Lecture Quiz 6

Question 1

What are the purposes of visual imagery?

Answer 1

1. Memory (making the visual properties of objects available when needed)
2. Problem-solving (allowing us to try out changes in the positions of objects or our bodies)
   - These imply that visual mental images are like pictorial representations of the world

Question 2

Mental images can be three-dimensional
Shepard & Metzler (1971)

Answer 2

Subjects were presented with an object and asked whether another object is a rotation of the first
The larger the required mental rotation (the greater the rotation from original image shown), the longer it takes to answer

Question 3

What is Spatial Knowledge?

Answer 3

• Knowledge about where things are in the world and how they are spatially related to each other.
  Can be “allocentric”, representing objects in relation to each other (like a map)
• Static (does not change as you move)
• A comprehensive view of space
  Can be “egocentric”, representing objects in relation to the observer (viewpoint dependent)
• Dynamic (updated as you move)
• Limited view of space

Question 4

Mental images have a size

Answer 4

• In a study subjects were asked to think of a particular animal (e.g., bear) at a size corresponding to one of these squares (tiny, small, medium, large).
• After a few seconds, participants were presented with a possible property of the visualized animal (e.g., floppy ears?) and asked to indicate “True” or “False” as quickly as possible
• Largest square/corresponding animal had the shortest recall time
• The smallest square/corresponding animal had the longest recall time
• The bigger the size and corresponding animal makes it easier to recall if the visual property given was T or F - easier to place a mental image if it is larger

Question 5

Allocentric Spatial Knowledge

Answer 5

• representing objects in relation to each other (like a map)
• Static (does not change as you move)
• Comprehensive view of space

Question 6

Egocentric Spatial Knowledge

Answer 6

• representing objects in relation to the observer (viewpoint dependent)
• dynamic - viewpoint changes as you move

Question 7

How can we determine which type of spatial knowledge is being used?

Answer 7

In a rectangular room, if you need to know the location of corner A relative to where you are standing right now, you could mentally form an:
- Allocentric representation of the shape of the room - representing objects in relation to each other
- Egocentric representation of “left short wall–right long wall” view - representing objects in relation to the observer

Question 8

How can we determine which type of spatial knowledge is being used?

Rat platform study

Answer 8

Study Training phase: Rats learned to swim to a hidden platform in a rectangular-shaped tub of water
- Hidden platform sometimes in corner A and sometimes in corner C
Study Test phase: Rats now had to swim to a hidden platform in a kite-shaped tub of water
- Group Consistent: Hidden platform in corner E
- Group Inconsistent: Hidden platform in corner G
- Group Consistent swam to the correct corner on a higher percentage of trials than Group Inconsistent. Why?
- Using allocentric spatial knowledge? - like a map to make sense of space - using info to know how the platform relates to the space

Question 9

Mental representations in Pavlovian conditioning

Answer 9

Test data suggest that CS elicits a mental representation of a food US that includes flavor
ex: hear a bell and think of cheese

Question 10

Visual Imagery and Mental Representations Take-Home Messages

Answer 10

• Visual imagery experiments suggest that our mental representations can have three-dimensions and size (big and small)
• Spatial knowledge is another kind of mental representation and can be either viewpoint-dependent (ego-centric) or more like a map (allocentric)
• In Pavlovian conditioning, the CS can elicit a mental representation of the US (eg, the flavor of the US)

Question 11

What happened to Phineas Gage?

Answer 11

• Metal pole through head causing damage predominantly of the left lower forebrain and its connections throughout the left and into the right frontal cortices
• The orbitofrontal cortex was a main area of damage in Phineas Gage
• behavior changes, no speech or motor impediments, and memory was intact

Question 12

What is included in Executive Function?

Answer 12

• Executive function refers to higher-level cognitive skills used to control and coordinate other cognitive abilities and behaviors
  1. Working memory
• Short-term maintenance and manipulation of information
  2. Inhibitory control
• Self-control: controlling your attention, behavior, emotions to override a strong internal or external cue
  3. Cognitive flexibility
• Adjusting to new demands, rules, or priorities

Question 13

Executive Functions–Working Memory
What is the N-back task?

