PSYCH 258

The many chess piece designs illustrate a many-to-one relationship

A second approach examines a computer at the algorithmic level of analysis

architectural level of analysis. The architecture consists of the properties built into a computer to process information. Architectural accounts answer questions such as “What serves as the device’s memory?” “Which symbols can the device store?” “Which basic operations manipulate symbols?” “How are these basic operations selected?” An architectural account of a universal Turing machine would focus on symbols on the ticker tape, on possible machine states, and on machine table contents.

Philosopher Karl Popper (1978) proposed that representations aid survival. Thinking permits actions to be modelled, evaluated, and discarded before being performed so that humans do not rashly undertake dangerous acts. For Popper, reasoning allows our hypotheses to die in our place. Cognitive psychology also presumes that

planning plays a critical role in cognition. Cognitive psychologists hypothesize that humans perceive information, construct mental models of the perceived world, and then manipulate models to plan and evaluate potential actions.

sense-think-act cycle.

The sense-think-act cycle begins with sensing. For psychology, sensing is transduction—converting something from one form into another form. In cognitive psychology, sensing transduces energy received from the world into mental representations or symbols.

After the display disappeared, participants reported as many characters as possible. Participants retrieved characters from memory because the display had vanished. Sperling called his method the whole report condition because participants attempted to report the whole character set.

Why might primary memory encode sounds when representing items? We often use rehearsal to preserve information in memory. Rehearsal involves saying items aloud to keep them in primary memory and is easier if the format of primary memory makes items easier to say aloud.