Exam 1 Flashcards
Cognitive Psychology
The study of the mind: memory, perception, attention, etc.
Socrates
Very interested in the nature of knowledge and belief. He created the Socratic method.
Aristotle
Developed the first known model of how memory works. He compared memory it wax seals: how impressions mold your mind. Younger people have “hotter wax” and it’s easier to have them remember.
Franciscus Donders
Ophthalmologist and physiologist. First to measure reaction time by flashing lights and having participants press a button when they saw the light.
Simple Reaction Time
Flash ->(processing)-> button press
Perceive the light -> physical response
Choice Reaction Time
Flash -> (processing) -> button press but 100 ms difference from Simple Reaction Time bc of choice between two buttons.
Perceive light -> identify location of it -> physical response
Cognitive Research
Lets us measure cognitive processes, which requires inference and requires a model of the processes.
Cognitive Models
Stimulus detection -> stimulus identification -> response organization
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Focused on learning and forgetting by studying meaningless syllables bc they were independent from a meaning bc that would lead to contextual clues. He did research on himself. He also looked at retention and improvement. He was the first person to discover forgetting curve by learning words and testing himself to see how much he forgot.
Savings
Being able to learn something a second time made it easier than learning it for the first time.
Spacing Effect
Spread out your learning, which allows you to remember more.
Wilhelm Wundt
Founded the first psychology lab, which was in Germany. Created structuralism.
Structuralism
Tried to break down the mind down into small pieces to see what it was made up like the table of elements. Wundt did this through introspection.
Introspection
What goes on in your mind when you see something. Introspection is unverifiable, unreliable bc people are different and even the same person could be different, and most mental processes are unconscious.
Behaviorism
All about the study of behavior and things that happen on the outside, which took the spotlight from the mind.
Stimulus -> response instead of stimulus -> mental processing -> response bc behaviorism only studies observable behavior. It was the dominant focus for a while. Can’t explain rats not going back to the same location on a maze.
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s experiment with dog, bell, and food, which led to salivation. Also, with Little Albert and his fear of small white animals.
Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner said, “All we need to know in order to describe behavior: reward good behavior and not bad behavior.” This is how animals are trained.
Cognitive Maps
Mapping out places in your mind.
Instinctive Drift
Going back to their instinct behavior.
Noah Chomsky
Famous linguist who argued that people understand the structure of language. A sentence can be grammatically correct but make no sense.
The Cognitive Revolution and End of Behaviorism
Made it okay to talk about how the mind works again like failure of conditioning animals, human language, developments in brain research, subjective experience, new models arose, bc behaviorism couldn’t explain this.
Behavioral Approach
Overt, deliberate responses like response time, accuracy, recall, etc.
Physiological Approach
Bodily responses and often outside conscious control. Measuring your brain’s activity and eye tracking.
Consolidation
Stabilization of a memory trace after its initial acquisition.
Cognitive Neuroscience
The study of the physiological basis of cognition.
Levels of Analysis
Refers to the idea that a topic can be studied in a number of different ways, with each approach contributing its own dimension to our understanding.
Neurons
Cells that are the building blocks and transmission lines of the nervous system.
Nerve Net Theory
A network believed to be continuous, like a highway system. It was proposed that signals could be transmitted throughout the nets in all directions by providing a complex pathway for conducting signals uninterrupted through the network. Discovered that it was not continuous by Ramon y Cajal.
Ramon y Cajal
A Spanish physiologist who was interested in investigating the nature of the nerve net. He discovered that the fact that the Golgi stain affects less than 1% of the neurons, made it possible for him to see that the nerve net was not continuous, but instead was made up of individual units connected together.
Neuron Doctrine
The idea that individual cells (neurons) transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous with the other cells as proposed by the nerve net theory.
Microelectrodes
Small shafts of hollow glass filled with a conductive salt solution that can pick up electrical signals at the electrode tip and conduct these signals back to a recording device.
Nerve Impulse (Action Potential)
An electrical response that is propagated down the length of an axon (nerve fiber), which lasts 1 millisecond. APs travel all the way down the axon without changing its height or shape.
Neurotransmitters
Chemicals that make it possible for the signal to be transmitted.
Mind
System that creates representations (everything we experience is the result of something that stands for experience) of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.
Principle of Neural Representation
Everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact with stimulus, but on representations in the person’s nervous system.
How experience is determined by representations in the nervous system.
Quality Across the Senses
Different experience associated with each of the senses like perceiving light for vision, sound for hearing, smells for olfaction, etc.
Quality with a Particular Sense
Shape, color, or movement for vision, or recognizing different kinds of objects based on their shape or different people based on face.
