Cog Psych Quiz 2

Overt Attention

Overt Attention

Eye movements (saccades) and fixations

Cover Attention

Attention “in the mind”

Bottom-UP attention

Features of the stimulus (Color, contrast, brightness)

Top-Down attention

• Personal relevance (someone you know)

• Societal relevance (Someone famous, taboo words)

• Task relevance ( “find people wearing hats”)

Where is Bottom-up attention?

Ventral attention network

Where is Top-down attention?

Dorsal attention network

How does attention help us engage with the world around us?

1) Enhances monitoring of a location (better detection in attended area and more brain activity there)

2) Enhances monitoring and perception of objects (Attention to a whole object is richer)

What are some examples of pre-attentive processing features

Form: Line length, size, curvature, orientation

Color: Hue, intensity

Motion: Flicker, direction of motion

How does preattentive processing features help us?

1) Pop out of display

2) Create clear boundaries

3) Not affected by number of distractors

What influences our ability to filter?

Perceptual load, processing capacity, salience of distractor

Perceptual load

Distraction is more likely during activities with lower perceptual load

Processing capacity

Distraction is more likely when an individual has capacity remaining

Salience of distractor

Distraction is more likely when the distractor is stronger

Stroop task

Shows selective attention, naming color of the word which was a different color; demonstrates SALIENCE of cues

List three limits of our attentions

Inattentional blindness, attentional blink, change blindness

Inattentional Blindness

It is difficult to pay attention to more than one thing at a time (Monkey business video)

Attentional Blink

Attention requires a Psychological Refractory Period (~500 ms); the brain needs a moment to blink

Change Blindness

Difficulty seeing changes between two highly similar images; especially if unaware or new image

Top down: knowing where to look when driving and what to expect

Bottom down: movement, bright color changes

What is Balint’s Syndrome, and where is the damage?

• Object-based deficits

• Bilateral Parietal damage

What are the three signatures of Balint’s Syndrome

1) Simultanagnosia (two things at once not connected) 2) Optic Ataxia (hand/eye coordination) 3) Occulomotor Apraxia (eye movements)

What is Hemispatial Neglect and where is the damage?

• Spatial defecit

• Unilateral parietal damage

How does damage to left and right parietal lobes differ in hemispatial neglect?

Right parietal damage —> Left spatial neglect

Left parietal damage —> Often no problem!

What are some real world examples of hemispatial neglect?

Shaving, dressing, eating

Three theories of language acquistion

1) Behaviorism

2) Nativist Theory

3) Interactionitst perspective

Behaviorism (Language)

Language is learned through operant conditioning

Nativist Theory (Language)

Noah Chomsky; Language acquisition device is unique to humans

Interactionist Perspective

A combination of the nativist and behaviorist theories

What is the hierarchical structure of language and what do they each represent?

Phonology - Sound of speech

Semantics - Vocab and meaning

Grammar - Syntax

Pragmatics - rules for appropriate and effective communication

Two Aspects of a word

1) Phonemes (/b/ as in "ball", /k/ as in "cat", /m/ as in "mom")

2) Morphemes (Dog, sit, S)

How do we use top-down processing to understand words in a sentence?

Word frequency, context, statistics (What sounds typically follow other sounds), Lexical semantics

What two things are in a sentence?

1) Semantics - Understanding the words

2) Syntax - Understanding structure

Principle of Late Closure

New words get added to the current phrase as long as possible

Constraint-based approach

Information in addition to syntax contributes to processing from the beginning (top-down) - Word meanings and context (narrative or visual)

Syntatic Coordination

Copying speech patterns of others by creating the same syntatic structure of the response sentence

Examples of non-literal language

Metaphor, sarcasm, indirect requests, humor

Use body language, facial expressions, and prosody

What are some components of Prosody and their uses ?

Components: Pitch, timing, amplitude, intensity

Uses: Affect, Word identity, questions v. command, Pragmatics

What are some errors in comprehension when it comes to language?

Speech segmentation errors, garden path sentences, eye tracking errors

What are some errors in production when it comes to language?

Disfluencies/fillers, phoneme exchange , word exchange

What words provide information about the coming delay?

Um = May indicate a major delay in speaking

Uh = May indicate a minor delay in speaking

They warn audience that something new is coming or for a correction

Phoneme exchange

Consonants replace consonants; vowels replace vowels

More likely to make another real word rather than a nonsense string

Word Exchange

Nouns replace nouns; verbs replace verbs

Replacements based on semantic links

ERP N400

• Detects semantic violation

• ~400ms following violation

• negative-going potential

• mostly central electrode

ERP P600

• Detects syntactic violation

• ~600 ms after violation

• Positive going potential

  • Mostly posterior electrodes

What gyrus is active for SYNTACTICALLY incorrect sentences?

