HUMAN COGNITION- EXAM 2 WRITTEN Qs

Describe the methodology and the results from Eric Wanner’s (1968) research study on

sentence meaning versus sentence style

Wanner asked participants to come into the laboratory and listen to tape-recorded instructions. For one group of participants they were warned that the tape began this way:

The materials for this test, including the instructions, have been recorded on tape. Listen very carefully to the instructions because you will be tested on your ability to recall particular sentences which occur in the instructions.

The participants in the second group received no such warning and had no idea that they would be responsible for remembering the instructions verbatim. After this point, the instructions were the same for both groups. Later on, one of four possible critical sentences were presented:

The implications of Wanner’s experiment are clear. First, memory is better for the meaning of the sentence in the instructions than for the style of the sentence. 

The second implication of these results is that people are capable of remembering exact wording if that is their goal — the warning did have a significant effect on memory for style.

Describe the methodology and the results from Mandler and Johnson’s study (1976) on

memory for classroom scenes

 This is illustrated in an experiment by Mandler and Johnson (1976) in which participants studied pictures of classroom scenes. After studying eight such pictures for 10 s each, participants were presented with a series of pictures consisting of the exact pictures they had studied (target pictures) and distracter pictures, which included token distracters and type distracters for each target. A token distracter differed from its target only in a relatively unimportant visual detail. In contrast, a type distracter differed from the target in a relatively important visual detail. 

Participants recognized the original pictures 77% percent of the time; they rejected the token distracters only 60% of the time, but rejected the type distracters 94% of the time.

Describe the methods and results the results from study of Labov (1973) studying which items participants would call or identify “cups” and which items are considered as “bowls”

A set of materials used by Labov (1973) in studying which items participants would call cups and which they would call bowls 

In one condition, participants were simply presented with pictures of the objects. As can be seen, the percentage of cup responses gradually decreased with increasing width, but there is no clear-cut point where participants stopped using cup. At the extreme 2.5 width ratio, about 25% percent of the participants still gave the cup response, whereas another 25% gave bowl. (The remaining 50% gave other responses.) 

In the other condition, participants were asked to imagine the object filled with mashed potatoes and placed on a table. In this context, fewer cup responses and more bowl responses were given. These influences of perceptual features and context on categorization judgments are very much like the similar influences of these features on perceptual pattern recognition.

According to the research by Warrington & Shallice (1984) and by Saffran & Schwatz

(1994), damage to what region of the brain causes deficits in biological categories (ex.

Animals, fruits and vegetables)? According to the research by Warrington & Shallice

(1984) and by Saffran & Schwatz (1994), damage to what region of the brain causes

deficits in artifacts (ex. Tools and furniture)?

Patients who have damage to the temporal lobes show deficits in their knowledge about biological categories such as animals, fruits, and vegetables. 

In contrast, patients with frontoparietal lesions show deficits in their knowledge about artifact categories but are unaffected in their knowledge of biological categories.

Describe the methods and results of J.D. Johnson, McDuff, Rugg and Norman (2009) study using brain imaging to investigate if the brain records experiences that we can no longer Remember.

Participants saw a list of words and, for each word, were asked either to imagine how an artist would draw the object denoted by the word or to imagine uses for the object. The researchers trained a pattern classifier to distinguish between words assigned to the artist task and words assigned to the uses task, based on differences in brain activity during the two tasks. 

The classifier was able to recognize from these patterns what task the word had been assigned to with better than chance accuracy. It was successful at recognition both for words that participants could recall studying and for words they could not remember. 

Describe the methods and results of Bradshaw and Anderson (1982) experiment the

contrasting effects of redundant versus irrelevant information.

These researchers looked at participants’ ability to learn some little-known information about famous people, under three conditions: single, unrelated, and related:

    In the single condition, they had participants study just one fact:

    In the unrelated condition, they had participants learn a target fact about the individual: plus two unrelated facts:

    In the related condition, participants learned a target fact: plus two additional facts that were causally related to the target fact:

           

Participants were then tested for their ability to recall the target facts immediately after studying them and after a week’s delay. In each test, they were presented with names such as Newton, Mozart, and Locke and asked to recall what they had studied. Comparing the unrelated condition with the single condition, we see the standard interference effect: Recall was worse when there were more facts to be learned about an item. However, the result is quite different when we compare the related condition to the single condition. Particularly after a week’s delay, recall was better when there were more facts to be learned, presumably because the additional facts were causally related to the target facts.

X Identify and explain the methods and results from Cabeza, Rao, Wagner, Mayer and

Schacter (2001) investigating the brain activation for regions of the brain for true items,

new items and false memory items.

In the hippocampus proper, true words and false words produced almost identical fMRI responses, which were stronger than the responses produced by the new words. Thus, these hemodynamic responses appear to match up pretty well with the behavioral data, where participants cannot discriminate between true words and false words. However, in the parahippocampal gyrus, an area just adjacent to the hippocampus, both false and new words produced weaker responses than the true words. The parahippocampus is more closely connected to sensory regions of the brain than is the hippocampus, and Cabeza et al. suggested that the parahippocampus retains the original sensory experience of seeing the word, whereas the hippocampus maintains a more abstract representation, which would explain why true words produce a larger hemodynamic response in the parahippocampus. 

