EXP3505 Chapters 1-3 Summer 2nd Half

Cognition

Any brain function involved in acquiring and processing information about the world in order to make intelligent behavioral decisions.

Fields of cognition

Include perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, and decision making.

Basic research

Research with the goal of understanding. DOES NOT need a specific end-use.

Examples of basic research questions

How does memory work? Where does it reside in the brain?

Applied research

Research with the goal of developing a solution to a problem.

Examples of applied research questions

How can I improve my memory? How can we treat memory loss?

Human factors

Field of psychology concerned with applying specific findings to the design of systems that people interact with.

Artificial Intelligence

A significant branch of computer science aiming to emulate human tasks.

AI limitations

Include tasks that require 'common sense' and understanding.

AI issues highlighted by

limitations in NLP and other areas like computer vision, speech recognition, and autonomous systems.

Recent progress in AI learning attributed to

machine learning and artificial neural networks.

Artificial general intelligence

A type of AI that possesses the capacity to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a level comparable to that of a human being.

Large Language Models

Advanced machine learning algorithms that process and generate human-like text by understanding patterns in the data they've been trained on.

Capabilities of LLMs

Answering questions, writing essays, summarizing texts, and even creating poetry or prose.

Cognitive Psychology

Studying human behavior through experiments to understand how the mind works, employing behavioral measurements.

Naturalistic Observation

Form of research method in which researchers observe the behavior of people or other organisms in their natural habitat, without any experimental intervention.

Neuroscience

Studies the brain, using modern tools to measure activity non-invasively or through more invasive measures for individual neurons.

Computational approach

Approaches such as artificial neural networks for experiments to understand real brains.

Methods of studying cognition

Physical brain, intelligent behavior, mind, observation, computer simulations.

Mind-Body Problem

Question of how physical mechanisms and the mind interlink.

Dualism

Mind and body as different substances.

Monism

Only one kind of basic substance in the world, could be just physical or mental or neither.

Neutral monism

There is only one kind of substance that is neither just physical nor mental.

Physicalism/Materialism

There is only physical matter.

Idealism

Only the mind is real and reality is mentally constructed.

Plato's belief

Mind is based on an immortal soul that is more 'real' than the physical world.

Descartes

Followed the belief of dualism.

Estimated number of neurons

~100 billion.

Estimated number of neuron connections

10 quadrillion.

Structuralism

Based on introspection.

Structuralism founder

Wilhelm Wundt.

Introspection

Technique employed by structuralists to study the mind by training people to examine their own conscious experiences.

Limits of structuralism

Extremely subjective, very hard to replicate, unable to be verified, reliant on implicit knowledge.

Replication

Process in scientific research in which a previous experiment is repeated using the same methods as the original.

Cortical blindness

Condition in which an individual with damage to the visual cortex will report having no visual experience, despite having working eyes.

Blindsight

A phenomenon in which someone who reports blindness due to cortical damage still shows behavior consisting with some perception.

Behaviorism

School of psychology that emphasizes using observable stimuli and behaviors as the basis of scientific experimentation. Emphasizes 'nurture', objective data.

Founder of behaviorism

John Watson

Stimulus

Visual or sensory pattern presented to experimental subject

Response

Behavior of experimental subject based on visual/sensory pattern

Classical conditioning

A learning protocol in which an involuntary behavior is paired with a stimulus, eventually leading to that behavior being elicited by the stimulus alone

Little Albert experiment proved

Behavioral responses can be modified by experience

Operant conditioning

Method of conditioning that reinforces certain behaviors through a system of rewards and punishments

Famous for operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner

Skinner box

A chamber used to contain and automatically provide behavioral feedback to an animal during operant conditioning experiments

Reinforcement learning

A form of behavioral conditioning based on punishment and reinforcement (reward) feedback

Negative reinforcement

Removing an unpleasant stimulus

Positive punishment

Generating an unpleasant stimulus

Negative punishment

Removing a pleasant stimulus

Positive reward/reinforcement

Generating a pleasant stimulus

Limits to behaviorism

Chomsky proved through children learning language that behaviorism isn't the only method of learning. Tolman's rat maze experiment proved latent learning exists, thus disproving behaviorism as the only science.

