Chapter 2 - History Cog.Sci / Linguistics Flashcards
Which of the following statements is least compatible with the cognitive view of information processing?
a. When someone speaks to me, my linguistic system segments the incoming auditory input into words.
b. When I see an object in the horizon, my visual system automatically computes its shape and its colour.
c. When I see an apple, I observe that it is round and it is red, and so I attribute those properties to the mental representation.
d. Visual illusions persist, even though I know it is there.
c. When I see an apple, I observe that it is round and it is red, and so I attribute those properties to the mental representation.
Watson, one of the founders of behaviorism, thought that introspection…
a. Had no place in a scientific psychology.
b. Could be used to measure only response times to stimuli.
c. Should be incorporated into mainstream cognitive psychology.
d. Was a valid method for understanding mental processes.
a. Had no place in a scientific psychology.
What was one of Plato’s key contributions to modern thinking about cognitive science?
a. The notion that all knowledge must be learned.
b. The notion that all knowledge is the product of externalized experiences.
c. The notion that knowledge can be innate.
d. The notion that our mental faculties are conscious intensions.
c. The notion that knowledge can be innate.
When I see an ambiguous figure, such as the Necker cube, I can assess the processes by which it changes perspective. This suggests that:
a. Perception and cognition are continuous, with the early stages of perceptual computations being accessible to higher thoughts.
b. Introspection is an unreliable method for investigating perceptual and cognitive processes because we cannot access how we perceive objects, even if we feel that we can.
c. Perception is multi-faceted, allowing us to experience an object in its full 3-D.
d. Cognitive processes are entirely dependent on how we think about objects when we see them.
b. Introspection is an unreliable method for investigating perceptual and cognitive processes because we cannot access how we perceive objects, even if we feel that we can.
Which of the following statements best describes Chomsky’s perspective on language acquisition?
a. Children learn language through the reinforcement of correct use of rules and representations when uttering words and sentences.
b. Children learn language by imitating and mimicking others in their environment.
c. Children learn language by abstracting all of the descriptive rules and representations from the utterances they hear in their environment.
d. Children are innately endowed with the mental machinery that allows for the capacity to learn and develop any language.
d. Children are innately endowed with the mental machinery that allows for the capacity to learn and develop any language.
The procedure in which trained participants describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli presented under controlled conditions is known as… ?
a. Introspection
b. Functional analysis
c. Behavioural analysis
d. Information processing
a. Introspection
Descartes was one of the first to have insights about cognition - that it could be (in modern terms) explained as:
a. Computational processes over mental representations
b. The conscious experience of mental processes and stimulus responses
c. Computational processes over operant and reinforced representations
d. The pairing of stimulus and responses
a. Computational processes over mental representations
These are three of the main factors leading to the so-called cognitive revolution of the 1950s:
a. Children’s ability to learn language through imitation, the development of Descartes’ Cartesian mind framework, and the rejection of the intentional fallacy
b. Behaviourism’s success in accounting for language acquisition, the development of brain scanning methods, and introspectionism
c. Plato’s notion of “earlier souls”, the need for an interdisciplinary science, and the success of operant conditioning
d. The development of computers, mentalism in linguistics, and Miller’s focus on internal “plans”
d. The development of computers, mentalism in linguistics, and Miller’s focus on internal “plans”
It is correct to say that …
a. Behaviorism explains the regularities in human cognition by having direct access to the mechanisms underlying sensation and perception.
b. Behaviorism is the dominant framework in cognitive science because it successfully explains rules and representations as a function stimuli-responses pairings.
c. Behaviorism does not explain the regularities of cognitive and perceptual events that underly the rules and representations of human cognition.
d. Behaviorism does not account for the nature of the rules and representations that underly internal workings of human cognition.
d. Behaviorism does not account for the nature of the rules and representations that underly internal workings of human cognition.
Which of the following statements best captures Plato’s “Poverty of Stimulus”?
a. The socio-economic class determines how we learn a stimulus.
b. Perceptual stimuli, such as visual or linguistic inputs, are too sensorily “poor” to be encoded by the cognitive system.
c. Our cognitive system has an explicit disposition to learn only certain types of stimuli.
d. Children can produce and understand sentences they have never heard.
d. Children can produce and understand sentences they have never heard.
