MEASURING BRAIN & MIND Flashcards
Donder: What is Mental Chronometry
Donder was interested in mental chronometry as a physiologist. Wanted to test the brain using the mind. Borrowed the word form wundt. Donder was interested in the eyeball and sensory perception- looking for new ways to asses his clintele. Working with people with visual impairments.
interested in how to measure it to diagnose it. Introduced a new paradigm; subtractive methodology.
Donder: what is Subtractive Methodology?
Obtaining measures by removing known parameters.
- gave participants a task that could be broken down into 4 seperate tasks.
- stilumus detection, stimulus identification, response selection response execution.
- line up a process, have participants do something in order and he called this the assumption of pure Insertion.
Donder: what is pure insertion?
subtractive methodology
line up a process and make pps do it in order.
his process incldued…
1. Mental processes (response) are arranged sequentially
2. Only one process can be active at a time
3. Mental processes were temporally isolated (happened in a step-wise fashion)
these processes occured dependently and arrnaged sequentially (one by one).
- first, detect stimulus ( i saw something, tasted something.
- second, then stimulus identification (perception); perception comes after sensation in an organzied way followed by…
- response selection
- response exectuion (motor output).
- he recognized, throug work of wundt titchener that there was some kind of mental representation to action (same as james such as affordances) but it goes in this order.
- they were isoalted (happen step-wise)
- have to create some paradigm that had all 4 of them and subtract the pieces as you measure them and you could to whats happening inside without having to worry reporting, intepretting it.
- way to get at the barebones, without relying on pps (subjects)
Donder: what is Simple RT (baseline)
subtractive methodology
Donders calculated the time required for each stage by using a subtraction technique: Perception and motor time = the time required for the simple task. … He demonstrated a simple principle: The time it takes to perform a task depends on the number and types of mental stages involved
Assumption sensory experience and associated responses were automatic.
- see something, do something (click a button) baseline measuring.
- simple RT does not require cogntion or perception.
- its a refelx; A simple reaction is nothing more than an automatic response.
- Stimulus detection→response execution
*Donders was looking at the physiological response
- eyeblincking as a reflex.
Donders: Go/No-Go Identification
subtractive methodology
you are identifying a stiml\ulus but not producing a mental output. no perception or cognition involved. Assumption; discrimination precedes response
- when you will respond or not.
-when you see a stimulus, hit the button, whe you don’t, dont do anything.
- sensory motor response.
- cognitive component.
- False alarm means participants are not paying attention.
- Now there was a legitimate reason to throw out a trial and do it again becuse pps didn’t do what they were asked to do, so they did the trial again when no one made errors.
Donder said error means something; it means they weren’t paying attention.
We are not interested in variation in this paradigm; we are interested in the correct way to do something.
introduced understanding what errors meant.
Donders; Choice RT: Response Selection
Subtractive Methodology
- more compelx than go-no-go
- respond like this when… respond like that when…
- Subtraction allows for the isolation of components
- Stimulus Detection → Stimulus Identification → Response Selection → Response Execution
- (Choice RT/ full version of the experiment; click this when this happens, that when this happends) - (Simple RT ) = get all cognitive components.(extract cognition straight out of it because you ask them to do something complex, then something reflexive).
- this allows you to say, this component right here is whats happening in the mind.
- then remove go, no-go from choice RT, and you are left with response selection which means you can then subtract response selection from stimulus identification and response selection to be left with stimulus identification.
problem; go/ no-go
Problem: incorrect Go/No-go responses
- donders just interested in the responses themselves but this is identification and response selection- didn’t care about what you’re thinking, but what you’re doing. 9start of behaviourism- remove subjectivity and measure objectively.
▪ “false start” (i.e. simple RT); people were moving faster than the stimulus
- anticipatory response; speeding up (intrainment)
- You’re hitting the button before the stimulus even appears.
- He did not account for the false start issue.
- inaccurate measure of response selection.
- response inhibition, a selction of a response, or stopping of a response.
fact check; go/ no-go
- go/no-go underscored perception.
- This is more complex than responding and not responding.
- Donders did not realize perception is not the same as motor.
- Signal detection; the likelihood of response (motor) given the detection of the stop signal (perception) (how we perceive a stimuli and then respond to them notorically, there are 3 components, not 2–> perception is seperate from motor which donder didn’t realize)
- he thought this was an error but it wasn’t, people were just inhibited to respond (intrainment)
- Not a perceptual process; this is motor (inhibition)
- Active (not passive) - false alarm; aware it was a wrong response but couldn’t stop yourself
- no target or no response; correct rejection, you should not be not responding to it.
