Intro 1-Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
What was the key part of cognitive psychology in the 1880’s?
Wilhelm Wundt and structuralism
What did Wundt/structuralism look at?
Replication issues and complex cognition. Introspection was used
What is needed for introspection?
Observer must know when experience begins and ends, and must maintain ‘strained attention’. Phenomenon must bear repetition/be capable of variation (experimentation)
What did introspection discover?
It determined the seven ‘qualities’ of sensation
What approach is James associated with?
Functionalism
How did functionalism develop?
Developed out of pragmatism as a philosophy
What does James/functionalism talk about?
To find meaning of an idea, look at its consequences. This led to emphasis on cause-and-effect, prediction and control, observation of environment and behaviour
What was the key part of cognitive psychology in the 1900s-1950s?
Watson, Skinner and behaviourism. Koffka, Kohler and Gestalt approach. Freud, Adler, Jung and psychodynamic approach
What does behaviourism look at?
Focus on observable causes of behaviour, stimulus-response links and applying to psychology. It comes from a reaction to the limits of introspection
What is the Gestalt approach?
It is a reaction to structuralism (human as a ‘whole’). Cannot break into smaller parts. Want to discover meaning and structure
What is the psychodynamic approach?
A reaction to the behaviourist approach. Focuses on unconscious motivations for behaviour
What was the key part of cognitive psychology in the 1950s-present?
Cognitive psychology and information processing. There is a scientific interest in unobservable mental processes. Behaviourism is inadequate and so a new paradigm was developed
What are different branches of the mind-body problem?
Type identity theory, functionalism, token identity theory
What is type identity theory (mind-body problem)?
Mental state is equivalent to specific pattern of neural events
What is functionalism (mind-body problem)?
Draws distinction between structure of mental state (neural activity) and function of mental state (consequences). Cognitive psychology about developing functional explanation of mental processes
What is token identity theory (mind-body problem)?
Mental state maps onto variety of different neural events, but if true, can knowledge of neural events ever help understand mental events?
What is the information processing analogy?
Input, processing, output. Similar to: sensory info, internal representations
What are assumptions of the computational metaphor?
The mind contains symbolic representations (stored in memory), and that cognition is the product of ‘operations’
What are the ‘operations’ that produce cognition?
Internal processes that act on symbolic representations. Operations deployed according to rules that are also stored in memory
What are the three levels of description (Marr)?
Computational theory level (what cognition is), representation and algorithm level (how cognition works), hardware level (how representations play out in real world)
What is modularity 1?
Marr-cognition composed of modules, which each have specific function/processes. Cognitive activity comprised of activation of several, independent modules. Damage to one module doesn’t necessarily affect other modules eg prosopagnosia. Modules correspond to anatomically defined areas and are similar across all humans
What is modularity 2?
Fodor-distinction between input systems (process incoming sensory info, transfer it to central processors, are domain specific), and central processors (make decisions, plan action, not modular)
What are methods for identifying modules?
Dissociations (manipulation that affects one cognitive task but not a different task), and double dissociations (show the opposite)
What is cognitive neuropsychology?
Reverse engineering cognition. Localisation of function less important. Typically investigate single cases, eg HM (Scoville and Milner), and neuropsychology to cure epilepsy
What is the model of object recognition (Ellis and Young)?
Object, initial representation-DF, viewer centred representation-simultanagnosia, object centred representation (NA)-object recognition units-semantic system (AB)
What are the limitations of cognitive psychology?
What is ‘normal’ performance for that patient (pre-injury)?, functional reorganisation of cognition (compensatory strategies), can say anything about time-course of information processing, damage is rarely focal
What is the problem with attention?
Humans have very limited cognitive resources and overwhelming amount of sensory information
What is attention?
Input and central processes. There are filters to limit sensory info to higher cognitive processes. Not a single construct, more like an ‘attentional system’
What is the modular model of attention (Posner and Peterson/Corbetta and Shulman)
Three components: alerting (central process), selection/orienting (input module), and executive (central process)
What is selection?
Modular with distinct anatomical correlates in parietal lobe and premotor cortex
What are filter theories of attention?
Cocktail party effect, shadowing and filter theory
What is the cocktail party effect?
By Cherry
What is shadowing?
Listen with one ear, ignore other. Cannot recall words from unattended ear, didn’t notice language change, didn’t notice talking backwards. Beep was noticed however. Unattended information is not processed
What is filter theory?
Broadbent. Unattended information is lost. Senses, to attention filter (input modules), to limited capacity cognitive system (central processes)
What are the strengths of filter theories?
Accounts for findings of Cherry
What are the limitations of filter theories?
Not all unattended info is lost, cannot account for analysis of info from unattended ear (‘breakthrough’ from unattended ear)
What is attenuation theory (Triesman and Geffen)?
Filter limits amount of stimulus info that cannot be processed. Attended stimuli analysed in detail. Processing attenuated in unattenuated channel but not extinguished. Much less info available to identify the stimulus
When will breakthrough occur?