Sensory Neurons (Receptors)
Firing based on light from the world in eye, touch based on pressure, etc. It’s based on external stimulus instead of other neurons.
Brodmann’s Area
Broke the brain down into thousands of pieces.
Single-Cell Recording
Placing an electrode right outside/next to a neuron and measure signals.
Disadvantages: Billions of neurons, but you can only measure one with this. Also, it’s very intrusive and probably the only people who get this are the ones who are getting brain surgery.
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
Measures electrodes externally using a cap and getting different brain waves.
Event-Related Potential (ERP)
Related to the particular stimulus given. For example, N400 refers to negative 400 ms in ERP which means that you’ll have a high jump in the graph (when the meaning is wrong) or P600 means a low jump (when the grammar is off).
Feature Detectors
Neurons that respond to specific visual features, such as orientation, size, movement, or the more complex features that make up environmental stimuli.
Hierarchical Processing
Processing that occurs in a progression from lower to higher areas of the brain.
Problem of Sensory Coding
The problem of neural representation for the senses.
Sensory Code
How neurons represent various characteristics of the environment.
Specificity Coding
The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object, which is unlikely to be correct.
Population Coding
The representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons.
Most or all neurons firing for everyone, but in different patterns.
Sparse Coding
Occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent. This occurs when small groups of neurons are involved.
Localization of Function
Specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain.
Cerebral Cortex
A layer of tissue about 3 mm thick that covers the brain (wrinkled covering).
Neuropsychology
The study of the behavior of people with brain damage.
Wernicke’s Area
Located in left temporal lobe and is specialized in language comprehension. Aphasia in this area leads to not being able to comprehend, but speak.
Broca’s Area
Located in left frontal lobe and is specialized in speech production and grammar. Aphasia in this area leads to not being able to speak, but can comprehend.
Parietal Lobe
Responsible for perceptions of touch, pressure, and pain.
Prosopagnosia
An inability to recognize faces. Also known as face blindness.
Double Dissociation
Occurs if damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present. This is used to conclude that functions A and B are served by different mechanisms, which operate independently of one another.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Brain imaging technique that creates images of structures within the brain.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Brain imaging technique that measures how blood flow changes in response to cognitive activity. Red and yellow indicate increases in brain activity and blue and green indicate decreases in brain activity.
Voxels
Small cube-shaped areas of the brain about 2-3 mm on a side. Units of analysis for fMRIs.
Fusiform Face Area (FFA)
An area in the temporal lobe that contains many neurons that respond selectively to faces. Damaged in prosopagnosia.
Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA)
Area in the temporal lobe that contains neurons that are selectively activated by pictures of indoor and outdoor scenes. Important for spatial layout and fires for places that you can easily navigate.
Extrastriate Body Area (EBA)
An area in the temporal cortex that is activated by pictures of bodies and parts of bodies, but not by faces or other objects.
Distributed Representation
The idea that specific cognitive functions activate many areas of the brain.
Neural Networks
Group of neurons or structures that are connected together.
Pain Matrix
Consists of a number of connected structures that are involved in the perception of pain.
Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)
Based on detection of how water diffuses along the length of nerve fibers. It’s a fairly new technique that measures communication throughout the brain.
Episodic Memory
Memory for personal experiences.
Semantic Memory
Memory for facts.
Spatial Resolution
How small of an area of space you can zoom into.
Temporal Resolution
How small of a slice of time you can zoom into to see brain activity.
Table of Temporal and Spatial Resolution
SCR EEG PET fMRI
Temporal Resolution Good Good Not Pretty Good
Spatial Resolution Good Not Good Good
Convenience Not Good Not so good Good
What’s most convenient always wins
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Injected with radioactive isotope and the tracer reflects glucose uptake. Very expensive and you have to avoid small children and pregnant women for a day and a half bc you’re still radioactive. A PET scan shows that when a person listens to someone talk, the left temporal lobe is activated.
Subtraction Technique
Start off with full brain activated and compare to control brain and subtract them out to show what areas are more activated during specific activities.
Techniques That Can Change Brain Activity
TMS and Wada Test
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Change the magnetism on machine and mess with the electricity of someone’s brain. Temporarily create brain damage.
Wada Test
Often used before brain surgery. Used to determine what side of your brain your language is on. Inject something to put one side of your brain to sleep. If language is severely impaired, then you know your language is on the side that’s asleep.
Grandmother Cell
That one cell that fires every time you see your grandma and only her. Psychologists don’t believe this is real, but that a Jennifer Aniston cell (a cell that responds to certain famous people) is.
Left vs. Right Hemisphere
Left: analytical, breaks things into parts
Right: holistic, “big picture”
Damage to the right, people would see the individual parts, but not whole picture.
