Lecture 6 - Cognitive Ability Flashcards
What can cognitive system be perceived as?
Cognitive system can be perceived as an information processing system.
What does information processing take?
Information processing takes time
What does information processing generate?
Information processing generates varying quality that varies from people to people
What ability do cognitive systems have?
Cognitive systems have an intrinsic ability.
What is cognitive ability?
Cognitive ability is the efficiency of completing cognitive tasks.
Does cognitive ability vary?
Yes, cognitive ability varies from people to people in different dimensions.
What is the difference between cognitive ability and cognitive performance?
- Cognitive ability refers to a trait (an intrinsic state, which is stable)
- Cognitive performance refers to a state (the outcome that you generate at a moment)
What do we need to use to infer cognitive ability?
We need to use cognitive performance to infer cognitive ability as we cannot directly measure cognitive ability while we can measure cognitive performance.
How can cognitive ability be measured?
Cognitive ability can be quantitatively measured.
How is cognitive ability in the short-term?
Cognitive ability is stable over short-term.
How is cognitive ability in the long-term?
Cognitive ability is changeable over long term.
Cognitive system is a c_______, h___________, m____________ system.
Cognitive system is a complex, hierarchical, multi-modular system.
How is cognitive system a complex system?
Cognitive system has a lot of functions that shows the system has a very good functioning.
How is cognitive system hierarchical?
Cognitive system has different layers and levels under a category.
How is cognitive system multi-modular?
Cognitive system has different functional systems
How are different cognitive abilities related/ unrelated?
Different cognitive abilities can be correlated with each other but cannot be fully predictive of each other.
Cognitive system is h________________
Cognitive ability is heterogenous -> there is no single cognitive ability that represents all
What are the two levels of cognitive abilities (information processing)?
They are low-level processing and high-level processing.
What is low-level processing?
It is simple, automatic and less trainable
What is high-level processing?
High-level processing is complex and more trainable.
Do people need to train their low-level cognitive ability?
Majority of people do not need to train their low-level cognitive system
What does reaction time test?
Reaction time tests your sensory ability (low-level cognitive ability)
What is mental speed?
Mental speed is the entire process of processing something
What makes a cognitive ability? (3 criteria)
- It can be reliably measured
- The measurement should be valid
- It is different from other existing abilities
How is a measurement reliable?
The measurement should generate consistent results in terms of cross-person ranking across measurements.
How is a measurement valid?
A measurement of cognitive ability is considered valid if it truly measures the said ability
How can you know if the measurement is reliable?
The person should have similar performances in different times when doing the same task
What are some examples that the measurement is not reliable?
Activities that are determined by randomness
Does a measurement with a high reliability necessarily have high validity?
No, measurement with high reliability does not mean that the cognitive ability being measured is a valid one.
How can we validate a measurement?
We can use existing knowledge of other ability to validate a measurement.
What is executive function? (2 definitions)
- The ability to control yourself to achieve something / drive yourself to do something
- highlevel processing that, through their influence on lower-level processes, enable individuals to regulate their thoughts and actions during goal-directed behaviours
What are the three dimensions of executive functions?
- Inhibition function
- Shifting function
- Updating function
What does inhibition function do?
Inhibition function is used to deliberately override dominant responses to resist distractions
What does inhibition function do?
Inhibition function is used to deliberately override dominant responses and to restrict distraction by inhibiting/ refraining yourself from doing something.
What task can measure inhibition function?
Stroop task measures the inhibition function.
- It presents incongruent list with tow conflicting dimensions of information with each other.
How can you test the measurement reliability of inhibition function?
You can measure inhibition functions for different people and for a longer time to evaluate reliability of different people by comparing scores for the first and second times
How can you test the measurement validity of inhibition function?
You can generate another task that also measures the inhibition function
- can use the flanker test (about the directions of arrow movement), Simon task (pointing direction of arrow)
- use a greater variety of different types of task to test the validity
What does shifting function do?
It is used to switch flexibly between tasks or mental sets.
What does shifting function require?
Shifting function requires cognitive effort to switch from one task to another
What task can measure shifting function?
Tasks that require switching can measure shifting function.
- e.g. asking the participants to report the ink colour of a word, after a few items, ask the participants to report the semantic colour.
How can you test the measurement reliability of shifting function?
You can measure the score generated by the task and use the task to measure it again at a different time point
How can you test the measurement validity of shifting function?
You can come up with different tasks for the shifting functions to test the validity.
What does updating function do?
- Updating function is used to monitor and engage in rapid addition or deletion of working memory contents
- it needs to delete something in working memory and replace it with something else
What can be used to test the updating function?
Keep track task can be used to test the updating function.
- It is shown with a sequence of stimuli one by one
- the participant has to remember the last item (previous item) under each category
What is used to measure reasoning?
Raven’s progressive matrices test
- a set of reasoning problems with increasing difficulty
- uses two different dimensions of data (two behavioural data) to measure the person’s performance
What are the two behavioural data in Raven’s progressive matrices test?
- The time for a person to finish a task
- The number of tasks correctly answered
What is creativity?
It is defined as a product or an idea that is original and therefore new, unusual, novel or unexpected, that is deemed valuable, useful or appropriate.
What function does creativity belong to?
Creativity is a cognitive function.
Of what level is creativity of the cognitive function?
Creativity is a very high level of cognitive function.
What task can measure the creativity?
Divergent thinking task can measure the creativity.
How does the divergent thinking tool work?
The participant has to provide multiple ideas in response to specific stimuli that is rated by human raters (can be self-report or other people report)
What does creativity assess?
Creativity assesses
1. Fluency (the number of ideas)
2. Originality (evaluate the quality/ novelty of ideas)
3. Flexibility (the diversity or variety of ideas)
4. Elaboration (the details of ideas)
