Approaches to Human Cognition

These flashcards cover key terms and definitions related to approaches to human cognition.

Social Cognition

An approach within social psychology focused on the cognitive processing of information about other people and social situations.

Cognitive Psychology

An approach that aims to understand human cognition by studying behavior, often including brain activity and structure.

Cognitive Neuroscience

An approach that aims to understand human cognition by combining information from behavior and the brain.

Algorithm

A computational procedure providing a specified set of steps to problem solution.

Bottom-up processing

Processing directly influenced by environmental stimuli.

Serial processing

Processing in which one process is completed before the next one starts.

Top-down processing

Stimulus processing that is influenced by factors such as the individual’s past experience and expectations.

Parallel processing

Processing in which two or more cognitive processes occur at the same time.

Cascade processing

Later processing stages start before earlier processing stages have been completed when performing a task.

Ecological validity

The applicability (or otherwise) of the findings of laboratory studies to everyday settings.

Implacable experimenter

The situation in experimental research in which the experimenter’s behavior is uninfluenced by the participant’s behavior.

Paradigm specificity

The findings with a given experimental task or paradigm are not replicated even when apparently very similar tasks or paradigms are used.

Lesion

Damage within the brain resulting from injury or disease; it typically affects a restricted area.

Modularity

The assumption that the cognitive system consists of many fairly independent or separate modules or processors, each specialized for a given type of processing.

Pure Alexia

Severe problems with reading but not other language skills; caused by damage to brain areas involved in visual processing.

Double dissociation

The finding that some brain-damaged individuals have intact performance on one task but poor performance on another task whereas other individuals exhibit the opposite pattern.

Association

The finding that certain symptoms or performance impairments are consistently found together in numerous brain-damaged patients.

Syndrome

The notion that symptoms that often co-occur have a common origin.

Case-series study

A study in which several patients with similar cognitive impairments are tested; this allows consideration of individual data and of variation across individuals.

Diaschisis

The disruption to distant brain areas caused by a localized brain injury or lesion.

Sulcus

A groove or furrow in the surface of the brain.

Gyrus

Prominent elevated area or ridge on the brain’s surface

Dorsal

Towards the top.

Ventral

Towards the bottom.

Rostral

Towards the front of the brain.

Posterior

Towards the back of the brain.

Lateral

Situated at the side of the brain.

Medial

Situated in the middle of the brain.

Connectome

A comprehensive wiring diagram of neural connections within the brain.

Single-unit recording

An invasive technique for studying brain function, permitting the study of activity in single neurons.

Event-related potentials (ERPs)

The pattern of electroencephalograph (EEG) activity obtained by averaging the brain responses to the same stimulus (or very similar stimuli) presented repeatedly.

Positron emission tomography (PET)

A brain-scanning technique based on the detection of positrons; it has reasonable spatial resolution but poor temporal resolution.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

A technique based on imaging blood oxygenation using an MRI machine; it provides information about the location and time course of brain processes.

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI)

This is a form of functional magnetic resonance imaging in which patterns of brain activity associated with specific events (e.g., correct vs incorrect responses on a memory test) are compared.

Magneto-encephalography (MEG)

A non-invasive brain-scanning technique based on recording the magnetic fields generated by brain activity; it has good spatial and temporal resolution.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

A technique in which magnetic pulses briefly disrupt the functioning of a given brain area. It is often claimed that it creates a short-lived 'lesion.' more accurately, TMS causes interference when the brain area to which it is applied is involved in task processing as well as activity produced by the applied stimulation.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

A technique in which a very weak electrical current is passed through an area of the brain (often for several minutes); anodal tDCS often enhances performance, whereas cathodal tDCS often impairs it.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Recording the brain’s electrical potentials through a series of scalp electrodes.

BOLD

Blood oxygen-level-dependent contrast; this is the signal measured by fMRI.

Neural decoding

Using computer-based analyses of patterns of brain activity to work out which stimulus an individual is processing.

Default mode network

A network of brain regions that is active “by default” when an individual is not involved in a current task; it is associated with internal processes including mind wandering, remembering the past and imagining the future

Computational modelling

This involves constructing computer programs that simulate or mimic human cognitive processes.

Artificial intelligence

This involves developing computer programs that produce intelligent outcomes.

Cognitive architecture

Comprehensive framework for understanding human cognition in the form of a computer program.

Connectionist models

Models in computational cognitive science consisting of interconnected networks of simple units or nodes; the networks exhibit learning through experience and specific items of knowledge are distributed across numerous units.

Neural network models

Computational models in which processing involves the simultaneous activation of numerous interconnected nodes (basic units).

Nodes

The basic units within a neural network model.

Back-propagation

A learning mechanism in connectionist models based on comparing actual responses to correct ones.

