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