PSY 322 Exam 1 Flashcards
What year was the birth of Psychology
1879
What is Cognition?
Cognoscere means “to know” in Latin
“The term ‘cognition’ refers to all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.”
Getting info from the environment then storing it and using it to reason - essentially using information to get stuff done
The mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, which is what the mind creates. How the mind operates (it creates representations) and its function (it enables us to act and to achieve goals). It is no coincidence that all of the cognitions in the first definition play important roles in acting to achieve goals.
Cognition Involves:
All Include —
Perception
Paying attention
Remembering and Memory
Distinguishing items in a category
Visualizing
Understanding and production of language
Problem solving
Reasoning and decision making
- All include “hidden” processes of which we may not be aware - unconscious streams of processing that we might not be aware
Cognitive Psychology:
The branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind
Cognition refers to the mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, that are what the mind creates
The science of thought - taking in information, storing it and then processing it in anyway
The Timeline - 11 total
1868 - Donders Reaction Time
1879 - Wundt Scientific Lab
1885 - Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
1890 - James Principles of Psyc
1913 - Watson Behaviorism
1938/1957 - Skinner Operant Conditioning, Verbal Behavior
1948 - Tolman Cog Map
1959 - Chomsky Review of Skinner Verbal
1953 - Cherry Attention
1958 - Broadbent Flow Diagram
1968 - Atkinson and Shiffrin model of memory
The mind:
Is involved in forming and recalling memories
Solves problems, considers possibilities, makes decisions
Helps us to survive and function normally
Is a symbol of creativity and intelligence
Creates representations of the world so we can act in it
The mind is a system that creates representations of the world so that we can act within it to achieve our goals.
Donders (1868) measured
RT
Simple vs Choice
The subtractive method
Donders (1868) measured how long it takes a person to make a decision. Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision. He determined this by measuring reaction time—how long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus. Donders said that different decisions take different amounts of time like something internal that you can’t externally observe and this is the issue of cog trying to get in the head of what we can’t obsereve. The purpose of Donders’s experiment was to determine how much time it took to decide which key to press in the choice reaction time task.
Reaction Time (RT): Measures interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus. Reaction time is measuring the difference of time and the presentation of stimulus and a person’s response to it. Like a stop watch I know what time I stopped the watch and what time you reacted to it and when I showed stimulus and when you responded to it.
Simple RT task: participant pushes a button quickly after a light appears – I show light and once you see light you hit the button that’s the response
Choice RT task: participant pushes one button if light is on right side, another if light is on left side – Identical to simple expect you with see light on left side or right and then responded if it’s on the right or the left
The subtractive method: Choice RT − Simple RT = time to make a decision — Simple took one sec and Choice took 1.2 sec and in both you have to see a light press button and make a reaction/choice. What’s leftover is the decision so it took 0.2 sec extra for the choice experiment.
Mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant’s behavior
Wundt (1879) established first
Structuralism:
Analytic Introspection:
Wundt (1879) established first scientific psychology lab
Structuralism: overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience called sensations - broke down the components of consciousness.
Method of analytic introspection: participants trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
Breaking consciousness up into its different parts using analytic method which was showing someone a picture and then breaking up how a person responded or felt with the picture but it did not show the building blocks of consciousness. Major issue is that there were no concrete results and participants were influenced by the person conducting it. According to structuralism, our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience the structuralists called sensations. Wundt thought he could achieve this scientific description of the components of experience by using analytic introspection, a technique in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
Ebbinghaus (1885): known for what
Short-break intervals
Savings
The forgetting curve
Savings curve
Memory and Forgetting - taught us how fast we can forget and retain
Read list of nonsense syllables aloud to determine number of repetitions necessary to repeat list without errors —- After taking a break, he relearned the list
Short-break intervals = fewer repetitions necessary to relearn list
Savings = (Original time to learn list) − (Time to relearn list after delay)
- Learn something the first time and then wait and see how long it takes you to learn it again and it was always shorter re-learning it meaning you have a savings
The forgetting curve that over time you forget more stuff
He taught us how fast we can forget stuff
Savings curve shows savings as a function of retention interval — Shows that memory drops rapidly for the first 2 days after the initial learning and then levels off. This curve was important because it demonstrated that memory could be quantified and that functions like the savings curve could be used to describe a property of the mind—in this case, the ability to retain information.
