Midterm Flashcards
What is cognitive science?
The interdisciplinary study about how the mind works
Describe cognitive science
Studying human behavior
Studying the brains of animals
Figuring out how to program robots to complete tasks
What problems are solved by the brain (H: 5 items)?
Sensation and Perception
Cognition
Communication
Action
Emotion
What is sensation and perception?
Internalizing the physical world
What are examples of cognition (H: 5 items)?
Understanding and Thinking
Planning and Imagining
Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
Attention
Learning and Memory
What are examples of communication (H: 4 items)?
Speech and Language
Gestures and Facial Expression
Body Language and Posture
Gait
What are examples of action (H: 3 items)?
Manipulating the Environment
Actively Exploring New Environments
Navigating Known Environments
What are the human emotions (H: 6 items)?
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Anger
Surprise
Disgust
What are some capabilities that other organisms possess that humans don’t (H: 3 items)?
Rattlesnakes can detect infrared light
Bats, porpoises, and some birds have echolocation
Cows and some birds have magnetoreception
What are the disciplines of cognitive science (H: 4 items)?
Philosophy
Psychology
Neuroscience
Computer Science, Engineering, Robotics
What is philosophy?
Reason-based approach to understanding the mind
What is psychology?
Study of the mind and behavior
What are some methods used in psychology (H: 3 items)?
Scientific: Empirical and Hypothesis Testing
Cause-and-Effect: X -> Y
Non-Scientific: Clinical, Analytical, and Introspective
What is neuroscience?
Study of the nervous system
What are some methods used in neuroscience (H: 4 items)?
Neuroanatomy: Structure of neurons and neural tracts
Neurophysiology: Function of neurons
Neuropsychology: Global functions of brain areas
Neuroimaging: Imaging of the brain
How are computer science, engineering, and robotics involved in cognitive science?
You can build machines that stimulate functions of perception, cognition, communication, and action
How can you combine all disciplines?
When working through an experiment
- Philosophy: Brainstorming
- Psychology: Test performance, document, hypothesize, and retest
- Neuroscience: Take it apart and see what’s important
- Computer Science, Engineering, and Robotics: Try to build a model
What is reverse engineering?
You have a solution and want to understand the design
How is cognitive science a reverse engineering problem?
We have the brain and we want to know how it works
When was the first mention of the brain?
1700 BC
What civilization viewed the heart as the seat of the mind and intellect?
Egyptians
Who was the first to champion the brain as the seat of cognition in the body?
Alcemeaon
What is the Medieval Cell Doctrine?
The different functions of the brain are localized in the ventricles
What are the functions of the different cells in the MCD (H: 3 items)?
Cell 1: Lateral - Common Sense - Multimodality
Cell 2: Middle - Reason and Thought
Cell 3: Memory
Why was dissection important in establishing the brain as the seat of cognition?
They found that the ventricles aren’t the seat of the soul and mind and that animals have ventricles too
What is phrenology?
The theory that the shape of size of the cranium can be used to indicate character and mental abilities
Who founded phrenology (H: 2 items)?
Franz Josef Gall and J.C. Spurzheim
How was phrenology studied?
Skulls were examined from insane and criminals to intelligent and accomplished people by detecting bumps on the skull
What was Broca’s patients name and why?
Tan, because it was the only word he could say
What is Broca’s Aphasia?
You can’t speak, but can understand language
How does Broca’s Aphasia occur?
Damage to the left frontal lobe
Why was Broca’s report important?
It showed that there’s localization of function in the brain
Why are women and minorities unrepresented in the history of cognitive science (H: 3)?
Educational Barriers
Discrimination in the Academy
Institutional Discrimination
Describe Donder’s reaction time experiment
A reaction time task to make inferences about cognitive processing
- Simple RT: Press J when the light goes on
- Choice RT: Press J for left light, K for right light
People take longer to respond when they have to make a choice, which is a mental process
Describe Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments
Used quantitative measurements of memory and developed the concept of association
Studied memory by
- Creating 2,300 lists of non-sense syllables
- Memorizing these lists
- Testing himself after various delays
Found the forgetting curve
Describe Calkin’s contribution to cognitive science
Setup the first women’s psychology lab
Created the Paired-Associates Memory Task
Denied a doctorate for being a women
Describe Tolman’s mental map experiment
A mental representation of your spatial environment
He used mice in his experiments
Learning Types
- Response Learning: Learn where to go based on previous movements or response
- Place Learning: Learn where to go based on cues in the environment
Describe Miller’s ‘Magic Number 7’ paper and his contribution to the cognitive revolution
The paper revealed that the capacity of short-term memory seems to be about seven items (+/- 2 items)
Chunking: Grouping items in a meaningful way
What is behaviorism?
