PSYCH 375: Cognition exam 1

mental modules (or organs)

-programmed by genes, shaped by evolution

-think in stages of info processing

-each module is independent of others

What are the questions we ask when deciding what to research

What is worth studying/ What’s important to explain

cognitive perspective

-Emphasizes info and how it is transformed
-Think in terms of stages in which info is transformed
-stages communicate w/ one another, but one stage doesn’t know what the other is doing

Heuristic

“rule of thumb” that will get you the correct answer most of the time

Bias

in context of reasoning and decision making, systematic errors that violate rules of rationality

Three Greek assumptions

the world is predictable
humans are part of the world-predictable
explanations should consist of physical events/ the rel world

Early Middle ages

focus became religion and religious community rather than secularism and the individual

Renaissance

Focus on observation
knowledge: nativists and empiricist

Perception and association in memory

Determinism vs nondeterminism

what does a nativist believe

ideas are innate (born with knowledge)
not really greek

What does an empiricist believe

knowledge comes from experience
greek

Perception

knowledge comes from our senses

Memory

rises from association between simple sensory info

Determinism

behavior is predicatble from known inputs

Nondeterminism

Not predictable- guiding force that passeth all understanding

Willhelm Wundt

father of introspectionism

Introspectionism

follow own thought process but trained

structuralist

Structralism

trying to understand structures that comprise thought

Functionalism

trying to understand the function of mental processes

John B Watson

published paper in 1913 saying introspection didn’t work
focused on oberservable behavior
led to behaviorism

Basic Unit of Behavior

reflex

Classical conditioning

associate an involuntary response and a stimulus

Pavlovs dogs

classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

associate a voluntary behavior and a consequence

two things behaviorism couldn’t explain

fixed action patterns (complex mating rituals)
critical periods (bonding with mother in birds)

what did Chomsky bring up that went against behaviorism

language is generative

What did HM (Henry Molasson)show about memory after bilateral medial temporal lobe region was removed

could’t make new memories so area is critical for encoding short-term memory into long-term memory

Three elements of the scientific method

Empiricism: knowledge comes from experience
develop hypotheses and then test them
public: results have to be open for examination and critique
nowadays more push for the raw data to be published as well
falsifiable: hypotheses have to be able to be proves wrong

Three Classes or research

Descriptive, correlational, experimental

Validity

how well results generalize

Reliability

how consistent the results

Descriptive research

self-reports, naturalistic, case studies

Phineas Gage

guy with beam through the eye had his personality change which tell us certain areas of the brain have differnt functions

What is a process according to the book

a series of steps that manipulates a representation

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

giant magnet aligns protons and then detected signal as they revert back to typical spin states (see where things are not function)

DTI (Diffusion Weighted Imaging)

measures directional water diffusions to infer connectivity (seeing where things are not function)

EEGs (Electroencephalography)

records neural activity from the surface of the skull
cheap,safe, repeatable, great temporal resoulution
poor spatial resolution,hard to analyze

PET (Positron Emission Tomography)

inject short half-life radioactive tracer into blood
can show cellular level changes with oxygen use, glucose metabolims.

fMRI (Functional MRI)

show oxygenated blood flow in the brain, safe, noninvasive, repeatable and high spatial resolution but slow and very expensive

What are PET scans most useful for

detecting tumors or diseases in body

MEG (magnetoencephalography)

measures magnetic signals produce by neurons themselves
subjects (kids)

schemas

memory representations of a type or category of event pre-programmed

Neuropsych

imagin helps observe abd track abstrat construct

ecological validity

how valid is the study in the real wold; how well does it apply to actual scenarios

internal validity

how confident someone is in their findings, based on good methodology and practices within the actual experiment (how well the experiment was carried out)

validity and reliability of controlled experiment

High internal validity and reliability, lower ecologial validiity

converging methods

multiple methods of study converging

thalamus

sensory information processing and rely within the brain

hypothalamus

hormonal regulation in the body

cerebellium

motor coordination and conditioning

Basal ganglia

motor coordination

Amygdala

emotional processing

Hippocampus

involved in learning and memory

Top left

Frontal lobe

Top Middle

Parietal lobe

Visual ambiguity three ambuties

shape + orentation
Light + Reflectance + shadow
Size + distance

liklihood principle

-assume world is 3d
see corners as right angles

How to solve ambiguities

lilihood principle
depth cues

illusory conjuntion

The tendency to mistakenly perceive a correlation between two events or variables, even when there is no actual relationship.

Oculomotor Depth cue

Accommodation lens: when objects get closer to the eye the lens of the eye must change shape in order to focus an image
convergence lens: as an object gets closer your eye cross increasingly more to gaze at it

retinal image cues

stereopsis: we have two eyes that field of vision combines
Pictorial cues
familiar size

Pictorial cues

-movment cues
-relative height
-lineaar perspective
-texture gradiesnt
-atmospheric perspective

Bottom up processing

Bottom-up processing: Information processing that starts with the sensory input and moves towards higher-level cognitive processing.

Top-down processing

The use of prior knowledge and expectations to interpret sensory information and make sense of it. It starts with a general idea or concept and then fills in the details based on what is already known.

inferential approach

A method used to draw conclusions about a population based on a sample. It involves analyzing data and making inferences or predictions.

ecological approach

It considers how various factors, such as culture, social norms, and physical settings, influence human behavior and development.

facial processing

facila processing is different then other processing

two-stream hypothesis

Dorsal “where” Ventral “What”

Allocentric

object-centered
different oreintations-same relationship of parts
geons

Egocentric

Viwer-cnetered
parts relative to person
mental rotation-a cognitive process

attention is

limited and selective

What is cognitive psychology

understand the abstract, representations and processes (discrete stages)

conjuctive search

more than one feature differentiatiates the target from other distractors

Disjunctive

one feature differnctaialtes the target

Feature integration theory

attention binds together objects in space

endogenous attention

conscious, directed, controlled, focused on specific task

exogensus attention

are active in the background, checking for environmental cues that could eb important

automaticity

requires few attentional resources
it happens without attention
it happens when you don’t overfocus on doing the task

Multitasking

we aren’t really doing it just switching attention quickly

response selection

our brain can’t choose what to do for two different tasks at the same time

schemas

Mental frameworks that organize and interpret information based on our past experiences, beliefs, and knowledge. They help us make sense of new information by filling in gaps and making assumptions.

Neuropsych

imaging helps observe and track abstract constructs (HM)

Converging methods

multiple methods of study converging on one answer increases confidence; better to use a combination of methods for most strength

back of head

Occipital

Bottom right

cerebellum

stick

Brainstem (Pones, medulla)

Bottom left

temporal lobe

Dorsal

top

Ventral

bottom

Anterior

front

posterior

back

medial

middle

sides

lateral

Consciousness

not the same as attention, we can be aware of stuff going on but not attend to them

Early filter theory

attends to physical characteristics like pitch and tone then filters

Late Filter theory

Attends to physical and semantic characteristics and filters out irrelevant stuff
cocktail party effect

Dichotic listening task

put in headphones and listen two different audios

Pictorial cue: relative height

objects lower on the picture plane are assumed to be closer to the viewer

linear perspective

parallel lines in 2d converge if you extend them enough in 3d

Texture gradient

more detail= closer

atmospheric perspective

objects in the distance have a blue haze