Tolman's maze experiments

When rats were placed in a different starting point of the maze than the one they had been trained on, they went in the correct direction to get the food but only if they had previously explored the maze.

Functions

Mappings from inputs to outputs.

A function can be

can be ANY consistent mapping between a set of inputs and outputs

Example of a function

List of yes or no responses to a written list of questions in English.

Algorithm

A set of operations that produces the input/output mapping of a function.

Transistor

Device used in computers to control whether or not a current flowed through parts of the system.

Turing

Strongly influenced the first designs of electrical computers.

First computer designs used

Electrical vacuum tubes.

Cognitive revolution

Movement in the 1950s that proposed that the mind could be understood as a computational system.

Information processing

An approach to human cognition that views it as a type of computation, with sensory information serving as an input which is processed by the brain to determine a behavioral output.

Machine learning

A technique in which the computer, rather than a human, determines correct algorithms.

Reaction time

A measure of how long it takes an experimental subject to respond to a given task or query.

Donder's experiment

Conducted an experiment on reaction times responding to a light stimulus under three different conditions.

Shortest RT in Donder's experiment

Detection condition.

Middle RT in Donder's experiment

Discrimination condition.

Longest RT in Donder's experiment

Choice condition.

Speed-accuracy tradeoff

Refers to when participants sacrifice accuracy for greater speed, or vice-versa, in an experiment with a speeded response.

Correctness

Measures whether or not a given response is accurate.

Thresholds

Tests at what point of a level or change in stimulus people are able to detect.

Involuntary behaviors

Eye movements, pupil dilation, heart rate, galvanic skin response, facial and body gestures.

Galvanic skin response

Skin conductance, can be measured using sensors to measure emotional arousal (primarily fear or anxiety).

Trials

Repetitions of an experimental condition, typically used in order to compensate for variability in performance across attempts.

Mental rotation tasks

Cognitive tests that assess the ability to mentally rotate objects in three-dimensional space.

High degrees of variability/individual differences

Typically dealt with by using a large sample of participants.

Cognitive neuroscience

A scientific field that merges brain imaging with behavioral experimentation.

Behavioral neuroscience

Assesses behavior and neurological factors in animals as models of human function.

Computational neuroscience

Uses computer models of the brain to model real brain function.

Stroop effect/interference

Psychological phenomenon in which reporting the ink color of words is slowed down when the words spell out the name of a different color.

Nervous system

Portion of the body consisting of neurons, nerves, and glial cells whose function is to allow different portions of the body to communicate with each other

Neurons

Specialized cells that receive and transmit information

Nerves

Bundles of connective tissue between the neurons that allows them to communicate with one another and other parts of the body

Glial cells

Cells within the nervous system that provide support for neurons and overall nervous system function

CNS

Portion of the nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord

PNS

Portion of the nervous system consisting of all neurons, nerves, and glial cells outside of the CNS

Cognition happens within

CNS

Brain

The seat of conscious, voluntary action and is also the basis for all learning in the nervous system

Feedback loop between CNS and PNS

PNS provides input from external senses, passes it on to the CNS for processing, and the CNS sends a behavioral decision as output back to the PNS to generate a behavior

Cerebrum

Largest portion of the human brain, devoted to controlling and regulating voluntary behavior. Consists of cerebral cortex and related structures

Cerebral cortex

Folded, layered structure that is the single largest structure of the brain

Gray matter

Neuronal cell bodies

White matter

Nerve tracts that connect neurons to each other

Hippocampus

Complex structure of the brain involved in memory formation

Size of human cortex

Is directly related to intelligence

Encephalization quotients (EQ)

Measure of actual brain size relative to the size that would be predicted based on body size alone

Contralateral

Opposite side of the body. In context of the brain, refers to the left side of the body being controlled by the right side of the brain, and vice versa

Gyri

Hill-like projections of the folds of the cerebral cortex

Sulci

Valley-like indentations of the folds of the cerebral cortex

Fissures

Just deeper sulci

Hemispheres

The two halves of the brain connected by several groups of fibers