Focuses on how people learn through interacting with the environment and that behaviors are acquired through conditioning
What was the cognitive revolution?
A movement in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its process, from which emerged a new field of cognitive science
Describe the Simon Task
Rules
- Raise your LH for a blue box
- Raise your RH for a yellow box
Congruent: The response and box are on the same side
- People are faster at congruent responses
Incongruent: The response and box are on opposite sides
- People are slower at incongruent responses
Simon Effect: Incongruent RT - Congruent RT
- The larger values mean greater interference
What are the most common outcomes measured in cognitive tasks (H: 3 items)?
Accuracy
Error or Omissions
Reaction or Response Time
Why do cognitive psychologists use models to study how the mind works?
To analyze processes that they can’t directly observe
What are advantages of using a model (H: 2 items)?
Can provide a testable hypothesis
Allows for simulation
What are disadvantages of using a model (H: 1 item)?
It can be over-simplified and lead to incorrect solutions
What are examples of models used (H: 2 items)?
Conceptual Model: Explains how the mind processes information
Computational Model: Explains how the brain would process information
What is ecological validity?
A measure of how test performance predicts behavior in real-world settings
What are the lobes of the brain and provide one function of the lobe?
Occipital: Visual processing
Parietal: Processes information from the senses throughout the body
Temporal: Processing auditory information
Frontal: Higher level executive functions (planning, judgement)
What is localization of function?
There are functions in a specific area of the brain
What is distributed processing?
Specific functions activate many areas of the brain
How are localization of function and distributed processed connected?
Many localized processes can happen at the same time which in turn activates many
Describe MRI?
A picture is represented with regions of the brain that are active
Blood-oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal is used when measuring
Advantage: No radioactive tracer needed
Disadvantage: Requires participant to be still
Describe PET
Shows how the brain and its tissues are working
A tracer is used to look for disease or injury in the brain
Advantage: Able to detect injury or disease
Disadvantage: Radioactive tracer
Describe DTI?
Detects the white matter fibers that connect different parts of the brain and how water travels along the white matter tracts
Helps to map specific brain areas before surgery
Advantage: Visualize white matter
Disadvantage: Artifacts and noise
Describe EEG?
Measures electrical activity on the scalp and make inferences about underlying brain activity
Advantage: Continuous and rapid measurements
Disadvantage: Poor spatial resolution and can only measure cortical activity
Describe MEG
Measures magnetic fields produced by your brain’s electical currents to map out brain function and identify the exact location of the source of epileptic seizures
Advantage: Very high temporal and spatial resolution
Disadvantage: Requires highly sensitive instrumentation
Describe TMS
Uses electromagnetic induction to induce weak currents inside the brain
The weak current can either excite or inhibit neurons in the targeted area
Advantage: Less invasive
Disadvantage: Still experimental
What are the different parts of a neuron and their function (H: 6 items)?
Dendrites: Take in information
Cell Body (Soma): Collects the information from the dendrites and contains the nucleus
Axons: Long extension that reaches out and helps connect neurons
- Axon Hillock: Controls the initiation of an electrical impulse based on the inputs
- Axon Terminal: Converts an electrical signal into a chemical signal
Myelin Sheath: Protects the axon and helps speed nerve transmissions
Describe spatial integration in a neuron
The extent and direction of the dendrites
Describe temporal integration in a neuron
The time window of the refractory period
How do neurons communicate?
They use electrochemical signals
What are neurotransmitters?
Chemicals that affect the electrical signal of the receiving neuron
What are different types of neurotransmitters (H: 2 items)?
Excitatory: NT that increases the chance a neuron will fire
Inhibitory: NT that decreases the chance a neuron will fire
What is a two-state neuron?
Theoretical model of a neuron
What is a perceptron?
Simplified model of a neuron
How are two-state neurons and perceptrons similar?
Both models of artificial neurons
How does a two-state neuron produce a binary output?
