Module 1

If you haven’t listened, you’ll enjoy it more than reading…likely… If you’re Dr. L … see, I told them to do the right thing. Here is a list-form summary of the podcast:

Blogging and Scholarship as Conversation: Blogging can serve as a personal platform for exploring research interests, engaging in metacognition, and timestamping the evolution of ideas. The concept of “scholarship as conversation”, a framework from the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL), highlights how online environments, including social media, foster connections among researchers and facilitate a more social approach to learning.

Library Staff and Roles: The podcast introduces Ryan Tucci, the Communication, Media Studies, and Journalism librarian, who also covers Political Science, African Studies, and qualitative data analysis software like NVivo. Jamila Hastik, the Arts and Social Sciences Librarian, covers Psychology, Cognitive Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Indigenous Studies, with a focus on assisting students with finding, navigating, and evaluating resources.

Evolution of Information Access: Academic resources have significantly transitioned from physical formats like card catalogues and print encyclopaedias to electronic databases and online reference collections. Early, expensive systems such as Dialog charged users by the second and keystroke, contrasting sharply with today’s more accessible electronic databases. The global pandemic notably accelerated this shift towards electronic-first purchasing and access models for libraries.

Changing Role of Libraries: Libraries have evolved beyond merely providing resources to actively helping researchers and students critically evaluate online information to ensure it meets their specific needs. They also manage collections through collection development policies, carefully curating materials and considering implications of inclusion, such as potential endorsement of viewpoints.

Self-Publishing and Library Collections: Despite an increase in self-published materials, libraries typically do not incorporate them into their main collections due to the extensive human resources required for cataloguing, assigning subject headings, and other administrative tasks, in addition to adherence to collection development policies.

Misconceptions about Online Research: A common misconception among students is that OmniSearch (the library’s primary search tool) provides access to all available information on a topic; however, comprehensive research often necessitates searching multiple subject-specific databases and tools like Google Scholar. It is crucial to recognise the limitations of each search tool, including factors like geographic coverage, language, and licensing agreements.

Citation Count Nuances: A high citation count alone does not guarantee an article’s quality or status as a foundational work. Various factors such as open access, article age, controversial content, or even demonstrable errors (like AI-generated images in one example) can inflate citation numbers. Determining an article’s significance requires a deeper evaluation of its content and context within its discipline and publication history.

Interlibrary Loan System: The library collaborates with other Ontario libraries via Omni to pool resources and negotiate more favourable terms for database access. The Rapido interlibrary loan service enables students to quickly obtain articles and resources not held by Carleton from partner libraries across the globe, making materials accessible even outside standard operating hours.

Library Adaptation to the Digital Age: Academic libraries have moved from physical card catalogues to Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs), facilitating remote access to resources. Communication methods with students have adapted to include chat reference, electronic research guides, online booking for consultations, and video communication platforms (e.g., Zoom, Teams). Tools like Zotero and the ability to save searches in databases have also enhanced students’ research management capabilities.

Leveraging Digital Resources for Cognitive Psychology Research: For multidisciplinary fields like Cognitive Psychology, it is advantageous to utilise broad multidisciplinary databases such as Academic One File, Scopus, and Web of Science, in addition to subject-specific ones like PsycINFO. Consulting subject specialists (librarians) can guide students to less obvious yet relevant databases, such as ERIC for research pertaining to children.

Citation Chaining: This valuable research technique involves both backward chaining (examining an article’s reference list to find older, related works) and forward chaining (using tools like Omni or Google Scholar to identify newer articles that have cited a particular older paper). It is particularly effective for discovering relevant literature and identifying foundational works within a field.

Emerging Research Tools: New tools like ResearchRabbit and Open Alex leverage the interconnectedness of research, sometimes through generative AI or machine learning, to visually map relationships between articles and assist researchers in discovering new relevant papers.

Online Academic Presence: Establishing a professional online presence is vital for controlling one’s professional narrative and validating credentials, as individuals often use search engines (like Google) to verify expertise. This involves thoughtfully selecting platforms, ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of information, differentiating between professional and personal content, and adhering to copyright and licensing regulations for any shared documents.

Important

Based on the provided sources, there are no instances where the “professor explicitly indicates in the lecture transcript” a concept using phrases such as “you need to know this,” “this is important,” “this is on the test,” or “keyword being…” Therefore, no concepts can be listed under this section according to your specific instruction.

