Lecture 7 and 8 Mental Chronomtery

Question 1

In 1800, what was thought to be the speed of the human mind?

Answer 1

Kant in the 1800s - infinitely fast because when asked to move a limb we could move it straight a

Question 2

What did they believe after they thought the mind’s speed was infinite?

Answer 2

Muller - 1838 : speed of light

Question 3

what did Helmholts (1860) say about the speed of the midn

Answer 3

first to conduct an experiment with a frog leg using electrical currents to make muscle contract - measured the onset of the electrical current with contraction of leg - concluded it took longer (25039 m/s). His follow up experiments on humans led to creation of reaction time (time to react from a stimulus etc)

Question 4

Why reaction time?

Answer 4

marker for mental processing speed (singleton, 1954) and intelligence (Kail and Salthouse, 1994)

Question 5

Mental chronometry

Answer 5

form of cognitive psychology where we use the reaction time of people’s responses to understand cognitive processes

Question 6

Mental chronometry: Donders (1868), subtraction method

Answer 6

Used three different tasks that required the measurement of the RT to detection, identification, selection and execution to subtract away from each other to work out the time it takes for the cognitive tasks.

Question 7

Assumption 1 of subtraction method:

Answer 7

Serial processing: that the 4 processes are occur one after another and that only one can be active at any one time

Question 8

Is serial processing always true?

Answer 8

Miller (1982) mapped SsTt onto hands in two different conditions (one w congruent letters, one with two diff letters) as people were faster when congruent

Question 9

After falsifying serial processing assumption, what did Miller come up with?

Answer 9

Cascade processing, as one starts, it triggers the beginning of the second process and so on

Question 10

Seocnd assumption of mental chronometry

Answer 10

Pure insertion - when adding in further elements to the of equation, it does not impact the upward/downward chain or reaction times/processing

Question 11

Evaluation of pure insertion

Answer 11

Ulrich et al 1999 - used different way to measure the chain by squeezing/applying force and this force was stronger in no/go task compared to simple suggesting the upward change differs

Question 12

Additive - factor method

Answer 12

Sternberg 1969 - way to measure RT using factors (IVs with diff values) and additive (test two factors)

Question 13

additive factor method application

Answer 13

Sternberg 1969 - binary classification task (maintain the assumption of serial processing) changed stimulus quality (detection process) and memory (identification)

Question 14

Addtitve factor method and MDD

Answer 14

Azorzin et al 1995 - have slower RT MDD patients took longer but only related in response selection no other area of processing

Question 15

Model of simple decision

Answer 15

simple decision –> hypothesis inference (based on noisy evidence, forced choice between options - which one to chose and when to chose)