Lecture 4 - Cognitive Representations & Priming

what was Noam Chomsky’s main argument against Skinner’s book “Verbal Behavior”?

• Noam Chomsky found behaviorism to be inadequate for explaining language acquisition

  • children produce novel speech when given improper input from adults

  • behaviorism would state that children would be completely replicating everything that is being said to them BUT THEY DONT DO THAT

• reinforcement schedules can’t explain overregularization errors

• the mind is an information-processing, rule-discovery, concept-forming device! not just an ‘association device’.

what do chomsky and other critics think of large language models?

• some critics believe that fascination with LLM (GPT) is misplaced because they are behaviorism in disguise. After all, these models are trained and work using purely associative principle. They are “statistical parrots”, “auto-complete on speed”

who is Ulrich Neisser? what did he do?

• he coined the term “Cognitive Psychology”

  • “the term ‘cognition’ refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations . . .”

• psychology should explore the operation of “non-observables” as attention, memory, reasoning, planning, goals, and problem solving

Explain the concept of Cognitive Functionalism.

• The mind cannot be reduced to the brain

• The mind is “information”

  • it can be realized or implemented on multiple substrates (neurons, silicon chips, atoms?)

• The mind is in some way “immaterial”. Mental states are “functions” or algorithms”

• The mind is like “software”, brain is like “hardware”

• Psychology needs to study the “software of the mind”

Explain the “mind is a computer” metaphor. What different parts of our body correspond with which computer parts? (sensory, motor, brain stem, frontal cortex, temporal cortex, visual cortex, hippocampus)

• Definition: Organisms don’t just mechanically respond to external stimulation. They process information.

  • sensory organs: input devices (touchpad, keyboard)

  • motor organs: output devices (screen, printer)

  • brain stem: simple processor (calculator)

  • frontal cortex: complex processor (cray computer - supercomputer)

  • temporal cortex: short term storage (RAM)

  • visual cortex: dedicated image processor (graphics card)

  • hippocampus: long term storage system (hard drive)

what are mental representation in cognitive psychology?

• mental representation are “symbols in the head” - pictures sounds, beliefs, memories of the outside world

• they are a basic mental element, a unit of thought

• they can be combined, manipulated, changed, to create new thoughts, (having language helps!).

what is constructvism?

• it is the idea that perception, thinking, and memory are constructive — we go beyond the information given by the senses

• example:

  • my retina sees a blurry blob.

  • perceptual representations allow me to identify it as a dog

  • conceptual representations allow me to infer that this thing is a mammal, hates cats, likes bones, etc.

  • we are, in a way, “making up our world”

what is the difference between chronically and temporarily accessible information?

• chronically accessible information (always on your mind - you don’t have to think about it

  • what’s your name?

  • what’s your date of birth?

  • your ex’s name?

• temporarily accessible information (comes to mind ONLY after it has been reactivated)

  • Name the current governor of California?

  • Name a duck from a Disney movies?

what are the determinants of temporary priming? what is the definition of priming, prime, and target?

• activation level is determined by the recency and frequency of previous exposure to related information

• priming: any procedure that activates a piece of mental information

  • prime = previously presented stimulus that increases information accessibility

  • target = stimulus that is the object of judgment

Explain the (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971) associative priming experiment. How do related primes affect the facilitation of lexical decision?

• Background

  • blank → prime stimulus → target stimulus → lexical decision

  • ex. blank → doctor → nurse → is this a word? nurse. (y/n)

• Results

  • faster lexical decision for related primes

  • relates primes > unrelated primes > nonword pairs > nonword first > nonword second

• Conclusion

  • evidence of determinants of temporal accessibility priming

Explain the Balcetis and Dale study on priming perception?

• Background

  • Two groups completed different scrambled sentence tasks

    • “actress good the well did”

    • “jazz in Europe started America”

  • then groups did perception task for ambiguous ink blot thing (looks like woman or jazz)

• Results

  • woman-prime group saw woman

  • jazz-prime group saw jazz player

• Conclusions

  • priming affects perception

what is the availability heuristic?

• a cognitive bias where people overestimate the likelihood of events that are easily recalled or come to mind readily. This can lead to biased judgments and decisions, as readily available information is often mistakenly perceived as more frequent or probable. 

  • If something is easy to remember, we tend to think it's more common or likely to happen, even if it's not

  • ex: thinking crime is rampant and likely to happen because the frequency in which it is shown on the news even if the rates are down

Explain the (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) study

• Background

  • participants memorize a list of 20 names

    • manipulation: female names are more famous, they appear at the beginning and end of the list

  • participants estimate the relative frequency of male vs female names

• Results

  • 80% of participants estimate that there were more female names on the list

• Conclusion

  • availability heuristic makes it easier to recall female names making it seem like there are more of them in our stupid little monkey brains