Psyc 3030 exam 1

What is cognitive psychology?

the scientific study of the mind, mental processes, and mental representations

What is cognitive psychology composed of?

perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making

What are cognitive and mental representations?

senses in which aspects of the external world are manifested in the mind (ie. shapes, objects, colors)

Define mental rotation.

how a stimulus can be view from a different perspective

What is nerual representation?

the way in which response properties of neurons (& brain regions) correspond to aspects of the world and mental representations

Define empiricism.

the belief that accurate knowledge can be acquired through observation & measurement

What is the APA code of ethics?

informed consent, freedom from coercion, protection from harm, risk-benefit analysis, deception. and debriefing confidentiality

What is the box and arrow model?

sensory memory -> short-term memory -> long-term memory

What is the distinction between parallel vs. serial processing?

_____ processing is when multiple inputs are processed simultaneously, whereas ______ processing is when multiple inputs are processed at once

What is mental chronometry?

• An approach for studying the time-course of information processing in the brain

• We can make predictions + inferences abt cognitive processes by measuring response time (RT) in a task

Encoding Stage→ Comparison Stage→ Decision Stage→ Reponse Stage

What is top-down processing?

passage of info from complex to simple stage

What is bottom-up processing?

passage of info from simple to complex stage

What is behaviorism?

"over-correction" favoring rigid observations, focus to observable inputs from environment, rewards (punishment), & observable output behaviors (ie. pavlovs dogs)

What are cognitive maps?

Mental representations of physical locations; junction between behaviorism and cognitive psychology

What is cognitive subtraction?

an experimental logic in which processing for some baseline condition is from processing for experiment

What is pure insertion?

the assumption that adding a cognitive component to a task/ condition doesn't change the processing for other components

What is inattentional blindness?

the failure to be aware of a visual stimulus because attention is directed away from it

change blindness

failure to be aware of a changing visual stimulus even when attention is directed towards it

orienting

movement of attention from one location to another or to a particular location or stimulus

salient

any aspect of stimulus that is relevant or stands out from the rest of the environment

endogenous (internal) orienting

when attention is guided by internal goals or the demands of a current task (top-down)

exogenous (external) orienting

when attention is guided by external stimulus or sudden change in input (bottom-up)

visual search

common lab/real world task that requires detecting the presence or absence of a specified target object among a distractions

overt orienting

when movement of attention is accompanied by eye body movement

covert orienting

when the movement of attention occurs without moving your eyes and body

attentional blink

reduced ability to detect a target stimulus that appears shortly after another target stimuli

salience map

map of environment that emphasizes the most behaviorally relevant locations and objects like a heatmap

shadowing

top-down endogenous rule, repetition of what you hear from a specific area

filter model

idea that you can filter out info easily to focus on a specific stimuli

attenuation model

more flexibility, u can attenuate attention without fully filtering out everything

late selection model

idea that you let some info in from unattended side

What is the basic structure of a neuron?

cell body, dendrites, axon

action potential

electrical impulse that allows neurons to communicate and compute, "all or nothing"

What is the consequence of action potentials

neurotransmitters released into the synaptic cleft bind to receptors on postsynaptic dendrites

excitatory effects

more likely to fire

exhibitory effects

less likely to fire

rate coding

combination of action potentials, single ap cannot convey intensity levels; greater rate of responses per unit time is used to code info

local representations

all information about a stimulus or event can be conveyed via one neuron

fully distributed representation

all information about a stimulus or event is carried by all of neurons in a given population

sparse distributed representation

(middle), all of information about a stimulus or event is carried by a small subset of neurons in a given population

localization of function

specific cognitive functions enabled by specific areas of the brain

distributed representation

specific cognitive functions involve many areas of the brain

phrenology

The study of the conformation of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character.

Paul Broca (1861)

discovered the Broca's area in the brain from 2 patients with damage to the same region of the frontal lobe: they had trouble producing speech, but no trouble comprehending it

Carl Wernicke (1874)

discovered the Wernicke's area of the brain from patients with damage to the temporal lobe: they had problems comprehending speech, but no trouble producing it

Neuropsychology

empirical observations, study patients with natural brain damage to inform theories about the brain and cognition

structural brain imaging

measures brain structure and anatomy (correlational)

functional brain imaging

what is going on in the brain when people are performing cognitive tasks (correlational)

Neurostimulation

noninvasive brain stimulation (causal, i.e.. TMS, TDCS, & TACS)

Process of reverse engineering the brain

infer the essential function of a brain region by removing it and measuring the causal effect on brain, behavior relationships

Single dissociation

when patients with damage to region "X" are impaired on a certain task (task A) but are unimpaired on another task (task B)

task resource artifact

if two tasks share the same neural/cognitive resource (brain region) but one task uses more of that resource, damage to this resource will affect the harder task more

"Gold standard," Double disassociation

occurs when there are two single disassociations with a complementary pattern (i.e. region x is important for task A, but not B & region y is important for task B, but not A)

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

uses an electrical current to induce a magnetic current that crosses the skull; which in turn (electrically) stimulates neurons under the coil

Computerized tomography (ct)

difference in x-ray absorption

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

difference in magnetic properties (based on H20 contained in the different brain tissue, typically)

What is the differentiation between a CT & an MRI?

the MRI has different signal intensity and has a clearer image that better shows the gyri & sulci

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

radioactive tracer compound is injected for use as an exogenous contrast agent to measure a change in blood flow (& other processes)

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

hemoglobin in blood has small influence on magnetic properties serves as an endogenous marker of blood flow.

Pure insertion

the assumption that adding a cognitive component to a task or condition that doesn't change the processing of other components

Serial Processing

handles tasks or data one at a time in a sequential order. Completes one step fully before starting the next. Think of a single-file line or a single checkout lane. It uses fewer resources and is easy to manage, but takes more time.

