core concepts Flashcards
what is cognitive psychology? (three answers)
the scientific study of the mind
the scientific study of mental, internal processes
the scientific study of behaviour and brain activity/structures
what does cognitive psychology help us understand?
human cognition (thinking)
how do we come to understand cognitive psychology? (two answers)
by observing individuals’ behaviour when doing cognitive tasks
observing brain activity
what are some examples of mental processes?
attention
perception
learning
memory
language
problem-solving
reasoning
thinking
what is cognitive neuroscience? (two answers)
studies the influence of brain structures and functions on internal processes
shows the brain areas that are responsible for different cognitive processes
how do we get evidence for cognitive neuroscience? (three answers)
fMRI
EEG
brain damage
what is the main assumption of cognitive neuroscience?
functional specialisation
what is functional specialisation?
are there areas of the brain that are specialised to do specific functions?
what processes are specialised?
low-level processes (e.g. primary visual cortex - sight)
are higher-level processes specialised? and why?
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
how could functional specialisation be distributed?
distributed patterns of activity across networks
what is cognitive neuropsychology?
studying the impact on mental processes in brain-damaged patients
what are the assumptions of cognitive neuropsychology? (three answers)
modularity
dissociation
double dissociation
what is modularity?
each cognitive process is separated into modules
what is dissociation?
damaging a specific area of your brain and that being responsible for losing a particular function
what is double dissociation?
two related mental processes function independently of each other shown in two case studies
what two famous case studies show double dissociation?
‘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
what does these case studies show?
that STM and LTM are supported by different areas of the brain
what are the advantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)
double dissociation gives good evidence to the theory of modularity
identify brain areas for specific cognitive tasks
what are the disadvantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)
hard to make comparisons with damaged patients as no ones injury is the same (case studies)
damage normally affects more than one module
what are the two components that make up computational cognitive science?
computational modelling
artificial intelligence
what is computational modelling?
a computer model that helps us understand cognitive processes
what is artificial intelligence?
produces outcome to mimic human behaviour but internal processes may not resemble behaviour
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 are the four properties of the connectionist model?
a set of units
activation state
weighting of connections
learning rules
what is a set of units?
different parts of the brain
what is the activation state?
how quickly neurones are firing (whether the networks are ‘busy’)
what are 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
what are the advantages of computational cognitive science? (three answers)
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
what are the disadvantages of computational cognitive science? (two answers)
mathematically and computationally complex
don’t recognise emotional and social factors
what are the three core concepts of cognitive processes? Is it… (three answers)
serial or parallel?
automatic or controlled?
top-down or bottom-up?
what is serial processing?
one process is completed before the next one (sequential)
what is parallel processing?
more than one process occurs at the same time (simultaneous)
who provided evidence for serial and parallel processing? what did he research?
sternberg (1966) - visual short term memory
what was sternberg’s experiment?
- 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
what did sternberg predict?
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
what were sternberg’s results? (two answers)
supported serial processing
reaction time increased by 38ms per additional word
who conducted a study on how we read words?
weekes (1997)
what was weekes’ study?
had to decide whether a word (3-7 letters) was a real or non-word
what was weekes’ results?
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
what is an automatic process? (four answers)
activated automatically
no active control or attention needed
unlimited capacity
no conscious guidance
what is a controlled process? (five answers)
intentionally activated
slow response
needs attention
easily disruptive
limited capacity
example of automatic processing?
face recognition
example of controlled processing?
focused attention in a busy environment
what is bottom-up processing?
processing that is directly influenced by environmental stimuli
(data driven)
what is top-down processing?
processing that is influenced by factors, such as an individuals’ experiences and knowledge
example of bottom-up processing?
prosopagnosia (face blindness)
example of top-down processing?
recognising your house
who created the lexical decision task?
meyer and schvaneveldt (1971)
what are the four things in a word?
its meaning (semantic info)
the way it looks (orthographic info)
the way it sounds (phonological info)
how it should be used (syntactical info)
what does the lexical decision task test?
how are words stored and accessed in the mind?
LDT experiment?
12 high school students
within-subjects design
48 related pairs/48 non-related/ 96 non-word pairs
what were the ldt results?
related pairs had faster reaction times
it did not affect accuracy results
what does the ldt explain? (two answers)
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
what is spreading activation?
a node gets excited and activates semantically related words in the network (connectionist network)
e.g. (fire engine -> ambulance -> red)
what is priming?
exposure to a stimulus triggers related nodes = faster responses
e.g. bread and butter
