Cognitive Science: Key Concepts Midterm

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, philosophical debates, neuroscientific concepts, and computational models for Cognitive Science.

Cognitive Science

The interdisciplinary study of the mind as an information processor, combining philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and anthropology.

Information Processing

The framework viewing the mind as a system that receives input (perception), stores it (memory), manipulates it (cognition), and produces an output (behavior).

Computational Theory of Mind (CTM)

The theoretical approach that treats the mind as an information processor that performs computations over representations.

Representation

A mental structure or symbol that stands for an object, abstract concept, or external state of affairs, such as symbols and mental images.

Computation

A formal process that acts on and manipulates representations by taking representations as inputs and producing outputs.

Mind–Body Problem

The philosophical question concerning what relationship exists between the mental realm (the mind) and the physical realm (the body, especially the brain).

Dualism

The view that the mind and the body are two distinct and irreducible kinds of things: mental and physical.

Substance Dualism

The view, associated with René Descartes, that the mind and body are made of completely different substances: physical substance is spatially extended, whereas mental substance is non-extended.

Conceivability Argument

René Descartes' argument that because one can coherently conceive of the thinking self existing without a physical body, the mind is not identical to the physical body.

Interaction Problem

The foundational dilemma for substance dualism regarding how an immaterial, nonphysical mind can causally interact with and influence a physical body.

Category Mistake

Gilbert Ryle's concept of mistakenly treating an entity as belonging to the wrong logical category, illustrated by mistaking a university as an extra building rather than the organization of its existing buildings.

Ghost in the Machine

Gilbert Ryle's critical phrase targeting the dualist idea that a nonphysical, separate mind inhabits and controls the physical body.

Property Dualism

The theory that the world consists of only one physical substance, but this physical substance possesses both physical and emergent nonphysical mental properties.

Monism

The philosophical position that reality consists of only one fundamental kind of substance or reality, encompassing views like physicalism and idealism.

Physicalism

The monist view that everything in existence, including mental states and consciousness, is fundamentally physical.

Idealism

A form of monism asserting that reality and the mind-body system are fundamentally and entirely mental.

Identity Theory

A physicalist theory stating that every distinct mental state is strictly identical to a specific physical brain state.

Consciousness Problem

The philosophical challenge of explaining how objective, physical brain facts can account for subjective, first-person conscious experiences, highlighted in Thomas Nagel's bat essay.

Multiple Realizability

The principle that the same mental state or cognitive function can be instantiated or realized across diverse physical systems, such as humans, cuttlefish, or artificial hardware.

Methodological Behaviorism

A psychological approach asserting that scientific inquiry should exclusively investigate publicly observable and measurable behavior, leaving internal mental states out of the discipline's scope.

Radical Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner's theoretical framework that explains behavior through environmental reinforcement and treats private events, like thoughts and feelings, as covert behaviors.

Analytic Behaviorism

The philosophical view that statements containing mental terms (such as beliefs or desires) describe behavioral dispositions or tendencies to behave in specific ways.

Overt Behavior

Actions and responses that can be directly observed and measured by an external observer.

Covert Behavior

Private internal activities, such as thinking, feeling, and imagining, that cannot be directly observed from the outside.

Classical Conditioning

A learning paradigm where an involuntary, automatic response becomes conditioned to appear in response to a previously neutral paired stimulus.

Operant Conditioning

A learning mechanism whereby the frequency of a voluntary behavior is modified through consequences, namely reinforcement or punishment.

Latent Learning

Learning that takes place without explicit reinforcement and remains unexpressed until an incentive or relevant context elicits it, as observed in Edward C. Tolman's rat experiments.

Cognitive Map

An internal, spatial mental representation of the physical environment that enables navigation independent of rote stimulus-response sequences.

Response Learning

Learning a specific sequence of motor actions, such as consistently turning in one specific direction, rather than navigating based on a mental representation of space.

Place Learning

Learning the specific spatial coordinates of a goal regardless of the starting position, demonstrating the existence of internal cognitive maps.

Cognitive Neuroscience

The branch of neuroscience that investigates the relationship between neural brain mechanisms and cognitive or mental operations.

Neuron

A specialized cell of the nervous system that processes and transmits information using electrical impulses and chemical signals.

Synapse

The functional junction between two neurons across which neurotransmitters diffuse to convey electrical or chemical signals.

Action Potential

A rapid, transient electrical impulse that propagates down the axon of a neuron to convey signals to other cells.

Lesion-Deficit Method

A research methodology that infers brain function by associating a localized structural lesion with a corresponding impairment or lost cognitive ability.

Broca's Area

A functional region located in the posterior portion of the left frontal gyrus associated with speech production.

Broca's Aphasia

A speech disorder resulting from damage to Broca's area, marked by slow, non-fluent, effortful speech production alongside relatively intact language comprehension.

Wernicke's Aphasia

A language condition characterized by fluent but disordered or meaningless speech coupled with significantly impaired comprehension.

