chapter 1 Flashcards
what is cognitive psychology
The science of how the mind is organized to produce intelligent thought and how it is realized in the brain
implications for cognitive psychology
Understanding acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and performance enables improvement of intellectual training and performance.
cognitive psychology and studying
-Preview the chapter.
-Use the section heading to create a study question for each section.
-Read the section and answer the question you generated.
-Read the section summary and review the main points.
-At the end of the chapter review the main points and section questions.
-When you are done, for each question you generated you have to see if you can remember the answer to the question without looking at your notes
early history in ancient Greece
Plato and Aristotle
-Philosophical discussions sparked a debate.
Two positions emerged:
-Empiricism - knowledge from experience
-Nativism - innate knowledge
early history in germany (focus on introspective observation)
Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory (1879).
-A cognitive approach to psychology
-His goal was to understand the workings of the mind
Introspection
-Introspection according to Wundt is breaking down thought into its smallest pieces, compared it to atoms; can get here through introspection which is like giving someone a word and having them say whatever experiences come to mind with that word
-Similar to free association, but more basic
Sample introspective experiment (Mayer & Orth, 1901)
- Free-association task
history, psychology in america (focus on behavior)
William James
-Principles of Psychology (1890), was the first psychology textbook
-“Stream of consciousness”
-Your brain will make sense of whatever experience you are having because you have an unbroken stream of consciousness, you are putting these things together and making sense of your lives
Edward Thorndike
-Learning theory applicable to classrooms
-“Law of effect”
-The idea that behavior is influenced by the consequences that follow it
John B. Watson (america)
Behaviorism
-Branch of psychology concerned with external behavior
-Baby Albert
-Pushed research on cognition into the background
-Cognitive psychology should not be psychology of the mind, not what psychology should be about, psychology should be about behavior, if you study this I can learn everything important about someone
-Did not think thoughts, emotions, cognitions were important
what is Gestalt psychology
Activity of the brain and the mind is more than the sum of its parts (contradicts introspection)
-Cannot break things down into individual pieces, cannot understand it by looking at pieces in isolation
-Can only understand it by looking at everything at once
Popular in Europe
-After in WW2 there was really no Gestalt psychology, a lot of these theorists were Jewish during the holocaust
what were the three main influences of the cognitive revolution when AI, information theory, and linguistics
-Computer science: Artificial intelligence (AI) development
Research on human performance (World War II)
-They wanted to make better soldiers during this time
Linguistics: Study of the structure of language (Noam Chomsky)
explain information-processing analyses
-Dominant approach in cognitive psychology
“Cognition is steps that process info”
-Definition of cognition that the field of cognitive psychology started using, what are the steps your brain goes through as you process different kinds of information
Sternberg paradigm
-Classic example
what is the sternberg memory search
-“Keep 3-9-7 in mind”
-“is 9 in the set?”
-The time needed to recognize a digit increases with the number of items in the memory set.
-The straight line represents the linear function that fits the data best.
-They could calculate for how much longer it would take to recall the set for every number added
explain Sternberg’s analysis of the sequence of information processing stages in his task
-For example, making stimulus harder to see increases time, but does not affect slope of line.
-Very narrow, cognitive psychologists have gradually broadened their approach:
-Gradual attention to more complex phenomena and to the nature of information processing in the brain
Process is you have to perceive the number, go through the set, and see if it is in the set
-They played around with how long it took people to perceive the stimulus (e.g. Tell people the number or show them a very blurry number)
what is cognitive neuroscience
The study of how cognition is realized in the brain, including findings in the study of most complex thought processes
what is a neuron
-A cell that accumulates and transmits electrochemical activity in the nervous system
-There are approximately 100 billion neurons in the human brain that are simultaneously active to process information.
what is an action potential
-Brief electrical impulse by which electrical information is transmitted along the neuron’s axon
-When an action potential reaches the terminal bouton, the bouton secretes a chemical substance called a neurotransmitter.