William James (1890):
functionalist
Principles of Psychology:
Observations based on the functions of his own mind, not experiments
Considered many topics in cognition, including thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagination, and reasoning.
James laid the foundation for psych in the US, he was a functionalist and not a structuralist which broke down the components of consciousness. He, as a functionalist, thought the function of what we do was much more interesting and he wrote principles of psychology which were mostly accurate for his time.
Watson (1913):
Two problems with analytic introspection method:
Behaviorism:
“Little Albert” Experiment:
Classical Conditioning:
Two problems with analytic introspection method:
- Extremely variable results per person
- Results difficult to verify due to focus on invisible inner mental processes
Behaviorism:
- Eliminate the mind as a topic of study and study directly observable behavior - easy data
- Mind: all inner stuff that can’t be measured and can’t be seen by the unconscious mind
“Little Albert” Experiment:
- 9-month-old Albert became frightened by a rat after a loud noise was paired with every presentation of the rat
- Examined how pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior
- Demonstrated that behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind
Classical Conditioning:
- how pairing one stimulus (such as the loud noise presented to Albert) with another, previously neutral stimulus (such as the rat) causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus.
- Pair a neutral event with an event that naturally produces some outcome
- After many pairings, the “neutral” event now also produces the outcome
Skinner (1938 AND 1957):
Operant Conditioning:
Verbal Behavior:
B. F. Skinner interested in determining the relationship between stimuli and response
Operant conditioning:
- Shape behavior by rewards or punishments
- Rewarded behavior more likely to be repeated
- Punished behavior that less likely to be repeated
Verbal Behavior:
- Argued children learn language through operant conditioning
- Children imitate speech they hear
- Correct speech is rewarded
Tolman (1948)
His Experiment
Cognitive map:
Cog Map - The Reemergence of the Mind in Psychology
Trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze
- When a rat was placed in a different arm of the maze, it went to the specific arm where it previously found food
- Tolman believed the rat had created a cognitive map, a representation of the maze in its mind
- The map helped the rat navigate to a specific arm despite starting the maze from a different spot
- Rejected the behaviorist perspective for the rat’s actions because you taught it go right find food but it didn’t do that.
Cognitive map—a conception within the rat’s mind of the maze’s layout
Chomsky (1959): Review of who?
Language must be determined by
Issues with behaviorism
Chomsky Review of Skinner Verbal Behavior
Argued that children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement
Children say things they have never heard and cannot be imitating
Children say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for
Language must be determined by inborn biological program
Issues with behaviorism one is language and how does it work and learn new languages.
Cherry (1953)
Broadbent (1958)
Information is first received and the steps
Cherry Attention
Broadbent Flow Diagram
Cherry built on James’s idea of attention
- Present message A in left ear and message B in right ear
- Subjects could understand details of message A despite also hearing message B
Broadbent developed flow diagram to show what occurs as a person directs attention to one stimulus - Unattended information does not pass through the filter
Information is first received by an “input processor.” It is then stored in a “memory unit” before it is processed by an “arithmetic unit,” which then creates the computer’s output.
Input - filter - detector - memory
The Decline of Behaviorism:
What year and what now focus on?
Kuhn defined
Controversy with behaviorism
Information-processing approach
1950s recognized as the beginning of the cognitive revolution—a shift in psychology from the behaviorist’s focus on stimulus to understand the operation of the mind.
Shift from behaviorist’s stimulus–response relationships to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind
Kuhn defined a scientific revolution as a shift from one paradigm to another, where a paradigm is a system of ideas that dominate science at a particular time. A scientific revolution, therefore, involves a paradigm shift. Now the digital age.
