Cognitive Psychology Critical Terms - Exam #1

Nativism

innate ideas, knowledge as innate

Empiricism

experience as source of knowledge, knowledge results from experience and comes through the senses

Structuralism

focus on the structure on the conscious mind, used introspection

Functionalism

emphasis on the functions of consciousness (influenced by Darwin)

Behaviorism

defined psychology as the scientific study of observable behavior

Channel capacity

the concept that any system processing information has a limited capacity

Serial processing

doing mental tasks one at a time in a series

Parallel processing

doing multiple mental tasks at the same time

Cascade processing

where a number of mental tasks may start as different times but may overlap (often because a later task can use partial information from an earlier task)

LOGIC THEORIST

often considered the first true AI program, it was capable of generating proofs of mathematical theorems

Turing test

proposed test to determine whether computers can think, can observer discriminate between the response of a human and a computer

Searle's Chinese Room

even if a system passes the Turing test, can it be said to think if it lacks intentionality

Reductionism

attempting to understand complex events by breaking down into their components

Ecological Validity

generalizability to real world situations

Dissociation

a disruption in one component of mental functioning but no impairment of another

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Event-related potential (ERPs)

momentary changes in electrical activity in the brain when a particular stimulus is presented (measured by EEG), this allows great temporal precision

*P600 component

This shows how rapidly we detect anomalies in syntax (by 600 ms after seeing the word)

fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)

a technique for examining brain function by measuring blood flow and oxygen use within the brain

Dendrites (input)

many small branches gathering an impulse into the neuron

Soma (cell body)

where the biological activity of the cell is regulated, includes nucleus

Axon (output)

branchlike structures sending input to next neuron

Action potential

brief change in the electrical charge of a neuron, followed by refractory period (absolute and relative)

All-or-none principle

all action potentials are the same

Synapse

gap between neurons

Neocortex

the very top layer of the brain that is responsible for higher mental processes

Corpus callosum

a band of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain

Cerebral lateralization

many different functions within the brain rely more heavily on one hemisphere that the other

Contralaterality

the receptive and control centers for one side of the body are in the opposite hemisphere of the brain

Hippocampus

critical for conscious long-term memory in the brain

Amygdala

processing of emotional information in the brain

*Perceptrons

System learns to make correct responses to particular inputs (stimuli), Two layers of simple interconnected units (input, output), Each unit may be active or inactive, Response that system makes depends on strengths of connections

*Connectionism

a computer-based technique for modeling complex systems that is inspired by the structure of the nervous system

*Hidden units

Embodied Cognition

the way our minds represent information reflects the fact that our bodies must interact with the world

Conceptually-Driven processing

top-down processing, relying heavily on our pre-existing knowledge and expectations

Data-driven processing

bottom-up processing, driven by the stimuli, relying heavily on information from the environment

Lexical decision Task

a timed task in which people decide whether letter strings are words

Word frequency effect

common words recognized faster

Orthographic neighborhood size

words with large neighborhoods recognized later

Donders' Subtraction Method

time needed for simple mental processes can be determined by subtracting the time needed for a task from the time needed for a more complex version of the task

Signal-detection theory

an approach to measuring accuracy which emphasizes that it must be separated from response bias

Diffusion model

information comes into the system gradually but continuously in a process like a random walk, allows analysis of accuracy and response times together

Global precedence

seeing big picture first

Local precedence

seeing details first

Sensation

the reception of stimulation from the environment and the encoding of it into the nervous system

Perception

the process of interpreting and understanding sensory information

Psychophysics

the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the psychological experiences caused by them

Distance effect

the greater the distance of difference between the stimuli being compared, the faster the decision that they differ

Symbolic distance effect

speed of judgements of differences between symbols is affected by distance on some symbolic dimension

Semantic congruity effect

decisions are faster when the judged dimension matches the implied semantic dimension

*Retina

the layer inside your eye that detects light and converts it into signals your brain can use

Rods

receptor cells in your eye, black and white vision, low light, periphery, 120m

Cones

receptor cells in your eye, color vision (red, green, blue), bright light, 7m

*Depth perception

the size of an image of an object on the retina depends both on distance (depth) and actual size, the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions (3D) and judge the distance of objects

Binocular disparity

differences in perspective between the eyes

Accommodation

changes in the lens to bring an object into focus

Interposition

relative positions of objects in front or behind others

Motion parallax

rate of apparent motion of near and far objects

*Hue

the aspect of color that is determined by the wavelength of light

*Brightness

our visual ability to perceive objects as having the same level of brightness even though the level of lighting changes

*Saturation

the intensity, purity, or vividness of a color sensation, representing its departure from gray or white

Fovea

small area of the retina that provides the most precise vision

Agnosia

a failure or deficit in recognizing objects, even though basic sensory ability is unimpaired

*Fixation

*Saccade

jumps or jerks in reading,

Change blindness

failure to notice changes in stimuli that occur during a saccade

Trans-saccadic memory

the memory that is used across a series of eye movements to build an understanding of the visual world

Partial report task

people shown briefly-flashed arrays of letters, people were able to report about three letters (span of apprehension) but often claimed to see complete array

Backward masking

the presentation of a later stimulus can interfere with the perception of an earlier stimulus is it is presented where the earlier stimulus had been

Sensory memory

a temporary buffer that holds sensory information for brief periods of time, auditory sensory memory last longer than visual sensory memory

Modality effect

advantage for auditory presentation over visual presentation at the end of a list in immediate serial recall

Suffix effect

a speech sound presented after the end of a list will selectively hurt recall of last items

Lipread lists, recall of

auditory sensory memory is process for determining what one has just heard, this process not only includes auditory stimulation but other information useful for identifying sounds

McGurl Effect

shows that people use lip movements to identify speech

Gestalt principles of grouping

Figure-Ground

parts are segregated as figure and background

Proximity

nearness is used to group

Similarity

similar objects are grouped together

Closure

completion of images with missing parts

Good continuation

continuation of an edge on a trajectory

Template approach

classification is done by stored models of all categorizable patterns; this is of limited use

Feature-detection approach

classification is done by breaking patterns down into features

Pandemonium

Data demons (encode pattern), computational demons (feature analyzers), cognitive demons (match whole letters), decision demons (decide which letter is present)

Importance of feature detection in pattern recognition

Pattern recognition requires PARALLEL PROCESSING

Pattern recognition is a problem-solving process

Geons

objects tend to have a small number of basic primitives, simple three-dimensional forms (cylinders, bricks, wedges, and cones)

Word-superiority effect

people can perceive words faster than nonwords or individual letters