PSCL 357 exam 1

Nativism

Innate ideas, anticipated by Plato, expressed clearly by Descartes.

Empiricism

Experience as source of knowledge, anticipated by Aristotle, expressed clearly by John Locke. Concept of tabula rasa (blank state) of the human mind at birth upon which experience writes.

Associationism

Concept emphasized by empiricists: we learn by linking simple ideas together.

Structuralism

Wundt, Titchener: focus on the structure of the conscious mind, using introspection.

Functionalism

James: emphasis on the functions of consciousness (its purpose in survival), influenced by Darwin.

Behaviorism

First Watson, then Skinner: define psychology as the scientific study of observable behavior.

Neobehaviorism

Interest in studying mental events using behaviorist theories after WW2.

Channel capacity

Concept that any system processing information has a limited capacity, brought into psychology by Miller.

Serial processing

Doing mental tasks one at a time in a series.

Parallel processing

Doing multiple mental tasks at the same time.

Cascade processing

A number of mental tasks may start at different times but may overlap.

Logic Theorist

Introduced by Simon & Newell, often considered the first true AI program, capable of generating proofs of mathematical theorems.

Turing Test

Proposed test to determine whether computers can think, can an observer discriminate between the responses of a human and a computer?

Searle's Chinese Room

Thought experiment challenging strong AI, proposing that a computer manipulating symbols can't truly understand meaning.

Reductionism

Understanding complex events by breaking them into components; criticized as excessive in cognitive psychology.

Ecological Validity

Generalizability to real-world situations; a criticism of cognitive psychology.

Dissociation

A disruption in one component of mental functioning but no impairment of another.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Magnetic stimulation used to temporarily disable brain regions.

Event-related potential (ERPs)

Momentary changes in brain electrical activity measured by EEG.

P600 component

Event related potential (ERP) component showing detection of syntactic anomalies.

fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)

Measures brain activity using blood flow and oxygen use.

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 a refractory period.

All-or-none principle

All action potentials are the same, will fire if threshold is reached.

Synapse

Gap between neurons.

Neocortex

Top brain layer responsible for higher mental processes.

Corpus callosum

Band of nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres.

Cerebral lateralization

Some functions rely more on one hemisphere.

Contralaterality

Control/receptive centers for one side of body are in the opposite hemisphere.

Hippocampus

Critical for conscious long-term memory.

Amygdala

Processing of emotional information.

Perceptrons

Early learning model: learns correct responses to inputs.

Connectionism

Computer-based modeling inspired by nervous system structure.

Hidden Units

Internal units between input and output layers that allow multi-layer learning.

Embodied Cognition

Cognition reflects a body interacting with an environment.

Conceptually-Driven Processing

Top-down processing which relies heavily on our pre-existing knowledge and expectations.

Data-Driven Processing

Bottom-up processing driven by the stimulus, 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 are recognized faster.

Orthographic Neighborhood Size

Words with larger neighborhoods are recognized faster.

Donders' Subtraction Method

Breaking down response time into separate stages, 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

Measuring accuracy requires separating accuracy from response bias.

Four outcomes of Signal-Detection Theory

Hits, false alarms, correct rejections, misses.

Accuracy in Signal-Detection Theory

Function of hits - false alarms, measured by d' (distance between distributions).

Response bias

Preference for one response, measured by criterion ('how much evidence do you need to say yes?').

Beta

One estimate of response criterion.

Diffusion Model

Proposed by Ratcliff (1978), allowing analysis of accuracy and response times together: information comes into the system gradually but continuously in a process like a random walk.

Random walk

Explains response times; person is gathering both positive and negative information.

Global/local precedence

A theme in cognitive psychology about which level of information you 'see' first: the global (big picture) or the local (details).

Sensation

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

Distal stimulus

An object or event in the outside world.

Proximal stimulus

The energies from the outside world that directly reach our sense organs.

Perception

The process of interpreting and understanding sensory information.

Psychophysics

Study of relationship between physical stimuli and the psychological experiences.

Distance Effect

The more different two things are, the faster and easier it is for your brain to tell them apart.

Symbolic Distance Effect

When comparing symbolic things (like numbers or words), you decide faster when they are farther apart in meaning or size.

Semantic Congruity Effect

Decisions come faster when the question 'fits' the usual meaning or size of what they're judging.

Retina

Where receptor cells are; vision begins when reflected light hits eyes.

Bipolar cells

Receive information from receptors.

Ganglion cells

Receive information from bipolar cells; axons converge to form a bundle of fibers (optic nerve).

Rods

~120 million, black/white, low light, periphery.

Cones

~7 million, color (red/green/blue), bright light, concentrated in fovea.

Depth perception cues

Binocular disparity, accommodation, interposition, motion parallax.

Hue

Color type (linked to wavelength).

Brightness

Intensity (linked to amplitude).

Saturation

Purity/intensity of color (how washed out vs. vivid).

Fixation

Period when eyes stop and visual info is gathered.

Saccade

Jump/jerk between fixations; visual processing suppressed during saccades.

Change blindness

Failure to notice changes that occur during a saccade.

Trans-saccadic memory

Memory used across eye movements to build understanding of the visual world.

Partial Report Task

Sperling, 1960: brief arrays of letters flashed, people report ~3 letters but claim they 'saw' more.

Backward Masking

Happens when a second visual stimulus appears right after a first one in the same place and interferes with your ability to see the first clearly.

Beta movement

The illusion of smooth motion created when many still images are shown rapidly in sequence.

Phi phenomenon

Two stimuli in two different points in space may be seen to move toward each other.

Sensory memory

A temporary buffer that holds sensory information for brief periods of time.

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.

Gestalt principles of grouping

Rules the perceptual system uses to organize stimuli into meaningful wholes.

Template approach

A pattern recognition theory in which classification is done by comparing stimuli to stored models (templates).

Feature-detection approach

A pattern-recognition theory in which objects are identified by breaking them down into basic features.

Pandemonium

Selfridge's model of pattern recognition in which different 'demons' operate in parallel.

Geons

Basic three-dimensional components that the visual system uses to build and recognize objects.

Word-Superiority Effect

The finding that people can recognize and perceive letters more accurately and quickly when they appear in real words than in nonwords or alone.

Binocular disparity

different eye perspectives, because your eyes are about 2-3 inches apart, each eye sees a slightly different image

• big difference between images = object is close,

• small difference = object is far 

Accomodation

Lens change to focus, looking at something close = lens becoming rounder, looking at something far = lens flatten

• your brain senses how much effort this takes

• more muscle effort = closer object

• less effort = farther object

Interposition

when one object partially covers another, the covered object is perceived as farther away

Motion parallax

when you move your head or body, objects at different distances appear to move at different speeds across your retina

• closer object = appears to move faster

• farther objects = appear to move slower and less