Midterm 1 Flashcards
Donders
looked into how long it takes to make a decision (mental chronometry)
donders= decision
used the light from the computer and compared that reaction time to the reaction time when the participant was forced to make a decsion
Wihelm Wundt
first person to belive that psyc could be a “real” science
structuralism: all conscious experiences is determined off of an individuals experience
analytical introspection: describing your expereineces as its happening
ex) apple example
what is the problem with analytical introspecition?
it is very SUBJECTIVE to an individuals personal experience
ex) describing an apple can be very different for people who love, hate, allergic to the fruit
Ebbinghaus
looked into early memory research
-forgetting curve
william james
wrote the principles of psychology
studied the function of consciousness
- viewed consciousness similar to a river
“I lost my train of thought”
pavlov
classic conditioning of dogs and figured that they began to associate the light turing on with them getting a treat so they started to salivate before the food was even brought to them
john watson
noted the problems with introspection
- extremely variable results from person to person (subjective)
-results are difficult to verify
Suggested BEHAVIORISM
- only study directly observable behaviours
“little albert” experiment, he based it off of pavlovs classical conditioning but did it so the results were something that we could see — albert crying
skinner
stimulus-response behaviourlism
- looked into the relationship between stimuli and responding
operant conditioning
ex) pos, neg reinforcement- pos,neg punishment
describe positive and negative reinforcement
*reinforcement is when it makes it more likely that the behaviour is repeated.
positive reinforcement= response is strengthened by adding rewarding stimulus
ex) pigions allowed to eat if they win ping pong
negative reinforcement= response is strengthened by the removal of an unplesent stimulus
ex) headache is gone after taking an advil
describe positive and negative punishment
positive punishment- adding a negative stimulus
ex) spanking
negative punishment- taking away a negative stimulus
ex) time out from play time
chomsky
argued against behaviourlist perspective
used language as an example because language is not determined by imitation or reinforcement
ex) children say things they have never heard said before “he goed to the store”
what is the approach called with was the shift from behaviourlist stimulus response relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind?
information-processing apprach
what are the two models in congnitive psyc
structural model- represents the physical structure
ex) model of the brain
process models- represents the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms
ex) usually looks like boxes which shows the input— to the output
extraneous variables
any variable other than the independent variable that seems likely to influence the dependent variable
ex) age or gender
confounding variables
occurs when two variables are linked together to make it difficult to sort out their specific effects
ex) when looking into the correlation between hours studying and test outcome, the confounding variable is the students previous knowledge on the subject
correlation/descriptive studies
no manipulation of variables
ex) effects of smoking on fetal babies
extremly unethical to to manipulate this, so you need to just observe
this includes specific case studies
positive corrolation vs negative correlation
pos= moving in the same direction
ex) high high school gpa= high collage gpa
neg= moving in opp direction
ex) high absence from class= low test score
research method= functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
measures brain activity before and during stimulation presentation
- by reading the activity before the stimulus is present it allows for the final reading to subtract the intial actovity and then the final conclusion only includes the brain activity from the stimulus
what are the four lobes of the brain
temporal– side of the head
parietal– top of the head
occipital– top of the spine, back of the head
frontal— front of head
thalamus
sensory system rather than olfactory
hypothalmus
biological function
sweating, hungry, thirsty
hippocampus
key to memory
pituitary gland
master gland- releases hormones
three components of the brain stem
midbrain
pons
medulla
pons
acts as a bridge between the medulla and midbrain in the brain stem
medulla
basic life functions- heart and breathing
cerebellum
little brain
gross motor movenment and balance
*alcohol affects this thats why you balence is bad when you are drunk
corpus callosum
runs between both hemispehers and allows for communication between the two
cerebral cortext
over layer of the whole brain
what is dissociation logic and what are the two types
A method to examine the function of a particular brain region
single dissociation= one function is lost , another remains
ex) person in car crash only has damage to the memory and no other known damages to the brain
double dissociation= requires two individuals with different damage and opposite deficits
ex) brocas area damage vs wernickes area damage
explain the affects of damage to brocas are and wernickes ares
brocas area– cant generate speech but the person is still consious about what they are trying to say
(non-fluent aphasia )
wernickes area- the person can generate speech well but none of it makes sense
(fluent aphasia )
both of these areas of the brain is examples of localization of function— which is when a specific area is responsible for a specific function
distributed processing
multiple areas of the brain involved in a single function
what is perception
the process of recognizing, organizing and interpretating information from senses
this is not an exact copy of the world and is based on past experiences and expectations
why is it difficult to design a machine that has good perception
inverse projection problem
– the stimulus of the receptors is ambigious
objects can be hidden or blurred
- people can often see half an object and infer what the rest of the object looks like based off previous experience, but a computer can not
objects look different from different viewpoints
-easy for humans, but very complex for computers
two types of human processing, define the bottom up processing
starts with the sensory receptors and then works up to the brain to identify the objects/scene being percieved
perception comes from stimulus in the environment. the parts are identified and then recognition occurs
example- when your eyes see a person there is multiple singles in the brain which then conclude that you recognize that person
what is template matching theory
a bottom up approach to human processing
- is the idea that we have patterns of how things should be and our brain tries to find a match from previous memories
ex) when there is a bunch of lines going through the world HELLO, a human can still recognize it, but a computer may not be able to because it doesn’t have a tolerance for partial information
what is the pandemonium model
pattern recognition as a gradual process of evidence accumulation based on a feature by feature analysis
but limited to only explaining simple patterns (letters), but how do we recognize other objects??
