Cognitive Psychology Exam 1

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the lecture notes.

Cognition

Mental activity or what the mind does

Psychology

the study of mind and behavior

Cognitive Psychology

The study of mind and mental processes that underlie behavior. Stimuli —> mind —> response

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to notice a salient stimulus when attention is focused elsewhere (e.g., moonwalking bear).

Introspection

Self-examination of one's own mental processes and experiences. No stimuli —> MIND —> no response

Wilhelm Wundt (and Edward B. Titchener)

coined term cognitive psychology and wanted to understand mental processes. Wasn’t a lot of technology at the time to understand this, so asked people questions and used equipment to measure mental processes.

Behaviorism

Approach focusing on observable behavior, rejected the idea that there is a human consciousness or understanding of our own mental processes. Stimulus —> Behavior (no mental process between)

Extreme Behavioralism

A perspective within behaviorism that denies any role of internal mental processes in influencing behavior, arguing that all behaviors are learned through imitation and reinforcement

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

Founder of behavioralism that thought everything is about stimuli in the environment that creates behaviors. Believed he could be given a dozen healthy infants, bring them up in a specific way and train them to become anything, regardless of their talents or background.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

Believed all of language is imitation and reinforcement. Another founder of behavioralism. Wrote Verbal Behavior, 1957.

Noam Chomsky

Disagreed with behaviorism and argued language requires mental processes to take in information, recalculate it, and do something with it. Highlighted rule-based errors and the combinatorial nature of language. A founder of cognitive psychology

Rule-based errors

Mistakes (e.g., 'He eated') that suggest internal grammar beyond imitation.

Combinatorial nature of language

Language’s capacity to combine elements to create unlimited expressions.

Cognitive Revolution

Shift to studying mental processes with rigorous experimentation from behavioralism, but focused on the mental processes of introspection. Influenced by information processing and computer science

Ulrich Neisser, George Miller, Noam Chomsky, Alan Baddeley 

Important figures in cognitive revolution

Mind as a computer

Metaphor for how the mind encodes, stores, retrieves, and manipulates information.

Hypothesis

The development of specific explanation of idea that guides a study

Theory

A general idea of how things may work

Control condition

Baseline condition used for comparison in an experiment.

Experimental condition

Condition in which the independent variable is manipulated.

Response time

Time to process a stimulus AND prepare a response. Always going to take longer than actual reaction time because it often requires physical movement and reflexes. (Testing behavioral methods)

Reaction time

Actual time it took to mentally recognize stimulus. Hard to actually mark when this occurred. (Testing behavioral methods)

Looking time

Amount of time someone stares at stimulus. Assumes people look when they’re processing something surprising or difficult to decode. Often used in studies with babies. (Testing behavioral methods)

Eye gaze tracking

Head.eye gear used to track eye gaze, showing where your attention is and how long it took for you to find something. (Testing behavioral methods). Can be inaccurate because you could be paying attention to something in your peripheral

Open-ended responses

Way to understand behavior processing with questions like, “Which of these options is the best course of action? How much would you pay for this?” (Testing behavioral methods)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Scans the brain to show the anatomy

fMRI

Type of magnetic resonance imaging that scans the function of the brain activities by creating a magnetic field and showing where oxygenated blood is going. Shows exactly where event took place, bad with time

BOLD signal

Blood oxygenated level dependent. When 2 stimuli are presented in fMRI scan, the oxygenated blood changes flow through the brain between stimuli

EEG (electroencephalogram)

Measures electric activity through scalp using electrodes measuring thousands of neurons. Measures exact timing of events

Gamma waves (EEG waves)

active thought

Beta waves (EEG waves)

alert, working

Alpha (EEG wave)

relaxed, reflective

Theta (EEG wave)

drowsy, meditative

Delta (EEG wave)

sleepy, dreaming

Event Related Potentials (ERPs)

Time lock EEG activity to a specific event and does many trails to see precise timing

EEG and fMRI

Often used together to accurately measure timing and location of event

Positron Emission Topography Scan (PET Scan)

Older method that measured blood flow through brain using radioactive isotope injection. Shows good data on where blood flow is happening but not when, but really invasive method

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Sends targeting magnetic pulse into person’s brain, which stimulates or turn off a brain area . Not common for research, but can show how brain areas change

Phineas Gage

Railroad worker that was impaled by a pole through head. Could still move, read, speak, think but his personality changed. Went from friendly and responsible to profane, impatient, and rude.

H.M.

