Applied Cognition 1, 2

What is Cognitive Psychology?

The study of thinking, attention, memory, perception, etc.

What is the timeline of events that led to the development of Cognitive Psychology?

Behaviorism was widely accepted. The Cognitive Revolution marked a shift in ideology and research. Leading to the Physiological approach.

What is a key factor of Cognitive Psychology? What does this factor mean?

It is interdisciplinary. It involved different disciplines that overlap, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science, etc

What was Franciscus Donders known for?

Mental chronometry and his reaction time experiment, including simple and choice reaction

What was Wilhelm Wundt known for?

Father of Psychology who has the first Psych Lab and looked at analytical introspection

What was Hermann Helmholtz known for?

Unconscious inference, based on past experiments. The rectangle experiment we did in class

What was Hermann Ebbinghaus known for?

Nonsense syllables experiment and the forgetting curve

What was the Little Albert experiment and who performed it?

John Watson classically conditioned a baby to fear rats

What is Noam Compsky known for?

He believed language was innate and reinforced

What is the idea behind Behaviorism? How does it differ from Cognitive Psychology?

Measure a relationship between an observable stimulus and the environment. NOT DONE

What was the information processing approach? What tech did it compare to?

We receive information input by storing, retrieving, and encoding this information. We are compared to computers.

What is a neuron?

Specialized cells of our nervous system

What is a Node of Ranvier (Ron-vee-air)

French; execrates information on the axon, located in those tiny gaps

What is a dendrite?

Receives signals from other neurons like a sticky hand

What is a cell body?

It contains the nucleus and keeps the cell alive

What is the myelin sheath?

It allows quicker transmission of information, effectively, and increases insulation

What are Schwann cells?

They produce myelin

What is an axon?

The long body that carries signals away from the cell body

Fill in the blank

A: dendrites B: cell body C: axon D: Schwann cells/myelin sheath E: node of Raniver F: axon terminal

What are sensory receptors and what do they do?

Structures that take information from environment and communicate with the different neurons

What is transduction?

The process of turning chemical energy to electrical energy

What is action potential?

When a neuron sends information down an axon. It happens or it doesn’t.

No size

Rate of firing

When does action potential occurs? What happened when it does?

???

What is a synapse?

Area between the end of axon and next neuron

What affects the speed of mental processing?

The rate of firing or action potential

High rate is fast

Low rate is slow

What’s the difference between excitatory and inhibitory signals in neurons?

Excitatory signals increase the chance a neuron will fire an action potential, while inhibitory signals decrease that chance

What is the relationship between neural processing and neural circuits?

Neurons bind together to form circuits. The more neural circuits we have, the more connections, the faster the processing

What is a neural circuit?

A group of interconnected neurons

How is convergence related to excitatory and inhibitory signals?

Depending on the signal of excitatory or inhibitory, it will communicate an increase or decrease of neurons 

What is convergence?

When one neuron receives many signals from many neurons

What is a feature detector?

Neurons that respond to specific features of stimuli

What is a grandmother cell?

It was a belief that there was a 1-1 ratio for neurons - stimuli, which is not true

What is distributive coding?

A neuron stimulates an entire network of information, like the activity done in class

What are the 4 lobes of the brain?

Frontal, Occipital, Temporal, Parietal

What is the Cerebellum?

Controls balance and motor movement

What are the main functions of the frontal lobe?

Higher cognitive functions, motor control, located in front of head

What are the main functions of the temporal lobe?

Hearing, language, memory, located by ears

What are the main functions of the occipital (aux-si-puh-tuhl) lobe?

Processing visual info, located back of head

What is the main functions of the parietal (pa-ry-a-tuhl) lobe?

Receives and processes sensory information. located at the topish area of head

What is the cerebral cortex?

The thick outer layer of the brain

What is the localization of function? And how does we know it exists

Organization of the brain into different areas that respond to different functions. If someone is missing the brain part then the function also is missing.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Low dose of radioactive tracker to measure blood flow in brain

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging fMRI

Uses iron in the blood to measure brain activity

What is experience-dependent plasticity? 

When neurons adapt to respond best to new environments Basically rewiring

What 2 factors are needed for perception to occur?

Attention and Sensation

What is Top-down processing? How does it from bottom-up processing?

A whole that is familiar vs unfamiliar That is built piece by piece to form a whole

What are the 6 laws of Gestalt Psychology?