recognition by components theory
- we perceive objects by perceiving elementary features
GEONS- 3D volumes
objects are recognized when enough information is available to identify objects geons
36 geons and these geons form together to form complex shapes
example of the complexity of the geons, if you only used 24 of them and wanted to make groups of three there would be 306 billion different objects you could create
there are two types of human processing, what is the top down approach
based on knowledge we have
-begins at the brain then works down to receptors
occurs very quickly
- people actively construct perceptions using information based on expectations and experience
- some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about the envrioment
why does top down processing occur very quickly?
people actively construct perceptions using information based on expectations and experiences
what is Helmoholtz Theory of Unconscious Inference
-its a top down theory
- some of our perceptions are the result of unconcious assumptions we make about the environment
ex) think about the two colour rectangles with one in front of the other, even though we cant see the full shape of the one behind, we assume that it is a rectangle
— likelihood principle= we percieve the world in the way it is “most likely” based on our past experience
Gastalt Laws of Perceptual Organization
Law of good continuation
- lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path
ex) rope in a pile
Law of good figure (simplicity)
- every stimulus pattern is seen so the resulting structure is as simple as possible
Law of Similarity
- similar things appear grouped together
Law of familiarity
- things are more likely to form groups if the groups appear familiar
law of proximity
- things near each other appear grouped together
law of common fate
- things moving in the same direction appear to be grouped together
ex)starlight mumeration
what are the two types of regularities in the environment
regularies in the environment=== charcteritics of the environment that occur frequently
physical regularities- regularly occuring physcial properties of the environment
semantic regularities- the meaning of a scence
ex) scene schema
what is a scene schema
is the knowledge of what a given scene ordinarly contains
ex) what does a proffesors office usually have in it
what are the three top down approaches
and compare them
Helmohotz theory of Unconcious inference
- uses info from the environment gathered through experience
Gatalt principles of organization
- differs from helmoholtz in that they suggest laws are innate (present from birth)
environmental regularities
what is an example where perception involves both top down and bottom up processing
Pain
bottom up - stimulation of nociocpetors in nervous system
top down- expectations, attention, placebo affect all affect how pain in perceived
____ become tuned to respond best to what we commonly experience
Neurons
ex) horizontals and verticles- more of these in the brain
what is an example of experience dependent plasticity (animals)
-animals reared in evironments containing only certain types of stimuli then they will have neurons respond to these stimuli will become more predominate due to neural placsticity
ex) when you raised a cat in an enviro with vertical lines, the neurons did not respond to horizontal lines due to neural plasticity
What is an example of experience dependent plasticity (humans)
when there is weak or no inputs from one eye, the stronger eye takes over in the brain meant for the other
what is brain ablation in science
method which alows scientist to damnage specific areas of otherwise normal brains
- controlled damage allows for clear conclusions to be drawn
what two parts of the brain are responsible fo rthe what and where of perception and action
“what” (ventral) stream= identifying an object
“where” (dorsal) stream= identifying the objects location
ex) of this is hand eye coordination
what is prosopagnosia
you cant recognize faces or cant interpret facial cues
what is akinetopsia
does not have the ability to view motion. sees life through a series of “snap shots”
whatis agnosia
unable to identify or recognize objects
what is hallucinogenic persistent perceptual disorder (HPPD)
causes similar affects of hallucinogenic drugs long after the affects should be gone
what is attention
the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment
includes consious and unconcious processes
what is positive priming and what are the two types
positive priming- prior presentation of a stimulus facilitates later recognition
- Conceptual = something related
-repetition= exact same stimuli
selective attention
filter out some information and promoting other information for further processing
ex) two phrases being said into each ear and being told only to listen to one of the phrases
what did broadbent suggest in terms of attention and what could this model not explain?
