Cog Psych 2

describe mental imagery and how it relates to perception

mental imagery: the act of “perceiving” without stimulus
Farah: imagery primes perception
Perky: perception primes imagery

imagery is more fragile and effortful but uses the same machinery as perception

explain the Kosslyn–Pylyshyn debate: spatial vs. propositional representations

evaluate evidence from mental scanning, brain imaging, and TMS

brain imaging (Kreiman et al): neurons in medial temporal lobe respond to both perceiving and imagining

fMRI (Le Bihan et al): primary visual cortex is activated during recall
Ganis et al: task: participants either perceived a faint image or imagined it
Finding: there was a near-complete overlap in the frontal and parietal areas with differences in the early visual cortex
imagery involves high level visual processing while perception uses lower levels

suppressing the non visual (Amedi et al): during visual processing, non-visual areas become suppressed. This mirrors what happens during visual perception. the brain treats imagery like perception processing that requires protection

TMS (Transcranial Magnetic stimulation): magnetic pulses induce an electrical current in cortical neurons, causing a temporary disruption in the region. if disrupting x impairs y, x causes y.

articulate where current evidence leaves the imagery debate

TMS ends the epiphenomenon debate.
Epiphenomenon would say that disruption in the visual region would not impair imagery, however it impairs both imagery and visual perception

aphantasia

no visual imagery

hyperphantasia

higher levels of visual imagery than normal

dual coding theory

words that evoke an image in the mind are more easily remembered

Shepard and Metzler

mental rotation:
determine whether or not two images are the same or mirror images - they are rotated

finding: reaction time increases linearly with angle or rotation, meaning mental imagery is not symbolic

Kosslyn

spatial (depictive)

Mental scanning:

people remember a picture - they mentally scan across the image to find an answer
finding: longer distances take longer to scan
mental images perserve spatial information

map:
they do this mental scanning implicitly even when told not to

Mental size:
told to imagine a rabbits whiskers when next to an elephant vs a fly, took longer for elephant but easier for fly
finding: larger images need finer detail making for more processing time

Pylyshyn

propositional

imagery is an epiphenomenon

it accompanies cognition but has no causal role

mental representations are propositional abstract symbol structures

The spatial appearance of imagery is in the mind of the observer, not in the representation

Key argument:
people are not really scanning a visual image.
participants are acting out what is expected (that it takes long the further the distance)
Evidence:
when told to imagine faster they are able to
if imagery was spatial it would be contained by a medium

Thatcher effect

rotation of the face:
rotation of facial features is undetectable upside-down
when mentally rotating a face we cannot process all of its components at once
imagery is not a single picture - it has propositional components
Pylyshyn: this is what is expected if imagery is a structured symbol system

farah

imagination primes perception:
task: people told to imagine a H or T - one of the letters get flashed
finding: people are primed to respond the letter that gets flashed
finding: imagination and perception share a common representational substrate

language

communication system that uses symbols to convey meaning
allows us to learn from others

creativity of language

language is a hierarchical system
components combine into larger units: sound, words, sentences, stories
governed by rules that determine how components can be arranged
we can generate and understand sentences we have never encountered before
this creativity sets human language apart from animal communication

Universality of Language

almost everyone learns a language
deaf children will learn to develop their own sign language if no one else knows sign language
early language development is similar across children
core features: word, grammar, nouns, verbs, negatives, questions, tense

psycholinguistics

the study of cognitive processes humans use to understand produce and learn languages
comprehension, production, representation, acquisition

components of language

phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics

speech sounds, phonemes, words, phrases literal meaning of sentences, meaning in context of discourse

phoneme: the smallest unit of sound that changes meaning
grapheme: the smallest written unit corresponding to a phoneme
morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit
lexicon:
syntax:
semantics:

phonemes and graphemes

phoneme: the shortest segment of speech that if changed changes meaning
grapheme is the written representation of a phoneme
languages differ in orthographic depth: how regular the mapping is between sound and letters
shallow orthographies: consists sound-letter mapping
deep orthographies: irregular mappings - “there/their” “two/too/to”

morphemes

smallest unit of language with actual meaning
free morpheme can stand alone as words “bed” “room”
bound morphemes attach to other morphemes (un-, -ing, -s)
morphological processing:

mental lexicon

your mental dictionary
lexicon size depends on education, age, and what counts as a word
starts at around one at age one, but near the end roughly is around: 42,000 - 50,000
vocabulary grows rapidly in childhood and continues to grow to adulthood

spoken word perception

recognizing spoken word is harder than it seems
sloppy pronunciation: we rarely articulate every sound clearly
different accents: the same word sounds very different across speakers
no clear boundaries: in continuous speech, words run together without pauses
the brain uses context and statistical regularities to segment the speech stream
speech spectrograms reveal enormous variation even from eh same phrase

word superiority effect

a letter is recognized faster when it appears in a word than when presented alone
suggests words and letters are activated simultaneously, not serially
Rumelhart and McClelland’s interactive and activation model
top-down processing: word-level knowledge feeds back to her recognize letters
similarity, a sentence superiority effect words are recognized faster in grammatical sentences

word frequency and ambiguity

word frequency effect: words that occur more frequently are recognized faster
confound: high-frequency words tend to be shorter
lexical ambiguity: many words have multiple meanings
biased dominance: one meaning is much more frequent than the other
balanced dominance: meaning are roughly equal (cast → play/plaster)
access speed depends on both dominance and sentence context

semantics and syntax

semantics: the meaning off words and sentences
syntax:the rules for combining words into grammatical structures
semantic violation: meaning is wrong
syntactic violation: grammar is wrong
the brain processes these two types of information through different mechanisms