Functional Specialization

The organizational principle that specific, dedicated areas of the brain carry out distinct cognitive or perceptual functions.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

A non-invasive technique that applies localized magnetic fields to temporarily disrupt or stimulate neural activity in targeted cortical regions, inducing a transient 'virtual lesion.'

BOLD Signal

Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent signal; an indirect metric used in fMRI that maps neural activity by tracking changes in regional blood oxygenation levels.

Subtraction Method

An experimental technique in brain imaging that isolates task-specific cognitive activations by subtracting baseline neural activity from task-elicited activity.

Fusiform Face Area (FFA)

A specialized cortical visual processing area primarily dedicated to facial perception and recognition.

Visual Word Form Area (VWFA)

A dedicated visual cortex region involved in reading, orthographic processing, and word recognition.

Brain Plasticity

The nervous system's capacity to adaptively modify its anatomical organization and redistribute functional processing across different areas.

Contralateral Organization

The neurological principle where each cerebral hemisphere predominantly receives sensory input and controls motor commands for the opposite side of the body.

Corpus Callosum

A wide commissural bundle of axonal fibers connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, facilitating interhemispheric communication.

Split-Brain

A condition occurring when the corpus callosum is surgically transected, isolating the cerebral hemispheres and allowing independent study of hemispheric lateralization.

Connectome

A comprehensive structural map detailing the intricate neural connections and circuitry across the entire nervous system.

Computational Level

David Marr's first level of analysis, identifying the specific goal, computational logic, and purpose of an information-processing system.

Algorithmic/Representational Level

David Marr's second level of analysis, detailing the formal representations and algorithmic procedures utilized to execute a computational task.

Implementational Level

David Marr's third level of analysis, explaining how an algorithm and its representations are physically instantiated in biological circuits or computational hardware.

Strong AI

The claim that a suitably programmed computer genuinely possesses a mind, consciousness, and genuine understanding, rather than merely simulating them.

Weak AI

The view that computers can effectively model, simulate, or execute intelligent tasks without possessing authentic subjective consciousness or internal understanding.

Functionalism

The philosophical doctrine defining mental states strictly by their causal functional roles relative to inputs, behavioral outputs, and other internal mental states, rather than by their physical composition.

Formal System

A system operating purely on discrete tokens manipulated according to precise syntactic rules and axioms without consideration of semantic meaning.

Qualia

The subjective, experiential, qualitative aspects of conscious awareness, characterizing 'what it is like' to undergo a sensory experience.

Inverted Qualia Problem

A philosophical thought experiment positing two functionally indistinguishable people who experience inverted qualitative color sensations, challenging functionalist definitions of conscious states.

Iconic Representation

A representation that encodes information by preserving structural, perceptual, or spatial resemblances to the object or scene it depicts.

Symbolic Representation

A representation that designates information via learned arbitrary conventions, formal rules, and discrete tokens without physical resemblance to its referent.

Mental Rotation

The cognitive manipulation of internal spatial representations, where the reaction time required to verify shape correspondence scales linearly with the angular disparity.

Aphantasia

A cognitive condition defined by the marked absence or severe deficit of voluntary conscious visual mental imagery.

Approximate Number System (ANS)

An intuitive cognitive system that estimates and compares non-symbolic quantities without counting, with discriminatory precision determined by numeric ratios.

Subitizing

The rapid, accurate, and effortless direct perception of numerical quantities in small visual arrays (typically four or fewer items) without sequential counting.

Analog Representation

A continuous form of mental or physical representation that mirrors the structural features, proportions, or dimensions of the represented entity.

Digital Representation

A discrete form of representation that encodes information using separate, countable symbols or binary states without requiring continuous structural mapping.

Successor Function

A fundamental arithmetic operation defined as $S(n) = n + 1$ that maps any number to the next integer, serving as the basis for iteratively constructing the natural numbers.

Turing Machine

An abstract mathematical model of computation consisting of an unbounded memory tape, a read/write head, and transition states governed by discrete formal rules.

Church–Turing Thesis

The thesis asserting that any algorithmically or effectively computable mathematical function can be computed by a Turing machine.

Determinacy

The property of a computational system wherein a given initial state and formal rule set mandate exactly one specific, invariant subsequent execution step.

Automaticity

Cognitive processing that executes rapidly and efficiently with minimal conscious attention or deliberate cognitive control, usually acquired via repetition.

Turing Test

An operational benchmark evaluating machine intelligence based on whether an automated agent can sustain natural language conversations indistinguishable from a human.

Chinese Room Argument

John Searle's thought experiment arguing that syntactic symbol manipulation according to formal rules is fundamentally insufficient to produce semantic understanding or intentionality.

System Reply

An objection to the Chinese Room asserting that while the individual human manipulating symbols lacks understanding, semantic comprehension belongs to the entire computational system as a whole.

Robot Reply

An objection to the Chinese Room proposing that grounding a program within a physical robot equipped with sensors and motor capabilities allows the system to acquire genuine semantic understanding.