PSY 200 Exam 1

cognitive psychology

science of thinking/study of the mind and its mental processes

Information processing steps

Transform, reduce, elaborate, stored, recovered, used

Analytical introspection

one of the first ways to study cognition; a technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

Problems with introspection

cannot be objectively measured and variable

Donders Experiment

Asked how long it takes to make a decision, used dot test to measure

Ebbinghaus Method

measured how long it takes to learn a list of nonsense syllables, Found relearning is generally faster 

Rate of forgetting

The difference in the amount of time for the initial learning vs the second learning

Behaviorism

study of the relationship between environment and behavior

Dendrites

part of neuron, receive signal

Axon

Part of neuron, send signal

Soma

cell body of neuron

Synapses

the space between the axon and the cell body or dendrites, creates a network

Action Potential

electrical potential responsible for transmitting neural info and for the communication between neurons

excitatory neurotransmitters

increase the probability that the next cell will fire

inhibitory neurotransmitters

decrease the probability that the next cell will fire

principle of neural representation

everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact with the stimuli, but on representations in the persons nervous system

specificity coding

each face is represented by a specific neuron

population coding

each face is recognized by a specific pattern

adaptation

a change over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant stimulus ex) optical illusions

Localization of function

neurons with similar function are often grouped together in the brain

Single dissociation

one person with one impaired function

Double dissociation

when two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other

EEG

electrodes placed near large groups of neurons to pick up their combined electric signal. Advantage- catches slight changes at high speed (high temporal resolution)

fMRI

measures blood flow in brain. Advantage- picks up on very small details (high spacial resolution)

TMS

sends electromagnetic pulse through the skull that can create a temporary “virtual lesion” which temporarily disrupts specific mental functions. Advantage- test whether a brain area is required for a mental process

Bottom-up processing

processing that starts with info received from the environment, builds to higher levels of knowledge

Sensory Information is an Ambiguous Theory

generally more than one state of the external world can explain the information arising at our sensors

Top-down processing

higher level knowledge influences what we process at lower levels

statistical inference

assumes that we use past experiences to estimate the probabilities of various candidate explanations of the sensory data

Gestalt principles

input from senses is organized into objects according to 1) good continuation 2) simplicity 3) closure

Experience dependent plasticity

experience can change the structure of the brain Ex) vertical line kitten

Dorsal Stream

the where pathway, processes for action

Ventral Stream

the what pathway, processing for recognition

How do we know the difference between dorsal and ventral streams

look at lesion studies

Attention

focusing on specific features, objects, or locations, or on certain thoughts/activities

Selective attention

attending to one thing while ignoring all others

divided attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time

dichotic listening experiments

participants were given two different dialogues in each eat, they could only attend to one ear, meaning that they were unable to report the content of the message in the unattended ear

Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention

Messages→ Sensory memory→ filter→ (attended message)→ detector→memory

sensory memory

holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second

Filter

identifies attended message based on physical characteristics, only attended message gets passed on

Detector

processes all info to determine higher-level characteristics of the message

Cocktail party effect

a person can detect their name even in the unattended ear

Treismans attenuation theory

both attended message and unattended message are processed, but unattended message is toned down

Lavies load theory of attention

high load tasks use higher amounts of processing capacity, low load tasks use lower amounts

processing capacity 

how much info a person can handle at a given moment

divided attention

being able to pay attention to, or carry out, 2 or more different tasks simultaneously

Schneidder and Shiffrin divided attention experiments

made people remember and speak 2 different things, and found people were very bad at this until they got a lot of practice

Inattentional blindness

a stimulus that is not attended to is not perceived, even if a person is looking directly at it

Binding

the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of an object ex) flashing many shapes and colors across screen, our brains get confused 

Treisman and Schmidt Binding experiment

tested above example, found that illusory conjunctions occur because features are “free floating”

Feature Integration Theory

object→ preattentive stage (automatic, object analyzed into features)→ focused attention stage (attention plays key role, features are combined)→perception