Cognitive Psychology

visual imagery

"Seeing" in the absence of a visual stimulus; a way of thinking that supplements verbal techniques.

mental imagery

Experiencing a sensory impression in the absence of sensory input. Applies to all senses.

imageless thought debate

• Some early psychologists believed thought was impossible without imagery, while others argued thinking could occur without images.

• This debate led to imagery research being pushed out during behaviorism but resurfaced during the cognitive revolution.

Cognitive Revolution

Psychologists began measuring behavior to explore cognitive processes, including imagery, through tasks like paired-associate learning.

Paired-Associate Learning

Participants study pairs of words (e.g., boat–hat) and are later tested on recall. Paivio (1963, 1965) found that memory for word pairs that evoke mental images is better than for abstract word pairs—supporting the conceptual peg hypothesis (concrete nouns create vivid images that serve as "pegs" for memory)

Mental Chronometry

Participants mentally rotate objects to determine if they match. Greater angular separation leads to longer response times, suggesting that imagery and perception may share mechanisms

Conceptual Peg Hypothesis

Concrete nouns serve as pegs for memory association.

Spatial Correspondence

Imagery and perception both involve spatial representations, though imagery is usually less vivid and shorter in duration

Mental Scanning:

Participants scan mental images similar to scanning real ones.

Kosslyn (1973

Took longer to mentally scan longer distances in an image.

Lea (1975)

Argued that distractions, not distance, may cause longer scan times.

Kosslyn et al. (1978):

Used a mental map (island); confirmed longer scan times for longer distances, supporting spatial nature.

Depictive (Spatial

Mental images are picture-like and spatially organized

Propositional

Mental images are abstract, language-like descriptions (e.g., semantic networks)

Size in Visual Field 

Participants imagined animals of different sizes. They answered questions about details faster when the imagined animal was larger in their mental image, similar to real perception.

Mental Walk Task: 

Participants imagined walking toward an animal until it "overflowed" their mental field. Smaller animals required a closer approach, mimicking real visual experience

Interactions (Perky, 1910; Farah, 1985)

Visualizing an object can influence perception. Participants' mental images matched faint projected images (Perky), and imagining a letter improved recognition of that letter when flashed (Farah), suggesting shared mechanisms

Imagery Neurons

Certain neurons in the medial temporal lobe respond similarly to both perceiving and imagining specific objects, indicating a close relationship between perception and imagery at the neural level

Brain Imaging

• Visual cortex activity increases during both perception and imagery.

• Larger imagined images activate more of the visual cortex, similar to perception.

• Frontal lobe activation is nearly identical for imagery and perception, but the visual cortex is more strongly activated by actual perception

• Overlapping neural mechanisms for imagery and perception

MVPA (Johnson & Johnson, 2014)

Machine learning classifiers could predict what scene a person was imagining based on brain activity, though with less accuracy than for actual perception, indicating overlap but not identity in neural mechanisms

Dissociations:

Some brain-damaged patients can perceive but not imagine, or vice versa, indicating that while perception and imagery share mechanisms, they are not completely identical

Improving Memory with Imagery

Creating vivid mental images (especially of concrete nouns) improves memory performance, as shown in paired-associate learning and conceptual peg studies

Language

a system of communication using sounds or symbols that allows us to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

Hierarchical:

Components that can be combined to form larger units
→ Letters → words → sentences → stories.

Rules-Based:

–Specific ways components can be arranged

Universality of Language

• All humans with normal capacities develop language.

• Over 5,000 spoken languages exist.

• Language development is similar across cultures (e.g., babbling at 7 months, words by 12 months).

• Even deaf children create their own sign systems.

Chomsky vs. Skinner

Skinner: Verbal Behavior Language learned via reinforcement (behaviorism)

Chomsky: Syntactic Structures Language ability is innate and genetically coded.

• Children say things they've never heard → can't be solely from reinforcement.

Psycholinguistics: Goals

Comprehension

Representation

Speech Production

Acquisition

Lexicon:

Al words a person understands

Lexical Semantics

The meaning of words

Word frequency

how often a word appears in a language

Word Frequency Effect:

people respond faster to high-frequency words (like "home") than to low-frequency words (like "hike")

Rayner & Duffy (1986):

• Measured eye movements while reading sentences

• Findings: longer fixations and total gaze durations on low-frequency words

• Interpretation: more time is needed to process words that are less common

Variable Pronunciation

• Pronunciation is often variable and informal:
  “Didjoo”, “Gonna”

• Context plays a crucial role in word recognition and understanding

Pollack & Pickett (1964):

• Participants could only recognize half of the words from their own conversations when played back in isolation

• Highlights the importance of context in word recognition

Speech Segmentation

• In spoken language, words are not separated by clear spaces or silences

• Knowing a language helps us perceive individual words

• Sentence meaning helps distinguish similar-sounding phrases (e.g., Big girl vs. Big Earl)

• Frequent exposure helps word identification

Lexical ambiguity:

words have multiple meanings

Ambiguous words

those that can be interpreted in more than one way, leading to potential confusion or uncertainty.