explain the build of neurons or how neurons work
-Signals come from neurons into the dendrites, when enough is collected it transmits signal down its own axon and communicates with other neurons
-Soma is the cell body which has all the organelles
-Myelin allows signals to transmit fast and effectively
what is a neurotransmitter
-Chemical that crosses the synapse from the terminal bouton of one neuron to alter the electric potential of the membrane of the next neuron
-How one neuron communicates with the next
explain polarization or electrical potential, and the two kinda
1) Excitatory synapses
-Decrease polarization
-Increase the likelihood of a cell firing
2) Inhibitory synapses
-Increase polarization
-Decrease the likelihood of a cell firing
how do neurons communicate
-Neurons communicate by releasing chemicals, called neurotransmitters, from the axon terminal on one side of the synapse
-These neurotransmitters act on the membrane of the receptor dendrite to change its electric potential.
what are the determinants of the representation of information in the brain
MEMBRANE POTENTIAL
-More or less negative
RATE OF FIRING
-Number of nerve impulses an axon transmits per second
how does neural information processing take place
in terms of excitatory and inhibitory effects.
-Individual neurons respond to specific stimuli features.
-Single neurons cannot represent human cognition complexity.
-Human cognition is achieved through large neural
explain the Mazover et al study with nonsense vs. coherent
-Compared brain activity of participants who heard nonsense sentences and coherent sentences
-Activity in brain regions increased as stimuli became more cognitively sophisticated.
what are the parts of the central nervous system
brain and spinal cord
explain lower and higher parts of the brain
Lower brain parts: Evolutionarily more primitive
-Do things that keep you alive in lower part of brain
Higher brain parts: Well developed only in higher species
-More complex part of brain
what does the spinal cord do
Carries neural messages from brain to muscles and sensory messages from body to brain
what is the lower part of the brain responsible for
more primitive functions
what are the four parts of the lower brain
-MEDULLA: Breathing, swallowing, digestion, and heartbeat
-HYPOTHALAMUS: Basic drives
-CEREBELLUM: Voluntary movement
-THALAMUS: Relay station
what is the cerebral cortex and what is it made of
Most recently evolved area of the brain
Most advanced cognitions:
-GYRUS: Bulge on the cortex
-SULCUS: Crease on the cortex
Cortical regions are typically organized into four lobes.
what are the four lobes of the brain
frontal, occipital, parietal, temporal
what does the frontal lobe do
Involved in two major functions:
-1. Back portion – primarily motor functions
-2. Front portion (prefrontal cortex) – higher -level processing (e.g., planning)
what does the occipital lobe do
primary visual areas
what does the parietal lobe do
Sensory functions, especially those involving spatial processing
what does the temporal lobe do
Primary auditory areas and recognition of objects
what is the hippocampus
Critical to memory
what are the basal ganglia
Basic motor control and the control of complex cognition
explain the hemispheres of the brain
LEFT AND RIGHT HEMISPHERES
Specialized for different types of processing:
-LEFT – linguistic and analytic
-RIGHT – perceptual and spatial
what is lateralization
-Left side of body connected to right hemisphere of brain
-And vice versa
what is the corpus callosum
Broad band of neural fibers that connects the two hemispheres
explain split brain patients
Have had an operation that surgically severed the corpus callosum
-There are only certain circumstances where you would notice differences between them and you
The two hemispheres differ in their specialization.
-Research has shown a linguistic advantage for the left hemisphere; the right hemisphere outperforms the left hemisphere in manual tasks.
what is aphasia
Severe impairment of speech caused by damage to the brain
what is Broca’s area
Region in the left frontal cortex that is important for processing language, particularly syntax in speech
What is Broca’s aphasia
-Severe difficulties in producing spoken speech
-Short speech, ungrammatical sentences, etc., but they make sense
-Still hear and understand things, does not really impact comprehension
what is Wernicke’s area
Region in the left temporal lobe that is important to language, particularly the semantic content in speech
what is Wernicke’s aphasia
-Serious disruptions in comprehension
-Speech with fairly grammatical sentences that are almost devoid of meaning, speak clearly and thoroughly but does not make sense
explain topographic organization
-In many areas of the cortex, information processing is structured spatially.