Based on a threshold function
How is the perceptron different from the two-state neuron?
It takes in multiple inputs and produces a single output based on weighted sums
What is lateral inhibition?
The ability to inhibit excitation in neighboring neurons
How does lateral inhibition work in the human eye?
It inhibits surronding cells making visual perception better by enhancing image contrast, color discrimination, and light adaptation
What are receptive fields?
Area in which stimuli can influence the electrical activity of sensory cells
What are ganglion cells?
Specialized neurons in the eye that take input from photoreceptors and integrate their information together in a specific signal
How do receptive fields work in ganglion cells?
It alter the firing of a ganglion cell
- Light in center -> Rapid firing
- Light in surround -> Slow firing
What is Hebbian learning?
An increase in synaptic efficiency arises from a presynaptic cell’s repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell
Learning and memory are represented in the brain by physiological changes at the synapse
“Cells that fire together, wire together”
What are semantic networks?
Concepts are arranged in networks that represent the way concepts are organized in the mind
How are semantic networks used to categorize concepts in the world around us?
They help create relationships between different concepts and ideas allowing for better understanding about different concepts
Describe the Collins and Qullian semantic network model
Captures differences between superordinate and basic-level concepts
What are the properties of semantic networks in the Collins and Qullian model (H: 3 items)?
Hierarchical Structure: Organization of categores
Inheritence: Lower-level items share properties of higher-level items
- Cognitive Economy: Shared properties are only stored at higher-level items
Spreading Activation: Activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that’s connected to an activated node
What is a connectionist network?
Arrangements of neurons in a network that describe how neurons are arranged and connected, how information flows from one neuron to another, and how connection weights change over time
How does learning in the connectionist network work (H: 3 items)?
The network responds to a stimulus
- Forward propagation of activation
Provided with the correct response
- Feedback
Modifies responding to match the correct response
- Backpropagation of error signal
How does the connectionist network work?
There are “neuron-like units”
- Input Units: Activated by stimulation from the environment
- Hidden Units: Receive input from input units
- Output Units: Receive input from hidden units
Connection Weights: Determines the degree to which signals sent from one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next unit
What is a Turing Machine?
Abstract ideas or computational devices that are intended to help investigate the extent and limitations of what can be computed
How does the Turing Machine work?
Set of instructions (computer program)
Infinite tape (environment)
Labeled states (where you are on the tape)
Binary code (0,1; language used)
Imitation Game: Can a computer successfully imitate a human
What are AI winters?
A period of reduced funding and interest in AI research
What conditions lead to AI winters?
A chain reaction that began with pessimism in the AI community, followed by pessimism in the press, followed by a severe cutback in funding, followed by the end of serious research
What are Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs)?
The type used to identify patterns in images and videos
How do DCCNs work?
Multiple layers of stimulated neurons
- Convolve and pool image
- Small number of fully connected layers
- Final representation emerges at the top layer
How are DCCNs and Perceptrons similar?
They’re both able to process images and identify patterns
What is sensation?
Absorbing raw energy through our sensory organs
What is perception?
Selecting, organizing and interpreting these signals
How are sensation and perception connected?
Both of these processes allow us to take in the world around us
What is bottom-up processing?
Taking in sensory information and it then shapes our perception
What is top-down processing?
Making inferences based on context, guessing from experience, and basing one perception on another
How are top-down and bottom-up processing connected?
Most perception is an interaction between these two processes
How does bottom-up processing work in vision?
The visual stimuli enters through the retina, the message in transmitted into the visual cortex, and then processed and understanding and experience of perception occurs
How does top-down processing work in vision?
You use what you already know to make sense of the new information you encounter
Why are edges important for visual perception?
They correspond to the boundaries of objects and allow you to better identify the object
Why are lines important for visual perception?
They help you define the form and shape of the object
What are photoreceptors?
The cells in the retina that respond to light
What are the different types of photoreceptors?
Rods: Sensitive to light
Cones: Able to detect light
How are the photoreceptors distributed along the retina?
Red, green, and blue are prevalent near the center, and the further away you go, the more rods there are and less cones thereare
How do we see color?
Our eyes are able to detect different wavelengths of light and each color has a different wavelength
What is colorblindness?
The inability to distinguish between colors
What is achromatopsia?
The inability to perceive color
How are colorblindness and achromatopsia similar?