Parsing and Garden path sentences

parsing: mentally grouping words into phrases to extract meaning
garden path sentences initially appear to menacing one ting then turn out to mean another
late closure: the parser assumes each new word belongs to the current phrase
when this assumption fails, the reader must reparse causing mental confusion
context helps resolve ambiguity in real time

understanding stories

understanding text requires building coherent mental representations
we go beyond what is explicitly stated through inferences:
anaphoric inference
instrument inference: filling in implied tools or methods
causal inference: linking events to their cuases
situation models: we represent stories as if we were experiencing the events ourselves

embodied language comprehension

situation models: suggest we mentally simulate what we read

Stanfield and Zwaan: participants responded faster to pictures matching the implied orientation in a sentence
same effect for implied shape
brain imaging: reading action words activates similar cortical areas as actually performing those actions
language understanding is deeply connected to perception and action

conversation and language production

conversation is dynamic and rapid: speakers take turns seamlessly
given-new contract: speakers structure sentences with given (shared) information before new information
common ground: mutual knowledge and assumptions between speakers
same-as-me bias: we always treat new people like they are like us
syntactic coordination: conversation partners tend to adopt similar grammatical constructions
syntactic priming: hearing a specific construction increases the chance you will use it too
reduces computational load making conversation flow more smoothly

language disorder

Broca’s aphasia: difficulties making sentences
Wernicke’s aphasia:

Broca’s and Wernicke’s area
two brain regions for language: Wernicke (temporal lobe) language comprehension and semantics
Broca’s area (frontal lobe) language production and syntax
modern neuroscience reveals a more distributed network (Perislyvian network)

Aphasia

Broca (non fluent) patients speak slowly with jumbled words

Wernicke (fluent)

ERPs for language

N400: a negative wave at 400ms, sensitive to semantic violations, associated with temporal lobe (Near Wernicke’s area)
P600: a positive wave at 600ms sensitive to syntactic violations associated with frontal lobe (near Broca’s area)

language lateralization

language is primarily processed in the left hemisphere

lateralization has surprising consequences for perception:
Gilbert et al:

how do we learn languages

three major theoretical perspectives:
behaviorist (Skinner): language is entirely learned through reinforcement
nativism (Chomsky): language is rooted in an innate universal grammar
statistical learning: language is acquired by detect

Skinner

Behaviorism:
language is entirely learned behavior shaped by reinforcement and conditioning
there s no need to assume underlying mental structures like grammar

the problem is that children proceed sentences that they have never heard, including ones that they wouldn’t be rewarded for

Chomsky

universal grammar:
we poses an innate universal grammar which is shared across languages
children only need a social context, not explicitly teaching or reinforcement

criticism: how do we explain the enormous difference in grammar between languages

Statistical learning

does language shape thought?

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Evidence for linguistic relativity

Color perception:
spatial reasoning:
Grammatical gender:
gilbert et al

criticisms and nuance

the Inuit show myth:

What is an emotion?

an inferred sequence of reactions

to a stimulus designed to have an effect upon

the stimulus that initiated the complex

sequence”

Plutchik’s Definition of Emotion

emotions are responses to objects and events that take place in the environment

emotions are functional, quickly, and efficiently facilitating action that has an effect on the world around us

it takes place inside people and must be inferred rather than observed

emotions versus moods

emotions:
short lived, tied to an identifiable trigger, lead to a specific action

Moods:
longer-lived, less tied to identifiable triggers, doesn’t have a specific action tied to it

Approach vs withdrawal

behavioral inhabitation vs behavioral activation (BISBAS)

emotions can be distinguished by tendencies to either approach or withdraw

circumplex model

when people rate similarity of emotions into words, placing closely related words produces a two dimensional circle:
two minions are:
valence: how pleasant is it
arousal: how strongly do you feel it

proposed criteria for basic emotions

it should universal among humans

should have a universal innate form of non-verbal expression

should be evident early in life

should be physiologically distinct form each other in the body and in the brain

Plutchik Model

why we study emotion

originally emotion and cognition were studied separately but now it is shown that emotion and cognition and intertwined

amygdala

it is in the medial temporal lobe

it is a threat detection system

receives sensory input via two routes:

fast subcortical pathway (thalamus to amygdala) for rapid detection

slower cortical pathway for detailed evaluation

emotion and attention

dot-probe task

boraden-and-Build hypothesis of positive emotions

negative emotions may focus attention, in order to solve problems

positive emotions may broaden attention, in order to identify new opportunities and build resources

Navon Task: global (broad) vs local (focus) attention

critical modification to Broaden-and-Build

not all positive emotions may have the same effect on attention, that w need to consider the emotion’s motivational intensity:

pre-goal emotions are higher in motivational intensity, involve solving of problems

post goal emotions are lower in emotional intensity, involve reactions to emotions that have already happened

approach motivation and breadth of attention

emotion and memory: encoding

memory encoding: the initial formation of a new memory

questions: are emotionally arousing images better remembered?

procedure: view 60 photos of objects and events ranging from neutral to emotionally intense

arousal and memory

yerkes-dodson law: attention, learning, and other aspects of cognition are at their best when arousal at an intermediate level

physiological arounsal and memory

does emotional memory facilitation depend on physiological arousal?

procedure:

results:

emotions and memory consolidation

amygdala and hippocampus are closely related.

synaptic tag-and-capture hypothesis:
the brain tags new memories for enchanted consolidation later, if later events indicate that memory is especially important

emotion and memory: retrieval

state-dependent retrieval: we’re more likely to recall a memory in a state similar to the one we were in when the memory was formed