Purdue Psy 200 - Exam 1

Cognition

Mental processes created by the mind

Cognitive Psychology

The scientific study of mental processes

Reaction Time

The time it takes to respond to a presented stimulus

Simple Reaction Time

Reaction to a stimulus with only one possible behavioral response

Choice Reaction Time

Reaction to a stimulus with multiple possible behavioral responses.

Donders's Key Inference

Mental responses cannot be measured directly; they must be inferred from behavior.

Structuralism

Approach holding that overall experience is determined by basic elements called sensations.

Analytic Introspection

Procedure where trained participants described experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.

Savings (Ebbinghaus)

Original time to learn a list minus the time to relearn it.

Savings Curve

Plot showing memory drops sharply for two days and then levels off.

Behaviorism

Approach focusing exclusively on directly observable behavior rather than the mind.

Classical Conditioning

Pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus changes the response to the neutral stimulus.

Operant Conditioning

Behavior is strengthened by reinforcers or weakened by punishments.

Chomsky's Criticism of Behaviorism

Children produce sentences never rewarded, showing language is not learned solely through conditioning.

Cognitive Revolution

1950s shift from behaviorism to understanding the operations of the mind.

Information-Processing Approach

Approach tracing sequences of mental operations involved in cognition, modeled after computers.

Broadbent's Filter Model

Proposal that input enters senses and passes through a filter to select target information.

Neuropsychology

The study of behavior and cognitive functions in individuals with brain damage.

Electrophysiology

Technique measuring electrical responses of the nervous system.

PET (Positron Emission Tomography)

Brain imaging using radioactive tracers to show areas of cognitive activity.

fMRI

High-resolution brain imaging measuring blood flow and activity without radioactive tracers.

The mind creates _____s of the world so we can act within it

Representations

What did Donders Study?

Reaction time

Mental Processes cannot be observed directly, they must be inferred from?

Behavioral responses

What Did Wundt Contribute to Psych?

He founded the first psych lab and had controlled environments

He was a founder of structuralism

What Did Ebbinghaus Study?

Forgetting and Saving

Why Was Ebbinghaus Important?

Showed that there was a way to quantify psychological processes

What Did William James Study?

Attention

What Was Chomsky's Criticism of Behaviorism?

Language cannot have originated through conditioning as individuals will say things that aren't rewarded or punished

What Helped Spurn the Cognitive Revolution?

The digital computer as they processed information in stages

Net Nerves

A continuous network of brain fibers

Golgi's Staining Technique

Stained less that 1% of the cells so their boundaries stood out

Previous staining techniques stained more, making it appear continuous

Santiago Ramon y Cajal

Discovered neuron doctrine by staining the less dense brains of newborn animals

Neuron Doctrine

Neurons are the building blocks of the brain

Neurons are not continuous with other cells

Cell body

Metabolic center of the neuron, contains mechanisms to keep the cell alive

Dendrites

Branch from the cell body and receive other neuron's signals

Axon

Processes from the cell body that bring signals to other neurons

Synapse

Gap between neuron and other cell's dendrites

Receptor

Specialized cells that receive signal from the environment

In places where senses are collected

Action Potential

Process of a neuron firing

Resting Potential

Charge of the neuron at rest

-70 mV

Threshold

Minimum charge needed for the neuron to fire

-55 mV

Depolarization

After the threshold, the internal charge increases and becomes positive

Repolarization

The internal charge decreases and becomes negative again

Hyperpolarization

The internal charge passes the resting potential, becoming more negative, before going back to resting potential

Exhibitory Signal

Makes a neuron more likely to fire

Inhibitory Signal

An input that makes a neuron less likely to fire

Action Potentials are Always the Same?

What Differs?

Strength and speed

The rate of firing

In a Neuron, a Stronger Action Potential is Represented by an?

Increased rate of firing

Principle of Neural Representation

Everything that a person experiences is based on nervous system representations

Feature Detectors

Neurons that respond to specific stimuli features

ie: orientation, movement, length, etc

Hierarchical Processing

Progression from lower to higher parts of the brain

Sensory Coding

How neurons represent various characteristics of their environment

Includes specificity, population, and sparse coding

Which Sensory Coding Strategy Does the Brain Use?

Probably most of them so if the brain gets damaged, other coding strategies may work

Specificity Coding

An object is represented by the rates of firing of a specialized neuron that only responds to that stimuli

Population Coding

An object is represented by the rates of firing of a large numbers of neurons

Sparse Coding

An object is represented by the rates of firing of a small amount of a large number of neurons

Cortical Equipotentiality

The brain operates as a unified whole

An old theory

Localization of Function

Specific parts of the brain have specific function

Frontal Lobe

Movement and reasoning

Parietal Lobe

Physical sensation

Occipital Lobe

Vision

Temporal Lobe

Hearing and language

Cerebellum

Motor coordination and balance

Cerebral Cortex

The outer layer of the brain

What the lobes are on

What Did Broca Study?

Localization of function in specific areas of the brain

Broca's Aphasia

Understands speech but struggles to produce it

Wernicke's Aphasia

Can produce speech easily but don't understand the meanings

Amygdala

Part of the brain focused on fear and emotion

Hippocampus

Turns short term memory into long term memory

Double Dissociation

Damage to one part of the brain causes one function to be present while another is absent

Shows two related functions are handled by separate regions of the brain

PET Scan

Tracks gatherings of radioactive sugars to image the body

MRI/FMRI

Identifies areas of increased blood flow

Advantages of fMRI

Tasks can be completed during it

Fusiform Face Area

Recognizes faces

Parahippocampal Place Area

Recognizes outdoor spaces

Extrastriate Body Area

Recognizes bodies and parts of bodies

DTI

Brain scan that maps neural connections through tracking water movement through white matter

EEG

Measures brain electrical activity

Distributed Representation

A stimulus causes many parts of the brain to fire

Neural Networks

Interconnected parts of the brain that communicate with each other

Structural Connectivity

Physically connected areas of the brain

Functional Connectivity

Areas of the brain that fire at the same time

Perception

Experience resulting from interpreting what our senses give us

Why Isn't Perception a Direct Recording of The Environment?

Some stimuli depends on how the individual interprets the setting

Sometimes not all stimuli required to definitely make a judgement are present

Inverse Projection Problem

The task responsible for determining what image is on our retina

There are many ways of viewing an object

Bottom-Up Processing

An image on the retina is transcribed into a signal, then sent to the brain for processing

Entirely based on sensation

Top-Down Processing

We identify the context of the situation which allows us to identify the stimuli

Speech Segmentation

The ability to tell where one word ends and another begins

Translational Probabilities

The likelihood that one sound will be followed up by another

Statistical Learning

The process of learning about translational properties and other language characteristics

Learned through hearing language

Unconscious Inference

Our perception is made by unconscious assumptions about our environment

Proposed by Helmholtz

Likelihood Principle

We perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern we have received.

The Gestalt Approach

Built in (innate) organizing principles structure perception

Principle of Good Continuation

Points that, when connected, make a line are seen as belonging together

Principle of Pragnanz

Every stimulus pattern is seen in a way that allows the resulting structures to be as simple as possible

Principle of Similarity

Similar things appear to be grouped together

Physical Regularities

Regular occurring physical properties of an environment

Semantic Regularities

The characteristics associated with the function of an environment

Scene Schema

A observer's knowledge about what is typically contained in a scene