Module 2 - How To Study Cognition Flashcards
The puzzle of how the physical body is related to mental activity is called ________.
A. The dualism divise
B. The mind-body problem
C. The mystery of mind
D. The great debate
B. The mind-body problem
Descartes articulated the perspective of _________.
A. Monism
B. Physicalism
C. Dualism
D. Behaviourism
C. Dualism
The use of introspection was a hallmark method of which school of psychology?
A. Behaviourism
B. Cognitivism
C. Structuralism
D. All of the above
C. Structuralism
What field of science served as an inspiration to the structuralist school?
Chemistry
The little albert experiment was an example of ____________ conditioning.
Classical
Teaching a dog to shake hands on command using a food reward is an example of __________.
A. Classical conditioning
B. Operant conditioning
C. A combination of classical and operant
D. None of the above
B. Operant conditioning
A finding in Tolman’s maze experiments was that when rats were placed in a different starting point of the maze than the one they had been trained on, they went _____________.
A. In the wrong direction to get the food.
B. In the correct direction to get the food but only if it involved producing the exact same behaviour as when they had first found the food
C. In the correct direction to get the food but only if they had previously explored the maze
D. In the correct direction to get the food, even when they had not previously explored the maze
C. In the correct direction but only if they had previously explored the maze
Which of these methods is NOT currently considered a scientifically valid form of data for the study of cognition?
A. Introspection
B. Measuring behaviour
C. Measuring brain responses
D. None of the above
A. Introspection
The “cognitive revolution” led to the idea of cognition as a form of _________.
A. Mental rotation
B. Introspection
C. Computation
D. Biology
C. Computation
How do psychologists typically deal with the challenge of cognitive differences across individuals?
Include many participants
What is the mind-body problem?
The question, or debate, of how mental events, such as thoughts, beliefs, and sensations, are related to, or caused by, physical mechanisms taking place in the body
What is dualism and who created this idea?
First created by René Descartes
Dualism views the mind and body as consisting of fundamentally different kinds of substances or properties.
- Body = physical material
- Mind = not physical
What is monism?
It is the view that there is only one kind of basic substance in the world.
(In regards to the mind-body problem)
What are the three types of monism?
- Physicalism/materialism
- Idealism
- Neutral monism
What is physicalism/materialism?
The position that the only kind of reality is physical reality.
(In regards to the mind-body problem)
What is idealism?
The view that the only kind of reality is mental
What is neutral monism?
View that there is only one kind of substance that is neither just physical or mental, and that mind and body are composed of that same element.
What is dualism synonymous with?
The idea of a soul or a spirit that is common across people and time
What area of the brain was identified by René Descartes as a possible location for the soul?
The pineal gland
What is pragmatic materialism?
Modern view that science operates based on physical methods, measurements and explanatory mechanisms and cannot test non-physical theories.
🚫say that mind and body are identical like monism
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V
It only states that observable behaviour can be explained based on physical processes. Our inner consciousness might not.
How many neurons are there in the human brain?
A. Ten million
B. Seven thousand
C. One hundred billion
D. One trillion
C. One hundred billion
Which of these is NOT an offered reason as to why studying the physical brain alone might be insufficient to understand cognition?
A. The brain is enormously complex
B. Cognition depends on non-physical mechanisms
C. The brain is embedded in the larger context of the body and the world
D. The brain must be considered within the contexts in which it operates
B. Cognition depends on non-physical mechanisms
What is structuralism?
A school of psychology whose approach relied on introspecting on one’s own conscious mental states in order to understand the mind
What does structuralism rely on?
Introspection
What is introspection?
A technique employed by the structuralists to study the mind by training people to examine their own conscious experiences
What are the reasons as to why introspection is not a good method to study the mind?
- Cannot be verified by others. Replication is impossible. Very subjective data. There needs to be a clear, verifiable measure
- It can only access mental activity that is conscious. However, much of our brain activity is unconscious to us.
What is cortical blindness?
A condition in which an individual with damage to the visual cortex will report having no visual experience, despite having working eyes
What is blindsight?
