cognitive key terms

Accommodation

ciliary muscles contract or relax to focus on an object

Action slips

performance of actions not intended, due to attentional failures

Agnosia

a loss of recognition of a previously learned stimulus

Akinetopsia

inability to detect motion due to problem with V5 area of the brain

Alveolar

sounds made by putting the tongue just behind upper teeth e.g. t and d

Amygdala

plays a role in fear conditioning. Patients with amygdala lesions don't show conditional responses even though a response to the unconditioned response is present

Attentional blink

if presented with items in quick succession the second is often not registered

Attenuation

unattended info is weakened not discarded so meaningful info breaks through

Attribute substitution

where you get information that works for the time being but it is not the info you need

Balint's syndrome

3 symptoms- simultanagnosia (inability to process more than one object at a time) optic ataxia (difficulty reaching for objects under visual guidance due to limitation of spatial selective attention) and oculomotor apraxia (difficulty shifting gaze and attention spotlight)

Behaviourism

founded by J.B Watson. psychology should be directly observable. Focuses on learning because it translates to observable behaviour

Belief bias

humans are seduced by believability of conclusions rather than validity

Biased competition theory

all stimuli compete for neural representation in the brain but biased mean one gets processed in ore detail, usually the most relevant

Bilabial

sounds made by both lips being together e.g. p and b

Cerebral achromatopsia

colour blindness after a lesion in the V4 in secondary primary visual cortex. Seeing in shades of grey

Cerebral hemiacromatopsia

seeing no colour in one eye due to location of damage

Cocktail-party effect

Cherry said filtering out of info and selective attention is not perfect and people still process some information even if it is not attended to such as hearing your name or a meaningful word to you

Cognitive neuropsychology

study of neural substrates of mental processes. Uses brain imaging techniques to study aspects of brain functioning and structure relevant to cognition to find out how and where processes occur

Cognitive psychology

science of the mind that investigates mental processes, focuses on thinking ands storage, and acquisition of knowledge

Cognitive revolution

reactionary movement against behaviourism as it cannot explain language, memory, reasoning etc very well. Began in the 1950s in the context of interdisciplinary research and communication.

Colour perception

does not truly exist in the real world, only in the brain. Colours are actually wavelengths of electromagnetic energy perceived for perceptual segregations and signalling and to protect us

Cones

photoreceptor cells that are more sensitive to higher light levels, colour and have good visual acuity. Concentrated in the middle, centre of the retina

Short cones

blue sensitive

Medium cones

green sensitive

Long cones

red sensitive

Cone monochromacy

only having one cone so can either only see red, blue or green

Conjunction fallacy

the probability of two events happening cannot be more probable than them happening alone

Controlled vs automatic attention

goal orientated effortful attention vs involuntary attention triggered by salient and meaningful events

Cornea

outermost, transparent and protective layer of the eye. This is where light first enters

Covert attention

the spotlight of attention can move even without your eyes moving, this allows us to anticipate results, monitor the world and prepare responses before overt action

Deductive reasoning

reasoning where the conclusions are true as it uses only info presented in the situation itself

Dichromacy

only having two cones, so cant see one of either blue, green or red

Divided attention

inability to manage multiple tasks at the same time. Our resources are very limited and adding more items overwhelms us

Dorsal stream

interprets spatial information such as location and motion in the occipital lobe

Double dissociation

tests two patients on two sets of tasks, if one performs well on one and badly on the other and the other person is the opposite then there is strong evidence for differing processing models

Dual task interference

when completing two tasks, the smaller the difference the harder to combine the tasks

Dysexecutive syndrome

difficulty planning, organising and controlling action due to frontal lobe damage

Early selection

unattended info is blocked before its meaning is processed

Executive function

top down mental processes that are conscious and effortful used to pay attention or concentrate on something

Feature integration theory

Treisman and Gelade say in visual processing first basic features are processed automatically but then attention is required to bind these features together into a coherent objects

Frontal lobe

involved in conscious thought and decision making

Functionalism

interested in function of conscious activity rather than the structure of it. They are studied as part of the biological activity of the organism, not separate. Says there's no distinction between mind and body

Functional fixedness

tend to use objects only in their usual way when problem solving. Other ways may be more effective

Fusiform face area (FFA)

in between occipital and temporal lobes, it is more active when viewing faces compared to objects

Gambler's fallacy

based on representativeness heuristic - if a fair coin produced 6 heads in a row it is assumed the next is more likely to be tails. But there's still an equal chance as the coin has no memory

Hemineglect

impaired or loss of ability to process stimuli in one hemisphere due to lesion e.g. only shaving one side of face

Hue

name and direction of colour

Incubation

you keep working on a problem even unconsciously

Inductive reasoning

increases semantic information, whilst it yields plausible conclusions they aren't necessarily ture

