Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is a major difference between the approaches for behavioral and cognitive psychology?
Behavioral focuses on observable behavior and their relationship with environmental stimuli. Cognitive focuses on internal mental processes. (perception, memory, etc.)
What are some of the questions cognitive psychologists attempt to answer?
How do decision-making and problem-solving work?
What is the cognitive approach generally?
Investigating mental processes like perception, memory, language, and reasoning.
What do cognitive psychologists hope to learn from studying the brain? Give an example.
They study the brain to link mental processes to neural activity and further the understanding of cognition. Ex: Studying the role of the hippocampus to see why damage in this area can cause amnesia.
What are two ways cognitive scientists consider representation in the brain?
Symbolic: information is stored abstractly, concepts or objects.
Connectionist: information is distributed across patterns of neural connections.
What is the difference between a localized function and a distributed one?
Localized: specific brain areas are responsible for specific stimulus.
Distributed: multiple brain regions working together. (memory formation working with hippocampus.)
What is meant by specificity vs. distributed coding?
Specificity: a single neuron represents a specific stimulus.
Distributed: patterns of activity across multiple neurons.
What can examining patients with brain damage tell us about cognition and the brain?
It can reveal how specific regions support cognitive functions.
What is the brain activity the fMRI is measuring?
Blood oxygenation changes related to neural activity.
What is the brain activity that EEG measures?
Electrical activity from neurons by scalp electrodes, captures brain patterns related to cognitive and sensory events.
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
fMRI: + high spatial resolution, identifies active brain areas. - low temporal resolution, indirect measure of activity.
EEG: + high temporal resolution, tracks real-time activity. - low spatial resolution, hard to pinpoint activity locations.
What is the subtraction logic of fMRI studies?
Comparing brain activity during a task vs a control condition to isolate task-specific brain regions.
How are sensation and perception different?
Sensation: detection of external stimuli by sensory organs.
Perception: interpretation of sensory input, giving meaning to stimuli.
What are the basic principles of sensation and perception?
Sensory thresholds, Signal detection theory, Sensory adaptation, Perceptual organization.
Define bottom-up versus top-down with respect to these.
Bottom-up: processing driven by raw sensory input.
Top-down: influence of prior knowledge and expectations.
What is template matching vs. the Feature Analytic Approach to understanding pattern recognition?
Template matching: recognizing objects by comparing input to stored “templates.”
Feature analytic approach: breaking objects into distinctive features for recognition.
What evidence is there for feature detection in the brain?
Neurons in the visual cortex respond to specific features.
How can context affect perception?
Context influences interpretation, like understanding ambiguous words based on surrounding sentences.
What is the word superiority effect?
Letters are recognized faster in the context of words than in isolation.
Define attention, with an example?
Focusing on specific stimuli while ignoring others. Ex: Listening to a friend in a noisy room.
Why is attention needed/useful?
Attention enhances processing efficiency, prioritizing relevant stimuli.
In the so-called ‘early selection models for attention. What evidence is there for an ‘early’ filter?
Dichotic listening tasks show unattended information is filtered out early, before reaching awareness.
What is the ‘cocktail party effect’?
The ability to focus on one conversation in a noisy environment, yet notice personally relevant stimuli.
How does the fact that participants can ‘shadow’ for meaning create problems for Broadbent’s model of early selection?
Shadowing for meaning challenges Broadbent’s early filter model, suggesting some unattended information is processed.
What evidence do we have for Late selection theories?
Semantic processing of unattended stimuli, like recognizing the meaning of ignored words.
Q: What is change blindness?
Failure to notice changes in a visual scene, revealing limits of attention.
How do cognitive psychologists study attention using eye-movement?
Eye-tracking technology records where and how long people focus, revealing attentional priorities.
What do we mean by a ‘pop-out’ effect?
Certain stimuli (e.g., red circle among blue squares) stand out effortlessly due to distinctive features.
What is meant by the ‘binding problem’?
How the brain integrates features (e.g., color, shape) into coherent perceptions.
What is Triesman’s feature-integration theory with respect to the binding problem?
Proposes that features are initially processed separately, then integrated through focused attention.
Can we divide our attention effectively? What is the evidence from dual-task studies?
Dual-task studies show performance declines when multitasking, but familiarity with tasks (e.g., driving and talking) can mitigate this.
What is the phenomenon of ‘inhibition of return’?
Delayed attention shifts back to recently attended locations, promoting efficient searching.
What does the performance on the Stroop task tell us about automaticity?
The Stroop effect demonstrates how automatic processes (reading) interfere with controlled tasks (naming ink colors).
Distinguish controlled task versus automatic task performance.
Controlled tasks: Require conscious effort (e.g., learning a new skill). Automatic tasks: Performed with little conscious effort after practice.
Can any task become automatic?
Yes, with extensive practice, tasks like typing or driving become automatic, though complex or novel tasks may resist automation
