Module 1- Introduction Flashcards
How much does the brain approximately weigh?
Around 3 pounds
What is the most sophisticated computing device in the known universe?
A- human brain
B- Google car
C- calculator
D- Deep blue (chess playing computer)
A = the human brain
What is a basic definition of cognition?
The sum of all intelligent mental activities + the acquisition and processing of sensory information about the world in order to make behavioural decisions.
Why is the study of cognition made up of multiple fields and subfields of scientific research?
Because cognition encompasses many different kinds of abilities
+
Intelligent behaviour itself is multifaceted.
Name the many areas of cognition we will study this semester.
- Perception
- Attention
- Short-term memory
- Long-term memory
- Language
-Problem solving - Decision making
What is the primary concern of the field of cognition?
Understanding the processes that allow things to go right.
Which of these would not be considered part of cognition?
A - memory
B - language
C - digestion
D - perception
C - digestion
What are the two major disciplines to understand brain functioning?
- Experimental psychology
- Neuroscience
What is basic research?
Scientific research whose goal is to try to understand the world and its phenomena without regard to a specific end-use of this knowledge.
What is the goal of basic research?
To understand who we humans are as a species and what makes us tick
What is applied research?
Research concerned with the end goal of developing an application or solution to a problem.
What is a motivation for cognition that is connected to machines and what is this field called?
Try to build machines that can do the same types of cognitions as humans
Artificial intelligence
What can be said about the progress of artificial intelligence?
It has made a lot of progress since the 1950’s when it was first attempted, but there are still many tasks that artificial intelligence cannot do as well as humans. It is no where close to the complicated processes made by the human brain.
Historically, artificial intelligence has been least successful at tasks that require what kind of capability?
A. Fast performance
B. Many calculations
C. Large memory
D. Flexible thinking
D. Flexible thinking
What changed in ai development that created a revolution in the field?
They are no longer programmed based on a human writing the computer code to decide what it should do, it is now programmed to learn.
What is called the new programming approach in ai?
Machine learning
What is neuroscience?
The study of the physical brain and related systems
What is the field of cognitive psychology?
Studying intelligent behaviour itself
What does cognitive psychology use to study intelligence?
Behavioural experiments
Method in which researchers observe the behaviour of people or other organisms in their natural habitat, without any experimental intervention.
Naturalistic observation
What are the results of experiments in cognitive psychology often open to interpretation and debate?
Because the methodology is kind of indirect
What is one limitation of cognitive psychology?
The complexity of each of the individual fields is such that they can become relative islands of research without making much direct contact with the other fields.
What is the goal of computational modeling?
Understanding the brain based on simulating brain processes or functions using computer-based models.
A field of psychology concerned with applying scientific findings to the design of systems that people interact with.
Human factors
What is the difference between basic research and applied research?
Basic research
- goal is to try to understand the world and its phenomena without regard to a specific end-use of this knowledge
Applied research
- Research with end-goal of developing a solution to a problem
What does the amygdala activity for memory?
It predicts memory for emotional but not neural images
What is Epistemology?
The philosophical study of human knowledge
What is Plato’s philosophy?
Knowledge involves experience and reason
- Deductive reasoning
- the world is a reflection of our reality
- external and internal processing interact (bottom-up and top-down)
RATIONALISM
- important of prior knowledge
- innate aspect to reasoning
- observation is not always certain
What is Aristotle’s philosophy?
EMPIRICISM
- inductive observational reasoning
- suggests to learn from what you see
- foundation for the importance of observation
What is structuralism?
It is a school of psychology at the origin of cognitive psychology.
Identify the basic elements of thought and learn how these elements combine to form complex thoughts
introspection and self-report
What is psychophysics?
A study of basic cognitive phenomenon by liking sensory experiences to physical changes
Ex: measuring the threshold for feeling the touch from a feather; the smallest amount of change in pigment to notice a difference between two colours
What were the criticisms for structuralism?
Experimental methods were considered too subjective, relying on self-report
Approaches were too simplistic
What is functionalism?
Early study of experimental psychology
- asks why the mind works
- not interested in breaking down mental states to basic elements
- cognition is about serving a function and so must adapt to current coals
What is a criticism of functionalism?
It is difficult to study some of these ideas (consciousness, imagery), especially if cognition is always changing
What is the difference between classical conditioning and instrumental learning or operant conditioning?
Classical conditioning
- learning by making associations between cue, a stimuli and the natural response
Operant learning
- behaviour is contingent on a schedule of reinforcements, rewards and punishments
- rewards encourage behaviours
- punishment reduce behaviours
Behaviour is limited because _______________.
A. It only focuses on internal processes
B. It is too complex as it accounts for internal and external responses
C. It is impossible to scientifically study behaviour
D. It does not account for internal mental processes and flexibility
D. It does not account for internal mental processes and flexibility
What are the problems with behaviourism?
- Overestimated the scope of their explanations
- cannot account for complex human behaviour
- the assumption that learning was the same for all individuals and across species is false
Ex: language. Behaviourism says that language is learned through conditioning, but children learn things that they’ve never heard before (sentences they’ve never heard)
What is latent learning?
Learning in the absence of any conditioning
What does the amount of choices do for information processing?
The greater the number of choices (or uncertainty of choice) requires more information to process, and thus it takes longer to make a decision.
What is decision fatigue?
Making decisions taxes cognitive processing and we have a limited amount of cognitive processing
What is the webster and thompson experiment and its findings?
Experiment where people heard two messages at the same time, with familiar and unfamiliar information.
This experiment found that people could process two messages at the same time but only if the messages are familiar to us. We can only process one message if it is unfamiliar to us.
What is ecological validity?
The extent to which the findings of a research study can be generalized to real-life naturalistic settings
