All Flashcards
Marr’s Levels of Analysis
Computation: what problem does cognition solve?
Algorithm: what processing steps does it follow?
Implementation: how is this physically carried out?
How do we measure similarity?
- confusability
- reaction time
- forced choice
- likert scales
Universal Law of Generalisation
The probability of generalising from one stimulus to another decreases exponentially as a function of dissimilarity.
Goldstone 1994 study
- more MOPs increased similarity
- more MIPs increased similarity
- MIPs increased similarity more than MOPs
Hodgetts and Hahn 2012 study
Found that square-triangle to square-square is 1 transformation, but other direction is two.
Deductive reasoning
Using facts to reach a logically certain conclusion
Inductive reasoning
Using facts to reach a plausible conclusion (but with room for doubt)
Valid outcomes of deductive reasoning
- Modus ponens: valid argument by affirming the antecedent
- Modus tollens: valid argument by denying the consequent
Invalid outcomes of deductive reasoning
- Affirming the consequent
- Denying the antecedent
Wason selection task
Rule: if there’s an R on one side, there’s a 2 on the other. Which cards do u flip?
- Most people will flip R and 2, which are both affirmatory arguments (modus ponens and affirming the consequent).
- They should flip R and 7 (modus ponens and modus tollens)
Indicative vs Deontic Arguments
Indicative: if this, then that.
Deontic: if this, then you should that.
People much better at checking the right things when it’s a Deontic argument
Features of indicative arguments
- premise diversity (ppl accept conclusion if premise is dissimilar)
- premise-conclusion similarity (ppl accept conclusion if it is similar to premise)
- premise monotonicity (ppl accept conclusion if there are more examples)
- premise non-monotonicity (more examples makes argument weaker)
Logical fallacies
- arguments from ignorance (better if in an epistemically closed system)
- circular reasoning (better if alternative is not very plausible)
- affirming consequent
- denying antecedent
Hahn and Oaksford 2007 study
Found that circular arguments were found to be more believable when the alternative was less plausible.
Social cognition and premise montonicity
- when world generates data, similarity between premises is irrelevant and ppl revert to premise monotonicity
- when human makes argument, similarity between premises is relevant and therefore non-monotonicity will appear
Ransom, Perfors and Navarro study
Limitations: limited range of arguments and phenomena.
Results: premise non-monotonicity when relevant-relevant, neutral-relevant and neutral-random (in decreasing order), premise monotonicity when random-random
Cognitive penetrability
The notion that perception can be influenced by knowledge, motivations or beliefs (New Look movement)
New Look Movement
Bruner and Goodman: children estimated size of coins to be larger than identically sized discs
Proffitt et al: heavy backpacks make distances look further
Bhalla and Proffitt: tired people perceive slopes to be steeper
Things we want look closer than things we dong
Inattentional blindness
Failure to notice a stimulus that would be easily noticeable if it were attended
Mack and Rock, 1998: gorilla experiment and judging cross size
Unconscious interference and example
Perception arising from the minds guesswork and problem-solving.
Amodal completion: minds ability to complete views hidden behind occlusion
Inattentional blindness and road safety
Scholl, Noles, Pasheva, Sussman: track 3 in 7 black circles. Red dot appeared. 70% of people not on a call noticed, but 10% of people on a call noticed.
Divided attention bad for when something unexpected happens, eg. child running across the road.
Constructivist vs ecological approach
Constructivist: information received by senses is often ambiguous, so the mind actively uses clues and heuristics to construct what we experience.
Ecological: the environment contains enough disambiguating info, which we discern by actively exploring it.
Seven sins of memory
- absent mindedness
- blocking (retrieval failure)
- misattribution
- persistence
- bias
- suggestibility
- transience
Blocking
The feeling of there being something interfering with access to memory, even though the memories are intact.
Eg. Tip of the tongue phenomenon.
Downsides of persistence
Persistence: memories not fading over time.
Hyperthymestic syndrome/autobiographical memory (Jill Price)
PTSD: unwanted and persistent memories of trauma
Source monitoring
Keeping track of the source of our memories
Source misattribution and example
Mistakes in source monitoring.
Henkel and Franklin: patients saw magnifying glass and asked to imagine a lollipop. Later, they couldn’t remember which they saw vs. imagined.
Reality monitoring framework
People often have trouble distinguishing memories of actual events with imagined memories.
Consistency bias and example
The tendency to remember the impacts of events through the lens of their impact on us today.
Eg. Bartlett’s War on Ghosts story study
Suggestibility
Our memories ability to be shaped and changed through leading questions and clues. Also in emotional situations.
Desirable difficulties
- retrieval practices
- spaced practice
- elaboration
The generation effect
We better remember material that we generated ourselves than material we simply memorise.
Testing effect
Roediger and Karpicke: restudying caused increased confidence, but self-testing caused increased retention.
Biased competition
In cluttered environments, multiple stimuli will fall in receptive fields of overlapping neurons and will compete to drive the neural activity. Attention will bias this competition in favour of the attended info.
Attentional network task
Measures:
- executive attention (how well people can resolve interference from conflicting info)
- spatial orienting (how well people can direct their attention to a location)
- alerting (how well people can prepare to respond when anticipating a target)
Executive attention index
Executive attention index = incongruent reaction time - congruent reaction time
Attentional capture
When something involuntarily captures our attention.
Value-modulated attentional capture
Stimuli linked with reward/punishment grab attention even when it is counterproductive.
Contextual cueing
Learned patterns guide attention even when we are not aware of them. Eg. Performing better in a task that you’ve seen before even though you don’t remember seeing it.
Attentional blink
The difficulty to perceive and respond to the second target stimulus amid a rapid stream of stimuli if the observer has responded to the first target stimulus within 200-500ms before the second is presented.
Emotion-induced blindness
The difficulty seeing a brief target if it follows soon after an emotion distractor.
Dot probe test
Just before a target appears in one of two locations, the locations are briefly occupied with an emotional and non-emotional stimulus. People are often faster at responding to the target when it subsequently appears at the location of the emotional stimulus.
Attentional bias modification
An attempt to combat clinical anxiety by altering attentional biases away from more emotional stimuli through training.
The symmetry constraint
The constraint: the distance from A -> B = the distance from B -> A. Similarity must be the same.
However, because of asymmetrical knowledge, this is not always the case.
Barrouillet et al. study
Found that adults are good with arguments abt the antecedent, less certain when the argument pertains to consequent.
Meanwhile, children assume all affirmatory arguments are true.
Two-stage account (Chun and Potter)
Stage 1. All items rapidly seen.
Stage 2. Items held in short-lived sensory buffer, where they quickly decay unless consolidated into working memory.
Consolidations proceeds one at a time.