Answer 13

• The N-back task requires participants to decide whether each stimulus in a sequence matches the one that appeared n items ago
• Task where one indicates whether each stimulus matches the one N-back (e.g., 2 trials before in the 2-back task). More and more errors as N gets larger
• the further back the trial is when asked if the stimulus matches the current trial the more errors occur

Question 14

What are the subfunctions of working memory?

Answer 14

Working memory sub-functions
- Stimulus maintenance - storing, monitoring and matching stimulus
- Stimulus removal

Question 15

Executive Functions – Inhibitory Control
What is the Stroop Task?

Answer 15

• Name font color when it is incongruent with (different from) the word, resolving conflict from a more dominant word reading response. Slower to name font colors when incongruent with color words.
• The Stroop phenomenon demonstrates that it is difficult to name the ink color of a color word if there is a mismatch between ink color and word. For example, the word GREEN is printed in red ink is difficult to name.

Question 16

Executive Functions – Cognitive Flexibility - What is the Wisconsin Card Sort Test?

Answer 16

• Sort cards into piles under reference cards based on “set”, either color, number, or shape, discovering rules based on feedback. - After a bunch of correct sorts, the rule changes.
• Example of a sorting rule: based on color, not number or shape
• What other cognitive processes might be required for this task?
• Interference control
• Memory of task set

Question 17

The sub-regions of the brain are defined by differences in what?

Answer 17

• Cell composition
• Connectivity with other brain regions
  although the boundaries can be somewhat fuzzy!

Question 18

Executive Functions–Lateral Prefrontal Cortex
Evidence from lesion/damage studies suggests that sub-regions of the prefrontal cortex might have different functions, what are they?

Answer 18

• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for N-back task (“working memory”)
• Lateral prefrontal cortex for Stroop task (“inhibitory control”)
• Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex for Wisconsin card sort task (“cognitive flexibility”)
• On the other hand, evidence from at least some neuroimaging studies suggests activation of multiple prefrontal cortex regions across multiple types of executive function tasks

Question 19

Decision-Making & Orbitofrontal Cortex

Answer 19

• Patients with orbitofrontal cortex damage struggle with real-life decision-making and appear to be unable to learn from their mistakes
• They can be otherwise fine and perform normally on standard lab tests of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility.
• Orbitofrontal cortex was a main area of damage in Phineas Gage
• The Iowa Gambling Task is a laboratory measure of decision-making, which shows that orbitofrontal damage is associated with an inability to act on the delayed (future) consequences of actions

Question 20

What is the Iowa Gambling Task?

Answer 20

• Participant needs to choose one out of four card decks (named A,B,C, and D). The participant can win or loose money with each card
• At first, Deck A and Deck B seem better because of their larger worth ($100 vs $50)
• But with continued play, choosing Deck C and Deck D leads to overall gain (+$250 for every 10 cards); Decks A and B lead to overall loss (-$250 for every 10 cards)
• Players cannot predict when a penalty will occur, precisely calculate the net gain or loss from each deck, or know when the game will end
• Patients with orbitofrontal damage had difficulty learning that Deck C and Deck D lead to more money in the long term

Question 21

Prefrontal Cortex and Executive Function Take-Home Messages

Answer 21

• Executive functions are typically divided into working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Laboratory tasks have been developed to measure each of these (N-back task; Stroop task; Wisconsin card sorting task)
• The prefrontal cortex is a critical brain region for supporting executive functions. Subregions of the lateral prefrontal cortex may support each of the 3 basic executive functions (but this is not so simple).
• The orbitofrontal cortex supports making decisions based on long-term consequences. An important lab task for studying this is the Iowa Gambling Task, which involves deciding between alternatives with different short-term and long-term payoffs.

Question 22

What is Attention?

Answer 22

• Attention is a set of limited-capacity cognitive processes devoted to monitoring stimuli

Question 23

What are the 3 types of attention?

Answer 23

1. Altering - preparing for stimulus
   - Ex: as soon as you see 0 on-screen you press a button and on to the next one
2. Orienting - selecting a stimulus
   - Ex: fixation cross followed by an arrow point in direction (pay attention to side of the screen pointing to) - selecting a region in space (the arrow is sometimes misleading)
3. Executive - focus on stimulus
   - focusing on stimulus - left button when A is in center and right button when B is in the center

Question 24

What is an Attentional Blink - a gap in attention?

