(Chapters 1-3) Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 4th Edition

Cognition

A mental process which includes perception, attention and memory.

Reaction time

The time it takes to respond to a stimuli

(decision making)

*Francis Donders (1868)

-found mental response can't be measured directly

-must be inferred from behavior

-first to link behavior w/the mind

Simple reaction time

The time it takes to respond to a single stimulus

*Donders

light flashed+recognize light+press button=1/10th sec

(stimuli) + (mental response)+ (behavior response)

Choice reaction time

Time it takes to respond to 2 stimuli

*Donders

2 lights left or right flashed+recognize light and decide which button to press+press left or right button=1/10th sec longer to make decision

Structuralism

Experience is determined by combining elements of experiments called sensations

**Wilhem Wundt (1879)

-first to establish a scientific psych laboratory

-Phd, creation of psych as a discipline

Analytic introspection

Method where subjects trained to describe experiences and thought process in response to stimuli. Goal was to describe experience in terms of mental elements

**Wundt

Savings

Determines how long it takes to memorize information the first time.

(orginal time to learn-time to relearn after delay)

**Ebbinghaus

-read nonsense syllables to determine number of

repetitions needed to repeat list without errors

Savings curve

Plot of savings versus time

**As percent savings goes down=info forgotten increases

James Watson

-Rejected analytic introspect because it produces different results from person to person.

-Results difficult to interpret in terms of the "invisible mind"

-Proposed new approach "behaviorism" which can be analyzed w/out reference to the mind

Classical conditioning

The transfer between 2 stimulus.

e.g. Watson n RAyner "little Albert experiment"

Operate conditioning

B.F skinner's idea that behavior can be shaped by rewards or punishment.

Cognitive map

Tolman's experiment that involved rats finding food through a 4 armed maze. When starting the rats from a different part of the maze, they still navigated through towards the food which proved cognition (the idea that something other than food changed the rats response).

He found they created a

**Mental conception of physical space

Information processing approach

Study mind created from insights associated with digital computer

Artificial intelligence

Field that studies how to make machines behave in ways that are like a human

Levels of analysis

Topics can be studied in different ways

Neuron

Cells specialized to create, receive and transmit info

**what we experience/know

Nerve net

A pathway or network of neurons that conduct uninterrupted signals

**Continuous, similar to highway

Neuron Doctrine

Individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system and are not continuous with other cells

**Discovered by Ramon y Cajal

-Used Gogli Stain on the brain tissue form newborn

animals

-Contradicted the nerve net

Cell body

The center of a neuron which contains the mechanisms to keep the cell alive.

Dendrite

Branch out of cell body that receives signals from neurons

Axon

Tube filled with fluid that transmits electrical signals to neurons

**also called nerve fibers

Synapse

Small gap between axon of a neuron and dendrite or cell body of another neuron.

Receptors

Neurons located in the eye, ears and skin that pick up information from the environment.

Neural circuits

Interconnected neurons

Microelectrode

Small wire used to record electrical signals from neurons

Resting potential

Difference in charge between inside and outside of nerve fiber or axon at rest. (no charge present)

Features detectors

Neurons that respond to specific stimulus features such as orientation, movement or length.

Some respond best to faces and not other stimuli

Hierarchical processing

Processing progression from lower (simple) to higher (complex) areas of the brain

Sensory code

How neurons represent characteristics in the environment

Specificity Coding

Representation of specific stimulus by firing specifically turned neurons

**theory of the grandmother cell

Population coding

Large group or pattern of firing neurons

Sparse coding

Small group of firing neurons with the majority of them remaining silent

Reference eletrode

Used along with the recording electrode and located a distance away so its not affected by electrical signals

Microelectrodes

Small shafts of hollow glass filled with conductive salt solution that can pick up electrical signals

Recording electrode

Very thin glass or metal probe that can pick up eletrical signals from single neurons (recording tip is inserted into neuron)

Neurotransmitter

Chemicals that affect electrical signal of receiving neuron

-released when signals meet synapse

-responce to incoming action potential

Principle of neural representation

Experience based on representation in nervous system NOT on direct contact with stimuli

Visual cortex

Back of brain that receives signals from the ye

Cerebral cortex

Responsible for most cognitive functions

Broncas Area

Language production

Frontal Lobe

*Damage=unable to speak but can still understand

double dissociation

Wernick Area

Language comprehension

Temporal lobe

*Damage=can still speak unable to understand

Double dissociation

Damage to 1 part of brain results in the lost of function A while function B is still present.

*some people can recognize faces/cant recognize objects

and vice versa

Occipital lobe

Vision

Prosopagnosia

Damage to temporal lobe

Inability to recognize faces

Parahippocampal place area

Responds to places, indoor, outdoor scenes

Temporal lobe

Extriate body area

Responds to pics of bodies and body parts

The blind spot

Place in each ye where optic nerve exits to send info to the brain

Inverse projection problem

Finding out what object is responcible for an image on retina

Viewpoint invariance

The ability to recognize and object from different view points

Bottom-up processing

Perception comes from stimuli in the environment

"eye to brain"

Top-down processing

Perception based on knowledge/expectations

"starting from the brain"

"what you think it is"

Speech segmentation

Perceiving words

-hearing spanish and knowing where the sentence starts and ends because you understand it (top-bottom processing)

Direct pathway model

Model of pain perception

-pain signals sent from receptors to the brain-bottom up processing

Likelihood principle

-Judgement based on unconscious inference

-Perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli

Unconscious inference

Rapid unconscious assumption we make about the environment

Gestalt Psychologist

Rejected idea perception was formed by adding up sensations (Wundts idea)

Apparent movement

The illusion of movement

-Proposed by Max Werthiemer

cannot be explained by sensations

whole is different than the sum of parts

(perception system creates movement)

*Gestalt principle

Principles of perceptual organization

Rules explaining how small elements of a scne become grouped to form larger units

e.g. black and white dots in a photo can become perceptually organized into a dalmation dog

*Gestalt principle

Principles of good contrinuation

Points when connected result in a straight or smooth curve line

e.g. coiled rope or shoe laces

*Gestalt principle

Law of pragnanz

Every stimulus pattern is seen in a way that result is simple as possible. Means good figure in german

-also called

principle of good figure

principle of simplicity

*Gestalt principle

Principle of similarity

similar things appear to be grouped together

eg. colorful dots grouped together by color to create viertile or horizontal columns

*Gestalt principle

Gestalt psychologist

Believe that experience play a minor roll in perception

"Built in" principles override experience