Production systems

These consist of very large numbers of “IF . . . THEN” production rules and a working memory containing information.

Production rules

“IF . . . THEN” or condition-action rules in which the action is carried out whenever the appropriate condition is present.

Working memory

A limited-capacity system used in the processing and brief holding of information.

Reverse inference

As applied to functional neuroimaging, it involves arguing backwards from a pattern of brain activation to the presence of a given cognitive process.

Converging operations

An approach in which several methods with different strengths and limitations are used to address a given issue.

Replication

The ability to repeat a previous experiment and obtain the same (or similar) findings.

Meta-analysis

A form of statistical analysis based on combining the findings from numerous studies on a given research topic.

Retinal ganglion cells

Retinal cells providing the output signal from the retina.

Retinopy

The notion that there is mapping between receptor cells in the retina and points on the surface of the visual cortex.

Receptive field

The region of the retina in which light influences the activity of a particular neuron.

Lateral inhibition

Reduction of activity in one neuron caused by activity in a neighbouring neuron.

Achromatopsia

A condition caused by brain damage in which there is very limited colour perception but form and motion perception are relatively intact.

Akinetopsia

A brain-damaged condition in which motion perception is severely impaired even though stationary objects are perceived reasonably well.

Binding problem

The issue of integrating different types of information to produce coherent visual perception.

Ventral stream

The part of the visual processing system involved in object perception and recognition and the formation of perceptual representations.

Dorsal stream

The part of the visual processing system most involved in visually guided action.

Allocentric coding

Visual or spatial coding of objects relative to each other; see egocentric coding.

Egocentric coding

Visual or spatial coding dependent on the position of the observer’s body; see allocentric coding.

Optic ataxia

A condition in which there are problems making visually guided movements in spite of reasonably intact visual perception.

Visual form agnosia

A condition in which there are severe problems in shape perception (what an object is) but apparently reasonable ability to produce accurate visually guided actions.

Hollow-face illusion

A concave face mask is misperceived as a normal face when viewed from several feet away.

Proprioception

An individual’s awareness of the position and orientation of parts of their body.

Monocular cues

Cues to depth that can be used by one eye but can also be used by both eyes together.

Binocular cues

Cues to depth that require both eyes to be used together.

Oculomotor cues

Cues to depth produced by muscular contractions of the muscles around the eye; use of such cues involves kinaesthesia (also known as the muscle sense).

Texture gradient

The rate of change of texture density from the front to the back of a slanting object.

Motion parallax

A depth cue based on movement in one part of the retinal image relative to another.

Vergence

A cue to depth based on the inward focus of the eyes with close objects.

Accommodation

A depth cue based on changes in optical power produced by thickening of the eye’s lens when an observer focuses on close objects.

Binocular disparity

A depth cue based on the slight disparity in the two retinal images when an observer views a scene; it is the basis for stereopsis.

Stereopsis

Depth perception based on the small discrepancy in the two retinal images when a visual scene is observed (binocular disparity).

Autostereogram

A complex two- dimensional image perceived as three- dimensional when not focused on for a period of time.

Amblyopia

A condition in which one eye sends an inadequate input to the visual cortex; colloquially known as lazy eye.

Size constancy

Objects are perceived to have a given size regardless of the size of the retinal image.

Ames room

A very distorted room that nevertheless looks normal under certain viewing conditions.

Honi phenomenon

“The typical apparent size changes when an individual walks along the rear wall of the Ames room are reduced when female observers view a man to whom they are very close emotionally.

Open-object illusion

The misperception that objects with missing boundaries are larger than objects the same size without missing boundaries.

Body size effect

An illusion in which misperception of one’s own bodily size causes the perceived size of objects to be misjudged.

Subliminal perception

Perceptual processing occurring below the level of conscious awareness that can nevertheless influence behavior.

Pattern recognition

The ability to identify or categorise two- dimensional patterns

CAPTCHA

A Completely Automated Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart involving distorted characters connected together is often used to establish that the user of an internet website is human rather than an automated system.

Law of Prägnanz

The notion that the simplest possible organisation of the visual environment is perceived; proposed by the gestaltists.

Figure-ground segmentation

The perceptual organisation of the visual field into a figure (object of central interest) and a ground (less important background).

Luminance

intensity of reflected light.

Monochromatism

Having no detectable cone function resulting in total colour blindness.

Dichromacy

A deficiency in colour vision in which one of the three cone classes is missing.

Negative afterimages

The illusory perception of the complementary colour to the one that has just been fixated; green is the complementary colour to red and blue is complementary to yellow.

Texture

Most objects (e.g., carpets; cobble-stone roads) possess texture, and textured objects slanting away from us have a texture gradient

Vitally important perception

That plays a key role in daily life