Final Exam Flashcards
CT scan
computerized axial tomography, x-ray energy, older technology
MRI
magnetic resonance imaging, no nuclear radiation, better image quality, but patient restrictions
EEG
good temporal resolution
PET
positron emission tomography, uses radioactive compound, measures blood flow to brain regions, showing which region is most active, expensive older tech
fMRI
functional magnetic resonance imaging, relies on magnetic properties of blood, shows activity of brain
Cognition
mental action/process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Involves perception, attention, memory, representation, language, problem-solving and decision making
Behaviorism
People: John Watson, Pavlov, Skinner
Views: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, pointed out flaws in introspection, contributions and insights into learning, language development and moral & gender development
Problems: only discusses nurture, no analysis of mental processes
Neuron
dendrites receive input from other neurons, cell body integrates info, axon transmits output of processing to other neurons, myelin insulates and speeds up AP, synaptic gap “connects” neurons
Independent variable
manipulated by experimenter, what you see the effect of
Dependent variable
measure of performance/behavior, indirect indicator of mental activity
Visual system components
cornea, aqueous humor, pupil, lens, vitreous humor, retina, optic nerve
Frontal lobe
motor cortex, PFC (planning, decision making, WM)
Parietal lobe
somatosensory cortex
Occipital lobe
visual information
Temporal lobe
auditory info and object recognition
Sensation
process of sensing out environment through touch, taste, sight, sound and smell
Perception
the way we interpret these sensation and therefore make sense of everything around us
Rods
scotopic vision
high sensitivity, night time, no color, low-acuity/high-convergence (many rods to one ganglion), sensitive to shorter wavelengths
Cones
photopic vision
low sensitivity, daytime, color vision, high-acuity/low-convergence (1 cone to 1 ganglion), sensitive to longer wavelengths
Selective attention
focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus; attention as a filter or spotlight theories
Divided attention
some cog resources are specialized; verbal & spatial tasks can be performed simultaneously because each use diff. parts
Dichotic listening task
one ear receives a recording, the other receives a different recording. Subject is asked to repeat back or pay closer attention to one side. People are accurate at shadowing, listeners are able to detect physical info of unattended sounds but not meaning
Capgras syndrome
recognize loved ones, but think they are impostors; PFC damage impairs reasoning so illogical thoughts are not filtered out, factual & emotional knowledge are dissociated (amygdala linked to emotional processing in general)
Bigrams
sequence of two adjacent elements from a string of tokens (letters, syllables or words)
Subjective experience
Gestalt psych studied this; how people use or impose structure and order on their experiences
Implicit
non-declarative, automatic, retention independent of conscious recollection
Explicit
declarative, memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and recollect
Schema
mental representation of how we expect the world to be
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
Experiment: students watched clips of car accidents and were then given leading questions
ex: verb contacted resulted in a lower average speed than smashed
Retrograde amnesia
inability to retrieve information from one’s past
Anterograde amnesia
inability to form new memories
Misinformation effect
incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event
Godden & Baddeley (1975)
context-dependent learning; tested student’s learning & recall on land and underwater
Modal model of memory
(1968 Atkinson & Shiffrin) sensory input –> sensory memory (unattended information is lost) –> short term memory (unrehearsed info is lost) –> long-term memory some info lost through decay or inference
Primacy effect
improved recall of words at the beginning of a list
Recency effect
improved recall of words at the end of a list
Smith (1979)
context-dependent learning; tested learning and recall in different locations (room A and room B)
Collins & Quillian (1969)
semantic memory = network of connected ideas
Hierarchical organization
a model of semantic memory organized in terms of nodes and links that store properties at the highest relevant node to conserve cognitive economy
Fisher & Craik (1977)
participants told to remember the second word of a pair that was either semantically related or simply rhymed
Encoding specificity
phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it
Semantic memory
general knowledge
Procedural memory
holds information concerning action and sequences of action; muscle memory
Intrusion/interference
some information can displace other information making it harder to retrieve
Decay
unrehearsed information
Heuristic
shortcuts, used to make every day decisions, reasonably efficient and accurate, gain efficiency but lose accuracy
Representativeness heuristics
if something looks like a member of the category, then it is a member
Availability heuristics
specific case of attribute substitution, ease with which examples come to mind is an index of frequency or likelihood
Ill-defined problem
missing or incomplete information or too broad (solution: turn into series of well defined sub-problems)
Well-defined problem
know the goal, operators, and all states
Framing
wording; can change people’s choices
Means-end problem solving
can the current state be made more similar to the goal state, using available operators? leads to subproblems, each w/ own goal
Flynn effect
intelligence scores are going up over time; possible product of better nutrition, more complex world, economic improvement
Hill climbing
always getting closer to goal (difficulties encountered when backtracking is a better strategy)
Confirmation bias
looking only for information that confirms your hypothesis/opinion; more responsive to evidence that confirms one’s beliefs
Belief perseverance
tendency to continue endorsing a belief even when evidence has completely undermined it
System 2
refers to thinking that is slower, effortful, and more likely to be correct
System 1
refers to thinking that is fast, automatic and uses heuristics
Operators
means of moving from one state to another (available tools or actions)
Analogies
exacting operators used to solve a source problem and applying them to solving a problem in a different domain (notice, map, apply)
IQ
intelligence quotient
mental age/chronological age x100
History of cognitive science
1950’s: cognitive revolution 1956: “birthday” of cog. sci by George Miller
1977: first journal issue of Cognitive Science
1979: first meeting of Cognitive Science Society
Episodic memory
holds memories of specific, personal events
