Cognitive Psychology Exam 4 Flashcards
Affirming the Antecedent
p therefore q
Denying the consequent
not q therefore not p
affirming the consequent
q therefore p
denying the antecedent
not p therefore not q
Which types of conditional syllogisms are valid?
Affirming the antecedent and denying the consequent
Which cards should you turn over in the Wason Four-Card Problem if the statement is: If Vowel, then even number – E K 4 7
E (affirming antecedent) 7 (denying consequent)
Falsification Principle
To test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule
What does the beer example vs card example show and prove
SHOWS: People did better on the card task when it was beers and drinking ages than when it was numbers and letters
PROVES: being able to relate the beer task to regulations about drinking makes it easier – concrete tasks are easier than abstract ones
Pragmatic Reasoning Schema
A pragmatic reasoning schema is a way of thinking about cause and effect in the world that is learned as part of experiencing everyday life
Permission Scheme
An example of the pragmatic reasoning schema that states that if a person satisfies condition A (such as being
the legal age for drinking), then he or she gets to carry out action B (being served alcohol).
Cholera Example
cholera and hepatitis included in the card experiment and people were surprisingly good which is kind alarming
social exchange theory
an important aspect of human behavior is the ability for two people to cooperate in a way that is beneficial to both people
What are two options to explain the four card problem
Cheating
Permission
Conclusion of Four Card Problem
Context is Important!!!!!!
familiar situations can often generate better reasoning than abstract statements or statements that people cannot relate to. However, familiarity is not always necessary for
conditional reasoning (as in the tattoo problem), and situations have also been devised
in which people’s performance is not improved, even in familiar situations
What are factors that lead to the strength of evidence in inductive reasoning?
Representativeness of observations – How well do the observations about a particular category represent all of the members of that category?
Number of observations
Quality of the evidence – strength of the observation (helps to include scientific facts in the evidence)
Availability Heuristic
events that are more easily remembered are
judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered
Which Heuristic does the letter R in first or third position prove
Availability Heuristic
Illusory correlations
Illusory correlations occur when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlation or it is
much weaker than it is assumed to be. Illusory correlations can occur when we expect
two things to be related, so we fool ourselves into thinking they are related even when
they are not.
Illusory Truth Effect
prior exposure increases ease of processing and is used as a heuristic to infer accuracy
Representative Heuristic
the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the
properties of A resembles the properties we usually associate with class B
Is the glasses and farmer story an example of the availability or representative heuristic
RepresentativeHeuristic
Base Rate
the relative proportion of different classes in the population
Conjuction Rule
the probability of a conjunction of two events (A and B)
cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (A alone or B alone)
law of large numbers
the larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting
group will be of the entire population
Expected Utility Theory
This theory is based on the assumption that people are basically rational, so if they have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in
the maximum expected utility
Expected Emotions
emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome
Immediate Emotions
are emotions that are experienced at the time a decision is
being made
Integral immediate emotions
emotions that are associated with the act of making a decision
Incidental immediate emotions
emotions that are unrelated to the decision
People are risk seeking the domains of ___ and risk averse in the domains of ____
losses and gains
Framing Effect
decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated, or framed.
What is the prefrontal cortex necessary for in terms of decision making?
Planning and preservation, problem solving, and reasoning,
What two parts of the brain are activated in the utility game?
Anterior Insula and the PFC
What are some aspects of Deduction
Theory based inference, top-down, either true or false, validation, syllogisms
Major Premise
The two statements
Minor Premise
The conclusion
Belief Bias
tendency to think syllogism is valid if conclusion is valid
Which conlusions are most and least likely to be thought of as valid
what does this prove
MOST: believable (valid and invalid)
LEAST: unbelievable and invalid
if conclusion is believable people are less sensitive to validity
What does the experiement of people going under an MRI and judging syllogisms show and prove?
SHOWS: right inferior frontal gyrus activates on correctly identified unbelievable conclusions (overcoming intuitive wrong responses) – area is often activated during inhibition of prepotent responses and top-down effortful processing
PROVES: people use right inferior frontal gyrus to inhibit making judgment based on just conclusion
Mental Models
build model of the premises using imagination, look for exceptions, and if you don’t find one, then syllogism is true
Does the brain use visual imagery to respond to syllogisms and what experiment proves this?
YES!
Experiment: people were sometimes given visual relations (smaller bigger, cleaner and dirtier) and sometimes control condition (better worse, smarter and dumber)
SHOWS: part of brain became more active during reasoning about visual relationships
What is an example of a mental model that isn’t visual
The Beatles songs
Which conditional syllogism statements are difficult for people to answer?
Affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent
What are some aspects of induction
making probable conclusions based on evidence, data based inference, bottom up, probabilistic conclusions, prediction, not guaranteed to be correct
what can strengthen inductive reasoning
frequency and representativeness
Do people obtain inductive reasoning estimates by thinking hard, colllecting data, and making conclusions OR by using short-cuts (heuristics)?
often heuristics
What does the coin flip example show?
People prefer the one that looks more random but really they each have the exact same probability and it’s a Representative Heuristic
Anchoring
when making an evaluation, we make an initial estimate (anchor) and then adjust this value to fit additional information
What does the African Nations in the UN example show and prove
SHOW: answered 25% when spinner stopped at 10 and 45% when spinner stopped at 65
Explain Fake News Experiment and what it shows and proves
Phase 1: view 3 real and 3 fake headlines (some participants saw warning for fake items)
Phase 2: Distraction task
Phase 3: rate 24 headlines (12 old and 12 new) for familiarity and accuracy
SHOWS: when people had already seen the news headlines they reported them as more accurate regardless of their accuracy even if they were inconsistent with the participant’s ideology – Results also hold after a week!
Doesn’t work on perfectly implausibility statements like the earth being a square
PROVES: illusory truth effect – prior exposure increases ease of processing and is used as a heuristic to infer accuracy
Explain the Conditions of the Fake-news study
There were three conditions, warning abt fake news and tagged as fake, warning about fake news and no tag as fake (doesn’t mean it’s real), and control (no warning and no tag as fake)
What does the fake news study show
In the warning condition, the headlines that didn’t have a tag were rated as much more accurate later on compared to the control condition than the warning and condition with tagged headlines → implied truth effect
Rationality Decision Making
Always prefer the option with the highest utility
Transitivity Decision Making
If Utility of A is greater than Utilitity of B
and Utility of B is greater than Utility of C then Utility of A is greater than Utility of C
Consistency Decision Making
If utility of A is greater than utility of B now then utility of A will be greater than utility of B later
What do economists use to measure utility?
revealed preference
What is the Neuroscience Monkey Experiment
Monkeys chose between different amounts of water and Kool-Aid
Activity in neurons in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (sits behind eye sockets) was measured
Monkey chooses by choosing 4 squirts of kool aid or one squirt of water
SHOWS: monkey is indifferent between 4 kool aid and 1 water (likes water more than kool aid), two types of relevant neurons
One type of OFC neuron encodes the value of Kool aid and firing rate increases when squirts of kool aid increases
One type of OFC neuron encodes the value of chosen offer, so it fires a lot when we chose one water and also four kool aid, so it fires more when the value of the chosen option is higher
Decoy Effect
violation of consistency through a third irrelevant option
Which is weighed heavier: losses or gains?
losses
Endowment Effect
people value their goods more if they own them
What does the lottery ticket and sports game experiment prove?
Optimism Bias
What are the two systems for decisison making?
System 1:
Intuitive
Fast
Non-conscious
Automatic
System 2:
Deliberative
Slow
Conscious
Controlled
All these heuristics we have seen are part of System ___
1
Hypothesis: People with higher scores on cognitive reflection test make ‘better’ decisions – Intertemporal Choice: $50 now or $100 in a month
what does this show and prove?
People who are good and use system 2 at cognitive reflection task are more patient and are less steep discounters
Marshmallow Test results
Kids who are more patient at the marshmallow task do better on the SATs, get higher education, and are better at suppresses responses at age 41
What does the Intertemporal choice and load experiment with the money and digits show and prove?
Load Condition: Have to remember 5 digits and recall number to the right of 5
SHOWS: Steeper discount in load condition
PROVES: Loading working memory reduces the value of the delayed option
What does the risky choices and load condition show and prove?
More risky choices under load
Fewer risky choices under load
Cognitive load increases risk aversion
PROVES: we need to use top down control to exert control and avoid being impulsive – need top-down control to suppress risk aversion heuristic
What does the monkey experiment with the kool aid and water show and prove?
One type of OFC neuron encodes the value of Kool aid and firing rate increases when squirts of kool aid increases
One type of OFC neuron encodes the value of chosen offer, so it fires a lot when we chose one water and also four kool aid, so it fires more when the value of the chosen option is higher
PROVES: activity in OFC drives decisions
BUT correlation is not causation!!!
Neurons fire based on subjective value of what is happening
What does the second monkey experiment show and prove?
