Cognitive Exam 1 Flashcards
Reaction time refers to
how long it takes to respond to stimuli
What did Donders study
How long it takes to make a decision by measuring reaction time
Simple vs Choice reaction time
Choice reaction time is ___ longer than simple reaction time
1/10 second
What is the primary cause of dual-task cost
not being able to make 2 decisions regarding 2 stimuli at once
Perception to response time longer in task 2, response selection delayed
What did Wundt study/propose (2 items)
Structuralism & Analytic Introspection
What did Ebbinghaus study
nature of memory & forgetting, how quickly information is lost over time
Savings Method
True about Analytic Introspection (4 items)
low reliability & validity, requires intensive training, triggered behaviorism
With Simple vs Choice reaction time, why is the white placeholder for the target location used
to let participants know WHERE the target would appear, they pay attention to potential target locations
With Simple vs Choice reaction time, why does the interval between trials VARY?
so participants cannot predict WHEN target would appear
Example of the practical application of mental chronometry
GOMS model to evaluate the efficiency of NYNEX phone company’s new workstation
What is mental chronometry?
measurement of response time
What is Ebbinhaus’ savings method
the ratio of relearning time to the original learning time
Why did Ebbinghaus use the savings method to measure memory and not the number of syllables remembered
not being able to recall study material does not necessarily mean not remembering anything about the study material (i.e., you do remember something but just cannot explicitly recall it)
Example of the practical application of the savings method
Evaluating the efficiency of using the flight-training simulator
What is the primary principle of cognitive psychology?
The mind cannot be measured directly (e.g., based on subjective reporting), therefore must be inferred from observable behavior
Example of the practical application of Introspection
Think-aloud testing in user experience (UX) design (especially, usability testing)
Watson used classical conditioning to explain what?
Negative emotional response to a certain specific stimuli
The primary difference between Classical and Operant conditioning
Classical explains learning about 2 external events
Operant explains learning about agent’s behavior and consequences
What phenomena CANNOT be explained by Behaviorism (4 items)
Cognitive Map
Language Learning
AHA Experience/Insight Learning
Observational Learning
Per Tolman’s experiment, rats learn a physical map of the environment (relative position of things)…
Even though the learning process has not been explicitly reinforced or punished
Define Nerve Net Theory
Physically connected, continuous network of neurons
Golgi Method stains how many neurons
few, 1 %
What was Cajal’s stain method?
Using the Golgi stain method on infant animal brains (low cell density)
What did Edgar Adrian study? (2 items)
Pressure-Sensitive Receptors
Neurons active and at rest
Per Adrian, what is a resting neurons mV
-70 mV
Inside a neuron’s cell body, -70 mV relative to outside the cell body
Per Adrian, what is an active neurons mV
+40 mV
Describe the process of firing neurons
When a neuron is stimulated, the charge inside the neuron rises to +40 mV due to the rush of positive sodium ions (Na+) into the cell body for ~1 millisecond, then returns to resting state at -70 mV
What happens to the STRENGTH of the action potential with stimulation
Strength remains the same no matter the strength of the stimulation
What happens to the RATE of the action potential with stimulation
Rate varies depending on the strength of the stimulation
What are Feature Detectors
neurons in the visual cortex that respond best to only specific orientations
Define Specificity Coding
our mind represents specific stimulus based on the firing of a specifically tuned neuron toward the stimulus (e.g., grandma cell)
What are 2 criticisms of specificity coding
A single neuron typically responds to multiple stimuli
There are too many kinds of stimuli that we can represent while the number of neurons are limited
What does Brain Localization of Function suggest?
Specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain
What is Broca’s area (location in brain & function)
language production
Frontal lobe
What is Wenicke’s area (location in brain & function)
language comprehension
Temporal lobe
Imagine that your grandfather speaks fluently but what he says does not make sense and he does not seem to understand what you had ask although he continuously speaks. Also, he does not recognize people he used to know. Then, the following brain areas might have been damaged
Wernike; Fusiform face area (FFA)
How is Double Dissociation demonstrated?
