Exam 1

Question 1

Top-down processing

Answer 1

uses contribution of the brain; person’s knowledge, experience, expectations
“is that something I’ve seen before?”

Question 2

Helmholtz’s unconscious inference

Answer 2

we use our knowledge to perceive but not in a conscious way (uses a top-down approach)

Question 3

Cognitive Neuroscience

Answer 3

-how does the of the structure and the function of the brain contribute to mental successes and failures
-the study of physiological basis of cognition

Question 4

Differences between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience

Answer 4

Both measure observable behavior and draw conclusions about underlying cognitive activity, but cognitive neuroscience also makes observations about the brain in addition to behavior to draw their conclusions

Question 5

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Answer 5

-one type of neuroimaging
-tracks oxygen use in the brain
-mesures fMRI signal during tasks to learn about how the brain works during these tasks

Question 6

Advantages of fMRI

Answer 6

safer, can measure activation of different regions of the brain, can design/control experiments

Question 7

Disadvantage of fMRI

Answer 7

expensive for researchers, cannot be used on everyone, can’t determine causation

Question 8

Disadvantage of patient studies

Answer 8

brain injury is complex and variable, need to find a number of patients (conditions are rare)

Question 9

What causes optical illusions

Answer 9

the images cause the brain to misinterpret what it’s seeing because the brain take shortcuts perception

Question 10

Forgetting curve

Answer 10

memory for information decreases with time since the information was learned

Question 11

Behaviorism

Answer 11

-eliminated the mind as a topic of study
-studies observable behavior
-methods involve conditioning
-John Watson

Question 12

Localization of function

Answer 12

parts of the brain are specialized for certain functions (ex: fusiform face area)

Question 13

Distributed representation

Answer 13

real-world activities use multiple areas of the brain

Question 14

Gestalt Laws of Organization

Answer 14

perceive objects by using patterns; “the whole is different than the sum of its parts” (utilized bottom-up approach)

Question 15

Regularities of the environment

Answer 15

perception is influenced by what is seen commonly in nature

Question 16

Light from above assumption

Answer 16

-regularity of environment
-light usually comes from above
-perceive shadows as specific information about depth and distance

Question 17

Super-recognizers

Answer 17

very strong facial recognition skills

Question 18

a study replicates if

Answer 18

you find the same patterns

Question 19

Factors that might be leading to the replication crisis

Answer 19

confirmation bias, incentives, errors, fraud

Question 20

Cognitive psychology

Answer 20

the scientific study of the mind, focused on understanding cognition

Question 21

Patient Studies/Neuropsychology

Answer 21

-find patients with areas of brain damage or known difficulty
-test them to learn about brain/cognition relationship

Question 22

Advantage of patient studies

Answer 22

can determine causality and less expensive

Question 23

Bottom-up processing

Answer 23

uses information from the senses, incoming raw data “what am I seeing”

Question 24

Spacing effect

Answer 24

learning in small chunks is typically more effective than all at once

Question 25

Early Critiques of Cognitive Psychology

Answer 25

-John Watson was critical of the study of the mind because of the black box problem and the use of introspection as a research method -Field of behaviorism was his solution

Question 26

The Cognitive Revolution

Answer 26

-started in the 1950s -shift from studying only behavior to also studying cognition -resulted in using observable behavior to make inferences about cognition

Question 27

Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)

Answer 27

-show numbers 0-9 one at a time on a screen -participant presses space bar for each number except 3 -hard not to press 3 unless you are paying very close attention

Question 28

Phonagnosia

Answer 28

inability to recognize voices

Question 29

Perception

Answer 29

organizing and interpreting information from the 5 senses

Question 30

Gestalt Law of Good Continuation

Answer 30

lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path

Question 31

Semantic regularities

Answer 31

scene perception influenced by what is happening within that scene and what we know about similar scenes

Question 32

Replication

Answer 32

when you rerun a prior study to see what you find

Question 33

Optical illusions

Answer 33

images or pictures that we perceive differently than they really are

Question 34

Challenges to studying the human mind

Answer 34

-We are studying the mind using the human mind (our limitations and biases can block progress) -Cannot directly see mental processes (black box problem)

Question 35

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 35

early memory researcher who tested himself, key findings were the forgetting curve and spacing effect

Question 36

Reasons for irreproducibility

Answer 36

-the original is wrong -the replication is wrong -both are true

Question 37

Levels of analysis for studying cognition

Answer 37

-performance -brain function -brain structure -neurons activated -chemicals (doesn't matter which direction)

Question 38

Principle of neural representation

Answer 38

what we experience is based on representations in the brain, not direct contact with the stimulus

Question 39

Prosopagnosia

Answer 39

inability to recognize faces

Question 40

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

Answer 40

-place electrodes on participants -detect and record electrical activity -very good at detecting the timing of events in the brain

Question 41

Event-related potential (ERP)

Answer 41

-EEG + task -brain's electrical activity resulting from a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event

Question 42

Gestalt Law of Simplicity

Answer 42

stimulus patterns are perceived so that the structure is as simple as possible

Question 43

Gestalt Law of Similarity

Answer 43

similar things appear grouped together

Question 44

Helmholtz Likelihood Principle

Answer 44

we make decisions based on similar situations we have encountered in the past

Question 45

Oblique Effect

Answer 45

-Regularity of environment -people can perceive verticals and horizontals more easily than other orientations

Question 46

Scene schema

Answer 46

the knowledge of a typical version of a scene, might be influenced by previous experiences

Question 47

Perceptual constancy

Answer 47

we have a tendency to see familiar objects as having standard shape, size, color, or location regardless of changes in the angle of perspective, distance or lighting

Question 48

Behaviorism

Answer 48

Measures observable behavior and focus studies and interventions on these outcomes only

Question 49

Replication Crisis

Answer 49

some have argued for a crisis because so many psychology studies do not replicate

Question 50

The Mind is a Black Box Problem

Answer 50

we know what goes in and what comes out but we cannot see these mental processes happen (ex: cannot directly see attention)