Broadbent, our attention works like a filter that helps us focus on specific details by letting in only certain types of information.
BUTTTT
this could not account for the cocktail party affect — participants name gets through and you can be trained to detect in unattend ear base on the meaning of the message
How was broadbents theory countered by Treismans Attenuation Theory?
she modified the early selection theory and belived that unattended info is NOT blocked but rather turned down
the signial strength needed to activate the persons attention depends on the words
ex) your name does not need a high signal strength for people to gain attention, but “ruttabaga” would need higher signal strength to garner attention
what is an example of late selection models in attention
Mckay
in attending ear, the person heard ambigious sentences and in unattened ear the person heard one of two different words
- the word they had differed the meaning of the sentence to the person
what is perceptual load
- the amount of congative recources needed to carry out a particular task
low-load tast vs high-load task
what is the load theory of attention
the amount of perceptual load is required for a task determines how much attention is needed for that task
the remaining congative recources could be used for other things
ex) a low load task only using a small amount of perceptual load, thus there is lots of congnitive recources left for the person to disperse their attention on other things, like talking while making a coffee
in eye tracking, what are fixations and saccades?
fixations are short pauses on points of intrest (dots)
saccades are rapids movements of the eyes from one place to another (lines)
what is stimulus salience and what type of processing does it use
areas that stand out and capture attention due to physical charcteristics ex( bright colour, motion
based on bottom up process
what is an example of top-down processing in eye movenment
familar objects take priority in scanning
this is subjective as it varies between people and their experience
what is the difference between “divided attention” and “distraction”
divided attention= attending to two or more things at once
distraction= one stimulus interfering with the process of another
divided attention can be done depending on what two things
practice
difficulty of task
automatic processing vs controlled processing
automatic- occurs with intention, uses very little of persons cognitive resources
controlled- pay attention at all times and control their focus
what does mind wandering activate in the brain
it activates the default mode network in the brain– areas of the brain that are activated when you are not involved in a task
what is inattentional blindness
when a stimulus that is not attended (not being payed attention too) is not perceived, even though the person may be looking at it
ex) think ducky in the cup game
what is change blindness and what is a real life example
if shown two versions of a picture, differences between them are not immediately different
continuity errors in films – some aspect in a scene change which should have remained the same
what is the difference between exogenous attention and endogenous attention
exogenous attention is automatic attraction of attention by a sudden visual or auditory stimulus
- this is a bottom up process as it is stimulus drive
endogenous attention is intentional and is consciously determined direction of attention
-this is a top down process
** both involve overt attention= shifting attention by moving eyes
what type of attention is automatic attraction (bottom up) and what type is intential (top down)
automatic attraction= exogenous attention
intentional = endogenous attention
**both involve overt attention = shifting attention by moving eyes
what is the binding problem
how an objects individual features are bound together to give a single percept
- think about moving a ball down a hill and how thats all we see, we dont see all the charcteritics that are involved in it
What was Trismans response to the binding problem
Feature Integration Theory
- attention allows us to perceive an objects visual features as belonging together
what are the two stages in treismans feature integration theory
preattentive stage
- automatic
-doesnt require attention
- unaware of process
focused attention stage
-attention plays key role
-features are combine (binding problem)
how did treisman test her feature integration theory
and what problem did they see
tested this theory by asking people to focus on numbers and the coloured shapes appeared, then asked about the shape
- Illusory conjunctions ( getting the wrong shape and colour) occur because features are “free floating’ this shows evidence for preattentive stage
what is balints syndrome
common illusory conjunction – mixing up the shape and colour
explain the role of bottom up processing and top down processing in the Feature Integration Theory
- Mostly bottom- up processing
top down processing influences processing when participants are told what they are going to see
search vs vigilance
search = scan of environment for particular features
vigilance is more being alter not scanning
feature search vs conjunction search
feature search= target is defined by single featire (ex. the colour red)
- target should pop, there is no attention required
conjunction search= traget is defined by two features (ex. letter and colour)
- attention is require and need to examine more closley
