PSY200 HW 1

weeks 1-3

mind

a system that creates mental representations of the world and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking and reasoning

cognition

the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making

cognitive psychology

scientific study of the mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and decision making

Donders

measured how long it takes a person to make a decision

• reaction time experiment (simple RT task, choice RT task)

• found that mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant’s behavior

Wundt

approach was structuralism (overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience called sensations)

• used analytic introspection- had participants describe experiences and thought processes

Ebbinghaus

explored memory and forgetting

• how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time?

• used himself as subject

  • found that forgetting occurs rapidly over the first two days and then more slowly after that, “quantified” memory

James

American psychologist who taught at Harvard

• observations based on the functions of his own mind

  • first psychology textbook

Watson

found issues with analytic introspection and proposed behaviorism

• eliminate the mind as a topic of study, instead study behavior

  • Little Albert experiment- demonstrated behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind (classical conditioning)

Skinner

interested in determining the relationship between stimuli and response

• operant conditioning- shape behavior by rewards or punishment

Tolman

used a rat in a maze attempting to find food

• believed rat had a cognitive map that helped navigate to a specific arm despite starting point

  • first idea that something other than ‘stimulus response’ was occuring in the mind

• believed children acquire language through operant conditioning

cognitive revolution

a shift in psychology from the behaviorist approach to an approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in terms of the mind

information processing approach

the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages

neuropsychology

the study of behavioral effects of brain damage in humans

electrophysiology

studies electrical responses of the nervous system including brain neurons

fMRI

brain imaging technique that allows for recording from the whole brain, but with relatively lower temporal resolution

EEG

brain imaging technique that allows for high temporal resolution recording, but is of low spatial resolution

TMS

brain imaging technique that allows scientists to temporarily disrupt the functioning of a particular area beneath the coil; helps correlate region with function

tDCS

brain imaging technique that allows scientists to temporarily increase or decrease the excitability of neurons under the electrode

perception

the conscious experience that results from stimulation of the senses

• can change based on more info, involves a process and can occur in conjunction with actions

inverse projection problem

the task of determining the object that caused a particular image on the retina (since it is ambiguous)

viewpoint invariance

the ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints

bottom-up processing

perception starting with the information received by the receptors (environmental energy stimulating receptors)

top-down processing

perception involving a person’s knowledge or expectations; what we expect to see in different contexts influences our interpretation

speech segmentation

the ability to tell when one word ends and another begins

transitional probabilities

the likelihood that one speech sound will follow another within a word

likelihood principle

part of Hemholtz’s theory that we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of the stimuli we have perceived

unconscious inference

part of Hemholz’s theory that is the idea that some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions that we make about the environment

Gestalt principles of organization

view that says the mind groups patterns according to ‘intrinsic’ laws of perceptual organization

• apparent motion

  • grouping principles (good continuation, simplicity, similarity)

oblique effect

finding that vertical and horizontal orientations can be perceived more easily than slanted orientation

light from above assumption

assumption that light is coming from above and can influence how we perceive 3D objects

semantic regularities

characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes; scene schema is the knowledge of what a scene typically contains

Bayesian inference

the idea that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability (our initial belief) and the likelihood (the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome)

what pathway

neural pathway (occipital lobe to temporal lobe) associated with perceiving or recognizing objects (ventral pathway)

where pathway

neural pathway (occipital lobe to parietal lobe) associated with neural processing that occurs when people locate objects in space (dorsal pathway)

brain ablation

procedure in which a specific area is removed from an animal’s brain, usually done to determine the function of this area by assessing the effect of the animal’s behavior

mirror neurons

neurons in the premotor cortex that respond both when a monkey observes someone else carrying our an action and when the monkey itself carries out the action

attention

focusing on specific features, objects, or locations or on certain thoughts and activities

divided attention

the ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more different tasks simultaneously

selective attention

the ability to focus on one message and ignore all others

Broadbent’s filter model

early selection model in which a message is filtered before incoming information is analyzed for meaning (sensory memory→filter→detector→short term memory)

Treisman’s attenuation model

intermediate selection model in which attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the information-processing system, but selection can occur later

dictionary unit

processing unit containing words and thresholds for activating the words (uncommon words have high thresholds, such as your name)

late selection model

model in which selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analyzed for meaning; unattended meaning still is analyzed

load theory of attention

theory that proposes that the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying out

processing capacity

the amount of information input that a person can handle; sets a limit on person’s ability to process information

perceptual load

the difficulty of a given task

overt attention

the shifting of attention by moving the eyes

saccades

rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another

fixation

short pauses on points of interest

stimulus salience

bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene that stand out and capture attention (color, contrast, movement)

scene schema

knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes, helps guide fixations from one area of a scene to another

covert attention

when attention is shifted without moving the eyes

same object advantage

occurs when the enhancing effect of attention spreads throughout an object, so that attention to one place on an object results in a facilitation of processing at other places on the object

automatic processing

occurs automatically, without the person’s intending to do it, and uses few cognitive resources

inattentional blindness

not noticing something even though it is in clear view, usually caused by failure to pay attention to the object or the place where the object is located

change blindness

difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different scenes that are presented one after another

feature integration theory

an approach to object perception that proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed (preattentive stage) and then combined to result in the perception of an object (focused attention stage)

binding

a process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create perception of a coherent object

illusory conjunctions

when features from different objects are inappropriately combined