The researchers found that 88% of the true words and only 12% of the new words were accepted, but 80% of the false words were also accepted — almost as high a percentage as the true words.

Describe and explain how Kahneman and Tversky (1984) differentiate between subjective utility versus subjective probability

This idea has been formalized in terms of what is called subjective utility — the value that people place on things for whatever reason. For instance, as indicated by our example, the value that we place on money does not correspond linearly to the amount of money. The receding example…1.2 U

Kahneman and Tversky (1984) also argued that, as with subjective utility, people associate a subjective probability with an event that is not identical with the objective probability. They proposed the function to relate subjective probability to objective probability. The function bows downward because very low probabilities are overweighted relative to high probabilities. 

Kahneman and Tversky (1979) showed that a great deal of human decision making can be explained by assuming that participants are responding in terms of these subjective utilities and subjective probabilities.

 Identify and explain the methods and results from Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley and Cohen (2001) fMRI research study investigating the effects of framing upon people’s decisions in response to ethical dilemmas

They compared participants’ responses to ethical dilemmas such as the following pair:\

Dilemma 1: A runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its current course. The only way you can save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternative set of tracks where it will kill one person instead of five.

Dilemma 2: You are standing next to a large stranger on a footbridge that spans the tracks in between the oncoming trolley and the five people. The only way to save the five people is to push the stranger off the bridge onto the tracks below. He will die, but his large body will stop the trolley from reaching the others.

In an fMRI study, Greene et al. compared the brain areas activated when people considered an “impersonal” dilemma such as Dilemma 1 with the brain areas activated when people considered a “personal” dilemma such as Dilemma 2. In the impersonal case, regions of the parietal cortex that are associated with cold calculation were active. In contrast, in the personal case, regions of the brain associated with emotion were active. Thus, part of what can be involved in making decisions in response to different framings of problems seems to be which brain regions are engaged.

Describe the methods and results of Knutson, Taylor, Kaufman, Peterson and Glover

(2005) fMRI experiment responding to uncertain outcomes in the context of reward

Probabilities.

In one fMRI study, Participants were presented with various uncertain outcomes, including in the magnitude and probability of rewards. For instance, on one trial participants might be told that they had a 50% chance of winning $5; on another trial that they had a 50% chance of winning $1.

Knutson et al. imaged the brain activity associated with each such gamble. The magnitude of the fMRI response in the nucleus accumbens in the basal ganglia reflected the different magnitudes of rewards (NOT probability). In contrast, the fMRI response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex did reflect differences in the probabilities of rewards (NOT magnitude).

Identify and explain the methods and results from Graf and Torrey (1966) experiment

investigating sentence constituent boundaries.

Graf and Torrey (1966) presented sentences to participants a line at a time in either of the two ways shown below. In form A, each line corresponds to a whole constituent, whereas in form B, there is no such correspondence (each line breaks in the middle of a constituent).

Participants showed better comprehension of sentences in form A, demonstrating that the identification of constituent structure is important in the parsing stage.

Describe the methods and results of Allopenna, Magnuson & Tanenhaus (1998) eye

fixation research study investigating the comprehension of spoken language.

Participants were shown computer displays of objects and geometric shapes. A participant would begin by fixating on the center cross and would then hear an instruction such as

    Pick up the beaker.

followed by an instruction such as

    Now put it below the diamond.

Participants would perform this action by selecting the object with a mouse and moving it, but the objective of the experiment was to study participants’ eye movements preceding any action with the mouse. It can be seen that participants are beginning to look to the two objects that start with the same sound (“beaker” and “beetle”) even before the articulation of the word finishes. It takes about 400 ms to say the word, and almost immediately after the word finishes, participants’ fixations on the wrong object (“beetle”) decrease, and their fixations on the correct object (“beaker”) shoot up. Given that it takes about 200 ms to program an eye movement, this study provides evidence that participants are processing the meaning of a word even before it completes.

Describe the methods and results of Mason, Just, Keller and Carpenter (2003) fMRI study comparing people’s comprehension between Unambiguous, Ambiguous Preferred  and Ambiguous Unpreferred sentences.

In one study, Mason, Just, Keller, and Carpenter (2003) compared three kinds of sentences, such as these:

        Unambiguous: The experienced soldiers spoke about the dangers of the midnight raid.

        Ambiguous preferred: The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers before the midnight raid.

        Ambiguous unpreferred: The experienced soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid.

Mason et al. collected fMRI measures of activation in Broca’s area as a function of time since sentence onset. The sentences lasted approximately 6 to 7 seconds, and as is typical of fMRI measures, the differences among conditions show up only after the processing of the sentence is complete, corresponding to the lag in the hemodynamic response. As can be seen, the level of activation increases with the difficulty of processing and is greatest for the ambiguous unpreferred sentence. The least activation is the unambiguous.