A controversy over language acquisition
Information-processing approach:
Way to study the mind based on insights associated with the digital computer
States that operation of the mind occurs in stages
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
Three-stage model of memory:
sensory
short
long
Tulving Long-term memory into three components:
Episodic
Semantic
Procedural
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) developed a three-stage model of memory:
- sensory memory (less 1 sec)
- short term memory (a few seconds, limited capacity)
- long-term memory (long duration, high capacity)
Information we remember is brought from long-term memory into short term memory
Long-term memory into three components:
Episodic ▪ Life events
Semantic ▪ Facts
Procedural ▪ Physical actions (driving)
Neuropsychology:
Electrophysiology:
Brain imaging:
PET
fMRI
Neuropsychology studies behavior of people with brain damage, and has been providing insights into the functioning of different parts of the brain since the 1800s.
Regardless of cause of damage
Electrophysiology studies electrical responses of the nervous system including brain neurons. Measuring electrical responses of the nervous system, made it possible to listen to the activity of single neurons. Measuring brain waves and see different sleep cycles and ability to do brain imaging
PET: Positron emission tomography - made it possible to see which areas of the human brain are activated during cognitive activity
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Both technologies show which brain areas are active during specific episodes of cognition
Levels of Analysis:
Levels of Analysis:
- We do not examine topics of interest from a single perspective; we look at them from multiple angles and different points of view
- Each “viewpoint” can add small amounts of information that, when considered together, lead to greater understanding
- Different levels to focus on like memory storage or neurons communicating
Building Blocks of the Nervous System:
Neurons:
Cell body/soma:
Dendrites:
Axon:
Neurons: cells specialized to create, receive, and transmit information in the nervous system
Each neuron has a cell body, an axon, and dendrites
Cell body/soma: contains mechanisms to keep cell alive
Dendrites: multiple branches reaching from the cell body, which receive information from other neurons
Axon: tube filled with fluid that transmits electrical signal to other neurons
How Neurons Communicate:
AP
Measuring action potentials
Synapse
NT
How Neurons Process Information
Action potential: Neuron receives signal from environment then Information travels down the axon of that neuron to the dendrites of another neuron
Measuring AP:
- Microelectrodes pick up electrical signal, Placed near axon, Active for 1 second
- Size is not measured; it remains consistent
- The rate of firing is measured
Low-intensity stimulus: slow firing OR High-intensity stimulus: fast firing
Synapse: space between axon of one neuron and dendrite or cell body of another
When the action potential reaches the end of the axon, synaptic vesicles open and release chemical neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters, chemicals that affect the electrical signal of the receiving neuron, cross the synapse and bind with the receiving dendrites
Neurotransmitters: chemicals that affect the electrical signal of the receiving neuron
- Excitatory: increases chance neuron will fire
- Inhibitory: decreases chance neuron will fire
How Neurons Process Information:
- Not all signals received lead to action potential
- The cell membrane processes the number of impulses received
- An action potential results only if the threshold level is reached - Interaction of excitation and inhibition
Definition of the mind:
Principle of neural representation:
Definition of the mind: A system that creates representations of the world, so we can act on it to achieve goals
Principle of neural representation: Everything a person experiences is based on representations in the person’s nervous system.
Feature Detectors - Hubel & Wiesel (1960s)
Experience-dependent plasticity:
Feature detectors: neurons that respond best to a specific stimulus
Experience-dependent plasticity:
the structure of the brain changes with experience
Hierarchical Processing:
When we perceive different objects, we do so in a specific order that moves from lower to higher areas of the brain
The ascension from lower to higher areas of the brain corresponds to perceiving objects that range from lower (simple) to higher levels of complexity
Can lose the ability to decipher certain sounds if it’s not used. Like using a muscle then it grows, not using it can deteriorate.
