CCC- Week 1- Introduction to cognitive psychology

Question 1

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 1

Cognitive psychology- psychology of mental processes- the ways in which the brain processes information-
And makes sense of information.

Question 2

What are the mental processes involved in cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

Perception
Learning
Memory storage
Thinking
Language

Question 3

What is wrong with the cognitive process in diagrammatic form?

Answer 3

Drastic oversimplification & representation of general sequential order of cognitive processes-

as suggests various stages of cognitive processing are distinct from one another.

Would be more accurate to show different stages merging & overlapping.

Question 4

What are the different approached of studying cognition?

Answer 4

Experimental psychology
Computer modelling of cognitive processes
Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuropsychology

Question 5

What is experimental psychology?

Answer 5

Carrying out scientific experiments on human participants to investigate the ways in which they perceive, learn, remember or think.

Typically involve large samples- small budgets etc

Traditional inferential statistics used to determine success.
A typical historic example: State dependent learning (e.g. Godden & Baddeley, 1975)- Material learned while diving is better recalled while diving.

Question 6

What is computer modelling of cognitive processes?

Answer 6

Involves simulation of certain aspects of cognitive function- through writing computer modeling programs- to test feasibility of a possible mechanism of brain function.

Often involving parallel distributed processing (PDP/neural networks)
E.g McClelland & Rumelhart PDP model of word recognition.

Question 7

What is cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 7

Involves study of individuals who have suffered from brain injury.

Can discover lots about the working brain through studying types of cognitive impairment, resulting from lesions (tissue damage) in certain regions. (Lesions can be caused by stroke/ tumor/ infection/ direct injury/ progressive disease- e.g Alzeimers)

Brain damage can impair information processing through disrupting one or more stages of cognition- breaking links between stages.

Single cases can be important.

Associations/ dissociations used to reveal the ‘modularity of the mind’

Question 8

What is an example of cognitive nuropsychology?

Answer 8

Typical example: Dissociation between acquired dyslexia & acquired anomia (type of aphasia where patient is unable to recall names of everyday objects). TMS opening new avenues for research.

Question 9

What is cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 9

Involves use of techniques- e.g. brain imaging / brain scans to investigate neural activities that underlie cognitive processing.

Two most used include PET scans (positron emission tomography) & MRI scans (magnetic resonance imaging).
PET scans - ( involve detection of positrons emitted by radioactive chemicals injected into the bloodstream)

MRI scans- ( detect responses to a powerful magnetic field.) MRI scans- better at detecting changes over a period of time- e.g. measuring brains response to a stimulus.

Question 10

What are MRI scans & what are they better at detecting?

Answer 10

MRI scans- ( detect responses to a powerful magnetic field.) MRI scans- better at detecting changes over a period of time- e.g. measuring brains response to a stimulus.

Question 11

What is an example of cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 11

Typical example- are different regions of the brain involved when naming pictures & reading words?

Question 12

What is Gestalt psychology?

Answer 12

Approach to psychology- emphasized the way in which the
components of perceptual input became grouped & integrated into patterns & whole
Figures.

Idea that we (people) contribute something to our perceptual input (from previous knowledge & experience) to form a whole. Whereas the behaviorist approach rejected this- only looking at the stimulus.

The psychologists believed that a proper understanding of human cognition is achieved through investigating mental processes.

Question 13

What is schema theory?

Answer 13

Proposes- all new perceptual input is analyzed by comparing it with items which are already in our memory store, e.g. shapes and sounds which are familiar from past experience. Stored items are referred to as ‘schema’, and they include a huge variety of sensory patterns and concepts.

Schema Theory & Gestalt- have had major influence on development of psychology- emphasizing the role played by inner mental processes & storage than just stimulus & response.

Question 14

What is a schema?

Answer 14

A mental pattern- derived from past experience, used to assist with interpretation of subsequent cognitions.

Suggests our perception & memory of an input may be changed/ distorted to fit existing schemas. Different people will perceive the same input in different ways- depending on their own unique store of experience.

Question 15

What is top down (schema driven processing)?

Answer 15

Processing which makes use of stored knowledge and schemas to interpret an incoming stimulus (contrasts with bottom-up processing).

Question 16

What is Bottom up processing?

Answer 16

Processing which is directed by information contained within the stimulus (contrasts with
top-down processing).

Question 17

What is top down processing also known as?

Answer 17

Schema driven

Question 18

What is bottom up processing also known as ?

Answer 18

Stimulus driven

Question 19

What is an example of how eye movements are top down & bottom up processing?

Answer 19

Influenced both by external stimuli (e.g. a flashing light) and our current goals (e.g. watching the footy)

Question 20

What is an example of experimental psychology?

Answer 20

A typical historic example: State dependent learning (e.g. Godden & Baddeley, 1975)- Material learned while diving is better recalled while diving.

Question 21

Why do we need metaphors/ models?

Answer 21

Scientific theories aim to be refutable (behaviorism)
Hypotheses are evaluated using empirical data in controlled behavioral studies.
We can’t look inside the mind to ‘see’ cognition (c.f introspectists)
So cognitive psychology relies on analogy and models of cognition
Models of cognition are evaluated against data & revised as necessary (always necessary!)

Question 22

What is Brocas area& what does it cause?

Answer 22

A region of the brain normally located in the left frontal region/ hemisphere- controls motor speech production.
Broca (1861), who first noted that damage to this region caused an impairment of speech production.

Question 23

What are the different lobes in the brain?

Answer 23

Occipital-

Parietal

Temporal

Question 24

Where are the occipital lobes & what do they do?

Answer 24

At back of brain, concerned with processing of visual input- damage to occipital lobes may cause impairment to visual perception.

Question 25

What are the parietal lobes concerned with?

Answer 25

Partly concerned with perception. Contain somatic sensory cortex which receives tactile input from the skin as well as feedback from themuscles and internal organs.

Important in the perception of pain & other parts of the parietal lobes involved in some aspects of short-term memory.
Brain-scan studies suggest that the parietal lobes are also activated during the retrieval of contextual associations of memories (Simons et al., 2008).

Question 26

What are the temporal lobes concerned with?

Answer 26

MEMORY!

Question 27

What are temporal lobe lesions often associated with?

What research is on this?

Answer 27

Temporal lobe lesions are often associated with severe amnesia.
Milner (1966) reported that a patient (HM), whose temporal
lobes had been extensively damaged by surgery, was unable to register any new memories.
Aggleton (2008) concludes -extensive evidence linking the temporal lobes to
encoding & retrieval of memories of past events

The temporal lobes also include main auditory region of the cortex & a language centre, known as Wernicke’s area (again
usually in the left hemisphere), which is particularly concerned with memory for language &understanding of speech (Wernicke, 1874).

Question 28

Wernickes area

Answer 28

Region of brain, normally located in left temporal region- concerned with perception & comprehension of speech.

Question 29

Milner 1966 study- HM

Answer 29

Reported that temporal lobe of amnesic patient HM was unable to remember any information for long periods- but ability to retain information for a few seconds was normal.

From observations- HMs lesions had impaired ability to store items in LTM- but caused no impairment of STM.
This suggests ‘dissociation’ between LTM & STM- they are separate systems.