Left Superior Temporal Gyrus

What gyrus is active for SEMANTICALLY incorrect sentences?

Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus

4 Neuropsychological Cases of Language Errors

Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia, Conductive aphasia, Aprosodia (tonal agnosia)

Symptoms, location, and examples of Broca’s Aphasia

• Left Frontal Lobe

• Moderate-Severe repetition and naming impariment

• Mild Comprehension impairment

• Non-fluent, slow production

• Self-aware in conversation

Symptoms, location, and examples of Wernicke’s Aphasia

• Left Temporal

• Mild-moderate repetition impairment

• Mild-severe naming impairment

• Very severe comprehension impairment

• Fluent but incomprehensible production (world salad)

• No apparent awareness or attempts to compensate for production errors

Symptoms, location, and examples of Conduction Aphasia

• Damage to the arcuate fasciculus (white matter tract connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)

• Intact comprehension

• Largely coherent speech production - Word or sounds substitutions

• POOR SPEECH REPITITION

What were the two aphasia present in the “The Presidents Speech”?

Wernicke’s and Tonal Agnosia

Symptoms, location, and examples of Aprosodia

• Right Anterior damage —> Poor spontaneous prosody (production)

• Right Posterior damage —> Poor prosody comprehension

• Intact semantic and syntactic production and comprehension

What do people with Aprosodia compensate for tonal agnosia?

Pay attention to visual cues (expressions and body language)

Pay attention to the precision of language

Ebbinghaus

Wrote “On Memory” in 1885

Studied the time it took to learn a list of nonsense syllables (used himself as the participant)

Savings Measure

How much faster you learn the list after X amount of time

William James

Wrote Principles of Psychology in 1890

Introduced the idea of Primary v.s. Secondary Memory 9Close to short v long-term memory)

What is Learning?

The process of acquiring new information

Memory

• The ability to store and retrieve that information after some amount of time

• The influence of conscious and unconscious processes on behavior

• NOT a snapshot of time; it is RECONSTRUCTIVE

Modal Model of Memory

Stages of Memory

Sensory, STM, ITM, LTM

Sensory Memory

Initial stage of memory, “copy” of initial stimulus

Only lasts for 1 - 2 seconds; allows you to see the trail of a sparkler or to watch movies

Iconic Sensory Memory

Storage within visual registers (occipital lobe)

Echoic Sensory Memory

Storage within auditory registers (primary auditory cortex (PAC))

Working Memory

The active contents of memory, constantly being written over

The information we are “working with” in the moment (contemplating, rehearsing, revising)

Allows us to understand sentences, dial a phone number, hold conversations

What is interference and decay (Working Memory)

Interference —> New information comes in

Decay —> Old information flows out

Baddeley’s Working Memory Model

• Central executive(PFC): responsible for focusing attention and controlling the flow of information between the other systems

• Phonological loop:(Broca’s and Wernickes) responsible for dealing with verbal and auditory information. It is divided into two parts

  • Phonological Store (Inner Ear)

  • Articulatory Control Process (Inner Voice)

• Visuospatial sketchpad(Occipital Lobe): what helps you visualize directions, mentally rotate objects, or remember where things are in a room

• Episodic Buffer(Parietal Lobe): backup storage system that holds episodes or chunks of information in a more integrated form and can bind information from different sources into coherent sequences

Duration of Working Memory

15-20 Seconds but can be more with rehearsal (potentially infinite)

Working Memory Brain Regions

Prefrontal Cortex: single-cell recordings show neurons that are specialized to hold information. Supported by short-term enhancements in connectivity between prefrontal neurons

What is the Attention Controller

Articulate Cingulate Cortex

STM to LTM In terms of rehearsal

Unrehearsed information is lost if not encoded into LTM

What brain area is involved from information going from STM —> LTM

Hippocampus

Dissociations of STM and LTM

STM depends upon intact corticostriatal systems, whereas LTM depends upon intact medial temporal lobe systems

Broca’s and Wernicke’s Area in Terms of Lesions

Broca’s Area: Loss of Fluency

Wernicke’s Area: Loss of semantics

Why is information lost at each stage of memory?

Sensory: Unattended information is lost

STM: Unrehearsed information is lost

LTM: Some information is lost over time

Prosody

Our ability to produce two sentences with same semantic and syntactic structure but mean different things

Arcuate Fasciculus

Damage to this region is associated with a selective REPETITION deficit

Capacity of Sensory Memory

Limitless?