1 Flashcards
Interaction
the effect of one variable depends on the other variable
Experimentation PROS
experimental control: can test for causal relationships
Experimentation CONS
- demand characteristics
- generalizability
Demand characteristics
knowing you are in an experiment can change behavior
Generalizability
experimental situations are often artificial, so they might not apply well to every-day life
Confounding variable
an unmeasured 3rd variable that influences both the supposed cause and effect which can make it seem like there is a causal relationship when there is not
Eye Movements
- excellent timing information
- useful for studies of natural behavior
- no extra task required
Measuring brain electrical activity (EEG, ERPs)
- excellent timing information
- no extra task required
- shows what happens between input and output
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- uses magnetic field to scan tissue in real time
fMRI
- measures levels of O2 in blood
- good spatial information
- can tell us if two processes are similar or different
- poor timing information
Neuropsychology
- examine performance of patients with naturally occurring brain damage
- if patients perform poorly on a cognitive task you can assume that the damaged tissue is normally involved
Methods for studying the brain that have high temporal resolution tell us ____ activity is occurring; methods with high spatial resolution tell us ____ activity is occurring
when ; where
Any experiment will, by necessity, involve a compromise between
generalizability and control
A researcher decides to study the shopping habits of local residents. He goes to the local supermarket and (1) makes a note of what kinds of food people buy, and (2) gives these people a brief survey to assess how healthy they are. After analyzing his data, the researcher concludes that people who buy mainly fruit are healthier than those who buy mainly donuts. Assuming that people eat what they buy, what can we conclude from the data?
healthier people tend to eat more fruit than donuts
According to the information processing approach, mental processing can be viewed as _____; while the brain can be viewed as _____.
the “software” of a computer; the computer’s “hardware”.
Another name for parallel distributed processing is
Connectionism
Janet drank from a jug marked “apple cider.” However, she spit the liquid out when she figured out that the jug contained coffee. Janet likes coffee, so why did she spit it out? It’s likely this is the result of
top-down processing
The process that begins with an image being created on the retina, moves on to converting the input into nerve signals, and then passing this information to the brain for further processing is _____ processing
bottom-up
A friend tells you that he needs a new “jair”. But, because you’re talking about his office, you barely notice and hear the word “chair”. This is an example of:
using the topic of conversation as context for disambiguation
Your friend recently bought a new coat. The first time you see her wearing it, she is in a very dark shadow, but you still know that her coat is red and compliment her on the color. This is an example of:
Normalizing
Seeing a raised pattern on a tile that is lit from above looks the same as an indented or concave pattern lit from below. The visual system makes the assumption that the pattern is raised because:
The visual system is using the light-from-above heuristic, derived from the fact that most natural light sources come from above
Dichotic listening experiments demonstrate that participants who are paying attention to material in the right ear will probably also be able to remember the _______ of the material they heard in their left ear.
Speaker voice
Identifying a word by first recognizing each letter is ___ processing; identifying a word based on its shape is ___ processing.
bottom-up; top-down
If a participant searches for a red fish among of blue fish, their search will probably be _____; if they search for a red fish among red cats and blue fish their search will probably be _____.
fast; slow
An experiment that had people recognize objects that either did or did not belong in a particular scene demonstrated that _______ may alter perception.
context
The main point about attention that can be inferred from the sensory store’s relatively large capacity is that
bottlenecks on attention must be located after the sensory store.
A model that recognizes typed characters by first breaking each character into a set of elements, such as “horizontal line”, and then using those elements to retrieve memory representations is doing object recognition using a
feature detection model
Having a significant conversation is easier while wiping a counter than while doing arithmetic. Why might this be?
Question 10Select one:
a. cleaning and doing math require the same type of attentional resources.
b. cleaning and doing math use different attentional resources.
c. doing math and talking use the same kind of resources.
d. both B and C
D. both B and C
You recently finished your engineering homework of creating a three-dimensional outline diagram of a microwave, when your friend walks in and spills nail polish all over it. They look at the picture and ask, “What was that supposed to be?” Your friend is more likely to recognize the diagram as a microwave if…
The paint does not cover the places where lines meet each other
Which finding would be the strongest evidence that people recognize face configurations holistically, rather than by recognizing individual features?
a.
When compared to the original picture, a face with a new mouth is not recognized as well
b.
When compared to the original picture, a face with a mouth that is located much lower than the original is not recognized as well
c.
Both A and B are good evidence that faces are processed holistically
d.
Neither A nor B is good evidence for holistic processing
b.
When compared to the original picture, a face with a mouth that is located much lower than the original is not recognized as well
Competing theories about bottlenecks of attention offer different hypotheses about
the amount of processing that happens before the bottleneck.
Word superiority effect
Letters are more easily identified when in a word rather than alone or in a non-word sequence
Main effect
effects of a single independent variable (without considering the other)
How does the brain deal with ambiguity?
- using context (contrasts)
- make assumptions
- use “top-down” information
Mondegreens
misinterpretations of words
(ie. all of the other reindeer vs olive, the other reindeer)
McGurk Effect
seeing facial movements in tandem with speech changes the auditory perception of the sound
Object recognition is
fast, robust, flexible
Prosopagnosia
specific inability to recognize familiar faces
3 things that can happen when you recognize someone from their face:
- recognize the face as familiar (i know that face from somewhere)
- retrieve stored biographical info (ie. where you met them, anything but their name)
- retrieve the name of the person
Alexia
specific inability to read written words
What does Alexia reveal about word processing
- word processing can be dissociated from the processing of other visual objects
- happens at multiple levels
Temporary memory store for vision
Iconic memory
Temporary memory store general
sensory store
Temporary memory store for audition
echoic memory
Change blindness door experiment
Simons and Levin
early selection
select information during perceptual analysis. some information is not fully perceived and linked to meaning
late selection
all information is perceived and linked to meaning. selection is done in short-term memory, where some information is retained and other information is forgotten.
Hemineglect
brain damage (especially in right parietal lobe) that causes people to be unable to pay attention to information on one side of space.
Balint’s Syndrome
Condition caused by damage to parietal lobe. Can only see one object at a time
