Psych 240 Snodgrass Exam 1

Cognitive Psychology

The study of how we perceive, learn, and remember (the study of the processes that take in, transform, and use information)

What is Cog Psych NOT?

emotion, interactions, individual differences

What is the Black Box problem?

mind is unobservable

Three ways to solve black box problem?

Introspectionism, behaviorism, cognitive approach

Introspectionism

Ask people what they're thinking

Behaviorism

only observe the observable

Cognitive approach

measure cognitive processes through experiments (INFER)

Problems with introspectionism

difficult to verify, reports only reveal end product not process itself

Classical Conditioning

Pair stimulus with previously neutral stimulus (PAVLOV)

Operant conditioning

Strengthening conditioning with positive reinforcers

Reaction time

how long it takes to react to a stimulus

Simple reaction time

reacting to presence or absence of a single stimulus

Choice reaction time

time to respond to one of two or more stimuli

Watson

founder of behaviorism

Skinner

founder of behaviorism

Dependent variable

what you measure and analyze

Independent variable

what you manipulate

Main Effect

influence of independent variable on dependent variable

Interaction

when levels of one independent variable affect the levels of another independent variable (lines cross on graph)

Donders

invented mental chronometry, you can measure mental processes, choice reaction time procedure

Mental Chronometry

study of the time course of mental processes

Serial information processing stages

receive, process, send

Donders subtraction method

detection, decision - detection

Pure Insertion assumption

all stages remain the same when you add another stage

Assumption of additivity

no stages overlap

levels

different conditions of independent variable

job of neurons

to create, receive, and transmit information in nervous system

nerve net

suggested continuous network of nerves

neuron doctrine

Ramon y Cajal, nerve sells transmit signals, not continuous

cell body

metabolism, keeps cell alive, integrates incoming information

dendrite

receive information from other neurons

axon

transmits electrical signal to other neurons

action potential

electrical potential responsible for transmitting neural information

low intensity stimuli neuron firing rate

slow

high intensity stimuli neuron firing rate

high

synapse

space between axon and dendrite of next neuron

neurotransmitters

chemical released at synapse in response to incoming action potentials

specificity coding

firing of very few neurons specialized to respond to a specific stimulus

sparse coding

pattern of firing of a small group of neurons in specific patterns, with most neurons not firing

population coding

pattern of firing of a large group of neurons

Broca's area

speech and language production, frontal lobe

Wernicke's area

language comprehension, temporal lobe

occipital lobe

vision, back of brain

parietal lobe

touch, temperature, pain (somatosensory cortex), top of brain

temporal lobe

hear, taste, smell, bottom of brain

frontal lobe

"higher" cognitive functions (planning, thinking, etc)

cerebellum

motor coordination

brainstem

breathing, heart, etc

Fusiform Face Area (FFA)

responds to faces, temporal lobe (damage causes prosopagnosia)

Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA)

responds to places (both indoor and outdoor), temporal lobe

Extrastriate Body Area (EBA)

responds to pictures of bodies and parts of bodies

Neural Networks

groups of connected neurons or structures

Perception

experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses

Inverse Projection Problem

infinite number of things that could be projection what we see, so our brain estimates attributes

Bottom up processing

sequence of events for processing environment, eyes to brain

Top down processing

processing that originates in the brain

Selfridge's Pandemonium Theory

feature demons, letter demons, decision demons

Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference

our perceptions are strongly influenced by unconscious assumptions

Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization

continuation, pragnanz, similarity

Oblique effect

vertical and horizontal lines more easy to perceive than oblique lines because they're less common in the real world

Light from above assumptions

we assume that light is coming from above because that is how it is in the real world

Scene schema

knowledge of what usually happens in a scene

experience-dependent plasticity

neurons become tuned to respond to common experiences

part of brain "where an object is" is processed

(dorsal) parietal pathway (landmark discrimination)

part of brain "what an object is" is processed

(ventral) temporal pathway (object discrimination)

attention

ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations

selective attention

attending to one thing while trying to ignore others

divided attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time (probably not actually possible -- more like switching attention)

dichotic listening

one message said in each ear

Early selective attention

BROADBENT - filters message before analyzing for meaning

Intermediate Selective attention

TREISMAN - analyze incoming stimuli, pass through selected message and unattended message much weaker, words with low thresholds have easier time of getting through, words with high thresholds hard to get through

Late Selective Attention

MCKAY - most incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the selected message is further processed

Load Theory of Attention

low load tasks that use few cognitive resources may leave resources available for processing stimuli unrelated to the task

perceptual load

difficulty of a given task

processing capacity

how much information people can handle

Lavie's theory of divided attention

distracting stimuli have a greater negative impact when primary task is less demanding

Automaticity

if a task isn't too difficult and we have lots of practice with it, we are able to execute it with less attention

Stroop effect

hard to not default to practice responses to stimuli (coglab with colors and words)

Stimulus Salience

areas that stand out and capture attention (color and motion)

Scene Schema

knowledge about typical scenes

covert attention

directing attention while keeping eyes in place

binding

features (such as color, form, motion, location) are combined to create our perception of an object

Triesman's Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

how we perceive individual features as part of the same object

Two stages of Triesman's Feature Integration Theory

Preattentive Stage (objects analyzed into separate features), Focused Attention Stage (combine features)

Balints Syndrome

can't focus attention on individual objects

Simple feature search

looking for things with one characteristic

Conjunction (Complex) search

two features, much slower

consciousness

to be aware of something

first order awareness

phenomenal consciousness, subjective experience/awareness

second order awareness

reflective awareness, access consciousness, thinking about external or internal events

self awareness

knowing our experience is our own

content consciousness

are we conscious of X

state consciousness

awake, asleep, in coma, etc

dualism

Descartes, mind and body exist separately

idealism

Berkeley, the mind is the fundamental reality

materialism/physicalism

physical things are fundamental reality

dual aspect monism/panpsychism

Spinoza, both mind and body are real and exist in all things

contrastive approach

compare conscious and unconscious effects

neglect

neglect patients ignore stimuli on contralateral side, don't realize they have it

Extreme hydrocephalus

enlargement of ventricles