2018

Question 1

What is an ‘abstract universal’ in a domain of study? What is a concrete universal
in a domain of study?

Answer 1

An abstract universal is the name of a set, something that is intended to capture
that which is similar across a number of entities, in the way that verb captures
that which is similar across the doing words. A concrete universal is something
material that interacts with everything else in the domain under study, such that it
is the essence of the domain, as in a stem cell being responsible for the generation
of a complex anatomy.

Question 2

What are the foveal and parafoveal regions in the perceptual span, in the processing
of a line of text?

Answer 2

The foveal region is that continuous section of words/letters that are projected onto
the fovea and are thus seen clearly and accurately processed. The parafovea region
is that region either side of the foveal region in which the letters are only partially
processed.

Question 3

What is the fine-coding versus coarse coding distinction? Illustrate you answer
with respect to receptive fields in the visual system.

Answer 3

Fine-coding is when a cortical neuron responds to a very narrow range of input
from the world, whereas coarse-coding is when that range of inputs is broader. In
the visual system, fine-coding would mean a small receptive field and coarse-coding
would mean a large receptive field.

Question 4

There are several studies in which researchers have plotted the separate distribu-
tions of measured IQ for the males and females in a large population. What did
they find was virtually the same in the two populations? What did they find that
was different

Answer 4

They found that the means were virtually the same. [1] They found that males were
significantly over-represented at both [2] the high and the low end of the range of
IQ.

Question 5

What is an ‘abstractionist’ theory of spoken language processing and storage?
What is an ‘episodic’ theory of spoken language processing and storage?

Answer 5

An abstractionist theory is one in which the detailed, more physical traces of the
speech are lost and only the gist is stored. An episodic theory is one in which the
more physical traces of the speech are stored.

Question 6

Cognitive scientists once tried to make computers able to recognize things in an
artificial visual world, to mimic human vision. Name one type of visual information
that they excluded so as to make the task ‘simpler’. Explain briefly why this turned
out not to be such a good idea

Answer 6

They excluded (colour) or (texture) or (movement) or (equivalent in a blocks-world
paradigm) [1]. In general, it is advantageous to human vision for there to be
rich information in the scene, all types of information interacting with the rest.
Simplicity is very ambiguous. Rich scenes provide more cues to resolve ambiguity.

Question 7

What happens to cognition when the corpus callosum is cut? How might the two
cortical hemispheres communicate in the absence of the corpus callosum

Answer 7

Either (surprisingly little difference is visible) or (there are split-brain phenomena
such as hemispheric conflict) or (there is less good bimanual manipulation) or
(there is an improvement in certain division-of-attention tasks) [1 mark] They
might communicate by predicting each others activities [1 mark].

Question 8

What is ‘movement parallax’ and what information does it convey to visual pro-
cessing?

Answer 8

Movement parallax occurs when the viewer is moving and different entities, such
as trees, in the environment are seen to move at different speeds with respect to
the viewer. It tells the viewer about the respective distances that those entities are
from the viewer.

Question 9

Give an example of recursive/nested modelling in two speakers, where one has a
communicative intention to convey something of common interest.

Answer 9

Jack is watching Jill eat berries. Jill knows that Jack is watching. Jill knows that
Jack wants to know if the berries are good to eat. Jack knows that Jill knows that he
wants to know if the berries are good to eat. She eats them with exaggerated relish.
She only does this because she has an intention to communicate (or equivalent).

Question 10

In general terms, what is autistic savantism? Give two frequently seen examples

Answer 10

Autistic savantism is the presence of a highly developed very particular skill in the
context of overall autistic functioning [1]. Commonly seen skills are (instantaneous
counting of small objects) or (calendrical calculation (15/2/54 was a Wednesday))
or (prodigious memory) or (facility with prime numbers).

Question 11

Words further away from fixation are processed less accurately?How have re-
searchers investigated the cause of this behaviour and what did they claim was
responsible for the effect?

Answer 11

They ran an eye-tracking experiment in which the letters get progressively larger
the farther they are from fixationbutterfly words. They found it was attentional
processing not simple visual clarity that produced the effect.

Question 12

‘DF’ had bilateral, ventral stream brain damage. What sort of visual task could
she do and what sort of visual task could she not do?

Answer 12

Her grasping of objects was good. She could not (identify figure from ground) or
(visually segment objects) or (identify lines and edges) or (equivalent of one of
these).

Question 13

What is an ‘affordance’ in visual perception?

