BCS 111 - Final

Paired-associate task

Used to test forgetting; pair the same cue word w/ a different target word

Ex. snow-heater, phone-marker, tree-memory

proactive interference

Old pairing interferes w/ new pairing; stronger if the old pair has a stronger connection than the new pair

Tested w/ paired association task

retroactive interference

New pairing replaces old pairing; when combined w/ old information decay the new pairing is stronger if the old pairing was learned a long time ago

Tested w/ paired association task

What is our processing capacity?

Limited

What is the storage capacity of Long-term memory?

Theoretically unlimited

Deep processing

Is meaning based

shallow processing

Is form-based

What is stored in long-term memory

Representation of concepts, concept & categorization, mental imagery (mental rotation)

How is knowledge stored in Long Term Memory?

Our knowledge and concept are organized like a hierarchy of categories

hierarchical network model

Concepts related in meaning (semantic memory)

Evidence for the hierarchical model

Slower responses to feature description than category name

Slower responses to features from the top level

Slower responses to category members from the top level

spreading activation

Hearing/Seeing one word also activates multiple related concepts/words; visual aids can initiate activation

Classical view of concept & categorization

List of features; binary distinction; no goodness-of-fit

Knowledge based Categorization

Prior knowledge about these objects is required for categorizing them together

Binary distinction

belong or not belong to the category

No Goodness of fit

No good or bad member (one or the other)

How do we link a word with the thing that the word represents? (Study mental imagery)

Concreteness of the word; language-specific

Concreteness of the word

hard to form mental images for abstract concepts

Language specific

pictorial vs. non-pictorial words

Jensen et al. Experiment summary

activation in parietal lobe for concrete words: image of object in space (the "where" stream)

Implications: Mentally "sense" the concrete objects even if the actual object is not presented

mental rotation (Cooper & Shepard)

Letter identification with various types of cues (conditions)

Main task: identify whether the letter in the Testing trial is a normal letter or mirror image of the letter

Time needed to make judgments in 5 different conditions

No cue: most difficult (slowest RT)

Both cues available and combined cues (condition B & C): easiest (faster RT)

What factors may contribute to the performance on mental rotation task? (Cooper & Shepard)

In both groups: The larger the rotation angle, the higher the error rate and RT.

HighSpan group outperformed the LowSpan group

- Mental rotation highly correlated with working memory capacity (related to visual rehearsal)

How do we find evidence for the effect of working memory on mental rotation?

Working memory task divides Ss into high vs. low span groups

Localization of mental rotation in the brain

parietal lobe and premotor cortex

Encode (mental rotation)

Remember what the shape looks like

Indicate (mental rotation)

Showing the direction of rotation

Rotate (mental rotation)

Mentally rotate the shape

Match (mental rotation)

Judge if the rotated result is correct

Mental rotation (Shepard & Metzler)

- The larger the rotation angle, the larger the RT (slower)

- Rotating by depth a bit easier when rotating by a large angle (although the difference is not very significant)

Implication: we mentally rotate not only 2D but also 3D images!

implicit encoding

Unconscious encoding of the features in an object/space/image.

Ex. Mental picture of Gleason

perceptual equivalence

Mentally imaging an object is similar to actually perceiving it

activation of fusiform face area (FFA) while seeing the actual face AND forming a mental image of it!!

spatial equivalence

amount of time it takes to mentally scan from A to B is a function of the actual distance A-B in the image

Testing spatial equivalence (Kosslyn 1983)

The longer the distance in the image, the longer the scanning RT

The distance between objects on the image is just like the "distance" between objects in our mind!

Application of spatial equivalence

applies to blind people- they learned through tactile senses

Form a mental "sketch" of the object by touch

When asked to mentally scan an image or object "without" seeing it, spatial equivalence is also found in blind people.

Transformational equivalence

rotating an object similar to rotating a mental image

structural equivalence

The features of the imaged object are similar to that of the actual object

Evidence for structural equivalence

Key manipulation:

- Complexity of the verbal description: one group receives complex descriptions and another receives simple ones

Positive correlation between RT and # of parts

- Complex objects require longer time to image

spatial cognition

Interaction between the mental 3D space and the actual environment

- knowing where we are

- knowing where to go

Higher-level cognition

language, reasoning, problem solving, decision making

Functions of language and cognition

- Labeling of objects - recognition

- Categorization

- Long-term memory

- Working memory - phonological loop

Cognitive approaches to the study of language

Perception, attention, working memory, long-term memory, concepts (connectionist models - semantic network, box-and-arrow models), language & thought, language development, language & reasoning

Time & space in language

Mental images of the past events

(or episodes) with timestamps

Chomsky

Nativism, universal grammar

Skinner

Behaviorism, reinforcement & conditioning, stimulus-response, behavioral studies of verbal behavior

Koko the gorilla

Use of sign language (~1000 signs)

Claimed to be able to understand a large number of spoken words

Kanzi

- Use of lexigrams (symbol- meaning pairings)

- Learned it by observation

What is the Clever Hans effect?

inadvertently cueing an animal or human

What are the two major features that differentiate human language and animal communication?

Productivity & displacement

Productivity

Unlimited in humans

Displacement

ability to talk about space and time freely

- Human language: future, past, here, there

- Animal: very limited

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism

linguistic determinism

The form of our language determines our cognition: how we think, remember and perceive

Linguistic relativism

Different languages generate different cognitive structures (e.g. categorization, description of objects, etc.)

