Ch 2: How to study cognition Flashcards
What is an algorithm?
A set of operations that produces the input/output mapping of a function.
What is behavioral neuroscience?
A scientific field that assesses behavior and neurological factors in animals to find relations to human processes.
What is behaviorism?
A school of psychology that emphasized using observable stimuli and behaviors as the basis of scientific experimentation.
What is blindsight?
A phenomenon in which someone who reports blindness due to cortical damage still shows behavior consisting with some perception.
What is classical conditioning?
A learning protocol in which an involuntary behavior is paired with a stimulus, eventually leading to that behavior being elicited by the stimulus alone.
Unconditioned stimulus + involuntary behavior = conditioned response
What is cognitive neuroscience?
A scientific field that merges brain imaging with behavioral experimentation.
What is the cognitive revolution?
A movement in the 1950’s that proposed that the mind could be understood as a computational system.
What is cognitivism?
An approach in psychology that uses behavior as a method for developing and testing theories of the underlying processing of the mind.
What is computational neuroscience?
A scientific field that uses computer models of the brain to model real brain function.
What is cortical blindness?
A condition in which an individual with damage to the visual cortex will report having no visual experience, despite having working eyes.
What is dualism?
The view that the mind and body consist of fundamentally different kinds of substances or properties.
What is a function?
Mappings from inputs to outputs.
What are human factors?
A field of psychology concerned with applying scientific findings to the design of systems that people interact with
What is idealism?
The view that the only kind of reality is mental in nature.
What is an independent variable?
The conditions that are being manipulated by the experimenter in order to determine their effects on the dependent variable.
What are individual differences?
Variations in performance across different individuals in cognitive tasks.
What is information processing?
Computatoinal cognition approach. Sensory info is the input. Behavior is the output.
What is introspection?
A technique employed by the structuralists to study the mind by training people to examine their own conscious experiences.
What is latent learning?
Learning in the absence of any reward or punishment conditioning, as in Tolman’s maze experiments.
What is the mind-body problem?
The question of how mental events, such as thoughts, beliefs, and sensations, are related to physical mechanisms taking place in the body.
What is monism?
The view that there is only one kind of basic ‘substance’ in the world, whether exclusively physical or exclusively mental.
What is neutral monism?
The view that the mental and physical are identical and all of reality is made of one kind of thing that is neither mental or physical.
What is operant conditioning?
A method of conditioning that reinforces certain voluntary behaviors through a system of rewards and punishments.
What is opsin?
Light-activated proteins, used in optogenetics to experimentally modify the activity of neurons.
What is optogenetics?
A technique used to control the activity of brain cells based on introducing light-sensitive proteins into the cells and activating them with light.
What is physicalism/materialism?
The view that all of reality, including mental processes, is physical or material in nature.
What is reaction time?
A measure of how long it takes an experimental subject to respond to a given task or query.
What is reinforcement learning?
A form of behavioral conditioning based on punishment and reinforcement (reward) feedback.
What is replication?
A process in scientific research in which a previous experiment is repeated using the same methods as the original.
What is a response?
The behavior an experimental subject engages in after a stimulus is presented.
What is a Skinner box?
A chamber used to contain and automatically provide behavioral feedback to an animal during operant conditioning experiments.
What is the speed-accuracy tradeoff?
When a participant in an experiment sacrifices accuracy in their responses for greater speed or vice-versa.
What is a subject/participant (experimental)?
A person upon whom a psychological experiment is being conducted.
What is a stimulus?
Anything used to stimulate the senses as part of an experimental procedure, such as an image or a sound.
What is the Stroop effect/interference?
A psychological phenomenon in which reporting the ink color of words is slowed down when the words spell out the name of a different color.
What is structuralism?
A school of psychology whose approach relied on introspecting on one’s own conscious mental states in order to understand the mind.
What is a trial?
Repetitions of an experimental condition, typically used in order to compensate for variability in performance across attempts.
