Psych 263 exam 1 unl

Cognitive history and neuroscience

Cognitive psychology

Scientific study of mental processes

Simple reaction time

Time to respond to the presence/absence of a stimulus

Choice reaction time

Time to respond to one of two or more stimulus

Ebbinghaus’s memory experiment and savings

Studied memory and forgetting.

Experiment: repeated lists of nonsense syllables one at a time (eliminate potential effect of word meaning on memory)

1. Determined

2. Wait for delay

3. Determined how long it took to relearn the list

   saving: original time to learn the list-time to relearn after delay

   larger saving means more remembering. Describes our ability to retain information. Memory drops rapidly for the 1st two days after the initial learning and slows after that

Structuralism

Argued that the overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience (sensations)

Wilhelm Wundt

Father of experimental psychology

Argued that psychology should focus on conscious processes/mental events

Edward titchener

Was one of the founders of structuralism

Introspection

A technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought process in response to stimuli

PROBLEMS: cannot study unconscious thoughts. Issues with testability claims

Functionalism

Describes the mind as a functional tool that allows us to adapt to our environments

William james

Functionalist. 1st psychology textbook= “principles of psychology” based on observing the operations of his own but not results of experiments

Behaviorism

Observation psychology

B.F. Skinner and John C

ProbLEMS: far too simplistic

Classical conditioning

Pair one stimulus with a previously neural stimulus causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus

Pavlov dog experiment

Pair food with a bell caused the dog to salivate the sound of the bell

Little Albert experiment

Paired a loud noise to a rat

Conditioned stimulus

A stimulus that can eventually trigger a response

Conditioned response

a response that is paired with a previously paired unrelated stimulus as a result of pairing the stimulus with another stimulus normally yielding the response.

Unconditioned stimulus

A stimulus that leads to an automatic response

Unconditioned response

A reflex that is involuntary in nature

Operant conditioning

Strengthen/withdrawing behavior by presentation of positive/negative reinforces

Tolmans cognitive map

Rat maze. They developed a mental conception of the spatial layout of the maze

Cognitive revolution

Science of psychology must study the mental world if we are going to understand behavior.

Information-processing approach

Traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition.

Participants could hear sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message.

Level of analysis

A topic can be studied in a number of different ways with each approach contributing its own dimension to our understanding

Cognitive neuroscience

The study of the physiological basis of cognition

Neuron

Functional cells that receive and transmit information (electrochemically) in the nervous system

Nerve net

A network of continuously interconnected nerve fibers

Neuron doctrine

Individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system and that these cells are not continuous with other cells, there is a gap (synapse) between cells

Neural circuit

Group of interconnected neuorn’s that’s process specific kinds of information

Synapse

Small gaps in between neurons

Receptor

A cell that is responsible for stimulus transduction

Neurotransmitter

A chemical substance that transmit the signal between neurons.

• signal transmission within a neuron is electrical. Communication between neurons is chemical. '

Membrane potential

Difference in charge (millivolts) between inside and outside of a neuron

Resting potential

More negative on the inside. Cell is “polarized” because membrane potential is not 0

Depolarization

decrease in membrane potential

Polarization

Maintain a positive charge on one side of the plasma membrane and a negative charge on the other

Firing rate

Number of action potentials per second

Principle of neural representation

Everything a person experiences is based on representations in the persons nervous system

Feature detectors

Neurons that respond to specific visual feature.

Example: visual cortex contains neurons that respond to all different orientations

Hierarchical processing

Processing that occurs in a progression from lower to higher areas of the brain

Specificity coding

Firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object

Population coding

Pattern of firing of a large number of neurons to represent an object

Sparse coding

Firing of a small group of neurons to represent an object. Neuron can respond to >1 stimulus through at different firing rates

Experience-dependent plasticity

An organisms neurons develop in a way that they respond best to the type of stimulation it has been exposed to

Cortical equipotentiality

An early idea that the brain operated as an indivisible whole

Localization of function

Specific brain areas learn specific functions

Neuropsychology

Study of behavior of people with brain damage.