Answer 24

• Brief period of time after the detection of a stimulus during which another stimulus cannot be detected
• Subjects heard a rapid presentation of letters, one at a time, and saw a rapid presentation of other letters, one at a time
  study:
• Auditory - when number is heard - press a button
• Experimental group - target = auditory number - probe = visual x
• While paying attention to the number (target) you miss the X (probe) - when X is distant participant is able to detect it - attention blink occurs when looking for number (target) and cannot immediately pick up on the X probe

Question 25

What is Inattentional Blindness–another gap in attention?

Answer 25

• We sometimes don’t see highly visible objects we are looking at when our attention is elsewhere
• Staring directly at object of interest but still can not pick up on changes - a gap in attention/disconnect between where we are looking and where our attention is
• Participants were instructed to point their eyes at a dot in the center of a screen and to make judgments about a cross shown just off to the side. Stimuli were presented very briefly and then participants made a judgment.
• If horizontal bar of the + was longer than the vertical, press left button
• If vertical bar of the + was longer than the horizontal, press right button
• On trial 4, the dot was a triangle instead of a circle.
• Afterwards, participants asked if anything had changed.
• Most participants reported no change (and could not correctly identify the new shape as a triangle, rectangle, or cross).

Question 26

What does Visual search describe?

Answer 26

• In a visual search task, participants search for a discrepant target within a varying number of stimuli, ex: a blue T among brown Ts and green Xs
• For highly discriminable stimuli, multiple features (e.g., color and shape) can be processed simultaneously
• Otherwise, features (e.g., color and shape) must be processed separately (e.g., “Is it an X? “Is it brown ?”) and joined together
• Set size - how many letters displayed
• The more distractors the longer it takes to find target

Question 27

What is Feature Integration Theory – attention is for identifying objects?
Preattentive stage vs. Attention stage?

Answer 27

• Attending to stimuli “assembles them”, brings them into attentional focus, and makes sense of them
• Preattentive stage: A visual scene is pre-attentively encoded on feature dimensions, which are detected automatically and in parallel across the visual field
  Specifies where things are (e.g., a blue stimulus; a ‘T’ shape)
• Attention stage: Feature information is “glued together” by a limited capacity attentional mechanism
• Only features in the same location and attentional focus encoded as belonging to the same object, specifying what the object is (e.g., a brown ‘X’)

Question 28

Types of Attention Take-Home Messages

Answer 28

• We can think of attention as having 3 types: preparing (“alerting”), selecting (“orienting”), and focusing (“executive”)
• The “attentional blink” and “inattentional blindness” are two examples of how we can easily miss stimuli even when looking right at them
• Visual search tasks can reveal automatic (feature search) vs. controlled (conjunction search) attentional processes
• Feature-Integration Theory describes the attentional processes that combine together different parts of a stimulus (e.g., color, shape) into a whole object (e.g., a blue car)

Question 29

Visual attention to a region of space
What is the Spatial Cueing Task?

Answer 29

• Spatial Cueing Task reveals attention to a region of space
• Keep eyes on the + in the middle of the screen
• Arrow appears, disappears and a target appears on the left or right side of the screen (arrow cues what side + will be on - could be giving correct information but could be misleading)
• Press button as soon as you detect the target
• Valid trials: Arrow points to one side of screen and target then appears on that side (40% of all trials) - took least amount of time to react
• Invalid trials: Arrow points to one side of screen but target then appears on the other side (10% of all trials)
• Neutral trials with a “double-headed” arrow (50% of all trials)

Question 30

How can Visual attention be to objects?

Answer 30

• Subjects were required to compare successive faces or houses and to say whether they were the same or different while undergoing functional neuroimaging
• Faces and houses were presented in the same spatial location, and one was moving slightly
  Switching attention from faces to houses - object attention due to being in the same space?
• Switching to attending to houses - another brain area is used
• Different brain areas are used for diff

Question 31

What is Neglect Syndrome?

Answer 31

• Patients fail to pay attention to space/objects opposite their brain lesion
• Failure to perceive or respond to a stimulus contralateral to the lesion when presented simultaneously with a stimulus ipsilateral to the lesion.
• Typically associated with damage to the right side of the brain, producing neglect of objects in the left side of space by standard neurological tests.
  Ex:
• Patients only draw right side of clock
• Patients only name object on the right side of a room
• Cancellation test - only focusing on the right side
• Typically neglecting the left side

Question 32

What is Space - or object-based attention deficit?

