Cognitive Psychology - Exam One - Dr. Chapman - UArk

what is psychology

the study of human behavior and mental processes

what is cognitive psychology

the study of the science of the mind's organization, production of thoughts, and the realization of these functions in the brain; the study of the ways that people acquire, process, and store information in the brain

what does homo sapiens mean

"human, the wise"

neural organization - vertebrate brain structure

hindbrain (cerebellum and brainstem)

midbrain

forebrain (cerebrum)

the cerebral cortex is separated by what?

the longitudinal fissure

what are the two hemispheres connected by?

the corpus callosum

our two-hemisphere cortex is characterized by what?

lateralization of function

property of contralaterality

lateralization of function

using our left or right hemisphere

property of contralaterality

the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere, while the left side of the body is controlled by the right hemisphere; information has to move around between the two halves

what is cortical organization?

wrinkles in the brain that increase the surface area for neurons; more neurons=higher processing capacity

what is convolution

the wrinkling of the brain

what is the human cortex?

a thin neural, convoluted sheet with a cortical surface area of 2,500cm squared

when does convolution occur?

during development; when there is enough brain matter, convolution begins

what are the lower portions of our neural structure and what are their functions

hindbrain and midbrain or brainstem (our "lizard brain")

this part of the brain is geared toward survival based functions and are responsible for basic functions such as breathing or heart rate (not for solving math problems)

what do our lower portions of our neural structure consist of?

medulla

hypothalamus

thalamus

cerebellum

functions of the medulla

breathing, swallowing, digestion, heartbeat (operate subconsciously)

functions of the hypothalamus

expression of our basic drives (the four Fs)

Feeding

Fornicating

Fighting

Fleeing

controlled on the hypothalamus, but can inhibit through executive function

functions of the thalamus

relay station, motor and sensory info to cortex

functions of the cerebellum (baby brain)

motor coordination and voluntary movement

what are the upper portions of our neural structure and what are their functions

forebrain and cerebral cortex are responsible for more advanced functions (cognitive functions)

what do our upper portions of our neural structure consist of?

the four lobes :

frontal lobe

parietal lobe

occipital lobe

temporal lobe

what are the four lobes

frontal

parietal

occipital

temporal

the cerebral cortex consists of what?

the four lobes of course!

what is the frontal lobe and what are its functions?

the most sophisticated in that it's responsible for planning, sequencing, executive control, personality, some emotions, parts of speech movement, problem solving, inhibitory control (a.k.a. our filter); the most advanced in evolution and individual development of the four lobes

what is the temporal lobe and what are its functions?

responsible for perception of auditory info, memory, language, and speech

what is the parietal lobe and what are its functions?

responsible for space and body representations (understanding your three-dimensional lobe), movement and orientation, recognition and perceptions (understanding where our body is relevant to our environment)

what is the occipital lobe and what are its functions

responsible for vision and visual processing

important because vision is our dominant sense

why is the frontal lobe a BFD?

it's the last part of our brain to mature (at around 25 years), it's critical for higher-level cognitive functions, things that make us "human"; metacognition, executive function, problem solving, analogical reasoning, inhibitory control, and working memory

what makes up the subcortical area

basal ganglia

hippocampus

amygdala

what are the functions of the basal ganglia

action selection and motor (movement) control

what are the functions of the hippocampus

memory formation, memory storage, navigation, transmitting information to other perts of the brain

what are the functions of the amygdala

regulation emotions

principle of stimulus-response compatibility

"natural" responses to stimuli have shorter response times than "unnatural" responses to stimuli

what are the four types of processing?

serial processing

parallel

top-down processing

bottom-up

what is serial processing?

tasks must be done in completion before starting the next (ordered steps)

ex: serial process #1: turn car on

serial process #2: step on gas

what is parallel processing?

tasks that can be done simultaneously (multi-tasking)

ex: parallel process #1: talking

parallel process #2: driving

what is top-down processing?

recognizing and remembering; perceiving previous experiences

ex: knowing who bill clinton is based on seeing his picture

what is bottom-up processing

our brain perceives our external stimuli and processes it in our brain

ex: observing the color and shape of fries

what is neuroscience

brain anatomy, chemical composition, cellular processes, etc.

what is cognitive neuroscience?

how brain structures relate/give rise to behavior

what are four techniques for studying neural function

single-cell recordings (single unit recording)

electroencephalography (EEG)

functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI)