Broca’s aphasia and area

A language disorder caused by damage to the Broca’s area in the frontal lobe

Definition: capable of comprehending what others are saying

Wernickes aphasia and area

a language disorder caused by damage to the Wernickes area in the temporal lobe.

produced fluent speech but showed inability to match words with their meanings

Hindbrain

Above the spinal cord and contains Medulla, Pons, Cerebellum. It coordinates bodily movements, also participates in some other cognitive functions

Midbrain

Important in coordinating movements

Relay station that transmit auditory and visual information

Help regulate experience of pain

Forebrain

Largest region in human brains. Cerebral cortex

Medulla

controls breathing and heart rates

Pons

Relay station that transmits information between different parts of the brain

Cerebellum

Largest area of the hindbrain.

Cerebral cortex

A layer of tissue covers the brain that serves most of the cognitive functions

Frontal lobe

receives signals from all of the senses and higher cognitive functions

Parietal lobe

Touch, pressure and pain. Somatosensory cortex receives signals from the skin.

Temporal lobe

Responsible for hearing and auditory cortex receives signals from the ears.

Occipital lobe

Responsible for vision and the visual cortex receives signal from the eyes

Double dissociation

A situation where damage to brain area 1 causes function A deficit but function B is intact, while damage to the brain area 2 causes function B deficit but function A is intact

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Blood flow increases in areas activated. Hemoglobin carries oxygen in the blood contains iron which increases the magnetic properties of the hemoglobin

Distributed representation

A specific cognitive function activates many areas of the brain

Neural network

Interconnected areas of the brain that can communicate with each other.

Selective attention

The ability to choose to focus on only one stimulus, excluding all others (distraction)

Divided attention

the ability to focus on two (or more occasionally) stimuli at the same time; usually there is some loss in attention to one or both

Sustained attention

Ability to focus on one task/event over long periods of time

Attentional capture

A rapid, reflexive shifting of attention

Filter model of attention

Filter illuminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information

Early selection model

Posits that stimuli are filtered, or selected to be attended to, at an early stage during processing

Late selection model

Dichotic listening

Present different stimuli to the left and right ears.

Shadow

Repeat what you hear

Cocktail party effect

Ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli

Attenuation model of attention

Proposes that there is a decrease in the perceived loudness of an unattended message.

Attenuator

Attenuator: analyzes the incoming message by its physical characteristics, language and meaning.

Attended messages pass through at full strength whereas unattended messages pass through with reduced strength.

Distraction

analyzes messages and contains words that are stored in memory. Each word has an activation threshold (smallest signal strength that can barely be detected)

Load theory of attention

the level of perceptual load of a task shows how much you will retain it.

Processing capacity

Amount of information people can process (sets a limit on peoples ability to process incoming information)

Perceptual load

Amount of resources needed to process incoming information; related to difficulty of a task

Stroop effect

difficulty in naming the color of the ink when it is conflicting with the name of the words.

Facilitation

The congruent condition is faster than the neutral/control condition

Interference

the incongruent condition is slower than the neutral/control

Overt attention

shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

Covert attention

Shifting attention from one place to another while keeping the eyes stationary.

Visual scanning

Eye movements from one place to another

Fovea

An area on retina specialized for seeing fine detail

Fixation

A pausing of eyes on places of interest while observing a scene

Saccadic eye movement/saccade

A rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next.

Stimulus salience

Physical properties that make a particular object or location conspicuous

Bottom-up processing

The process of sensation where the input of sensory information from the external environment is received by our sensory receptors

Top-down processing

Perceptions begin with the most general and move toward the more specific

Scene schemas

Observers knowledge about what is contained in typical scenes

Spatial attention

Mechanism through which someone focuses on a particular position in space

Space-based attention

A process that allocates attention to a specific region, or location in the visual field.

Posner’s cueing paradigm

Observers performance in detecting a target is typically better in trials in which the target is present at the cued location than in trials in which the target appears at the uncued location.

Valid cue

Accurate info on the cue

Invalid cue

Inaccurate info on the cue

Exogenous cue

Outside.

Reflexive or stimulus driven/not learned. (Bottom up processing)

A number of perceptual changes can attract attention

Occurs rapidly even though the cue is not predictive of target location.

Cannot be suppressed.

Endogenous cue

Inside

overlearned stimuli that convey directional information (top-down processing)

Instructions that can be voluntarily obeyed.

These cues do not directly indicate a spatial location but rather require interpretation.

Object-based attention

Attention can be enhance processing objects