Man who experienced epilepsy for most of his life and had surgery to stop the epilepsy. They removed part of his brain. He stopped having seizures, but was no longer able to form a new memory anymore 

Causes of lesions and damage in brain

Strokes/loss of O2, surguery, disease, physical trauma

Data input

sensory-perceptual hierarchy. Sensory receptors —> brain

Decision output

motor-control hierarchy. Brain —> body. Includes Peripheral and Central Nervous System

Peripheral Nervous System (PFS)

Nerves that go out into your extremities

Central Nervous System (CNS)

Brain and spinal cord

Subcortical structures

structures below the cortex (brainstem, thalamus, cerebellum, basal ganglia, hippocampus, amygdala)

Brainstem

Automatic responses, connects spinal cord to rest of brain

Thalamus

Takes information from spinal cord and sorts it to be sent to other areas of the brain

Cerebellum and basal ganglia

Works together to think about timing for movement. Also involved with complex decision making; getting feedback from environment and doing something with it

Cerebellum

Fast movement

Basal ganglia

Slow, delivered movements

Hippocampus and amygdala

Subcortical structures in the limbic system

Hippocampus

Involved with spatial location and processing emotional information. Damage can cause forms of amnesia, so involved with memory

Amygdala

Specialized to deal with emotional learning, memory, and social interaction. Damage can cause person to not show startle response when frightened. Personal space fear also found here

Cerebral cortex

Makes up 80% of total brain volume. Made of folds (sulcus) and ridges (gyrus)

Sulcus

Fold in cerebral cortex

Gyrus

Ridge in cerebral cortex

Occipital lobe

Processes visual information. Damage causes cortical blindness (cerebral cortex)

Parietal lobe

Processes information about body senses and where body is in space. Damage can cause incorrect processing of sensory information and knowing where body is in space (cerebral cortex)

Temporal lobe

Processes auditory information. Some complex vision is being processed here. Damage causes impaired sound pattern recognition (cerebral cortex)

Frontal lobe

Involved in decision making and planning motor activities. Damage causes impulsivity. Fully developed in early 20s. (cerebral cortex)

Primary sensory area

Functional division of cerebral cortex that takes input from thalamus about sensory information and starts sending it to rest of the brain

Primary motor area

Functional division of cerebral cortex that receives information about motor neurons

Association areas

Functional division of cerebral cortex that receives information from other subcortical and cortical parts and associates them together for more complex cognition

Topographic organization

Neurons near each other tend to get input from body parts near each other 

Cortical magnification

The more sensitivity you need in a body part, the more cortex is dedicated to it  

Contralateral connections

Opposite side connections. Left side controls right side and vice versa

Contralateral vision

Information in left vision field is coming into right hemisphere of occipital lobe

Corpus callosum

Brain structure that connects brain hemispheres and shares information between the two 

Left brain

verbal, analytical

Right side

Intuitive, holistic

Cornea —> iris & pupil —> lens —> retina

Path of light in eye

Photoreceptors

specialized cells in the retina of the eye that detect light and convert it into electrical signals that are sent to the brain for processing. 

Blind spot

Where optic nerve is, there are no photoreceptor cells 

right/left visual fields --> optic nerve --> cross over at optic chasm --> lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) --> primary visual cortex 

Visual pathway

Lateral geniculate Nucleus (LGN)

a relay station in the thalamus that plays a crucial role in visual processing 

Parvocellular

Section in LGN where color and detail information is sent to be processed 

Magnocellular

section in LGN where motion is processed 

Receptive fields

The specific part of the visual world (what you're looking at) that affects the activity of a single neuron in your visual system. When changes happen, the neuron starts firing more or less, helping the brain detect contrast, patterns, light, contrast, and edges

ON-center

Positive center, negative surround. When there’s light in the center, the positive neurons get more excited. When there’s light in the surround, the off neurons fire less

OFF-center

Negative center, positive surround. When there’s light in the center, the negative neurons fire less. When there’s light in the surround, the on neurons fire more.

Sensation

How we process information coming in from the world. Colors, lines, shapes, facts coming into visual system

Perception

What your brain makes from a sensation. What you think is happening in the image. The brain likes rules, organization, easy labor, and sometimes lies to have what it likes

Primary visual cortex

Measures color, speed, orientation, etc. of visual images 

Feature integration theory

To perceive a stimulus, the primitive sensory features must be detected and integrated into a whole.

Feature detection —> parallel processing

Things are happening at the same time. People are perceiving orientation, color, shape at the same time

Feature integration —> serial processing

Things are happening one after the other. People are perceiving features of the object one after the other

Illusionary conjunctions

Perceptual error when people combine separate features of object into one false perception. Visual perception is overloaded

Gestalt principles

Describes how the human brain naturally organizes visual elements into unified wholes, or patterns, rather than as separate parts. (proximity, similarity, connectedness, common fate, good continuation, closure, good form)

Proximity

Gestalt principle where things closer together tend to be seen as the same object

Similarity

Gestalt principle where things that look alike to each other tend to be seen as the same object

Connectedness

Gestalt principle where things that are connected to each other tend to be seen as same object

Common fate

Gestalt principal where things that move in the same direction tend to be seen as the same object 

Good continuation

Gestalt principle when we see line/pattern we perceive it as continuing in the same direction 

Closure

Gestalt principle where we like to see things with closed borders and tend to ignore gaps in objects 

Good form

Gestalt principle where our brains groups together form that have similar shapes, colors, patterns, etc.  

flat

The retina is a ___ surface

Binocular cues

Information you get about depth that come from each of your eyes

Binocular disparity

Eyes sit at different places on your face and light comes in at slightly different angles for each eye, so view of world is slightly different for each eye

Monocular cues

Cues that come from one eye (includes motion parallax)