-Adjacent areas in the cortex represent information from adjacent areas of the visual field.
what is the initial evidence for topgraphic organization
Looking at a monkey brain, injected it with a tracer so that whatever part of the monkey’s brain was active would light up and be made apparent
Made the monkey look at a bullseye picture, in the occipital cortex the brain ink mirrors the image the monkey saw
-The things you see are projected into the occipital cortex
what divides the parietal cortex from the motor cortex
the sulcus
explain the somatosensory cortex
The parts of your body that are the most sensitive get the most space on the somatosensory cortex
Ex. Face is a very sensitive part of the body and takes up a lot of space in the cortex
The same is true with the motor cortex, on your motor cortex there is less space given toward your face but more space given to hands eyes and legs because these parts of the body are more coordinated
explain phineas gage and how he contributed to methods in neuroscience
Used to rely primarily on brain damage
-Phineas Gage was working on railroad tracks and an iron rod went through his head and out the top of his head, this did not kill him and he was almost immediately conscious after
-Destroyed his prefrontal cortex, changed his personality
what are the three neural imaging techniques
EEG, PET, fMRI
what is an EEG
Electroencephalography (EEG)
-Measuring electrical pulses that go through someone’s brain
-Good at measuring the time of something occurring, but not the best at measuring location
-Event-related potentials (ERPs)
-Whenever your brain does something it has this reaction
what is PET
Positron emission tomography (PET)
-Better at determining the location of a brain event
-Injecting a tracer into someone’s blood and watch which parts of your brain is sucking up the blood, can tell by looking at an X-ray
what is fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
-Better at determining the location of a brain event, not a good indicator of timing of event
-Using a magnetic field to track iron in the blood, iron in your blood sends off a radio wave which allows fMRI to track where the blood is going
limitations of brain imaging techniques
These various imaging techniques have revolutionized understanding of the brain activity underlying human cognition, but they have a limitation that goes beyond temporal and spatial resolution:
-Provide only a limited basis for causal inference
-Is brain activation the cause of you doing things, or is it the effect of you doing the thing
-Previous studies limited to people with strokes, brain injuries, and brain disease
what is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
-Allows researchers to briefly incapacitate (or stimulate) a region
-Coil is placed over particular part of head so that pulse or pulses can be delivered to that region
Useful in determining role of different brain regions
Clinical applications
-Can help determine causal relationship of brain function and activity, turn off parts of your brain and see if it can still function
-Can also activate parts of your brain and help disorders like depression, Autism, etc. because these disorders have less active parts of your brain than normal/healthy brains
explain using fMRI for children equation solving and where activity was found in the brain
Blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response (different information-processing components tracked separately)
Whenever your brain does anything the oxygenated blood goes to that part of your brain and the fMRI measures the iron in the hemoglobin
-Illustrates usefulness of using information-processing analysis and cognitive neuroscience techniques
-Found that when children were solving equations there was activity in the prefrontal, motor, and parietal areas of the brain
-Children had to solve 0 step equations, 1step or 2step equations
what did the find in the motor part of the brain for the children solving equations study
-After they gave response, the most blood was being sucked into the portion of the brain 5 seconds later
-No matter how many steps the problem has it takes the same amount of time in the motor cortex
what did the find in the parietal part of the brain for the children solving equations study
In the 0 step question least amount of activity, in the 2step equation most amount of activity, activity peaks until the problem is solve
what did the find in the prefrontal part of the brain for the children solving equations study
-The black line never peaks in the 0step problems, most people know what this is b remembering rules and applying them
-More activation for 1step and 2step problems
what are the problems with neural imaging
fMRI misses a lot of data
-We know from comparing EEG with fMRI
Low test-retest reliability
-You will find different things if you do these studies again with a different group of people
-Could be because getting people time in an fMRI tube is very expensive so they would have very small sample sizes
-Low power
Likelihood of not committing a type 2 error, failing to reject the null when the null is false
Possibility of false positives
-Salmon study
-Grab a big salmon, throw it in the fMRI and have it for dinner, the fMRI had found activity in the fish even though it was dead, something was off with the machine
