Cognition Flashcards
What is cognition
- Cognition is an activity of the mind. Involves in the acquisition and use of knowledge.
- The mind creates representation of the world. We acts upon this representation to achieve our goal.
What mental process does cognition include
- Includes mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, decision-making, reasoning, problem-solving, imagining, planning & executing actions.
How to measure cognition
- unlike normal psy, cognition is observed via behavior
- understanding of the behavior can show a person’s cognition
- the environment create a stimulus. these stimulus create thought in our mind and leading to behavior
what are the different level of processing
- Computational level: what is the computational problem that the brain is trying to solve?
- Algorithmic level: what are the algorithms that the brain or mind is doing?
- Implementation level: how are these computations realised physically?
what is computational apporach
-based on the classical computational model of mind which states that thinking and reasoning are computations carried out with abstract symbols, according to symbolically represented rules. The symbols represent concepts and relations in the world - they are abstract tokens that bear no necessary resemblance to the thing they represent (e.g., 0s and 1s in a computer programme). The rules specify an input-output relation as in “If X, Then, Y”.
Shepard, holvand and Jekins categorization exp
- Catogory types vary in the complexity of the rule required to learn them
- Type 1 is easy, 2 a bit harder, 345 are odd Type 6 is hard
- measure how long it take to learn different object (went as expected). Type 6 is impossible to be completely accurate
- it was found that categorization can’t be done by how confusable it is.
- selective attention is key to categorization
mental representation
- Having different representation leads to focus on different aspects
- Changing selective attention lead to different answer
The war of ghost exp: how does memory change over time
Fredrick bartlett 1932
- presented British participant with an American folk story: the war of the ghost
- bartlet read it aloud and ask them to repeat it back
- he then ask them after a period of time (hours,day,week,moths or year)
- he noted down all change in the story told by the participant
- as more time pass, more and more detail are lost
Analysis of change from the war of ghost
- General outline stay constant for each subject after first recall
- rhythm and style are altered
- story are rationalized, meaning of various symbol is added
- form and items are stereotyped
- with infrequent reproduction, details are omitted or simplified and items transform into more familiar
What did the war of ghost showed about memory
- memory are comprise of specific details and theory or expectation of how those detail fit together
- if not recalled, the detail gradually loss until only the gist remain.
Oral tradition and memory
Method of loci: visualizations, dances, and stories are used encode things you want to remember
- think of a place and mentally visualize it with the item needed to remember
- when need to remember again, think of traveling to that place
different type of attention
® Covert attention - looking out the side of the eye.
® Overt attention – moving your eyes to look at something.
® Divided attention – attending to more than one thing at once.
® Selective attention – focusing on a single object. Selective attention not only highlights whatever is being attended, but also keeps us from perceiving what isn’t being attended (filtering out other things in the same manner as indicated in Broadbent’s filtering theory).
Folk devil theory
-introdeced by stanley Cohen in 1972, in his study folk devil and panics
three stages
-symbolism: the devil portrayal is oversimplified, easily recognizable and streotypical
-Exaggeration: the facts of the devil are exaggerated, distorted or made up
-prediction: futher immoral action are anticipated
