experimental psychology was cut off by behaviorism for nearly half a century. Today's cognitive psychology continues this direction, while maintaining the strict hypothesis deduction method of new behaviorism and adding machine simulation method. This expands the research topic of cognitive process analysis.

Turing's mathematical system, published in 1930s, was later called Turing Machine, which also had an impact on psychology. Quantitative logic and Turing machine make people think that human cognitive system can also be regarded as a symbolic application system. Some concepts of human beings can be expressed by symbols, which can be transformed through a certain symbolic operation process. These thoughts play an important role in cognitive psychology not only in theory but also in concrete research.

A basic view of cognitive psychology is that computers can be used to simulate people's internal psychological processes. The computer accepts the symbol input, encodes it, makes a decision on the encoded input, stores it and gives the symbol output. This can be compared with how people receive information, how to encode memory, how to make decisions, how to transform internal cognitive state, and how to compile this state into behavioral output. This analogy between computer and cognitive process is only a horizontal analogy, that is, describing the internal psychological process at the computer program level, mainly involving the information processing process of people and computers, which is an analogy of performance, rather than an analogy of hardware and operation methods of computers and human brains.

The rise of cognitive psychology is a major change in the development of western psychology. Some people say it is a new school, others say it is a new direction, and more people agree with Kuhn's point of view as a new "paradigm". Kuhn called the replacement of old and new paradigms in science scientific revolution. It is in this sense that some American psychologists believe that the emergence of cognitive psychology is the second revolution in the development of American psychology. The first revolution was the rise of behaviorism.

The emergence of cognitive psychology shows that American psychologists have changed their views on basic issues such as the objects and methods of psychology. Behaviorism has dominated American psychology for forty years, and its influence is deeply rooted, while cognitive psychology opposes the basic viewpoint of behaviorism.

On the research object of psychology, behaviorism advocates the study of explicit and observable behavior, regardless of the internal psychological process; Cognitive psychology has shifted the research focus to the internal psychological process. In terms of research methods, behaviorism emphasizes strict laboratory methods and excludes all reports of subjective experience; Cognitive psychology attaches importance to laboratory experiments and reports of subjective experience. For cognitive psychologists, changing external conditions is not an end, but an auxiliary means to reveal the knowledge structure.

Cognitive psychology tries to unify all cognitive processes. It holds that cognitive phenomena such as attention, perception, memory and thinking are intertwined, and understanding one group of phenomena helps to explain another. Because of their interdependence, it is possible to find a unified processing model of human cognitive process.

Cognitive psychology should not only unify the cognitive process, but also unify all fields of general psychology, that is, to study and explain emotions, motives, personality and other aspects from a cognitive point of view. The viewpoint of cognitive psychology is further extended to social psychology, developmental psychology, physiological psychology, engineering psychology and other fields.

Cognitive psychology attaches importance to the comprehensive viewpoint in psychological research, and emphasizes the interrelation and mutual restriction among various psychological processes, which is helpful to expand psychological research methods in the study of specific problems. The research results of cognitive psychology also contribute to the development of computer science.