SHOWS: Increased preference for offer 2 in condition 1 and Increased preference for offer 1 in condition 2
PROVES: electric current reduces the utility of something of that option
Proves causation because we are sending an electric current to silence that neuron so we will have a smaller utility of that option
Backfire Effect
why conversations between people with strong opposing views (as in politics) can sometimes seem counterproductive
Are Hueristics good or bad?
In general really good but they can often lead us astray and lead to making irrational choices
Gaps in Utility THeory
- Gain/loss framework (includes framing effect)
- Endowment Effect
- Decoy Effect
- Mood
Indiference Point
decision maker truly does not care between two choices
Resource Theory/Ego Depletion Theory
if willpower is eerter at first, people will be less likely to be able to exert willpower later
Is willpower a fixed resource?
cookie and radish theory seems to prove this but it is not about glucose
if resource theory doesn’t work, then what does?
the cost-benefit decision – people will use cost benefit analysis to decide whether or not to do something
What does cognitive control help us overcome
response conflict
is the stroop effect reduced more after an incongruent or congruent trial?
incongruent because you learn you need to start paying attention
language
a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences
What are the four major concerns of psycholinguists?
Comprehension
Speech Production
Representation
Acquisition
Lexicon Definition
a person’s knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, and how they are used in relation to other words
Phoneme
the shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word
Morpheme
Morphemes are the smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function
Phonemic Restoration Effect
“fi lling in” of a missing phoneme based on the context produced by the sentence and the portion of the word –> uses top-down processing
Speech Segmentation
The process of perceiving individual words in the continuous fl ow of the speech signal
Word Superiority Effect
the finding that letters are easier
to recognize when they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are
contained in a nonword
Word Frequency
the relative usage of a word in a particular language
The Lexical Decision Task Result
When researchers presented this task under controlled conditions, they found that
people read high-frequency words faster than low-frequency words
Lexical Ambiguity
When words have more than one meaning
Lexical Priming
Priming involving the naming of words is called lexical priming
Semantics
the meanings of words and sentences
Syntax
syntax specifies the rules for combining words into sentences
Parsing
The grouping of words into phrases
Temporary Ambiguity
initial words of a sentence can lead to more than one meaning
Garden Path Sentence
sentences that lead the reader “down the garden path” (down a path that seems right, but turns out to be wrong
syntax-first approach to parsing
focuses on how parsing is determined by syntax and the grammatical structure of the sentence
Late Closure
The principle of late closure states
that when a person encounters a new word, the person’s parsing mechanism assumes that this word is part of the current phrase, so each new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible
Interactionist Approach to Parsing
This approach proposes that all information, both syntactic and semantic, is taken into account simultaneously as we read or listen to a sentence, so any corrections that need to occur
take place as the sentence is unfolding
Anaphoric Inference
Inferences that connect an object or person in one sentence to
an object or person in another sentence are called anaphoric inferences
Instrument Inference
Inferences about tools or methods are instrument inferences
Causal Inference
Inferences that the events described in one clause or sentence were
caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence are causal inferences
Situation Model
A situation model is a mental representation of what a text is about
Given-new contrast
The given–new contract states that the
speaker should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information: (1) given information—information that the listener already knows; and (2) new information—information that the listener is hearing for the first time
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
the nature of a culture’s language can affect the way people think
Cognitive Control Definition
The ability to flexibly guide behavior in order to achieve goal or intention while overcoming otherwise compelling response tendencies
Task Switching requires representations to be
updated or reconfigured
What two additional forms of control are required for task switching
Holding tasks in working memory
Suppressing the non-relevant tasks
What are other forms of cognitive control beyond task switching?
response inhibition
attention
manipulating items in working memory
planning
dual tasking
Simon Task
Tasked with either clicking a blue or green button depending on stimulus on screen
SHOWS: people are compelled to click the button depending on space the stimulus is on the screen even they are just supposed to be thinking about the color
Why do we study response interference the most?
there is clear mapping between goals and distractors
most extensively studied
arguably incorporates concepts on prior slide
When is the ACC activated?
when responding to demands on the screen
When is the DLPFC activated?
during anticipation of upcoming demands
Reactive Control
Respond to Stimulus in default automatic ways until the stimulus tells you that you need to start paying attention like with an incongruent stimulus
Proactive Control
maintaining task in working memory at all times so that when stimulus comes on it is relatively easy
Ex. repeating in your head “respond to color of the word” over and over again
in the AX Continuous Performance Task, how would someone falsely respond if they were using proactive control?
to the AY because probe was maintained
in the AX Continuous Performance Task, how would someone falsely respond if they were using reactive control?
more likely to falsely respond to X after you see a B because you have been preparing to respond to X – probe was not maintained
What is the hypothesis about working memory capacity and control?
people with larger working memory capacity will use proactive control because they find it easier to maintain probe which would lead to be better BX performance and worse AY performance
Was the hypothesis abt contorl and working memory right and what does it prove?
