Midterm Flashcards
Cognitive Psychology
Study of the mind
Choice reaction time
time to respond to one of two or more stimuli
Dichotic listening
presenting one message to the left ear and a different message to the right ear
Operant conditioning
Skinner, which focuses on how behavior is strengthened by presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock
Classical conditioning
Pavlovs dogs
Reaction time
time it take to react to a stimulus
The likelihood principle
we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the retinal image (e.g man face made out of random objects that you can only see via certain angle
Unconscious inference
Helmholtz: perception is a result of unconscious assumptions about the environment
Principle of closure
objects are perceived as whole even when not (WWF panda)
Bayesian Inference
the process of forming beliefs about the causes of sensory data (combination of prior beliefs and how these causes give rise to sensations)
Signal Detection theory
quantifies the response of an observer to the presentation of a signal in the presence of some kind of noise
free
space
Bottom up processing
starts with information received by the receptors
Principle of good continuation
when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together and lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path
Inverse projection problem
task of determining the object that causes a particular image on the retina –> a particular image could have been caused by an infinite number of objects
Landmark discrimination task
the task is to remember an object’s location and to choose that location after a delay
object discrimination task
a problem in which the tasks is to remember an object based on its shape and choose it when presented with another object after a delay
Oblique effect
finding that vertical and horizontal orientations can be perceived more easily than other (slanted) orientations
Perception pathway
associated with perceiving or recognizing objects
Scene schema
A person’s knowledge about what is likely to be contained in a particular scene
top down processing
involves a perceiving things based on a person’s knowledge or expectations
Unconscious interference
Helmholtz - some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions that we make about the environment
Frontal lobe
Higher cognitive functions: forming memories, emotions, impulse control, problem solving
Parietal lobe
processing and interpreting input –> inform us about objects in our external environment through touch and about position and movement of our body
Occipital lobe
visual processing area –> visuospatial processing, distance and depth perception, object and face recognition, and memory formation
Temporal lobe
helps you use you sense to understand and respond to the world - auditory stimuli, memory and emotion
Color constancy
objects appear the same color under different illuminations
Bayesian framwork
our assumptions are influenced by the prior (our past experiences)
Context shapes our..
perception
McGurk effect
integration of information across senses (video of guy saying ba)
Visual deception effect
objects that are presented in a way that affords interaction are rated more favorably (button = push)
Affordance
awareness of how to interact with objects
Priming
exposure to one stimulus influences how a person responds to a subsequent, related one
Selective attention
what we want to pay attention to
Divided attention
doing more than one thing at once
Spatial cue are
hard to ignore (coglab with arrows)
change blindness
difficulty detecting change in scenes when a) occurs slowly or b) interruption in perception
inattentional blindness
failure to notice often large-scale events when your attention is engaged elsewhere
The Stroop effect
attention can enhance processing of relevant stimuli and inhibit irrelevant simuli (difficulty naming color when the words spells something different)
Automatic processing
processing that occurs automatically, without the person’s intending to it
Binding problem
problem explaining how an object’s individual features become bound together
Bottleneck model
proposes that incoming information is restricted at some point in processing, so only a portion of the information gets through to consciousness
Cognitive load
the total amount of mental effort used in working memory
early selection model
explains selective attention by early filtering out of the unattended message
Endogenous cues
Always appear in the center of the screen and indicate where the participant can expect the target - top down
Exogenous cues
Appear at one of the location where the subsequent target could appear (e.f left/right fixation) - bottom up
Late selection models of attention
proposes that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after the information in the message has been analyzed for meaning
Load theory of attention
the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on the load of the task the person is carrying our (high-load tasks result in less distraction)
perceptual load
related to difficulty of the task
Spatial attention
a form of attention (visual) that involves directing attention to a certain location in space
High load vs low load
high: higher amounts of processing capacity
low: lower amounts of processing capacity
distraction increases during __ perceptual load and __ cognitive load
low; high
Control processes
active processes that can be controlled by a person (rehearsal, attention..etc)
Sensory memory is responsible for..
the persistence of vision (sparkler letters)
Sensory memory
decays quickly, high capacity
capacity and duration of Short term memory
4 items; 15-20s
Chunking
binding together pieces of information ot be more easily remembered
Proactive interference
information that was learned previously interferes with learning new information
Visuospatial sketch pad
store for visual and spatial information
Phonological loop
speech and sound related component of working memory and holds verbal and auditory information
Prefrontal cortex is responsible for..
working memory, explicit memory recall, guiding behavior, changing tasks, emotional regulation
Field dependent/ utilization behavior
utilizing objects just because they are there, even if it is not yours
Donders pioneering experiment
- first psychology experiment
- measured how quickly participants could perceive a light and press a button
- choice reaction time tasks also –> slower reaction times
SOA
Stimulus onset asunchrony: measures the amount of time between the start of one stimulus and the start of another
Central executive
part of working memory that coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad -
“traffic cop”
Control processes
Atkinson and Shiffrins → active processes that can be controlled by the person and that may differ from one task to another (rehearsal)
Echoic memory
brief sensory memory for auditory stimuli that lasts for a few seconds after a stimulus is extinguished
Iconic memory
brief sensory memory for visual stimuli that lasts for a fraction of a second after a stimulus is extinguished
retroactive interference
when more recent learning interferes with memory for something that happened in the past
working memory
a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning and reasoing
The amount of information held in STM can be expanded by..
chuncking
In new model who did what to STM memory?
Baddeley revised STM with working memory in order to deal with dynamic processes that unfold over time and that cannot be explained by a single short-term process
Working memory consists of what three components?
phonological loop, visuospatial sketch pad, and central executive