Damage to one region of the brain causes a deficit on process A but not on process B
AND
Damage to another region causes a deficit on process B but not on process A
What is the function of the Frontal Lobe
Coordination of information received from all senses & decision making
What is the function of the Occipital Lobe
Vision
What is the function of the Temporal Lobe
hearing, taste, smell
What is the function of the Parietal Lobe
touch, temperature, pain
Define Sensation
sensory receptors stimulated by environment
Define Perception
processing of sensory information by specialized areas or the brain, resulting in meaningful experiences
Example of distinction between sensation and perception
A patient with visual agnosia who sees something but does not know what it is
Define Bottom-Up processing
Eye to Brain
Perception affected by sensation
Define Top-Down processing
process originates in brain
sensation re-constructed based on person’s knowledge/experience/expectations/context
Example of distinction between bottom-up and top-down processing
Vanishing head illusion (not seeing a head, but seeing the whole black bar)
Examples of Top-Down processing (3 items)
Phonemic restoration effect: filling in the missing phoneme based on the context
An image presented before an ambiguous image (young-lady-old-lady, duck-or-rabbit) affects how the ambiguous image is interpreted
The fate of ink blob demonstration: the same ink-blob is recognized differently depending on the context
Phonemic restoration effect is similar to (2 items)
Vanishing head illusion, especially perceiving a continuous black bar
Perceiving a complete X although the X has a hole in the middle
Underlying mechanisms (principles) of perception (4 items)
Bayesian inference
Helmholtz likelihood principle
Taking regularities into account
Gestalt principles of organization
What is Bayesian Inference?
our final experience is determined on prior (initial belief) and likelihood (current evidence)
What is true based on taking regularities of the environment into account?
Based on experiences, we know that {light comes from above} which affects our perception of a textured surface (e.g., protruding or indented)
Oblique effect supports the account by showing that we are more sensitive to regularities of the environment
Examples of experience-dependent plasticity (experience changes the brain) (3 items)
Oblique effect
A cat’s lack of sensitivity to vertical lines after being reared in a horizontal-line-only environment
Increase in FFA response in Greeble experiment
Define Principle of Good Continuation (Gestalt)
Lines follow the smoothest path
ex) a rope coiled on a beach and are able to perceive it as a single strand
Define Principle of Similarity (Gestalt)
Similar things (color, shape) appear to be grouped together ex) You are at a parade where there are a number of marching bands. You perceive the bands that are all in the same uniforms as being grouped together. The red uniforms are one band, the green uniforms another, and so forth
Define Principle of Good Figure/Simplicity/Praganz (Gestalt)
a complex image is perceived as the sum of its parts, tend not to make a complex story
Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the underlying structure is as simple as possible
Define What Pathway (location & function)
Visual cortex to Temporal Lobe
Object recognition, Perception
ex) brand logos
Define Where Pathway (location & function)
Visual cortex to Parietal lobe Spatial recognition (action) landmarks ex) inserting key into keyhole
What is dichotic listening paradigm
participants listen to one message through one ear and another message through the other ear. Participants were to repeat only one of the messages designated by the researcher (shadowing)
What is the purpose of shadowing in dichotic listening
To ensure that participants are paying attention to the designated message
What is the Cocktail Party Effect?
The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli
In an Early Selection Model (selective attention process) what did Broadbent and Treisman propose
Broadbent proposed the FILTER
Treisman proposed the ATTENUATOR
Why did Treisman modify Broadbent’s Early Selection Model (Bottleneck Model)
Participants recognized their own names released from the unattended ear
Dear Aunt Jane experiment
Why did McKay propose the Late Selection Model
unattended information can be processed fully without attention
experiment where he released either “river” or “money” along with “They were throwing stones at the bank,”
Per Lavie’s Load Theory of Attention, we are more likely to process unattended stimuli when…
The task load is low due to the low complexity of stimuli, and therefore available processing capacity is left
Why did Lavie propose her Load Theory of Attention
Resolve the issue of Early vs Late Selection controversy
In Posner’s Pre-cueing experiment, how often did the arrow cue accurately predict the target location
In most (80%) of the trials
What were the results of Posner’s Pre-cueing experiment?