Language affects only perception or the influence of language is "task-development"

Testing Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Pirahã language

Three words for counting: One, two, many

Sense of quantity influenced by their language

Subjects respond by putting out a matching number of balloons Sense of quantity influenced by their language: evidence for relativism: the larger the quantify, the larger the error rate

Language effect on categorical perception (Winawer 2007)

Russian vs. English speakers' categorization of colors

- Two words to describe blue in Russian (light blue vs. blue)

- At category boundary:

• Russians still able use two different words despite the subtle color difference

• English speakers tend to perceive those two as the same (using one word)

Impact of aphasia on abstract thinking

Normal, aphasics, right-hemisphere damaged (non-aphasic), left-hemisphere damaged (non-aphasic)

Task: Weigl sorting test (sort all cards in any way, verbalize sorting strategy, sort in alternate way)

Normal ≅ Right-hemisphere damaged but non-aphasic ≅ Left-hemisphere damaged but non-aphasic >> Aphasics

- supports relativism

Early preverbal development (supplementary gestures)

adds info to the verbal info (pointing to an apple while saying "eat")

- Two concepts

Early preverbal development (complementary gestures)

redundant info (e.g., pointing to an apple while saying "apple")

- One concept

Iverson & Goldin-Meadow (2005) - early preverbal development results

Positive correlation between onset age of supplementary gestures and onset of two-word stage

How do we learn a word?

Associate sequence of sounds with a concept

Cross-modal binding task:

associate a visual with an auditory input

Phonological binding task:

associate two auditory input (ex: a verbal label for a bird song)

under extension

failure to generalize from one exemplar to others (being too specific)

over extension

overgeneralize one word to all other members in the broader category (animal)

If a child has working memory deficit...

- Difficulty following verbal instructions

- Difficulty in reading

- Delayed vocabulary acquisition (Ellis 1996)

- Delayed syntactic acquisition

• Esp. impaired phonological loop

Gathercole and Baddeley

5-6 yo children

- Divided into low vs. High repetition of nonword repetition (a WM measure)

Task: object-name association task

Gathercole and Baddeley results

High-rep. group scored higher than low-rep.

Score decreases as the nonword gets longer

Monosyllables repeated less accurately than disyllables

High-repetition group needs less time for learning

Kim & Kaiser (2000)

Test of Language Development-2 (TOLD-2) as a standardized measure of lang. dev. (For kids aged 4-13 yo)

Tested children with and w/o ADHD

Child with attention deficit: sentence imitation & word articulation impacted the most (showcases the importance of working memory & attention)

Hierarchical model of Bilingual memory

Assuming one unified conceptual representation for both languages

• Stronger connection between Lexicon 1 and concepts due to late acquisition of Lexicon 2

• A word in Lexicon 2 first translated to Lexicon 1 via "lexical link"

Test attention shift in mono- vs. bilinguals:

Less perseveration will be observed in bilingualsàbetter inhibitory control

Switch cost: RT("lower case?") - RT ("word?")

- Lower switch cost in bilinguals (i.e., similar RT to both features)

Implications of Krizman et al.'s study

Proficient in multiple languages - enhanced sensory processing

Proficient in multiple languages - enhanced selective attention

Enhanced selective attention - enhanced ability to attend to the target even in noisy context

Preverbal stage

Supplementary Gestures correlates with initial language development

Is language essential for problem solving?

Not for basic biological needs

Language is needed for tasks that require verbal skills

Language can help the thinking process but its not needed

What do we need for problem solving?

Goal setting

Attention

Memory

Experience

Knowledge about the problem itself: problem-specific

Well-defined problems

- clear goal/narrower scope

- narrower set of actions

- easier to plan ahead than the ill-defined ones

ill-defined problems

- open-ended

-unclear actions needed to achieve the goal

-may generate some well-defined problems while solving the ill-defined ones

Generate-and-test (trial & error approach)

Guess & check

working backwards

Know what the solution should look like

Perform the last step first

Planning moves

Backtracking

- step back to track the root of the problem

- commonly used in coding and debugging

Analogy

A similarity or comparison between two different things or the relationship between them.

Mental set

One's strategy/preference to approach a problem

Functional fixedness

a fixed mental set for the function of an object

divergent thinking

Think outside the box (more than one direction)

Divergent thinking examples

- The plier in the two-string problem

- The box in the candle problem

- The parking lot problem

- Most brain teasers

Convergent thinking examples

Finding a word that can be combined with each of the three words in the set to create another new set of three words or phrases (The Remote Associates Test)

1. Snow, down, out

2. Cross, rain, tie

Convergent thinking

a type of critical thinking in which one evaluates existing possible solutions to a problem to choose the best one

The ability to associate irrelevant concepts

fluid intelligence

Ability to solve new problems

crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; Ability to solve similar problems that you encountered before

How to measure intelligence

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

— test fluid (balance weight on scale), verbal (questions & vocab size w/ pictures), spatial skills/visual imagery (w/ shapes) IQ

What cognitive tools do we use to answer questions on an IQ test?

Problem-solving, reasoning, decision making, language

deductive reasoning

Premises to conclusion

- From broader scope to one (conclusion)

inductive reasoning

Inference from available information to determine

possible outcomes

- From one condition to many (possibilities)

Difference between deductive & inductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning narrows from one to many, while inductive reasoning creates many possible outcomes

Categorical syllogism

- Drawing conclusion from more than one premise

- Each premise is a description of a category.

Ex. Some professors are tall.

All tall people are skinny.

àIs it always true that "All tall professors are

skinny"? - yes

Four-card task

If a card has a consonant on one side, it must have an odd number on the other side. Which card(s) would you flip in order to test if the rules are true?

E K 8 1

Content effect

abstract problems are harder than concrete problems in deductive reasoning

propositional reasoning

the fact or assertion that you can infer from the sentence

analogical reasoning

Inference based on an established relationship between two premises

Car: ground = ______: sky

hypothesis testing

Small set of conditions/premises - many possible outcomes

Hypothesis testing employs _______ reasoning

Inductive