Cognitive Psychology Semester 1 Flashcards
Are brain areas specialised for particular functions?
LOW-level processes have SOME degree of FUNCTIONAL SPECIALISATION.
What is an example of functional specialisation?
The primary visual cortex
How does the brain work for complex processes?
Coordination and integration of different areas across the brain.
What does cognitive neuroscience mean?
Focuses on the influence of brain structures on mental processes and shows the areas of the brain responsible for different cognitive processes
What studies are usually used with neuropsychology?
Case studies
What is the definition of cognitive neuropsychology?
Study of brain-damaged patients to understand cognition
What are three assumption of neurospychology?
- Modularity
- Dissociation
- Double Dissociation
What is an assumption of cognitive neuroscience?
Functional specialisation
What is Modularity?
Assumes the mind is constructed by different modules (each being a cognitive process e.g. language module). And processes can be separated out.
What is a module and why is it different to functional specialisation?
A module is a theoretical system that is a cognitive process whereas functional specialization is a specific area of the brain controlling a function.
What is dissociation in terms of neuropsychology?
If part of a brain gets damaged and then you lose a particular function, as it can be assumed that that part of the brain is responsible for that function.
What is double dissociation?
Two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other using two case studies.
What is a famous case study of double dissociation?
HM (Scolville & Milner, 1957)
- Had epilepsy
- Surgical removal of hippocampus
- After surgery, STM is good
- Can’t transfer information to LTM
&
KF (Shallice & Warrington, 1970)
- In a motorcycle accident
- Damaged his Parietal Lobe
- Had poor STM after damage
- STM tested by memorising numbers
- Average ppl remember 5-7, KF only remember 2
- Could still make LTM
Name 2 positive evaluation points for cognitive neuropsychology
- Enables identification of brain regions required for cognitive tasks.
- Double dissociation is good evidence of processing modules
Name 2 negative evaluation points for cognitive neuropsychology
- Difficult to compare case studies given the nature of damage being individualized
- Not clear that patient had intact functioning before injury other than patient not reporting difficulties prior
What two parts is computational cognitive science broken down into?
-Computational modelling
-Artificial intelligence
What is Computational Modelling?
Constructs models that helps us understand human cognition.
- modelling underline processes
What is artificial intelligence?
Designed to produce outcomes that resemble human behaviour
- internal processes may not resemble those in human cognition.
What is the connectionist network?
The idea that the brain is a big network that is made up of neurons and units that are all connected to each other.
What does it mean by activation state?
How ‘busy’ your network is.
- How quickly the neurons are firing.
What is the weighting of connections?
How big are the connections between two places in the brain depending on the amount of activity.
What are the learning rules?
Adding and linking new pieces of information together.
Name three positive evaluation points for computational modeling
- Theoretical assumptions are explicit and go into detail.
- Some models can demonstrate learning effects, reflecting human learning behaviour
- If we can recreate processes, we can damage it to understand how damage may impact human processing.
Name two negative evaluation points for computational modeling
- These models can be mathematically and computationally complex.
- The computational models don’t recognize motivational, emotional, and social factors.
What are the three core concepts of cognitive psychology?
- Serial or Parallel?
- Automatic or Controlled?
- Bottom-up or Top-down?
What is the difference between serial and parallel processing?
Parallel processing is processing information all in one.
Whereas, serial processing is when you process information sequenctionally
What is the study that tries to understand difference between parallel and serial processing using Short-term memory?
Sternberg 1966 - Visual Short-term Memory.
- Participants given list of words (2, 4, or 6 words).
- Had a small intermission
- Given a word and participants had to decide if it was in their list of study words
PREDICTION
- If we could look at all words at once, wouldn’t matter if we have 2, 4, or 6 words (Parallel processing would not change RT)
- Serial processing means it would make RT longer for more words.
The results supported Serial Processing. RT increased by 38ms per additional word
What is the study looking at whether reading words is parallel or serial processing?
Weekes (1997)
Do we take words in a unit or read each letter individually?
Had different words that were non-words and real words that ranged between 3-7 letters.
Participants had to decide if they were real or non-words.
Real words RT is not affected by the length of words - suggests parallel processing
Non-words RT affected by the length of words - suggest serial processing
List at least 3 aspects of automatic processing
- Fast and efficient
- No attention needed
- No conscious guidance
- Unlimited capacity
List at least 3 aspects of controlled processing.
- Slow response
- Demands attention
- Easily disrupted
4.Limited capacity - Needs effortful control
Give one example of controlled processing and one example of automatic processing.
Automatic processing - face recognition
Controlled processing - Completing a puzzle
Match up bottom-up and top-down processing to data-driven and knowledge-driven.
Bottom-up = data-driven
Top-down = knowledge-driven
Give a brief explanation of bottom-up processing
-Stimulus influences perception.
-Start from basic features and integrate into whole
Give a brief explanation of top-down processing
-Knowledge influences perception
- Expectations and experiences used to recognise stimuli
What are the four pieces of information that we store about a word?