A phenomenon in which someone who reports blindness due to cortical damage still shows behaviour consisting some perception
What is the think-aloud protocol?
A research method that involves having participants verbally describe their though process as they are performing a specified task
What is behaviourist?
A school of psychology that emphasized using observable stimuli and behaviours as the basis of scientific experimentation
Who is the founder of behaviorism?
John watson
What is the basis of behaviourism?
Stimulus and response
An involuntary behaviour can be induced by a stimulus that wouldn’t normally cause such a reaction, based on the fact that the stimulus was previously paired with a different stimulus that naturally does cause that reaction.
Classical conditioning
What was the purpose if the Little Albert experiment?
To show that behavioural responses can be dramatically modified by conditioning
A method of conditioning that reinforces certain behaviours through a system if rewards and punishments
Operant conditioning
A form of behavioural conditioning based on punishment and reinforcement feedback
Reinforcement learning
What is the view of cognition from Skinner (behaviouralist)
People learn which behaviours to produce in any situation, based on the reinforcement they received for producing those behaviours in the past
In the context of the nature vs nurture debate, what did behaviourists believe produced cognition?
Nurture
What is negative reinforcement?
Removing an unpleasant stimulus
What is positive punishment?
Generating an unpleasant stimulus
What is negative punishment?
Removing a pleasant stimulus
What is a positive reward?
Generating a pleasant stimulus
Learning in the absence of any reward or punishment conditioning, as in Tolman’s maze experiments.
Latent learning
What is one fatal flaw if the behaviourist approach?
It cannot account for the flexibility of cognition to generate novel, intelligent behaviours that have not already been observed or performed.
What is a function (computers)?
Mappings from inputs to outputs
A method for producing the correct output from the input —> recipe for producing the desired result.
Algorithm
A way of encoding information, based on whether or not some device is «on» or «off».
Binary
A device used in computers to control whether or not a current flowed through parts of the system?
Transistor
What is the cognitive revolution?
A movement in the 1950’s that proposed that the mind could be understood as a computational system
What is information processing?
An approach to human cognition that views it as a type of computation with sensory information serving as an input which is processed by the brain to determine a behavioural output.
What is the goal of researchers of cognition in computers?
It is to determine what underlying algorithm or program the brain uses to compute its input/output functions
What is used to illustrate the algorithm of the brain and cognition?
Flowcharts
How can the brain be thought of, in computer terms?
The mind may be though of as software, running on the hardware of the brain
What is the cognitive approach based on?
The ideas that we can measure observable behaviour in order to test the theories if the underlying mental processes.
An approach in psychology that used behaviour as a method for developing and testing the theories of the underlying processing of the mind.
Cognitivism
Or
Cognitive psychology
What is the reaction time?
A measure of how long it takes an experimental subject to respond to a given task or query.
What is the detecting condition of Donder’s experiment?
It requires detecting that a light stimulus is present and producing a single motor response
What is the discrimination condition of Donder’s experiments?
Requires the ability to detect a light stimulus as well as discriminating whether it is the correct stimulus to produce a response.
What is the choice condition of Donder’s experiment?
Requires detection and discrimination as well as a choice between two behavioural responses.
What is the stroop effect?
A psychological phenomenon in which reporting the ink colour of words is slowed down when the words spell out the name of a different colour.
What kind of experiments does cognitive psychology employ?
Behavioural experiments where the participant is given a task to perform. The subject’s responses are typically recorded and some measure if these responses is then compared across experimental conditions
What is correctness?
This measures whether or not a given response is accurate.
What are thresholds?
A stimulus may be manipulated along on or several dimensions, such as the brightness of a visual stimulus or the loudness of an auditory stimulus, in order to test what level or change in the stimulus people are able to detect
In order to address the issue of noisy data in cognitive psychology, what technique is used?
Many repetitions of each condition, called trials
What is cognitive neuroscience?
A field that combines behavioural experiments with methods for measuring brain activity
What is behavioural neuroscience?
A scientific field that assesses behaviour and neurological factors in animals as models of human function.
