Chapter 1-4 Exam

Definition of cognitive psychology

Scientific study of the mind, including mental processes and how the mind operates.

Mental processes included in cognition

Attention, learning, memory, decision

Franciscus Donders

Mental chronometry and simple vs. choice reaction time.

Wilhelm Wundt

Father of experimental psychology; used analytic introspection.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Studied his own memory with nonsense syllables; discovered forgetting curves and savings.

William James

Father of American psychology; authored "Principles of Psychology".

Mary Calkins

Discovered the recency effect.

Herman Canady

Studied the influence of examiner race on IQ testing.

George Sanchez

Revealed cultural bias in IQ testing.

Behaviorism

Scientific study of observable behavior; reaction to introspection.

John Watson

Founded behaviorism; conducted "Little Albert" experiment.

B.F. Skinner

Developed operant conditioning and included cognitive aspects in behaviorism.

Edward Tolman

Demonstrated cognitive maps in rats.

Noam Chomsky

Critiqued behaviorism; argued for inborn language ability in children.

Cognitive neuroscience

Scientific study of the biological basis of cognition.

Neurons

Cells that create, receive, and transmit information.

Nerve net theory

Early idea that neurons are connected for continuous communication.

Neuron doctrine

Modern theory that neurons transmit signals to each other individually.

Parts of a neuron

Cell body, dendrites, axon.

Action potential

Electro

Neural representation

Experiences are based on representations in the nervous system.

Specificity coding

Stimuli represented by firing of a single neuron.

Distributed coding

Stimuli represented by patterns across many neurons.

Hierarchical processing

Simple coding in lower areas; complex in higher regions.

Localization of function

Specific brain areas serve specific functions.

Broca's area

Associated with language production; damage causes Broca’s aphasia.

Wernicke's area

Associated with language comprehension; damage causes Wernicke’s aphasia.

Prosopagnosia

Face blindness due to fusiform face area damage.

Distributed representation

Cognitive functions spread across multiple brain regions.

fMRI

Brain imaging that tracks blood oxygen levels to measure activity.

Perception

Experiences from sensory stimulation.

Sensation vs. Perception

Sensation is detection; perception is interpretation.

Bottom

up processing

Top

down processing

Helmholtz's theory

Perception is unconscious inference based on likelihood.

Gestalt principles

Organization of perception into meaningful wholes.

Regularities of the environment

Physical and semantic patterns influence perception.

Bayesian inference

Combines prior knowledge and likelihood to interpret stimuli.

Perception and action

rely on different neural pathways

Mirror neurons

Fire during both action and observation; link perception and action.

Attention

Ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations.

Selective attention

Focusing on one thing while ignoring others.

Divided attention

Focusing on multiple things at once.

Overt attention

Eye movement toward attended object.

Covert attention

Attention without eye movement.

Broadbent’s filter model

Early selection model for attention.

Treisman’s attenuation model

Intermediate selection; weakens irrelevant info.

McKay’s late selection model

selective attention occurs at a later stage of processing

Processing capacity

Amount of info a person can handle.

Perceptual load

Difficulty of the task affects attention.

Automatic processing

Task becomes easier with practice and uses fewer resources.

Inattentional blindness

Failure to see visible objects when attention is elsewhere.

Change blindness

Failure to detect changes in a visual scene.

Spatial attention

Attention to specific locations.

Posner cueing task

Tests spatial attention using cues.

Object

based attention

Feature Integration Theory

Combines features into coherent perception through attention.

Visual search

Scanning environment to locate a specific object.