Damage to the left, people would see the whole picture, but not the individual details.
Distributed Processing
Localized areas are spread out throughout the brain that gets combined to understand what happens.
Perception
Experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses. Perceptions can change based on added information and can involve a process similar to reasoning or problem solving.
Inverse Projection Problem
The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina. This involves starting with the retinal image and extending rays out from the eye.
Viewpoint Invariance
The ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints.
Bottom-Up Processing
Sequence of events from eye to brain that starts at the “bottom” or beginning of the system, when environmental energy stimulates the receptor. Starts with sensations and builds up into objects and then builds up into scenes.
Top-Down Processing
Processing that involves a person’s knowledge or expectations, originating in the brain, at the “top” of the perceptual system.
Speech Segmentation
The process of perceiving individual words within the continuous flow of the speech signal.
Direct Pathway Model
Model of pain perception that proposes that pain signals are sent directly from receptors to the brain. Pain occurs when receptors in the skin (nociceptors) stimulated and send their signals in a direct pathway from the skin to the brain. This is a bottom-up process bc it depends on stimulation of the receptors.
Hermann Von Helmholtz
19th century physicist and physiologist that had an idea about how people use information.
Likelihood Principle
We perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received bc of years of experience with the world.
Unconscious Inference
Our perceptions are the results of unconscious assumptions, or inferences, that we make about the environment. Happens automatically with no thought.
Scene Recognition
Computer being able to recognize different scenes.
Color Constancy
Our perception of the image changes based on the color of the scene.
Size Constancy
Adapt our perceptions to the context. You know that an object is farther in the scene, so your mind is compensating for the distance the object looks like it is: making it look bigger or smaller.
Gestalt Approach
The whole is more than the sum of its parts (opposite of bottom-up processing). He focused on objects having meaning + holistic image as a whole than all of the parts.
Apparent Movement
An illusion of movement perception that occurs when stimuli in different locations are flashed one after another with the proper timing. Movement is perceived, but nothing is actually moving.
Gestalt Psychologists
A group of psychologists who proposed principles governing perception, such as laws of organization, and a perceptual approach to problem solving involving restructuring.
Principles of Perceptual Organization
Used to explain the way elements are grouped together to create larger objects.
Principle of Good Continuation
Law of perceptual organization stating that points that, when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together. In addition, lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path. Also, objects that are overlapped by other objects are perceived as continuing behind the overlapping object.
Lines that continue the same path are grouped together.
Law of Pragnanz, Principle of Good Figure or Simplicity
Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible.
Go with the simplest interpretation instead of seeing an abstract object.
Principle of Similarity
Similar things appear to be grouped together. Grouping can occur because of similarity in color, size, shape, or orientation.
Regularities in the Environment
Characteristics of the environment that occur frequently.
Physical Regularities
Regularly occurring physical properties of the environment, such as physical features, the lines, and light.
Oblique Effect
The finding that vertical and horizontal orientations can be perceived more easily than other (slanted) orientations.
Light-From-Above Assumption
We assume that light is coming from above, because light in our environment, including the sun and most artificial light, usually comes from above.
Semantic Regularities
The characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes.
Makes it easier to identify an object by its contextual clues or misguide your perception.
Scene Schema
Knowledge about what is likely to be contained in a particular scene. This knowledge can help guide attention to different areas of the scene.
Conceptions of Object Perception
Helmholtz’s unconscious inference, the Gestalt laws of organization, and Regularities in the environment.
Theory of Natural Selection
States that characteristics that enhance an animal’s ability to survive, and therefore reproduce, will be passed on to future generations.
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by its exposure to the environment/experience.
Ex. Kitten reared in horizontal environment only has neurons that fire for horizontal lines.
Brain Ablation
The study of the effect of removing parts of the brains in animals. Experiments using this wanted to determine the function of a particular area of the brain.
Neuropsychology
Th study of the behavior of people with brain damage.
Object Discrimination Problem
A problem in which the task is to remember an object based on its shape and choose it when presented with another object after a delay. Associated with research on the what processing stream.
Landmark Discrimination Problem
Problem in which the task is to remember an object’s location and to choose that location after a delay. Associated with research on the where processing stream.
What/Perception Pathway
The pathway leading from the striate cortex to the temporal lobe. Responsible for determining an object’s identity.
AKA Ventral stream and perception pathway.
Where/Action Pathway
The pathway leading from the striate cortex to the parietal lobe. Responsible for determining an object’s location.
AKA Dorsal stream and action pathway.
Illusory Contours
When we think we see something, but other objects are just perfectly placed. We perceive normal objects.
Common Fate
Things that move together should be grouped together as one object.