- donder only saw the first column.
- We use go/ no-go to test dementia
- Repetition (Learning)
- Expertise
- Changes in explicit/ implicit memory - another thing donder did not know; people completing go/no-go (choice rt) faster than the simple reaction time.
- he did not understand this, adding more processes in there.
- he had people do it 100x over so they would obviously become better at procedural task and donder could not account for this. –> the numbers stopped making sense.
who is Hans-Lukas Teuber (1955) and what is single dissociation
Experimental Methods
- Single Dissociation; if disruption to function B causes a disruption in task B but not in task A.
- measure a without measuring b (test them independently)
- we need to find a task that cna measure one function without measuring another function.
- shape vs. colour.
- a subject who cannot respond to a colour but can osberve the shape of the object. (single dissocitation task)
- change only one component of the object and see if it makes a difference.
- If you broke it down to a simple stimulus (just shape), they realized people’s ability to detect certain tasks was measurable.
- they were now placing it into sensation and perception.
Single Dissociation: Limiation
Limitation; the magnitude of impairment (easy tasks aren’t as impaired)
- only works for simple tasks but the minute it gets to compex tasks, it moves beyond sensation and perception.
- can we actually say colour is seperate from shape, shaoe is seperate from form.
- shape and colour might inform each other, but distance is not reliant on them all. can we use single association to detangle shape and colour if they’re reliant on eachother (no we cannot)
- A process may include a separate function (partially independent)
- The whole is greater than the sum of its part (gestalt)
- Some processes may include a separate function; shape and colour might inform each other but distance is not reliant on them all. So can we use single dissociation to disentangle shape and colour if shape and colour are reliant on each other? –> no we cannot.
Single Dissociation; limitations that aren’t neccessarily a bad thing.
▪ explorative; when you don’t know which possess is reliant on other processes- start testing it.
▪ more ecologically valid; neuropsych; more valid to do single than double dissociation
▪ elucidate certain connections between functions
▪ determine parameters of functions that we know are dissociated
what is double dissociation?
Double Dissociation; if task A engages function A but not function B, task B engages function B but not function A.
DD; allows us to correlate between brain regions of damage and fucntion.
- if you can test individuals on a whole bunch of tasks and determine what they cannot do, and realize where the brain injury was, you can say if you have damage over here and you can do this still sot hat part of the brain is involved with that task but you can’t do this other task as well so that same part of the brain is also involved with this task as well. (working backwards, subtracting)
- dd; take 2 single associations and attach them, if you have a differential response between them, it tells you something about the person.
- dd; father of neuropsychology.
- Determines
The independence of functions
The parameters of a function
who is Broca? and what did he do ?
Evidence-based practice
- Broca believed mental illness wasn’t a religious thing but a physiological thing, biology.
- broca interested in double dissociation because it allowed him to document his findings.
- The process of Communication involves;
- Faculty of language; establishing a relationship between idea and sign
- Faculty of articulate speech; control of organs of emission (motor, larynx, tongue, upper limbs)
- And reception (sensations; ears, eyes, touch) sense of information coming in.
Broca: what is faculty of language?
Faculty of language;
❑Ideomotor Apraxia; Disruption in the connection between the concept and motor symbol but not the motor ability
- disruption of the faculty of lanaguage between internal rep. and the motor gesture –> individuals with impairments will have a difficult time understanding this.
Having a hard time putting motor and ideas together but can do simple ones that are more direct (put your hand on your forehead) vs. (how do you brush your teeth).
Don’t understand the meaning.
When symbols have meaning, it takes us longer to process (the chimpanzee video of tapping numbrs→ for chimpanzees, numbers don’t have a meaning, so it doesn’t take a long time to do it, whereas humans associate meaning with numbers hence why it takes them longer)
Broca; What is the faculty of articulate speech.
❑“Aphemia” (Broca’s Aphasia) ▪ Disruption in motor ability but not motor sign and concept
- no problem conecting between the idea and the symbol (internal rep), the problem they had was faculty of articulate speech- they couldn’t produce information.
- Using double dissociation, he saw a separation between language and articulate speech.
- Understands the questions but has a hard time to articulate the words.
- Respond to their environment symbolically but cannot produce language that is symbolic.
- Problem with grammar involved; organization of words.
- these faculties helped him say that part of the brain was involved with this sort of speech etc. (this part lets you talk, this parts is associated with comprehending, etc.)