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

describe single-cell recordings (a.k.a. single unit recordings)

allows scientists to study a single neuron by inserting a micro-electrode into the brain and record activity from a single neuron

extraordinarily high temporal and spatial resolution

limitations include: highly invasive, expensive, immobilization, many higher cognitive activities involve larger populations of neurons; this technique can't be used for those

describe electroencephalography (EEG)

measures event related potentials (ERPs), records electrical activity on the scalp during repeated events which then segments and averages the brain waves

limited spatial resolution despite high temporal resolution

limitations include: we don't know what neurons are being worked, we only know the region, timing is almost immediate with ERPs and this includes a lag, requires many trials, skull and brain tissue distort electrical fields, largely blind to subcortical activity, requires immobilization of the subjects

describe functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI)

provides a non-invasive, indirect measure of brain activity by measuring the blood oxygen-level dependency (BOLD), essentially the neural blood flow that correlates with electrical activity, but is NOT electrical activity

poor temporal resolution despite high spatial resolution (we know where things are happening, but poorly when)

limitations include: time consuming to analyze the data and look at its parts (can take up to months), expensive to install and maintain, provides only an indirect measure of brain activity, distortions in some brain regions, noise from scanner can be distracting to subject, may be uncomfortable to claustrophobics, participants must remain still limiting response types and experiment duration

describe transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

pulses provide a magnetic field that can disrupt brain activity in the underlying cortex, creating a temporary "lesion" (depolarization or hyper polarization of neurons), revealing a causative, rather than correlational, brain-behavior link

limitations include: not clear how TMS changes brain activity, it can only target the cortex, disruption may spread to connected regions, may (very infrequently) cause painful muscle spasms or seizures

what is cognitive neuropsychology?

concerned with the patterns of cognitive performance (intact and impaired) shown by brain damaged patients; proves fairly direct evidence of brain cognition linkages

what is functional modularity?

this is defined as the cognitive system that consists of numerous, independent processing units; modules exhibit domain specificity

ex: when looking at an apple, there are different neurons for the color and different neurons for knowing its name.

what is anatomical modularity?

when each module is located in a specific brain region

what is single dissociation?

patients impaired compared to controls in one task but not others

ex: in prosopagnosia patients (inability to recognize faces), one task involved using landscape photos showing about the same results, but when using faces, results were vastly different

what is broca's aphasia?

language production is impaired, but comprehension is not impaired; characterized by disfluent speech

frontal lobe damage resulting in difficulty in language production, but able to understand what is being asked of them

what is wernicke's aphasia?

language comprehension is impaired, but language production is fluent

temporal lobe damage resulting in, although fluent, language that is nonsense and agrammatical; "word salad"

what is double association?

one patient, group (A), is impaired in task 2 but not in task 1.

whereas another patient, group (B), is impaired in task 1 but not in task 2

example: broca's aphasia and wernicke's aphasia

two main problems with perception

1. sensory information is insufficient for explaining our perception

2. there is too much sensory information to process

T/F?

The strength of event-related potentials (ERPs) is that they have excellent temporal resolution.

True

What is the function of neurons in our brain?

They accumulate and transmit electrical activity.

The part of the human brain that is primarily responsible for visual information processing is:

The occipital lobe

T/F?

A neuron's firing rate refers to the number of nerve impulses the axon transmits per second.

True

Which method in cognitive neuroscience allows researchers to make causal inferences about the relationship between an area of the brain and behavior?

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

T/F?

A bulge of the cortex of the brain is referred to as a sulcus.

False

What approach to cognitive psychology tries to analyze cognition as a set of steps in which information is processed?

Information-Processing Approach

Split-brain patients are individuals who have undergone surgery to prevent epileptic seizures. What does this surgery involve?

Their corpus callosum is severed.

A patient with Broca's aphasia would be most likely to exhibit which of the following symptoms:

Impairment in speech production, characterized by disfluent speech, agrammatical sentences and difficulty producing language more generally.

T/F?

The temporal lobes of the human brain are involved in object recognition.

True

The frontal lobe of the human brain is used for what major processes?

Motor functions and higher level cognitive processes

EEG refers to what?

Electroencephalography

T/F?

The frontal lobe of the human brain is disproportionately smaller than that of other non-human primates.

False

T/F?