Participants responded slower to stimulus at invalidly cued location, than validly cued location, demonstrating selective visual attention
What is the Stroop Effect
the difficulty of not performing a well-practiced or automatic task at the cost of an intended processing
Why did participants not notice the gorilla in the Invisible Gorilla Video (3 items)
Visual scene was too crowded, too much processing capacity for irrelevant stimulus
Attention directed to white stimulus, filtering out black. without attention, no perception
did not expect to see gorilla
Describe the results of Schneider & Shiffrin’s Divided Attention Experiment
required divided attention between target and test frames
with practice could become automatic
when task was too hard participants never reported automaticity
Describe the process of Binding
combining disconnected features (color, texture, location) into a single image
Describe Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory (3 items)
Preception goes through pre-attentive stage - free floating features
Then Focused attention stage - features combine with help of attention
No evidence supporting Balint’s Syndrom patients
What are the 4 key aspects of an experiment
Stimuli - physical objects presented to participants
Procedure - sequence of stimuli
Task - participant response to stimuli
Result
What are the 3 stages of the simple perceptual-motor task
Perceptual process (hearing/seeing), Response Selection (decision), & Motor Response (pushing a button)
What caused the emergence of Behaviorism (3 items)
Watson didn’t like Analytic Introspection
Proposed Behaviorism - purely objective & experimental
observe behavior, not consciousness
How did Tolman’s Cognitive Map Experiment impact behaviorism and cognitive psychology
1st-time concept of cognitive used - something other than stimulus-response could occur
“Cognitive” violated behavioralism - internal processes were not acceptable topics of study
Define Cajal’s Neuron Doctrine (3 items)
Neurons shapes are related to their function
individual nerve cells of the nerve net are not continuously connected
made cellular study of mental life possible
Define Population Coding
firing a large all neurons for stimulus
ex) all neurons are responding to 3 people
Define Sparse Coding
firing a small group of neurons while others don’t respond
Define Distributed Representation
while the brain is localized for different functions, the cognitive process has distributed activation of various specialized brain areas
ex) color fires in multiple parts of the brain
Fusiform Face Area (FFA) location & function
Underside of Temporal Lobe
responds to faces
Define Helmholtz Theory of Unconscious Inference
perception is the result of unconscious and rapid assumptions we infer about the environment
Define Helmholtz Likelihood Principle
we perceive objects most likely to cause pattern of stimuli
what is “most likely” based on past experiences
What is the Bayesian Inference formula
prior x likelihood = probability of outcome
Define Experience Dependent Plasticity
mechanism of brain structures are changed by experience. neurons change to respond to specific stimuli of environment
Define the Principle of Proximity (Gestalt)
we group things together that are similarly close
ex) large grid of dots, split into 3 columns. recognize 3 sets
Define Principle of Familiarity (Gestalt)
things are more likely to form familiar or meaningful groups
once you see it a certain way you cannot unsee it
Define Principle of Common Fate (Gestalt)
things moving together in the same direction belong in the same group
ex) birds flocking together
What are the 7 principles of Gestalt
Good Continuation Good Figure/Simplicity/Pragnanz Closure Similarity Proximity Familiarity Common Fate
What is Gestalts Principle of Organization
the mind organizes parts according to 7 principles to make a meaningful perception
the whole is greater than the sum of parts
Define Lavie’s Load Theory of Attention
how much information people can handle & limit on the ability to process information
low load tasks have remaining processing capacity
Define Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention
explains how we focus on one message
Message -> Sensory memory -> Filter -> Detector -> Memory
Define Treisman’s Attenuation Model
“leaky filter”
unattended messages are attenuated. weaker processing
Message -> Attenuator -> Dictionary -> Memory
Define Balint’s Syndrom
inability to focus attention on individual objects due to parietal lobe damage
Define Inattentional Blindness
not attending to something clearly visible and missing it
demonstrates the role of selective attention
What was Cartwright-Finch & Lavie’s experiment and the results?
cross-arm stimulus for 5 trials, participants focused on the length of arms, 6th trial added small square to display
2/20 (10%) saw the square
example of intentional blindness
What was Treisman’s Illusionory Conjunction Study
black numbers and shapes, participants "saw" new shapes/colors focusing attention (removing black #s) eliminates illusionary conjunctions - shapes and colors properly matched