RESULTS: the hypothesis was right!!!! People with good working memories were more accurate on BX trials and slower on AY trials
PROVE: strong evidence that there are two systems in the brain and are available to different degrees for different people depending on capacity for working memory
Why do we have to exert control?
To achieve goals and the ability to exert cognitive control predicts academic success, increased mental health, and social competence
What is the Dual Task Paradigm and what does it show and prove?
Phase 1: manipulate the amount of willpower exerted
a bowl of radishes and a bowl of cookies and one group was asked to taste and rate the radishes and one was asked to taste and rate the cookies and not the radishes
Phase 2: measure how much willpower people can still exert
Both groups were given unsolvable puzzles and see long they tried before giving up
RESULTS: radish condition gave up much more quickly than the cookie condition
PROVES: people who had already exerted willpower by not eating cookies had less resource left over to try the puzzles
What does the glucose experiment show and prove?
Original Idea: brain glucose
Experiment: have people drink sugary lemonade after phase 1 and have some people drink lemonade with artificial sweetener and then therefore sugar lemonade people should be able to
Result: found that there is no depletion of willpower after real lemonade
EXPERIMENT FLAWS:
You could have just rewarded them for control and it may not be because of the lemonade
If the reward removes depletion effect then that means it wasn’t that they were unable to exert control in phase 2, it was just that they didn’t want to
Swishing a drink eliminates the depletion effect also so it does not have to do with glucose in the brain
Brain glucose just is not invovled and has been measured at other times
What is an alternative theory to the resource model?
that people use cost-benefit analysis to decide to exert control
What is the Demand Selection Task and what does it show and prove?
People see two patches on screen and have to select one and if number is blue, they have to judge if number is higher or lower than 5, and if number is yellow, they are supposed to say whether it is odd or even
One of the patches is high demand and one is low demand (the low demand patch has low task-switching)
SHOWS: people had preference for low demand patch
PROVES: people don’t like exerting control
Which experiment shows that people use cost benefit analysis?
Money and N-back test
What are the 4 aspects of language acquisition?
Acquisition
Representation
Comprehension
Production
What is the main goal of language?
The main goal of language is that it allows us to express ideas to each other
What is common group?
knowledge, belief, and assumptions shared between speakers
Grounding Definition
process of placing information in the common ground which entails both partners knowing the information and both partners knowing that they both know it
Presentation Phase
Person A presents information to be considered based on assumption that if B gives some evidence, A can believe that B understands the information
Acceptance Phase
Person B accepts signals by returning evidence that they believe they understand. This is based on the assumption that once A registers this evidence, B believes A understands
What does the experiment with postcards and NY Landmarks show and prove?
SHOWS: words used per picture drops over time
PROVES: common group gets established over time
What type of memory does common ground contain?
Episodic and Semantic Memory and some implicity
Can Amnesics establish a common ground
yes but it takes much longer – there is an implicit component (getting better) but also a lot is an explicit component
What are three possibilities of segmenting speech into morphemes or words?
- Pauses between sounds
- stretch and pitch
- context
Drift Diffusion Model
- At every timepoint (t), the agent samples a little bit of evidence (e)
- A response is made when there is enough cumulative evidence
- But, sampling is noisy (εt ∼ N(0, σ)
What is the beginning of the DDM graph called
non-decisison time
Noise induces ____
variability in RT and choice
What is the Lateral Intraparietal Sulcus (LIP)
involved in selection and preparation of eye movements
DDM Equation
Vt = Vt-1 + d x e + Et
What does Vt stand for
decision value at time t
What does e stand for
evidence at time t
What does d stand for
drift rate parameter, determines how quickly we approach the decision
What does Et stand for?
noise at time t due to random observations
Speed-accuracy tradeoff
When we try do tasks quickly, we sacrifice accuracy
When we try do tasks accurately, we sacrifice speed
Prediction Error Equation
PE = r - V
What neurons encode prediction error
Dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain
Temporal DIfference Learning Equation
Vt + a (r + Vt+1 - Vt)
Does a higher or lower learning rate reduce uncertainty in a volatile world?
Higher
Does a higher or lower learning rate reduce uncertainty in a stable world?
lower
model based w
w = 1
behavior w
w = .5
