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cognitive psychology > core concepts > Flashcards

core concepts Flashcards

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1
Q

what is cognitive psychology? (three answers)

A

the scientific study of the mind
the scientific study of mental, internal processes
the scientific study of behaviour and brain activity/structures

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2
Q

what does cognitive psychology help us understand?

A

human cognition (thinking)

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3
Q

how do we come to understand cognitive psychology? (two answers)

A

by observing individuals’ behaviour when doing cognitive tasks
observing brain activity

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4
Q

what are some examples of mental processes?

A

attention
perception
learning
memory
language
problem-solving
reasoning
thinking

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5
Q

what is cognitive neuroscience? (two answers)

A

studies the influence of brain structures and functions on internal processes
shows the brain areas that are responsible for different cognitive processes

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6
Q

how do we get evidence for cognitive neuroscience? (three answers)

A

fMRI
EEG
brain damage

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7
Q

what is the main assumption of cognitive neuroscience?

A

functional specialisation

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8
Q

what is functional specialisation?

A

are there areas of the brain that are specialised to do specific functions?

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9
Q

what processes are specialised?

A

low-level processes (e.g. primary visual cortex - sight)

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10
Q

are higher-level processes specialised? and why?

A

evidence is less clear

behaviour is so complex that there is a high likelihood there is more than one area of the brain helps its function

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11
Q

how could functional specialisation be distributed?

A

distributed patterns of activity across networks

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12
Q

what is cognitive neuropsychology?

A

studying the impact on mental processes in brain-damaged patients

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13
Q

what are the assumptions of cognitive neuropsychology? (three answers)

A

modularity
dissociation
double dissociation

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14
Q

what is modularity?

A

each cognitive process is separated into modules

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15
Q

what is dissociation?

A

damaging a specific area of your brain and that being responsible for losing a particular function

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16
Q

what is double dissociation?

A

two related mental processes function independently of each other shown in two case studies

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17
Q

what two famous case studies show double dissociation?

A

‘HM’: scoville & milner (1957)
- epilepsy -> seizures -> removed hippocampus
- couldn’t form long term memories
- stm was intact

‘KF’: shallice & wallington (1970)
- motorcycle accident -> damaged parietal lobe
- could not form short term memories (poor digit span - 2)
- ltm was intact

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18
Q

what does these case studies show?

A

that STM and LTM are supported by different areas of the brain

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19
Q

what are the advantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)

A

double dissociation gives good evidence to the theory of modularity

identify brain areas for specific cognitive tasks

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20
Q

what are the disadvantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)

A

hard to make comparisons with damaged patients as no ones injury is the same (case studies)

damage normally affects more than one module

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21
Q

what are the two components that make up computational cognitive science?

A

computational modelling
artificial intelligence

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22
Q

what is computational modelling?

A

a computer model that helps us understand cognitive processes

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23
Q

what is artificial intelligence?

A

produces outcome to mimic human behaviour but internal processes may not resemble behaviour

24
Q

what is the connectionist network?

A

the idea that the brain is a big network that is made up of neurons and units that are all connected to each other

25
Q

what are the four properties of the connectionist model?

A

a set of units
activation state
weighting of connections
learning rules

26
Q

what is a set of units?

A

different parts of the brain

27
Q

what is the activation state?

A

how quickly neurones are firing (whether the networks are ‘busy’)

28
Q

what are the weighting of connections?

A

how big are the connections between two places in the brain depending on the amount of activity

29
Q

what are the learning rules?

A

adding and linking new pieces of information together

30
Q

what are the advantages of computational cognitive science? (three answers)

A

theoretical assumptions are clear and explicit

models can resemble human behaviour

If we can recreate processes, we can damage it to understand how damage may impact human processing

31
Q

what are the disadvantages of computational cognitive science? (two answers)

A

mathematically and computationally complex

don’t recognise emotional and social factors

32
Q

what are the three core concepts of cognitive processes? Is it… (three answers)

A

serial or parallel?
automatic or controlled?
top-down or bottom-up?

33
Q

what is serial processing?

A

one process is completed before the next one (sequential)

34
Q

what is parallel processing?

A

more than one process occurs at the same time (simultaneous)

35
Q

who provided evidence for serial and parallel processing? what did he research?

A

sternberg (1966) - visual short term memory

36
Q

what was sternberg’s experiment?

A
  • 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
37
Q

what did sternberg predict?

A

parallel processing -> wouldn’t change reaction time:
If we could look at all words at once, wouldn’t matter if we have 2, 4, or 6 words

serial processing -> reaction time is longer for more words

38
Q

what were sternberg’s results? (two answers)

A

supported serial processing
reaction time increased by 38ms per additional word

39
Q

who conducted a study on how we read words?

A

weekes (1997)

40
Q

what was weekes’ study?

A

had to decide whether a word (3-7 letters) was a real or non-word

41
Q

what was weekes’ results?

A

parallel processing -> if it was a real world, it didn’t matter on the length in reaction time

serial processing -> if it was a non-word, reaction time would be slower

42
Q

what is an automatic process? (four answers)

A

activated automatically
no active control or attention needed
unlimited capacity
no conscious guidance

43
Q

what is a controlled process? (five answers)

A

intentionally activated
slow response
needs attention
easily disruptive
limited capacity

44
Q

example of automatic processing?

A

face recognition

45
Q

example of controlled processing?

A

focused attention in a busy environment

46
Q

what is bottom-up processing?

A

processing that is directly influenced by environmental stimuli
(data driven)

47
Q

what is top-down processing?

A

processing that is influenced by factors, such as an individuals’ experiences and knowledge

48
Q

example of bottom-up processing?

A

prosopagnosia (face blindness)

49
Q

example of top-down processing?

A

recognising your house

50
Q

who created the lexical decision task?

A

meyer and schvaneveldt (1971)

51
Q

what are the four things in a word?

A

its meaning (semantic info)
the way it looks (orthographic info)
the way it sounds (phonological info)
how it should be used (syntactical info)

52
Q

what does the lexical decision task test?

A

how are words stored and accessed in the mind?

53
Q

LDT experiment?

A

12 high school students
within-subjects design
48 related pairs/48 non-related/ 96 non-word pairs

54
Q

what were the ldt results?

A

related pairs had faster reaction times
it did not affect accuracy results

55
Q

what does the ldt explain? (two answers)

A

the decision for related words are primed (made easier/faster) due to semantic relatedness of the two

the decision-making process of one word influenced the process for the other word

56
Q

what is spreading activation?

A

a node gets excited and activates semantically related words in the network (connectionist network)

e.g. (fire engine -> ambulance -> red)

57
Q

what is priming?

A

exposure to a stimulus triggers related nodes = faster responses

e.g. bread and butter

cognitive psychology (6 decks)

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