Lecture 6 - Cognitive Ability Flashcards

1
Q

What can cognitive system be perceived as?

A

Cognitive system can be perceived as an information processing system.

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2
Q

What does information processing take?

A

Information processing takes time

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3
Q

What does information processing generate?

A

Information processing generates varying quality that varies from people to people

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4
Q

What ability do cognitive systems have?

A

Cognitive systems have an intrinsic ability.

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5
Q

What is cognitive ability?

A

Cognitive ability is the efficiency of completing cognitive tasks.

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6
Q

Does cognitive ability vary?

A

Yes, cognitive ability varies from people to people in different dimensions.

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7
Q

What is the difference between cognitive ability and cognitive performance?

A
  • 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)
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8
Q

What do we need to use to infer cognitive ability?

A

We need to use cognitive performance to infer cognitive ability as we cannot directly measure cognitive ability while we can measure cognitive performance.

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9
Q

How can cognitive ability be measured?

A

Cognitive ability can be quantitatively measured.

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10
Q

How is cognitive ability in the short-term?

A

Cognitive ability is stable over short-term.

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11
Q

How is cognitive ability in the long-term?

A

Cognitive ability is changeable over long term.

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12
Q

Cognitive system is a c_______, h___________, m____________ system.

A

Cognitive system is a complex, hierarchical, multi-modular system.

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13
Q

How is cognitive system a complex system?

A

Cognitive system has a lot of functions that shows the system has a very good functioning.

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14
Q

How is cognitive system hierarchical?

A

Cognitive system has different layers and levels under a category.

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15
Q

How is cognitive system multi-modular?

A

Cognitive system has different functional systems

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16
Q

How are different cognitive abilities related/ unrelated?

A

Different cognitive abilities can be correlated with each other but cannot be fully predictive of each other.

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17
Q

Cognitive system is h________________

A

Cognitive ability is heterogenous -> there is no single cognitive ability that represents all

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18
Q

What are the two levels of cognitive abilities (information processing)?

A

They are low-level processing and high-level processing.

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19
Q

What is low-level processing?

A

It is simple, automatic and less trainable

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20
Q

What is high-level processing?

A

High-level processing is complex and more trainable.

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21
Q

Do people need to train their low-level cognitive ability?

A

Majority of people do not need to train their low-level cognitive system

22
Q

What does reaction time test?

A

Reaction time tests your sensory ability (low-level cognitive ability)

23
Q

What is mental speed?

A

Mental speed is the entire process of processing something

24
Q

What makes a cognitive ability? (3 criteria)

A
  1. It can be reliably measured
  2. The measurement should be valid
  3. It is different from other existing abilities
25
Q

How is a measurement reliable?

A

The measurement should generate consistent results in terms of cross-person ranking across measurements.

26
Q

How is a measurement valid?

A

A measurement of cognitive ability is considered valid if it truly measures the said ability

27
Q

How can you know if the measurement is reliable?

A

The person should have similar performances in different times when doing the same task

28
Q

What are some examples that the measurement is not reliable?

A

Activities that are determined by randomness

29
Q

Does a measurement with a high reliability necessarily have high validity?

A

No, measurement with high reliability does not mean that the cognitive ability being measured is a valid one.

30
Q

How can we validate a measurement?

A

We can use existing knowledge of other ability to validate a measurement.

31
Q

What is executive function? (2 definitions)

A
  • 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
32
Q

What are the three dimensions of executive functions?

A
  1. Inhibition function
  2. Shifting function
  3. Updating function
33
Q

What does inhibition function do?

A

Inhibition function is used to deliberately override dominant responses to resist distractions

34
Q

What does inhibition function do?

A

Inhibition function is used to deliberately override dominant responses and to restrict distraction by inhibiting/ refraining yourself from doing something.

35
Q

What task can measure inhibition function?

A

Stroop task measures the inhibition function.
- It presents incongruent list with tow conflicting dimensions of information with each other.

36
Q

How can you test the measurement reliability of inhibition function?

A

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

37
Q

How can you test the measurement validity of inhibition function?

A

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

38
Q

What does shifting function do?

A

It is used to switch flexibly between tasks or mental sets.

39
Q

What does shifting function require?

A

Shifting function requires cognitive effort to switch from one task to another

40
Q

What task can measure shifting function?

A

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.

41
Q

How can you test the measurement reliability of shifting function?

A

You can measure the score generated by the task and use the task to measure it again at a different time point

42
Q

How can you test the measurement validity of shifting function?

A

You can come up with different tasks for the shifting functions to test the validity.

43
Q

What does updating function do?

A
  • 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
44
Q

What can be used to test the updating function?

A

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

45
Q

What is used to measure reasoning?

A

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

46
Q

What are the two behavioural data in Raven’s progressive matrices test?

A
  1. The time for a person to finish a task
  2. The number of tasks correctly answered
47
Q

What is creativity?

A

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.

48
Q

What function does creativity belong to?

A

Creativity is a cognitive function.

49
Q

Of what level is creativity of the cognitive function?

A

Creativity is a very high level of cognitive function.

50
Q

What task can measure the creativity?

A

Divergent thinking task can measure the creativity.

51
Q

How does the divergent thinking tool work?

A

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)

52
Q

What does creativity assess?

A

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)