Biased dominance

one meaning is more frequent

Balanced dominance

meanings are equally common

Coherence

Representation of the text in one’s mind that creates clear relations between parts of the text and between parts of the text and the story’s main topic

•Anaphoric Inference

•This type of inference links pronouns or phrases back to previous elements in the text, aiding in understanding relationships and continuities

•Instrument Inference

•Readers infer the tools or methods implied in actions, based on their knowledge of the world and the context of the narrative

•Causal Inference:

•Understanding how events are causally connected is key to making sense of sequences and outcomes in a story

situation models

When people read a story, they form dynamic mental models or simulations of the narrative

N400 Response

• Smaller for expected and event-related words

• Larger for unexpected, unrelated words

• Shows knowledge activation even when words don’t literally fit

Motor Simulation:

Reading action words activates motor brain areas

Given–New Contract

speakers include known and new info

Theory of mind

understanding others’ thoughts

Common Ground:

• shared knowledge and beliefs

Entrainment

synchronization of language over time

Syntactic Coordination

adopting similar sentence structures

Syntactic Priming:

hearing a structure increases use of it

Nonverbal Communication

Interpreting gestures, tone, expression

Similarities Music and Language

• Evoke emotions

• Use structured sequences

• Listeners form expectations

• Violations elicit P600 response (like grammar errors)

Broca’s Aphasia

trouble with both language and music syntax

Congenital Amusia

music deficit, normal language

Problem:

•An obstacle between a present state and a goal

•Not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle

•Difficult to solve

The Gestalt Approach

•The Gestalt approach suggests problem-solving success depends on mental representation.

Restructuring

changing the problem's mental representation, is key to finding solutions.

Insight problems

problems are characterized by sudden realizations of solutions, often after restructuring the problem mentally.

Non-Insight problems

problems are solved through a step-by-step, methodical process.
Research by Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987) showed that people experience a sudden leap in "warmth" ratings (feeling close to a solution) just before solving insight problems, while non-insight problems show a gradual increase

Research: Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987)

Participants rated their closeness to a solution ("warmth") every 15 seconds. Insight problems showed a sudden jump in warmth, while non-insight problems showed a gradual increase, indicating different cognitive processes

Functional fixedness

is the tendency to restrict the use of an object to its familiar functions, which can hinder problem solving.

Candle problem:

People see boxes only as containers, not as supports, making the solution harder unless the boxes are empty

Two-string problem: 

Pliers are seen only as tools, not as weights

Mental set

is a preconceived notion about how to approach a problem, based on past experiences.

Water jug problem

Participants often stick to a familiar solution even when a simpler one is available. Those who started with simpler problems were more likely to use the simpler solution later

Information processing approach

views human thinking and cognition as similar to how computers process information.

initial state

starting conditions

goal state

desired outcome

operators

Actions that move the problem from one state to another

Problem space

All possible states and actions for solving the problem

Means-end analysis

A strategy that involves breaking a problem into subgoals and reducing the difference between the current state and the goal state at each step.

Subgoals

Intermediate states that help move from the initial state to the goal state, making complex problems more manageable

Checkboard problem (Mutilated checkerboard problem)

This problem demonstrates the importance of how a problem is stated. It is easier to solve when the information provided highlights the key aspects of the problem, aiding in forming the correct mental representation

Analogies & Using analogies

Using a solution from a similar (source) problem to solve a new (target) problem is called analogical transfer.

Obstacles to solving analogical problems

• Difficulty in noticing the analogical relationship

• Focusing on surface features instead of structural features

Steps in analogical problem solving

1. Noticing the analogical relationship

2. Mapping the correspondence between source and target problems

3. Applying the mapping to generate a solution

Experts

Experts are individuals who have devoted significant time to learning and practicing in a field, resulting in high skill or knowledge.

• Experts solve problems more quickly and successfully in their field

Experts vs. novices

• Experts have more knowledge and organize it around deep structures (principles), while novices focus on surface features.

• Experts spend more time analyzing problems before acting, leading to more effective solutions

Limits of expertise

• Experts are not better than novices outside their field of expertise.

• Expertise can hinder flexible thinking; experts may be less open to new approaches, while less experienced individuals may make more creative breakthroughs

Creativity

Creativity involves divergent thinking-open-ended exploration of multiple possible solutions-and requires both originality and usefulness.

Divergent thinking

A key aspect of creativity, involving generating many possible solutions or ideas

Practical creativity

Involves applying analogical problem solving to create novel, useful solutions, as seen in inventions like Velcro and the Odón device (inspired by unrelated phenomena).

Creative problem solving

Basadur et al. (2000) proposed a multi-stage process for creative problem solving, including problem finding, formulating, solving, and implementing solutions

Knowledge/expertise and creativity

Too much expertise can sometimes limit creativity by making it harder to think flexibly or outside conventional approaches.

Group brainstorming

Alex Osborn proposed group brainstorming to enhance creativity by encouraging free expression of ideas without criticism, though research shows that individual brainstorming can sometimes be more effective due to issues like production blocking and social loafing

Creative cognition

Smith et al. (1993) found that giving examples before a creative task can limit creativity, as people tend to stick to features from the examples (a form of functional fixedness)

Creativity & the Brain

The 9-dot problem is easier to solve when the left anterior temporal lobe is inhibited, suggesting that reducing habitual thinking patterns can enhance creative problem solving

Reasoning

the process of drawing conclusions.

Decisions

the process of making choices between alternatives.

Inductive reasoning

• Reasoning that is based on observation. Reaching conclusions from evidence. Specific cases → broad principles. Inductive arguments are probabilistic, leading to likely but not certain conclusions.

• Used to make scientific discoveries: hypotheses and general conclusions.

• Used in everyday life: make a prediction about what will happen based on observation about what has happened in the past.

Factors contributing to the strength of an inductive argument:

• Representativeness of observations

• Number of observations

• Quality of the evidence

Heuristics

“Rules of thumb” that are likely to provide the correct answer to a problem, but are not foolproof and sometimes lead to errors.

availability heuristic 

a mental shortcut where individuals estimate the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples of that event come to mind

representativeness heuristic.

a cognitive bias where individuals make judgments about the likelihood of an event based on how closely it resembles a stereotype or prototype in their minds

Illusory correlations:

correlation appears to exist, but either does not exist or is much weaker than assumed.

Stereotypes:

an oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people that often focuses on the negative. May arise from illusory correlations.

Base rate:

relative proportion of different classes in a population.