Core concepts

• Cognitive Psychology: This field is the scientific investigation of human cognition, encompassing all our mental abilities, including perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, reasoning, and understanding. It fundamentally studies how people acquire and apply knowledge or information. It emerged as the study of internal mental processes and complex behaviors, seeking to link external behaviours with the internal processes that facilitate them.
• Cognition: This term signifies “knowing”. Cognitive processes refer to all the various ways in which knowledge is acquired, stored, and subsequently used.
• The Cognitive Revolution: This pivotal shift began in the mid-1950s, when researchers across multiple fields started to develop theories of mind based on complex representations and computational procedures. It marked a move away from behaviourism and led to cognitive psychology becoming the predominant branch of scientific psychology by the 1960s.
• Behaviourism: Prior to the Cognitive Revolution, this movement dominated psychology, asserting that the discipline’s role was to study observable behaviours and their relationship to objective, observable stimulus conditions, without considering internal mental processes. Its limitations, such as failing to distinguish between memory and performance or account for complex learning, contributed to its decline.
• Human Mind as a Computer Metaphor: A central analogy in cognitive psychology is that the human mind functions like a computer. Initially, cognitive psychology concepts were simple, much like early computing machines. However, as computer science advanced, incorporating developments such as cloud network computing, the metaphor expanded to include analogies like neural networks.
• Cognitive Neuroscience: This interdisciplinary area has gained significant momentum, representing an overlap where cognitive psychology, traditionally focused on processes, now integrates with the physiological study of the brain. It utilises sophisticated brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), to directly observe brain activity as individuals perform psychological tasks. This allows researchers to witness processes like learning, memory encoding, and recall in real-time brain activation.
• Sub-domains of Cognitive Psychology: Traditionally, the field covers human perception, attention, learning, memory, concept formation, reasoning, judgment and decision-making, problem-solving, and language processing. Modern perspectives also incorporate social and cultural factors, emotion, consciousness, animal cognition, and evolutionary approaches.

Theories and Frameworks

• Theory of Mind: This area explores how cognitive load interacts with our ability to understand others’ thoughts and intentions, investigating the impact of mental resources on social cognition.
• Cybergogy: This framework focuses on cyber-physical learning within higher education, examining how blended learning environments can facilitate collaborative and innovative learning by integrating technology and physical elements.
• Cognitive Control & Task Rules: Investigations in this domain focus on how rules influence our ability to switch tasks or maintain focus, with the mediodorsal thalamus identified as playing a critical role in suppressing irrelevant neural representations while protecting short-term memory.
• Probabilistic Models of Cognition: This approach uses probabilistic models to represent the computational foundations of inductive reasoning and decision-making, viewing learning and reasoning as inference within complex probabilistic structures.
• Behaviourism & Neuromodulation: Modern research extends classical behaviourist concepts by exploring how external stimuli not only shape behaviour through reinforcement but also alter neural circuitry, providing neuroscientific evidence to the behaviourist perspective.
• Piaget’s Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts: Building on Jean Piaget’s foundational theories, current research investigates how digital tools and environments influence cognitive stages in children, providing evidence-based guidance on digital media use for young children.
• Working Memory Updates: This concept, evolving from George Miller’s “magical number seven,” now incorporates more complex models that explain how the brain uses information compression and chunking to enhance short-term memory capacity.
• Chomsky’s Language Acquisition & Machine Learning: Current research parallels Noam Chomsky’s theories of innate grammatical structures with machine learning algorithms, particularly in natural language processing, to advance understanding of language acquisition and processing.
• CBT & Online Interventions: Principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are being adapted for digital platforms, such as mobile apps and teletherapy, demonstrating effectiveness in delivering therapeutic techniques and broadening access.
• Atkinson-Shiffrin’s Model & Alzheimer’s Research: The Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model informs contemporary research into memory disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on how disruptions in information processing pathways can be therapeutically targeted.
• Cognitive Neuroscience & Connectomics: Modern cognitive neuroscience uses advanced imaging techniques to map complex neural networks (connectomes), thereby enhancing our understanding of how cognitive processes are organised and networked within the brain.
• HCI & VR: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research increasingly involves virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to study and enhance cognitive functions.

Notable Individuals

Atkinson and Shiffrin: Credited with developing the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model.

Jean Piaget: Known for his theories on the stages of cognitive development in children.

Noam Chomsky: Recognised for his theories on innate grammatical structures and language acquisition.