Answer 13

It is a feature of a visual object that invites action from the viewer, e.g. the handle of jug, which can be grasped

Question 14

What is the ‘central bias’ in scene viewing and how might it be explained?

Answer 14

The central bias is the tendency to fixate the middle region of the picture in the
early stages of scene viewing. It might be (because we have learned to look at
pictures in which the photographer has typically situated the region of interest in
the middle of the picture) or (because subjects in eye-tracking experiments are
typically constrained to face the middle of the screen and it is more or less the
default place to look).

Question 15

What is a ‘regressive saccade’ in reading? What is ‘binocular disparity’ in reading

Answer 15

A regressive saccade is when the next fixation point is in the opposite direction to
the direction of reading (i.e. leftwards, back in the text, for English. Binocular
disparity is the distance between the two fixation points in a simultaneous fixation
by the left and right eye.

Question 16

James IV (1493) was said to have conducted an ‘experiment’ on Inchkeith island;
what was it? What would be the (real) modern equivalent?

Answer 16

He is said to have arranged for two infants to be raised by a woman who could not
speak, so as to investigate the emergence of language. The modern equivalent would
be feral children, found living wild with animals or cut off from human influence.

Question 17

How would you induce a so-called ‘false memory’ in a laboratory task?

Answer 17

Show people a sequence of related words and, after an interval, show them a related
lure that did not actually appear earlier and ask them and ask them if that word
was present. [One mark for sequence of related words; one mark for the lure being
a related, but absent word.]

Question 18

What is a ‘box-and-arrow’ model in cognitive science? Why might an implemented
computational model be a superior research tool to a box-and-arrow model?

Answer 18

A box-and-arrow model is a short-hand graphical representation of the relations between different abstract parts of a processing domain. A computational model
might be superior because (it can capture more detailed, quantitative behaviour)
or (it can generate unexpected outcomes that might be (errors in the theory) or
(productive behaviours to explore in analogous human behaviour))

Question 19

Zhang, Isola and Efros (2016) describe a ‘split-brain’ cross-channel autoencoder.
Describe two central features of their model of visual processing?

Answer 19

It was divided into two halves [1] and each half was trained to take a different
visual channel (e.g. colour, greyscale) and to predict from it what the other half
had been given: one half was trained to predict colour from greyscale, the other
half greyscale from colour, for the same picture [2].

Question 20

Over evolutionary time, the two hemispheres of the human brain have become
larger but the corpus callosum has not increased in size proportionately. What
has been the possible consequence?

Answer 20

The hemispheres have become relatively encapsulated [1]. They may have needed
to model each other so as to stay coordinated, potentially creating a lot of useful
procedures and representations. [1]

Question 21

What is ‘superpositional storage’ in memory and how might ‘catastrophic inter-
ference’ come about?

Answer 21

Superpositional storage is when one memory is laid down over the same substrate
as an earlier memory, so that they both co-exist and can both be retrieved. Catas-
trophic interference comes about when laying down a later memory interferes with
the storage and access of an earlier memory

Question 22

In the nervous system, what is meant by ipsilateral projection and contralateral
projection?

Answer 22

Ipsilateral projection is when the left side of the body, or stimulation from the
outside world, is projected to the left hemisphere of the brain, and conversely for
the right side and the right hemisphere. Contralateral projection is when the left
side of the body, or stimulation from the outside world, is projected to the right
hemisphere of the brain, and conversely for the right side and the left hemisphere.

Question 23

Name one of the theories of autism? Broadly, what does the theory claim;

Answer 23

(Mindblindness theory: The individual lacks a functioning theory-of-mind module)
or (Weak central coherence theory: The individual has functioning perceptual and
cognitive domains but cannot integrate them to make sense of complex contexts)
or (Empathising-systemizing (E-S) theorythere is a range of cognitive styles, with
a maladaptive extreme of simultaneously being poor at empathising and needing to have things very ordered) or (Extreme male brain theoryASD individuals are like
a very extreme version of male cognition.) [1 mark for name, 1 for gloss].

Question 24

What challenge faced the infants in Meshcheryakov’s so-called ‘Experimentum
Crucis’ (‘crucial experiment’)? What was Meshcheryakov’s grand philosophical
conclusion about cognition?

Answer 24

The infants were profoundly visually and auditorily impaired. He concluded that
activity mediated by others and by artefacts was crucial to the development of
cognition

Question 25

What is Penfield’s homunculus and what is the technical term for this kind of
mapping?

Answer 25

Penfields homunculus is the structured projection of the receptors and effectors of
the different parts of the body onto the sensory and motor cortex. It is a topographic
mapping.