People who have them aren’t able to distinguish between colors
What are the Gestalt’s principles?
The mind groups patterns according to laws of perceptual organization
Provide accurate information about properties of the environment
What are Gestalt’s laws (H: 6 items)?
Good Continuation
Simplicity
Similarity
Familiarity
Proximity
Common Fate
What is the law of good continuation?
Lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path
What is the law of simplicity?
Every stimulus pattern is seen so the resulting structure is as simple as possible
What is the law of similarity?
Similar things appear grouped together
What is the law of familiarity?
Things are more likely to form groups if the groups appear familiar or meaningful
What is the law of proximity?
Things near each other appear grouped together
What is the law of common fate?
Things oriented in the same direction appear to be grouped together
What is the prototype theory of object recognition?
All examples of a particular class or category are averaged to create a “prototype”
What is a problem with the prototype theory of object recognition?
Sometimes there are examples that don’t fit the prototype
What is the feature theory of object recognition?
We sort object into their component parts as a way of recognizing them
What are the steps involved in the feature theory of object recognition (H: 3 items)?
- Sensory information is broken down into small components, or features
- Features are identified by comparison to long-term memory
- The set of identified features are compared with feature lists in long-term memory
How are the prototype and feature theories of object recognition similar?
Both of these theories allow us to better recognize different objects
What is sound?
The pressure variation in time around the mean atmospheric pressure
How do we produce sound (H: 2 items)?
Vibrations
Resonance
What are the dimensions of sound (H: 4 items)?
Frequency
Amplitude
Timbre
Complex Sounds
What is frequency?
The number of sound waves to pass any point in a second
What is the measure of frequency?
Cycles per second or Hertz
What is the psychological correlate of frequency?
Pitch
What is amplitude?
The magnitude of movements produced
What is the measure of amplitude?
Pressure in decibels
What is the psychological correlate of amplitude?
Loudness
What is timbre?
Whatever is left after equating pitch and loudness
What is the psychological correlate of timbre?
Sound quality
What are complex sounds?
Frequency composition and amplitude associated with each frequency
How does the ear transduce sound into an electrochemical signal (H: 3 items)?
When sound waves hit the ear drum, it causes the ear bones to vibrate
The bones push on the cochlea, creating waves in the liquid inside the cochlea
The liquid pushes on hair cells, generating an action potential
How does the brain process auditory information?
The brain processes auditory information in the temporal lobe through tonotopic organization
- Low frequencies are perceived at the anterior end
- High frequencies are perceived at the posterior end
What are universals in language?
What all/no languages have
What are the shared structures in language (H: 5 items)?
Phonological: Sounds of the language
Morphological: Conjunctions into words
Syntactic: Grammar
Semantic: Meaning
Pragmatic: Practical aspects of meaning
Describe the universals in language (H: 6 items)
All humans use language
Complexity
Arbitrary mapping from sounds to meaning
Discrete specialized signs
Infinitie meanings from finite signs/symbols
Shared structure of all languages
What is a phoneme?
The smallest segment of speech that if changed would change the meaning of the word
What are examples of phonemes (H: 2 items)?
Vowels
Consonants
Describe a vowel
The vocal tract is open when produced
About 13 in English (3-46 depending on the language)
Describe a consonant
The vocal tract is closed when produced
About 24 in English (6-95 depending on the language)
What are features of consonants (H: 3 items)?
Voicing
Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation
What is voicing?
Whether the vocal cords vibrate or not
What is the place of articulation?
Where the obstruction occurs
What is the manner of production?
How the sound is made
How are vowels and consonants connected?
They’re important in language and are combined to form words and sentences
Why is speech processing difficult (H: 6 items)?
Speaking Rate
Absence of Clear Boundaries
Variability
Quality of Information
Sloppiness
Noise
What is semantic coordination?
Conversations go more smoothly if participants have shared knowledge
What is syntactic coordination?
Using similar grammar constructions
How are semantic and synatctic coordination connected?
People coordinate their conversations based on these two components to facilitate communication
What is language?
A system of communcation using sounds or symbols that allow you to express feelings, thoughts, ideas and experiences
What are properties of language (H: 2 items)?
Hierarchical System: Components that can be combined to form larger units
Governed by Rules: Specific ways components can be arranged
What is Skinner’s perspective on language?
