Cognition, consciousness, and language Flashcards
Information processing model
Brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information much like a computer
Ability to think abstractly
Develops over time.
Early cognitive development is
limited by brain maturation
What influence cognitive development?
Culture, genes, environment
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational
Sensorimotor stage
Focuses on manipulating the environment to meet physical needs through circular reactions. Object permenance ends this stage.
Circular reactions
For example, a child may suck his or her thumb by accident and then later intentionally repeat the action. These actions are repeated because the infant finds them pleasurable.
Preoperational stage
Focuses on symbolic thinking, egocentrism, centration
Symbolic thinking
For young children to engage in making up or imagination by acting as if things are real when they are not real. Symbolic thinking is a cognitive stage of development in young preschool age children.
Centration
In psychology, centration is the tendency to focus on one salient aspect of a situation and neglect other, possibly relevant aspects. Introduced by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget through his cognitive-developmental stage theory, centration is a behaviour often demonstrated in the preoperational stage.
Concrete operational stage
Focuses on understanding the feelings of others and manipulating physical or concrete objects
Formal operational stage
Focuses on abstract though and problem solving
Cognitive decline and aging
Mild is normal; significant might indicate underlying disorder
Biological factors that affect cognition
Organic brain disorders, genetic and chromosomal conditions, metabolic derangements, drug use
Problem solving
Requires identification and understanding of the problem, generation of potential solutions, testing of potential solutions, and evaluation of results
Mental set
Pattern of approach for a given problem. An inappropriate mental set may negatively impact problem solving.
Functional fixedness
Tendency to use objects only in the way they are normally utilized, which may create barriers to problem solving
Trial-and-error
the process of experimenting with various methods of doing something until one finds the most successful.
Algorithms
a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.
Deductive reasoning
Deriving conclusions from general rules
Inductive reasoning
Deriving generalizations from evidence
Heuristics
Shortcuts/rules of thumb to make decisions. It can lead to problematic decisions.
Biases
When an experimenter or decision maker is unable to objectively evaluate information. It can lead to problematic decisions.
Intuition
“gut feeling” regarding a particular decision. It can lead to problematic decisions. However, they are attributed to experience with similar situations.
Emotional state
Plays a role in decision making. It can lead to problematic decisions.
Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences
The theory of multiple intelligences differentiates human intelligence into specific ‘modalities’, rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. They are linguistic, logical-mathematical, musicalk, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal
Variations in intelligence can be attributed to
environment, education, and genetics combinations
States of consciousness
Alertness, sleep, dreaming, altered states of consciousness
Alertness
State of being awake and able to think, perceive, process, and express information.
What would you see on the EEG of an alert person?
Beta and alpha waves
Sleep
Important for health of body and brain
Stage 1 of sleep
Light sleep and dominated by theta waves on EEG.
Stage 2 of sleep
Slightly deeper sleep than stage 1 and has theta waves, sleep spindles, and K complexes
Stages 3 and 4 of sleep
Deep (slow-wave) sleep (SWS). Delta waves predominate on EEG. Most slee-wake disorders occur during Stage 3 and 4 non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Dreaming in SWS focuses on consolidating declarative memories.
Rapid eye movement sleep or REM or paradoxical sleep
Mind appears close to awake on EEG but person is asleep. Eye movements and body paralysis occur in this stage. Dreaming in REM focuses on consolidating procedural memories.
Sleep cycle
Around 90 minutes for adults
1-2-3-4-3-2-REM or 1-2-3-4-REM
REM becomes more frequent near morning
Melatonin
Changes in light in the evening trigger release of melatonin by pineal gland resulting in sleepiness
Cortisol levels near morning
Increase near early morning and help promote wakefulness
Circadian rhythms
Trend around 24 hours
Dreaming
Occurs mostly in REM
Dyssomnia
is a broad type of sleep disorders involving difficulty falling or remaining asleep, which can lead to excessive sleepiness during the day due to the reduced quantity, quality or timing of sleep eg insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, sleep deprivation
Parasomnias
Parasomnias are a category of sleep disorders that involve abnormal movements, behaviors, emotions, perceptions, and dreams that occur while falling asleep, sleeping, between sleep stages, or during arousal from sleep eg night terrors and sleepwalking
Hypnosis
State of consciousness in which individuals appear to be in control of other normal faculties but are in a highly suggestible state. It is often used for pain control, psychological therapy, memory enhancement, weight loss, and smoking cessation
Meditation
Quieting of the mind and is often used for relief of anxiety. Also has a role in religion.
Conscious-altering drugs
Depressants, stimulants, opiates, hallucinogens
Depressants
They promote or mimic GABA activity in the brain. They include alcohol, barbiturates, and benzodiaxepines.
Stimulants
Increase dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin concentrations in synaptic cleft. They include amphetamines, cocaine, and ecstasy.
Opiates and opiods
They cause death by respiratory depression. They include heroin, morphone, opium, oxycodone, and hydrocodone.
Hallucinogens
hallucinogen is a psychoactive agent that often or ordinarily causes hallucinations, perceptual anomalies, and other substantial subjective changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness that are not typically experienced to such degrees with other categories of drugs. LSD, ketamine
Marijuana
Has depressant, stimulant, and hallucinogenic effects.
Tetrehydrocannabinol
Active ingredient in marijuana
Drug addiction is mediated by
mesolimbic pathway
Mesolimbic pathway
Nucleus accumbens, medial forebrain bunlde, bentral tegmental area. Dopamine is main neurotransmitter
Selective attention
Allows one to pay attention to a particular stimulus while determining if additional stimuli in the bacground require attention
Divided attention
Uses automatic processing to pay attention to multiple activities at one time
Phonology
Actual sounds of speech
Morphology
Building blocks of words, such as rules for pluralizations, past tense, and so forth
Semantics
Meaning of words
Syntax
Rules dictating word order
Pragmatics
Changes in language delivery depending on context. Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.
Nativist (biological) theory of language
Language acquisition as being innate and controlled by language acquisition device or LAD
Learning (behaviorist) theory of language
Language acquisition as being controlled by operant conditioning and reinforcement by parents and caregivers
Social interactionist theory of language
Language acquisition as being caused by a motivation to communicate and interact with others
Whorfian (linguistic relativity) hypothesis
The lens through which we view and interpret the world is created by language
Where are speech areas found in the brain?
In the dominant hemisphere which most of the time is left hemisphere
Broca’s area
Controls motor function of speech
Broca’s aphasia
Damage to broca’s area leads to nonfluent aphasia in which generating each word requires great effort
Wernicke’s area
Controls language comprehension.
Werncike’s aphasia
Fluent, nonsensical aphasia with lack of comprehension
Arcuate fasciculus
Connects wernicke’s area and broca’s area.
Conduction aphasia
Damage to arcuate fasciculus and is marked by inability to repeat words heard depsite intact speech generation and comprehension