When stimuli can be identified using limited info eg beep in spoken language, when consistent with ongoing tasks, and when stimuli very easily identified eg own name
What is the spotlight metaphor?
Spothlight moves through space (Posner). Zoom lens (Erikson and St James). Spotlight is flexible: wide focus with little detail or tight focus with lots of detail
what is overt attention?
Movement of eyes to fixate location of interest
What is covert attention?
Orienting attention to location that is nor being fixated
What is the cueing task (Posner)?
Compared central symbolic/peripheral spatial cues. Cost/benefit of attention shifts. How do top down processes affect attention
What are two systems for orienting?
Exogenous and endogenous. Triesman and Gelade say they are the same issues but from different angles
What are exogenous systems?
Orient to salient location
What are endogenous systems?
Orient to task relevant location
What is feature integration theory (Triesman)?
Integrates attention into info processing model of perception. Feature analysis stage roughly analogous to primal sketch. More complex objects need focused attention to bind features together
What is the binding problem?
Visual processing splits objects into component features. Triesman and Gelade visual search tasks
What is feature integration theory?
Two stages of processing: preattentive and attentive. Attention acts like ‘glue’ that binds features into objects
What is preattentive processing?
Objects defined by single, salient feature
What is attentive processing?
When features need to be combined
What are illusory conjunctions (Triesman and Schmidt)?
Identify shapes in briefly presented displays. Incorrectly report letter/colour combinations not present. Triesman-shows attention needs to bind features into objects. Triesman’s glue possibly similar to Posner’s spotlight
What is attention?
Selection of task relevant information. Sensory information and internal information
Is attention a filter, resource, or both?
Selective attention acts as a filter. Attentional resource is used to decide what stimuli are and how to respond
What is the capacity limit of attention?
Attention capacity limited to 3-4 items
What is Sperling’s partial report?
Participants report 3-4 items
What is change blindness’ effect on capacity limits?
No effects when <3 objects present
What is multiple object tracking?
Pylyshyn and Storm: can track up to 5 objects accurately, but only works with objects, not collections of features (Scholl et al)
What did Downing and Dodds find?
In some special cases, capacity us limited to 1 item. Attentional guidance from WM
What is the debate over the number of locations that can be attended?
Some argue multiple loci (up to 4: Baldauf and Dodds), others argue for single invisible loci (Jons/Peters/De Weerd)
What is the early vs late selection debate?
Where does attentional ‘bottleneck’ occur? There is evidence for bottlenecks at several levels of processing. Filter and resource theories have contrasting views
What do filter theories argue about selection?
Bottleneck occurs early in processing. Attention operates at the level of sensory analysis. Unattended stimuli is not processed semantically
What do resource theories argue about selection?
Bottleneck occurs late in processing. All inputs are processed at semantic level. Attention operates at level of response selection
What is the evidence for early selection?
Broadbent argued unfiltered stimuli is not processed at all. Shadowing (Broadbent), selective looking (Neisser and Beckcen), change blindness (Rensink et al), inattentional blindness (Mack and Rock), attentional blink (Raymond, Shorpiro and Amell)
What is evidence that unfiltered stimuli can be processed?
Occasionally words from unattended ear are reported. Links to the attenuated filter
What is the attenuated filter?
Treisman: irrelevant information can pass through filter if capacity is not filled by relevant information
What do ERPs show about visual attention?
Studies suggest attention operates at early stage of processing (Luck, Woodan and Vogel). Attention enhances neurological responses
What is sensory processing?
Attention affects produces signal enhancement. Attention enhances spatial resolution (Yeshurun and Carrasco). Attended locations have higher perceieved contrast (Carrasco, Ling and Reid
What evidence of sensory processing comes from neurophysiology?
Attention modulates responses of early visual areas such as V1-V5. Attention lowers phosphene thresholds in V1 (Bestmann et al)
What is evidence for late selection?
Number of paradigms appear to show late selection. Can occur when meaning of distracting stimulus is processed, resulting in stimulus conflict. Flanker effects (Erikson and Erikson), Stroop effect (Stroop), negative priming (Tipper and Driver). Can also occur when responses must be selected sequentially (psychological refractory period)
What is the psychological refractory period?
Bottlenecks occur at level of response selection. If two stimuli presented in quick succession, reactions to 2nd stimuli is greatly slowed. Suggests only one response to one target can be selected at a time, consistent with the existence of a late bottleneck
What does electrophysiology show about attentional selection?
Hillyard et al: studies of auditory attention. Attend to one ear, ignore the other. Detect occasional probe stimuli. Suggest information can modulate early/late processing
What is the reason behind perceptual load theory?
Attempt to reconcile early and late selection. Lavie/Lavie et al propose passive limited capacity filer and an active central resource
What is the difference between filter and central resource?
Filter=process perceptual properties of stimuli. Central resource=identification and decision making