Language is learned through reinforcement
What is Chomsky’s perspective on language (H: 3 items)?
Human language is coded in genes
The underlying basis of all language is similar
Children produce sentences that they have never heard and that have never been reinforced
How are Skinner and Chomsky’s perspectives connected?
They show how complex language development is
What is the phonemic restoration effect?
The phenomenon where sounds actually missing from speech can be restored by the brain
What is an example of the phonemic restoration effect?
Participants were presented with a word interrupted by a cough, and they were asked to identify the position of the cough
None could do it and no one noticed the missing phoneme
Suggests that people “fill in” missing phonemes based on context of sentences and portion of word presented
What is the word superiority effect?
The phenomenon of better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters or non-words
What is an example of the word superiority effect?
Participants were presented with stimuli (word, letter, or non-word)
Two letters were shown and they had to pick which letter they saw in the original stimulus
Participants identified letters more quickly when they were part of a word
What is the word frequency effect?
The phenomenon of faster reading time for high-frequency words than for low-frequency words
What is an example of the word frequency effect?
Examined eye movements while reading texts with both high- and low-frequency words
Participants looked at low-frequency words longer
What is the lexical decision task?
Participants read a list of words and non-words
They say “yes” when they read a word
What does the lexical decision task measure?
IV: Word or Non-Word
DV: Reaction Time
What are semantics?
The meanings of words and sentences
What is syntax?
The rules for combining words into sentences
How are semantics and syntax connected?
They influence processing as one reads a sentence and they’re used simultaneously
What is the given-new contract?
The speaker constructs sentences to include both given and new information
What is given information?
Information the listener already knows
What is new information?
Information the listener is hearing for the first time
What is an example of the given-new contract?
In a study, participants took longer to comprehend the second sentence if it violated the given-new contract (requires an interference)
What is the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis?
The idea that language in a particular culture influences thought
Describe an experiment supporting the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis
Two cultures (English and Russian) had differences in how participants assigned names to color chips
Russian: Distinguish between different colors of blue
- 20 different versions (1st: 1-8; 2nd: 9-20)
Pick the square on the bottom that matches the square on top
- IV: Same or Different Category (Russian)
- DV: Reaction Time
Russian speakers responded more quickly when the two squares were from different categories
What is the role of context on language processing (H: 2 items)?
When words are taken out of context, it’s hard to identify them
It helps clear up ambiguity after all meanings of a word have been briefly accessed
What are examples showing the role of context on language processing (H: 2 items)?
Participants were sitting in a room waiting for the experiment to begin, and they were played recordings of single words from their conversation, but were only able to identify half of the words played
In lexical priming, participants responded faster when words related to the word were shown than unrelated words
Donders interpreted the difference in reaction time between the simple and choice conditions of his experiment as indicating how long it took to
Make a decision about a stimulus
Why can we consider Tolman one of the early cognitive psychologists?
Because he used behavior to infer mental processes
What is the process for understanding complex mental behaviors?
Cognition
Reaction time refers to the time between the ___ of a stimulus and a person’s response to it
Presentation
Which of the following is a technique for creating a “temporary lesion” in humans?
TMS
The cell bodies of neurons comprise ___ matter in the brain
Gray
Which of the following brain regions are in the limbic system (H: 5 items)?
Hippocampus
Cingulate Gyrus
Entorhinal Cortex
Thalamus
Amygdala
The semantic network model predicts that the time it takes for a person to retrieve information about a concept should be determined by
The distance that must be traveled through the network
In the semantic network model, a specific category or concept is represented at a
Node
Learning in the connectionist network is represented by adjustments to network
Connection Weights
The connectionist network has learned the correct pattern for a concept when
The error signals are reduced to nearly none and the correct properties are assigned
A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that
Has high stimulus salience
The Gestalt psychologists believe that
Perception is affected by experience, but built-in principles can override experience
The fact that trees are more likely to be vertical or horizontal than slanted is an example of
Physical Regularity
The process by which small objects become perceptually grouped to form larger objects is the principle of perceptual
Organization
Speech segmentation is defined as
Organizing the sounds of speech into individual words
What are the sensory neurons for audition?
Inner Hair Cells
A Fourier transform represents sound by displaying
Frequency and Amplitude
The existence of transitional probabilities adds a(n) ___ quality to learning and using language
Anticipatory