The meaning (semantic info)
The way it looks (orthographic info)
The way it sounds (phonological info)
The way it’s used (syntactical info)
What is spreading activation?
A node gets excited and activates semantically related words in the network
Give two definitions of the mind
The mind controls and creates mental functions such as perception.
The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so we can live in it.
What is Donder’s (1868) simple reaction time task?
Participants saw a light and were required to push a button.
What was the choice reaction time task by Donder (1868)?
Pressing a corresponding button, so a decision has to be made.
i.e. push a green button if they see a green light.
What were the results when Doner (1868) compared the simple RT task with the choice RT task?
There was a slower RT when participants had to make a choice.
What is structural introspection?
Build components of experience using introspection which forces us to realize thoughts are unconscious and there is no way to test the claim.
What is behaviourism?
Behaviour is observable, stimuli is measurable, events are recordable,
What are the differences between structural models and process models?
Structural models
-Represents structures of the brain
-Mimic appearance
-The purpose is to simplify
-Usually function specific
Process model
-How processes operate
Does not represent structure or location
What happens if you pay attention to a sensory memory?
It is encoded into short term memory.
What does the brain do to put a long term memory into short-term memory?
Retrieval
What happens if memories are not rehearsed?
They are lost
What are three types of short-term memory retrieval tasks?
Free recall (unprompted, any order)
Cued recall (cue is given)
Serial recall (recalled in order)
What do we use recognition tests for?
Short-term memory - participant is shown something and states if they have seen it before or not
Can also be used in Long-term memory testing.
What are the differences between recall and recognition testing?
Recall has two stages -
selection of items from memory
familiarity decision
Recognition -
only has familiarity with decision
can be used with long-term memory testing
List at least three factors that affect recall
Attention
Motivation
Interference & Serial Recall Effect
Gender
Food consumption
Physical activity
Trauma
What are the two parts of the serial position effect that influence recall ability?
- regency effect: Remember the stuff at the end
Because you remember the most recent items - primacy effect: Remember stuff at the beginning
When LTM has encoded earlier items
What psychologist suggested that STM is based on sound?
Conrad (1964)
True or False? When letters sound similar, there are fewer serial recall errors?
False! There are more serial recall errors when letters sound similar such as x and s.
What is auditory dominance by Conrad (1964)?
Letters that are visually similar may result in more recall errors
What does our working memory do?
Transfers information to and from short-term memory and long-term memory
Who proposed the working memory model?
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
What is the function of the central executive?
It is the controller
Does not store memories
Coordinated how information is used
Name the 2 memory buffers
Phonological loop -
Visuospatial sketchpad
What are these the two components of?
Phonological store
Articulatoryrehearsal processes
What are the roles of the phonological store?
Acts as an inner ear
Holds input for a few seconds in a speech-based form
Spoken words enter the store directly
Written words are first converted into articulatory code then enters the store
What is the role of the articulatory rehearsal processes
Acts as an inner voice to rehearse information from the phonological store.
It is an active process to keep items in the loop
What is some supporting evidence for the phonological loop?
- Conrad’s experiment that similar-sounding letters are harder to remember
- Articulatory suppression - disrupting memorising by repeating a word out loud
- Word length effect - recall decreases as word length increases
What is the use of the visuospatial sketchpad?
It forms a picture in your mind to hold visual and spatial information
What is the new third buffer called by Baddeley?
The episodic buffer
Why has it been assumed that humans have another buffer?
We hold so much information such as strings of numbers or long sentence
What are the different types of Long-term memory
Explicit (conscious, declarative)
Implicit (not conscious, nondeclarative)
What are the two types of explicit long-term memory?
Episodic and semanatic
What are the three types of implicit long-term memory?
Priming
Procedural memory
Conditioning
What is priming in long-term memory?
Exposure to a stimulus influences response to a later stimulus.
What is procedural long-term memory?
Memory of how to do different things
What is conditioning in long-term memory?
Pairing a stimulus with a neutral stimulus to create an association
What is episodic memory?
Personal experiences
Tulving (1985) - mental time travelling
What is semantic memory?
Stored knowledge and facts
What evidence do we have to support the decision between episodic and semantic memory?
Brain damage f KC who had a motorcycle accident who had damage to the hippocampus and had damage to episodic memory
The patient in Italy lost semantic memory after illness did not recognise words or facts but could remember personal information
Brain imaging supports the division but also shows overlap
What is morphing in long-term memory?
Where you will lose the episodic memory but retain the semantic memory
e.g. remember info learned in the lecture but not the day of the lecture.
What is the hierarchial network model?
Don’t need to remember everything.
There are hierarchical nodes and we infere from semantic memory
What is the hierarchial network model?
Don’t need to remember everything.
There are hierarchical nodes and we infer from semantic memory
What is the spreading activation theory of memory?
There are cognitive units that are interconnected in a network and retrieval is performed through spreading activation (Anderson, 1983)