Parallel Processing

Handles multiple tasks or data streams at the exact same time. Splits work across multiple paths or processors at once. Think of multiple open grocery store checkout lanes. It saves time and handles complex tasks fast, but requires more hardware power or brain energy.

Brain Imaging

Technique such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that results in images of the brain that represent brain activity. In cognitive psychology, activity is measured in response to specific cognitive tasks.

Positron emission tomography (PET)

• introduced in 1976, made it possible to see which areas of the human brain are active during certain cognitive activities

•  the most significant physiological advance that came a decade after Neisser’s book. One of the first brain imaging techniques invented.

PET had disadvantages: it was expensive and involved injecting radioactive tracers into the bloodstream

What are the disadvantages of Positron Emission Tomography (PET)?

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

•  replaced PET, this is another brain imaging technique

• did not involve radioactive tracers and which was capable of higher spatial resolution, meaning it could more precisely identify the specific locations of brain activity

•  also typically has a higher temporal resolution than PET. Temporal resolution refers to the ability to determine precisely when certain brain activity takes place.

• the introduction of _____ in 1990 caused its own revolution within cognitive psychology 

• Collected from one slice of the brain at a time. Each slice is composed of voxels (or “volumetric pixels”

Voxels

• The fundamental unit of data within an fMRI experiment

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation  (TMS)

• developed in the 1980s, uses magnetic coils that can be orientated over specific brain regions to induce electrical currents that temporarily lesion the area.

• uses an electrical current to induce a magnetic current that corssess the skull which in turn (electrically) stimulates neurons under the coil.

  • Can have an excitatory effect or inhibitory “virtual lesion” effect (brain damage that last about 15 seconds)

Task-Related fMRI

• the change in brain activity that can be linked specifically to the task. The results of these calculations for each voxel are then displayed as colorful activation patterns

Disengaging Attention

a cost to stopping attention in one location because your attention is shifting somewhere else.

William James

• one of the early American psychologists (although not a student of Wundt’s), taught Harvard’s first psychology course and made significant observations about the mind in his textbook, Principles of Psychology

• observations were based on observations about the operation of his own mind rather than on results from experiments

• One of the major forces that caused psychology to reject the study of mental processes was a negative reaction to Wundt’s technique of analytic introspection.

• He deducted that attention applies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others

Cognition

The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problemsolving, reasoning, and decision making.

Wilhelm Wundt

•  founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany. _____ approach, which dominated psychology in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was called structuralism.

• considered “the father of experimental psychology”.

• _____ wanted to create a “periodic table of the mind,” which would include all of the basic sensations involved in creating our experiences.

• ______ thought he could achieve this scientific description of the components of experience by using analytic introspection

structuralism

An approach to psychology that explained perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations.

Analytic introspection

a technique in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

John B. Watson

• American psychologist, founded an approach to psychology called behaviorism

• 
  

behaviorism

The approach to psychology, founded by John B. Watson, which states that observable behavior provides the only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes are not considered worthy of study by psychologists.

• His problems with analytic introspection was:

it produced extremely variable results from person to person, and . . .

these results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes.

• observable behavior, not consciousness (which would involve unobservable processes such as thinking, emotions, and reasoning), is the main topic of study

What was John B. Watson’s issue with analytic introspection?

classical conditioning

A procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response.

B.F. Skinner

• introduced  operant conditioning

• Devoted focus to observable inputs from the environment, rewards (punishments), + observable output behaviors + rejected the study of internal mental process.

Operant Conditioning

A learning process by which behaviors are made more likely to recur by the inclusion of reinforcers or less likely to recur by the inclusions of punishments. _____ ____ can be used to shape behavior toward a more desired outcome.

Edward Tolman

• the first cognitive psychologist

•  professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley from 1918 to 1954, considered himself a behaviorist because his focus was on measuring behavior

• Did the rat maze experiment

• In one of his experiments, Tolman (1938) placed a rat in a maze like the one in Figure 1.8. Initially, the rat explored the maze, running up and down each of the alleys (Figure 1.8a). After this initial period of exploration, the rat was placed at point A and food was placed at point B, and the rat quickly learned to turn right at the intersection to obtain the food. Tolman’s explanation of this result was that when the rat initially experienced the maze it was developing a cognitive map —a conception within the rat’s mind of the maze’s layout

What did Edward Tolman do in his experiment related to cognitive mapping?

Spatial Attention

By choosing to pay attention to one location, we are disgrading or choosing to not pay attention to one location

Non-Spatial Attention

Attention that is not restricted to a particular spatial area. Not restricted to particular area.

Neuron

basic building block of the brain. It actually processes information.

Dendrites

branches from cell body that receive information from other neurons

Axon

long branching structure that transmits information to other neurons (at a synapse)

Action potentials

: electrical impulse that allows neurons to communicate (and compute!). It either happens or it doesn’t.

• Dendrites receive input from (many) pre-synaptic neurons

Axon hillock

integrates chemical signal (up to a threshold). The component that is the interface between cell body and Axon (tells axon to send an action potential)

• They were anatomist and scientist interested in the brain

• They helped with our understanding of anatomy

• Provided some of the first realistic drawings of the human brain

• Gall and Spurzheim also introduced phrenology, which had three key assumptions

What did Franz Joseph Gall (1759- 1828) and Johann Spurzheim (1776- 1832) do?

1. Different brain regions= different functions/behaviors/traits

2. Regional brain size produces distortions on the skull

3. Sizes and distortions correlated with differences in psychological abilities and personality

What were the three key assumptions of phrenology?

Broca’s Aphasia

Can’t speak but can understand (can’t call you broka)

Wernicke’s Aphasia

Can speak but can’t understand (can say “hey carl” but can’t understand carl)