Introspection

encourages explanation and examination of own experiences regarding sensations

Iris

regulates the dimension the pupil to control amount of light that enters the pupil

Judgement

the assessment of the likelihood of a given even occurring on the basis of incomplete information. It is often the basis or start point of decision making

Labiodental sound

sounds made by putting lips against teeth e.g. f and v

Late selection

all stimuli are processed for meaning but attention chooses what reaches conscious awareness

Lightness

degree of light reflected from the surface of an object

Magnocellular cells

ganglion cells which respond to movement

Modus ponens

affirming. If it is sunny children will play outside. It is sunny so they will play outside. If p then q. p therefore q

Modus tollens

negating. Children noy playing outside so is not sunny. If p then q. not q therefore not p

Multistore model of memory

says there are stages of memory. Input- sensory memory- STM- LTM. Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968

Occipital lobe

involved in visual processing

Optic chiasma

where optic nerves cross to allow nerve fibres from the nasal retina to cross to the opposite optic tract for processing

Parietal lobe

involved in spatial information processing

Parvocellular cells

ganglion cells which respond to colour, fine details and slow/still objects

Phenome

smallest sound change that changes the meaning of the word e.g. pat to bat. There are 45 in English and different languages differ in which distinctions matter

Ponzo illusion

the brain relies on distance cues to measure size and depth etc. Lines appear different sizes when placed between converging lines even when they're identical

Productive problem solving

characterised by insight into structure of the problem and by productive restructuring of it

Propositional reasoning

formal logic system where symbols p and q are used and paired with logical operators such as not, and, or, if to reach conclusions

Prosopagnosia

inability to recognise face by sight in the absence of impairment (e.g. dementia) can be congenital but is often result of injury. Affects 1-2.5%

Prototype model

a prototype is an abstract, idealised representation of a member of a category based on average

Reproductive problem solving

involves reusing previous experiences

Retina

visions are projected onto here, all upside down. The first layer is ganglion cells, then the middle is made of amacrine, bipolar and horizontal cells. The back is the photoreceptors

Rods

larger photoreceptors sensitive to low levels of light. They detect motion but have poor acuity. Distributed across both sides of the retina

Rod monochromacy

no cones= no colour

Saturation

purity of the hue

Scripts

narrower form of schema, referring to a well structured sequence of events associated with an activity

Selective attention

ability to focus on one source of information while filtering our others. Dichotic listening task used to measure

Semantic memory

general knowledge e.g. capitals and about language and words

Single dissociation

tests a patient on a set of tasks, if they perform poorly on one and well on the other then inferences can be made about differing processing modules

Somatic marker hypothesis

says we use our gut to assess positive or negative emotional consequences of future actions. Helps us anticipate emotional outcomes- Domasio

Sustained attention

need to maintain general alertness even while focusing on certain things

Syllogisms

consists of two premises and a conclusion where if the premises are true the conclusion must also be e.g. all artists are beekeepers and all beekeepers are chemists = so all artists are chemists

Temporal lobe

involved in higher order thinking, meaning, memory, language etc (average adult knows 50,000 words). Concepts are used to organise the information to allow us to process it deeply and search efficiently

Structuralism

developed by Wundt aims to analyse the mind by breaking consciousness into basic elements like sensations and images

View dependent theory of recognition

visual input is compared to stored protypes that include characteristic properties taking into account extrinsic influence

View independent theory of recognition

visual input is matched to a structural description in terms of its parts and their relationships. Uses intrinsic properties only based on the 36 basic geons

Visual agnosia

inability to distinguish objects by sight in the absence of significant visual or intellectual impairment

Apperceptive agnosia

deficit in perceptual processing, failure to generate a perception and form patterns

Associative agnosia

deficit in associating a visual input with meaning, e.g. can copy a drawing but not understand what it is

Category specific agnosia

deficit in recognising a single category or class of objects

William James

American psychologist and philosopher, twice president of APA. Insisted psychology is a functional science

Working memory model

outlines the STM as a dynamic, multi-component system

Wundt

founding father of experimental psychology, founded first lab (1979) and journal (1881), established psychology as a separate science developed structuralism

Zoom lens model

attention doesn’t have a fixed size. It can narrow for higher resolution processing or widen for a larger area with less detail

brown-peterson task

a cognitive psychology paradigm used to measure the duration of short-term memory by preventing rehearsal. Participants are shown a trigram (e.g., "KQX"), then count backward by 3s to prevent rehearsal before recalling the letters

retinal disparity

slight difference in images captured by left and right eye due to their positions. they are 2D but combined into one 3D image

convergence

the brain measures the inward turning of the eyes to determine distance. the nearer the objects the more the eyes converge

4 chunks

capacity of STM- Cowan 2000

photoreceptor- bipolar cell- ganglion cell

order visual info travels within the retina

trichromat

can see all 3 colours normally

bipolar depth cues

visual info taken in by both eyes enabling depth and 3d vision perception