**Sensory Coding:
**
Specificity coding
Population coding
Sparse coding
Specificity coding: Representation of a stimulus by the firing of specifically tuned neurons specialized to respond only to a specific stimulus
Population coding: Representation of a stimulus by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons
Sparse coding: Representation of a stimulus by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent
Specificity coding: IS WRONG WE DO NOT DO THIS - cells in the body sometimes die and like neuron four doesnt work that doesn’t mean that you won’t perceive the stimulus
Population or Sparse: Could be either it is distributing and pattern like
Localization of Function:
Specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain
Cognitive functioning declines in specific ways when certain areas of the brain are damaged
Cerebral cortex (3-mm-thick layer covering the brain) contains mechanisms responsible for most cognitive functions - outermost layer
Frontal Lobe: primary motor cortex, reasoning, planning, speech, emotions, problem solving, decision making
Parietal Lobe: primary somatosensory cortex(touch mostly), orientation, recognition, attention
Occipital Lobe: visual processing
Temporal Lobe: hearing, smell, memory, and speech
Localization of Function: Language
Language production is impaired by damage to Broca’s area – Frontal lobe - Production
Language comprehension is impaired by damage to Wernicke’s area – Temporal lobe - comprehension
Production vs comprehension
Patients with this problem—slow, labored, ungrammatical speech caused by damage to Broca’s area—are diagnosed as having Broca’s apha-sia. The fact that damage to a specific area of the brain caused a specific deficit of behavior was striking evidence against the idea of equipotentiality and for the idea of localization of function. Eighteen years after Broca reported on his frontal lobe patients, Carl Wernicke (1879) described a number of patients who had damage to an area in their temporal lobe that came to be called Wernicke’s area. Wernicke’s patients produced speech that was fluent and grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent. Here is a modern example of the speech of a patient with Wernicke’s aphasia
Localization of Function: Perception
Primary receiving areas for the senses
Brain areas
Occipital lobe: vision
Parietal lobe: touch, temperature, and pain
Temporal lobe: hearing, taste, and smell
Coordination of information received from all senses – Frontal lobe
Localization Demonstrated by Brain Imaging:
fMRI
FFA
PPA
EBA
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - Measures neural activity by identifying highly oxygenated hemoglobin molecules – Activity recorded in voxels
Fusiform face area (FFA) responds specifically to faces
Damage to this area causes prosopagnosia (inability to recognize faces)
Area in brain that specifically responds to faces
Parahippocampal place area (PPA) responds specifically to places (indoor/outdoor scenes)
Extrastriate body area (EBA) responds specifically to pictures of bodies and parts of bodies
Central principle of cognition:
Central principle of cognition: Most of our experience is multidimensional. - experience world in a more rich a complicated way
Connectome:
Connectome: structural description of the network of elements and connections forming the human brain
- Interconnected areas of the brain that communicate with each other
- Parts of brain does not function in isolation but work together and facilitate communication
- Connectome is like the human genome mapping all genes that exist but not knowing what they all do or all their interactions, the connectome is like that but the setup of your nervous system with elements of structures and also how it works
Structural connectivity:
Functional connectivity:
Structural connectivity:
the brain’s “wiring diagram” created by axons that connect brain areas
- as unique to individuals as fingerprints
- Will change over time due to things like plasticity
Functional connectivity:
how groups of neurons within the connectome function in relation to types of cognition
- determined by the amount of correlated neural activity in two brain areas
Like roads that exist in city and traffic that follows, structure is the road of what connects to what whereas functional is how they function and pass information
Six Common Functions Determined by Resting-State fMRI: Different types of networks seeing it by fMRI by having them do nothing or certain types of tasks.
Visual:
Somato-motor:
Dorsal Attention:
Executive Control:
Salience:
Default mode:
Visual: Vision; visual perception
Somato-motor: Movement and touch
Dorsal Attention: Attention to visual stimuli and spatial locations
Executive Control: Higher-level cognitive tasks involved in working memory and directing attention during tasks
Salience(standout): Attending to survival-relevant events in the environment
Default mode: Mind wandering, and cognitive activity related to personal life-story, social functions, and monitoring internal emotional states
Dynamics of cognition:
the flow and activity within and across the brain’s functional networks change based on conditions
change within and across networks is constant
The only thing constant is change bc demands and life changes us
Default mode network:
mode of brain function that occurs when it is at rest
one of the brain’s largest networks
What happens when at rest just chilling not doing anything active
Sensation:
absorbing raw energy (e.g., light waves, sound waves) through our sensory organs - start point of getting energy from the environment like light in eyes or air pressure or pain or temp that we absorb
