psy 200 ch 1-3

Cognitive psychology

Studying behavior to understand human cognition.

Cognitive neuroscience

Combining information from behavior and brain neuroimaging techniques to understand human cognition

Bottom-up processing

Processing directly influenced by physical characteristics of stimuli.

Top-down processing

Processing influenced by a person's feelings and expectations.

Serial processing

Completely processing one stimulus before processing the next.

Parallel processing

Multiple cognitive processes occur at the same time.

Modularity

The cognitive system consists of independent, specialized processors.

Dissociation

Intact performance on one task but impaired performance on a different task in brain damaged patients.

Case-series study

Study in which several patients with similar cognitive impairments are tested.

Event-related potentials (ERPs)

Pattern of electrical activity obtained by averaging brain responses to the same repeated stimulus.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Magnetic pulses briefly disrupt brain function in a given area.

Lesion

Structural alteration within the brain caused by disease or injury.

Cognitive architecture

A framework for understanding human cognition as computer programs.

Computational modelling

Constructing computer programs that simulate human cognitive processes.

Retinopy

Mapping between retina receptor cells and points on the surface of the visual cortex.

Lateral inhibition

Activity in one neuron decreases because of activity in a nearby neuron.

Binding problem

Integrating different types of information to produce a whole visual perception.

Ventral stream

Visual processing related to object perception and recognition.

Dorsal stream

Visual processing related to visually guided action.

Achromatopsia

Impaired color perception due to brain damage but intact form and motion perception.

Akinetopsia

Impaired motion perception due to brain damage but intact stationary object perception.

Optic ataxia

Impaired visually guided movements due to brain damage but intact visual perception.

Visual form agnosia

Impaired shape perception due to brain damage but intact visually guided action.

Dichromacy

Deficiency in color vision due to one missing cone class.

Negative afterimage

Illusion of perceiving the complementary color to the one that has been fixated.

Color constancy

Perceiving the same color under varying viewing conditions.

Illuminant

Source of light falling on a surface or object.

Pattern recognition

Identifying or categorizing two-dimensional patterns.

Law of Pragnanz

We perceive the simplest possible organization of the visual environment.

Figure-ground segregation

Perceiving an object of central interest as the figure and a less important background as the ground.

Uniform connectedness

Nearby stimuli with the same visual properties are perceived as a single unit.

Holistic processing

Processing that involves integrating information from an entire object.

Face inversion effect

Faces are much harder to recognize when they are upside down.

Part-whole effect

Part of a face is more easily recognized when presented in the context of a whole face.

Prosopagnosia

Impaired face recognition due to brain damage but intact object recognition.

Fusiform face area

Part of the brain associated with face and object processing.

Visual buffer

Kosslyn’s theory; a short-term memory store.

Binocular rivalry

Two different visual stimuli are presented one to each eye but only one stimulus is seen.

Positron emission tomography (PET)

Brain-scanning technique based on the detection of positrons; good at spatial location but not time course.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Brain-scanning technique based on imaging blood oxygenation; good at spatial location and time course.