Cognitive Exam 1

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the provided lecture transcript. Each card presents a term and its concise definition.

Nativism

The view that certain kinds of knowledge are innate or inborn.

Philosophical empiricism

The view that all knowledge is acquired through experience.

Wilhelm Wundt

Father of experimental psychology; established the first psychology lab in 1879 in Germany and founded the field’s first journal; studied immediate conscious experience using introspection.

Introspection

Examining or observing one’s own mental and emotional processes.

Structuralism

Early school aiming to identify the basic elements of psychological experience; associated with Edward Titchener; focused on the structure of consciousness using introspection.

Functionalism

Early school focusing on the function or purpose of consciousness; led by William James; views consciousness as a stream and connected to real-world applications.

Behaviorism

School of psychology that emphasizes observable behavior and rejects introspection; associated with John Watson and B. F. Skinner; uses stimulus–response analysis.

Instinctive drift

Tendency for conditioned animals to revert to instinctive behaviors, interfering with learned responses.

Cognitive Revolution

1960s shift back to studying mental processes; cognitive psychology views mind as information processing; uses observable behavior to infer mental processes.

Capgras Syndrome

A disorder where a person can recognize a loved one but believes they are imposters, due to disrupted emotional processing and amygdala involvement.

Amygdala

Brain region crucial for emotional appraisal and fear learning; interacts with cognitive systems in recognition and emotion.

Hippocampus

Brain structure essential for forming new memories; damage can impair declarative memory formation.

Prefrontal cortex

Brain region that supports executive functions like reasoning, planning, and decision making.

Phineas Gage

Famous case of frontal-lobe damage leading to drastic personality changes; illustrated brain–behavior relationships.

Broca’s area

Brain region involved in speech production.

Wernicke’s area

Brain region involved in language comprehension.

Medulla

Lower part of the brainstem controlling basic autonomic functions (breathing, heart rate, swallowing).

Pons

Brainstem structure linking to the cerebellum; involved in attention, sleep, dreaming; contains reticular formation.

Cerebellum

“Little brain” responsible for balance, coordination, motor learning, and timing.

Thalamus

Gateway to the cortex; sensory relay station directing information to the appropriate cortical areas.

Hypothalamus

Regulates homeostasis and drives: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating; controls temperature and autonomic responses.

Corpus callosum

Large bundle of neural fibers that connects the two cerebral hemispheres; enables communication between them.

Left hemisphere interpreter

Idea that the left hemisphere tends to construct a coherent narrative to explain experiences when communications between hemispheres are disrupted.

Akinetopsia

Disorder characterized by inability to perceive motion, while other visual functions may remain intact.

Cerebral cortex

Outer layer of the brain consisting of two hemispheres and four lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital) responsible for higher-order functions.

Frontal lobe

Lobe involved in executive functions, decision making, problem solving, and motor control.

Parietal lobe

Lobe responsible for spatial information, sensory integration, and proprioception.

Occipital lobe

Lobe dedicated to visual processing; contains the primary visual cortex (V1) and visual areas MT and V4.

Temporal lobe

Lobe involved in memory (hippocampus here), language, and auditory processing.

Left visual field/right occipital processing

Information from the left visual field is processed in the right occipital lobe (and vice versa) after crossing at the optic chiasm.

Proprioception

Sense of body position and movement, contributing to a sense of self and spatial awareness.

Motor cortex (frontal lobe)

Brain region in the frontal lobe involved in planning and executing voluntary movements.

Lateralization of language

Tendency for language functions to be stronger in the left hemisphere for most people.

Split-brain procedure

Surgical severing of the corpus callosum to treat seizures; results in disconnection between hemispheres and reveals hemispheric specialization.

Perception

The process of interpreting and organizing sensory information to form meaningful experiences.

Sensation

The reception and encoding of environmental stimuli by sensory receptors (raw input).

Retina

Light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye that transduces light into neural signals.

Rods

Photoreceptors specialized for low-light (night) vision; high sensitivity but low color and acuity.

Cones

Photoreceptors specialized for color vision and high acuity in brighter light.

Fovea

Center of the retina with the highest visual acuity; densely packed with cones.

Blind spot

Region of the retina with no photoreceptors; the brain fills in the missing information.

Optic nerve

Nerve that transmits visual information from the retina to the brain; fibers cross at the optic chiasm.

Optic chiasm

Point where optic nerves cross to the opposite hemispheres.

LGN (lateral geniculate nucleus)

Thalamic relay station that forwards visual information to the visual cortex.

V1 (Area V1)

Primary visual cortex; first cortical processing stage for basic features like lines, edges, orientation, and contrast.

MT (area MT)

Visual area specialized for processing motion.

V4

Visual area involved in color and shape processing.

Where pathway (dorsal stream)

Pathway for spatial processing and guiding actions (perception for action).

What pathway (ventral stream)

Pathway for object identification and recognition (perception for recognition); damage can cause visual agnosia.

Gestalt principles

Rules such as similarity, proximity, continuation, and closure that describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups.

Amodal completion

Perceiving a whole object even when parts are occluded from view.

Figure-ground organization

Perceiving a figure as distinct from its background; includes principles like enclosure and symmetry.

Unconscious inference

Helmholtz’s idea that the brain actively interprets sensory input to create meaningful experience.

Hindsight bias

Tendency to see events as having been predictable after they have already occurred.

Lewin’s experimental approach

Kurt Lewin promoted systematic observation, experimentation, and role-playing to study social psychology and real-world realism of settings.