CogPsych 240 Exam 1 Flashcards
the mind
creates/controls mental functions (i.e perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning)
how do we study the unobservable mind?
3 theories: introspectionism, behaviorism, cognitive
cognitive psychology
the scientific study of the human mind (how we think, perceive, learn, and remember)
cognition
the mental processes (such as perception, attention, and memory)
what was THE problem?
the mind is pretty unobservable (the black box); from stimulus to response, it’s hard to see whats happening in the mind (via cognitive processes)
what is NOT cognitive psychology
emotion, neuroeconomics (ppl are completely rational), social interactions, individual differences
introspectionism
1890s-1960s-ish: ask ppl what they experience while completing various tasks; undertsand the black box by just asking; tried to break down all aspects of experience into “elements”
structuralism
a subset of introspectionism; our experience is determined by combining different sensations (they wanted to make a periodic table of the mind)
analytic introspection
a mehod where trained participants describe their experiences/thought processes in response to stimuli
behaviorism
1870s-1950s ish: accepting the black box, only analyzing an individuals behavior and environment NOT the mind
problems with behaviorism
limiting science to the directly observable is a bad idea; you can reasonably infer what’s going on in the mind via experiments
what counts as “behavior”?
anything we can publicly observe (speaking, association and classical conditioning, etc)
watson’s declaration
psychology should study behavior and not the unobservable mind
what idea did skinner propagate?
1905-1990; reinforcement and reward; the ONLY thing that changes behavior LONG TERM is reward (punishment only stops behavior for a short period of time)
operant conditioning
strengthening behavior w/ positive enforcers or negative punishments (skinner)
reinforcement schedules
rewards at predictable intervals (fixed schedules) are not as effective as intermittent ones; think gambling
classical conditioning
pairing 1 stimulus with a neutral stimulus (pavlov)
computational view of the mind
the mind processes information thorough a sequence of stages (like a computer program); information-processing approach
dependent variable
what you measure/analyze (ex: reaction time, accuracy, brain activity)
independent variable
what you manipulate/what you think may be the cause or influence of a certain behavior or result (ex: number of items memorized, amount of alcohol ingested)
main effect
the effect of ONE dependent variable (ie: the average effect of an IV)
interaction
when the effect of an independent variable is not constant across the other independent variables
reaction time
how long it takes to respond to a presentation of a stimulus
simple reaction time
responding to the presence of a stimulus
choice reaction time
choosing between 2 stimulus and responding
what did donder’s do?
invented mental chronometryp; the study of the time mental processes take
problems with looking @ the time it takes to complete tasks (subtractive method)
assumes that the duration of all stages together = reaction time (but what abt time to move hand?) also assumes you know what the stages are
cognitive neuroscience
the study of physiological basis of cognition (basically the correlation between the mind and experience)
neuroscience usually focuses on what?
very large groups of neurons
building blocks of the nervous system
neurons (dendrites, cell body, axon, mylin sheath, vesicles, synapse)
neuron doctrine
ppl originally thought the brain was just a continuous network of neurons, (nerve net) but there is actually space between each neuron
action potentials
electrical potential that transmits neural information; RATE of firing equals strength of stimuli
hubel and wiesel (1960s)
some neurons are specialized for certain visual stimuli (feature detectors)
hierarchal processing
when we perceive different objects, processing stages go from simple (lower) to more complex (higher)
specificity coding
every neuron is made for 1 stimulus (not true)
sparse coding
firing only a small group of neurons in response to a stimulus
population coding
firing a network of neurons in response to a stimulus
localization of function
certain parts of the brain are specialized for certain types of activity
broca’s aphasia
damage to frontal lobe, difficulty speaking
wernicke’s area
damage to temporal lobe, difficulty understanding language
lobes of the cerebral cortex
occipital, parietal, temporal, frontal
information flow
back to front: increasingly more complex stimulus
single dissociation
when testing which part of the brain does what, and only one part of the brain is affected
double dissociation
2 single dissociations that oppose eachother
evidence for localization?
fusiform face area, parahippocampal place area, extrasite body area
what is the binding problem?
how are all our experiences integrated even though they are processed in different parts of the brain (no one knows)
phenomenal consciousness
(subjective experience and awareness) touch, feeling, hearing, etc
cognitive map
mental conception of a spatial layout (tolman and his rats)
cognitive revolution
a shift in psychology (1950s) away from behaviorism
paradigm
a system of ideas which guide thinking in a particular field
sensory memory
holds information for a fraction of a second before it gets passed to short term memory
short term memory
can be prolonged via rehearsal
long term memory
hold an indefinite amount of information for a long period of time
sensory, short term, and long term memory is whos model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin
episodic memory
memory for events in your life
semantic memory
memory for facts
procedural memory
memory for physical actions
episodic, semantic, and procedural memory are part of whos model of long term memory?
Tulving
neuropsychology
study of behavior of ppl with brain damage
electrophysiology
measuring electrical responses of the nervous system
reflective awareness
access consciousness; linked to cognitive functions of some kind
self awareness
knowing that your experience is different from others (mirror test)
what is content awareness?
if you are aware of a stimuli
what is state awareness?
if you are awake, asleep, or in a coma
theories for how the mind and body relate
dualism/dual aspect monism, idealism, and materialism/physicalism
idealism
the mind is all that matters in experience
dual aspect monism
both mind and body are real and reality includes both; experience exists on a spectrum
dualism
mind and body are distinct substances that cannot exist without eachother
materialism
only the physical is reality
neural correlates of consciousness
trying to find a physical part of the brain that is in charge of consciousness
turing test vs chinese room
computer can pass as a human, but if it doesn’t fully understand what its doing is it really conscious???
blindsight
suggests unconscious vision; damage to V1
neglect
completely ignoring everything in the oppposite half of the part of the parietal lobe that is imparied
split brain
severed corpus callosum; 2 separate consciousnesses?????
extreme hydrocephalus
excessive fluid in the skull that destroys brain tissue
plasticity
the ability of the brain the adapt
bottom up model of perception
you build up from small pieces of the picture; put together in stages
top down model of perception
used to resolve ambiguity; draws on memory to complete the picture (constructive perception)
the “demons” are part of what cognitive process?
percepton
helmholtz theory of unconscious interference (1960)
ppl infer most everything about the world; we fill in the blanks with past knowledge
the top down view of perception inlcudes which laws?
law of good continuation (lines) law of good figure, and law of similarity
oblique effect
we have specialized neurons for vertical/horizontal lines
greebles experiment (gauthier)
FFA began to respond more to greebles the more they were shown
what are the 2 streams of perception?
ventral (what) and dorsal (where)
dichotic listening
patients couldnt repeat the unattended message but could still report tone, pitch, etc
broadbents filter model
filtration happens early before analyzing for meaning,
treismans filter model
selection happens depending on what situation you’re in
mckays filter model
late stage selection; unconscious processing of meaning
lavie’s perceptual load theory
we have limited processing capacity for tasks
distractive stimuli should have [____________] of a negative impat when the task is less demanding.
more
schneider and shiffrin (1977)
divided cognition into controlled and automatic with their experiment
covert attention
pretending to be engaged w/o moving your eyes away from the stimulus