Answer 32

• Patients with neglect syndrome were asked to respond as quickly as possible to a target that appeared within either a left (blue) circle or a right (red) circle
• Patients neglect slower to detect targets in the left (blue) circle.
• Now, while patients watched, the barbell-shaped frame was slowly spun so that the red circle was now on the left and the blue circle was on the right
• Patients with neglect are now slower to detect targets in the right (blue) circle.

Question 33

Selection theory – what happens to unattended stimuli?

Answer 33

• Early selection theory proposes that attention acts as a filter between sensory memory and short-term memory so that there is no semantic processing of unattended stimuli
  
  • Only simple ‘physical’ properties (e.g. pitch of a voice) processed prior to hitting the filter
• Late selection theory proposes that all incoming stimuli automatically receive at least some semantic processing
  
  • Unattended information undergoes more than just physical processing (e.g., you recognize your name in a crowded room)

Question 34

Early vs. Late Selection Theory Study

Answer 34

• Study phase: All subjects heard and verbally repeated a series of word pairs; out of those word pairs:
• Two target words ( dog, cow) of the same category (animals), paired with mild shock
• Two target words (arm, leg) of another category (body parts)
• Test phase: Shadowing task (attend to one ear and repeat words), with a series of different words presented to each ear, while measuring “palm sweat” (a fear CR)
• Group 1: Target words presented in the attended ear
• Group 2: Target words presented in the unattended ear

Question 35

Early vs. Late Selection Theory

Answer 35

• More recent studies suggest that:
  
  • In high attention-demanding situations, you tend to process only the physical characteristics of unattended information.
  • In lower attention-demanding situations, you tend to process not just the physical characteristics but also the meaning of unattended information.

Question 36

Selective Attention Take-Home Messages

Answer 36

• “Selective attention” is choosing to attend to something rather than something else.
• Visual selective attention can be directed to a region of space, or to objects.
• Neglect Syndrome is a neurological disorder that seems to cause patients to not be able to attend to one half of space.
• Early Selection Theory and Late Selection Theory are two different accounts of the extent to which unattended stimuli are processed.

Question 37

What is Multitasking–dividing attention between two tasks?

Answer 37

• Questionnaire of multi-tasking activity (e.g., cell phone use while driving) and perceived ability to multitask
• Performed a divided attention task to measure actual ability to multitask
  
  • Series of letters intermixed with math problems, each with equation and possible solution
  • Answer TRUE or FALSE for math problem and then recall letters
• Performance on the divided attention task was negatively related to measures of multi-tasking activity and perceived multi-tasking ability

Question 38

Cell phone conversation impairs driving study
Why?

Answer 38

• Group 1 drove in a driving simulator (single task) and while talking with a passenger (dual task)
• Group 2 drove in a driving simulator (single task) and while talking on a hands-free cell phone (dual task)

Question 39

Why is cell phone conversation more impairing than passenger conversation?

Answer 39

• Detailed video analysis of conversations
• Passenger conservations, but not cell-phone conversations:
  
  • Passengers actively engaged in supporting drivers (e.g., pointing out hazards, helping to navigate, reminding the driver to exit at rest stops).
  • Conversation stopped during a difficult section of driving
  • Passenger made references to traffic conditions

Question 40

Why does a conversation impair driving?

Answer 40

• Participants performed the driving task with or without also talking on a hands-free cell phone; eye fixation (i.e., where they were looking) monitored
• Later, participants were asked to identify objects that they had been looking at while driving
• Significantly lower percentages of objects were recognized when subjects were driving and talking. Inattentional blindness?

Question 41

What is Bottleneck Theory–task switching?

Answer 41

• The bottleneck theory suggests that individuals have a limited amount of attentional resources that they can use at one time.
• Bottleneck at the level of “meaningful processing”
  
  • For example, waiting to process what a road sign says while you process what a person said
• Bottleneck at the level of “response decision”
  
  • For example, wait on a decision where to turn while deciding on a response to what a person said

Question 42

Divided Attention Take-Home Messages

Answer 42

• Multitasking may involve task-switching
• We do not seem very aware of how good or bad we are at multitasking
• Poorer driving while talking on a cell phone may be due to “inattentional blindness”. Talking with a passenger may lessen this
• “Bottleneck Theory” explains divided attention as switching between two tasks