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is ideal because it has excellent spatial resolution and excellent temporal resolution.

False

T/F?

The field of behaviorism was concerned with studying mental processes instead of overt behavior.

False

T/F?

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, as a technique, relies on the fact that areas of the brain with greater neural activity also have increased oxygen levels in the blood of those areas.

True

T/F?

Neural information processing relies on action potentials.

True

Which of the following is the most accurate description of the field of cognitive neuroscience?

The study of how cognition is realized in the brain.

T/F?

The human somatosensory cortex has a topographic organization.

True

Your friend tells you that her great-aunt unfortunately had a stroke and the doctor's said that she has been diagnosed with something called Wernicke's aphasia. As a student taking cognitive psychology, you know a bit about this type of aphasia! What do you tell your friend to help prepare her for what to expect when she arrives at the hospital to visit her great-aunt?

Her great-aunt is likely to experience impairment in speech comprehension but not speech production. She will probably be able to speak fluently but may not make a great deal of sense when she does speak.

T/F?

One of the general difficulties in speech perception (compared to other types of auditory perception) is segmentation of the elements to be recognized

True

Which of the following statements fit the Gestalt Principles of Organizaton?

All of these are true:

Visual elements close together are viewed as being grouped together into units

The brain segments visual scenes into objects based on a set of principles

Continuity and closure help us group items

Objects that look alike are grouped together

Which of the following is the appropriate order of items involved in the process of converting light into neural energy in vision?

Lens, retina, receptor cells, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, optic nerve

You interview for a position as a paid research assistant in a visual perception laboratory on campus. You observe a session in which a participant is shown pictures of objects and is asked first to name the object and then to draw the object. Participant 1 is not able to name any of the objects, but can draw each reasonably accurately. Participant 2 is neither able to name the objects, nor draw them. Patient 1 and Patient 2, respectively, will likely be classified as having:

Associative agnosia, apperceptive agnosia

An individual with visual agnosia may exhibit which of the following:

An inability to recognize objects, faces, and letters using vision

What is the main assumption of the Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception?

Patterns are perceived via the combination of two independent sources of information: contextual information and stimulus information

The following statements are true about the topography of the visual cortex:

The left visual field is represented in the right cortex

The right visual field is represented in the left cortex

The fovea has a disproportionately large representation in the cortex

T/F?

If elements of a visual scene change at the same time that you experience a retinal disturbance (e.g. eye movements), it is possible that you will not notice a change in the visual scene , as long as the change fits into the context (for example, the white cat in a painting is then a grey cat).

True

Phonemes can be distinguished based on their:

Place of articulation

Voicing

Consonantal feature

In order to effectively solve a Rubix cube, you'll use what type of photoreceptors?

Cones

T/F?

One of the ways that computer systems have been engineered to tell humans and robots apart is to provide CAPTCHAs that cannot be recognized by template matching alone.

True

What type of photoreceptors are used for color vision?

Cones

Some of the earliest research on receptive fields of visual cortex cells was demonstrated using:

Cats

What theory includes these three basic principles?

A) Objects are segmented into a set of sub-objects

B) Each sub-object can be classified into a category

C) We recognized objects as a pattern composed of sub-objects.

Recognition-by-components Theory

The "Where" pathway is critically involved in:

Perceiving the location of objects in space

What are edge detectors?

Cortical cells that respond positively to light on one side of a line and negatively to light on the other side

During speech recognition, we tend to have difficulty discriminating between phonemes that fall in the same category, but we are good at discrimination between phonemes that fall into different categories based on VOT. This is evidence for what?

Categorical perception

T/F?

Most humans have more difficulty recognizing objects that are upside down than faces that are upside down

False

T/F?

In template matching, the perceptual system identifies a new pattern by attempting to compare the new retinal image to stored patterns from previous experience.

True

The "What" pathway is critically involved in:

Perceiving details and recognizing objects

what is the most dominant sense?

visual perception (seeing)

what is the second most dominant sense?

auditory perception (hearing)

what are the five senses in perception?

visual perception

auditory perception

olfactory perception

tactile perception

taste

reception in vision

absorption of physical energy (to our eyes)

transaction in vision

physical energy is converted into an electrochemical pattern in the neurons

coding in vision

one-to-one correspondence between aspects of the physical stimulus and aspects of the resultant nervous system activity (the actual neurons firing)

cones receive what?

color