Quiz 1 Flashcards
The Cognitive Revolution
Cognitive psychology arose (1950s-60s) through introspection and behaviourism
Creation of Introspectionism (Structuralism)
Wilhelm Wundt in the late 1800s
Introspectionism (Structuralism)
Focus on studying one’s own conscious thoughts and experiences
Limitations of Introspectionism
- Methods for studying mental events are not scientific.
- You are the only person who can observe your own thoughts. We are only able to study what an individual tells you about, which can differ in intensities, words, etc.
- People don’t have access to unconscious thoughts, meaning there are processes that we do not know about.
-not able to test as a pure science
H.M. study
Had hippocampus removed (due to epilepsy) and could not form new memories
Behaviourism
- Dominated psychology in America for the first half of the 20th century
- Focused on observable behaviours and various stimuli
Behaviourism Limitations
- To fully understand behaviour, we cannot ignore mental events
-various stimuli evoke the same behaviour
Behaviourists
John Watson, Pavlov, B.F. Skinner
John Watson
- The biggest advocate of behaviourism
- “Give me a child, and I can train them to do anything.”
- Worry more about what the individual is doing, not what is in the mind.
-intrigued by babies behav and learning (e.g. grasping reflex)
Pavlov
- Stimulus-response pair
- Reward-punishment pairing for everything about us.
B.F. Skinner
Can stimulus-response pairs explain all behaviour?
- Conditioning is key
Cognitive Psychology
The scientific study of how the mind encodes, stores, and uses information
Contributors to the revolution
Noam Chomsky, Edward Tolman, Claude Shannon, George Miller, Donald Broadbent
Ulric Neisser
-father of cognitive psychology
-book brought together a succession of topics that both summarized the content of new field and also set the research agenda for many years
Donald Broadbent
- Built a filter model of attention.
- Idea that information is filtered, helped us think about cognition in the same way we think about computers.
Noam Chomsky
- Skinner’s description that children’s language development occurs via conditioning was criticized.
- Children still develop language, there is just an inherent understanding of language (the human brain is made for it).
Edward Tolman
- Demonstrated that reinforcement is not required for learning.
- Example: food present vs. no food present, the rat was still able to navigate the maze without the food reward.
Transcendental method
-Kant
-sometimes called inference to best explanation
- Heavily influences the future study of psychology.
- Reasoning backward from observations to determine the cause (does not rest on direct observation)
- You don’t come up with an explanation and end it there; you use the scientific method to predict how the person will react in other situations in the future, then test it.
George Miller
- Identified the amount of information people could store (7+/- 2).
- An estimation of marbles thrown becomes more difficult and limited if over this amount.
Cognitive Science
- Cognitive Science Hexagon
- Psychology, Philosophy, Linguistics, Anthropology, Neuroscience, and Computer science all interact with each other.
Cognitive Psychology pt. 2
- The focus of cognition ended up focusing on mental processes and events instead of the stimulus-response connection.
Examples of Cognitive Psychology
- The process of knowing rather than merely responding to stimuli.
- How the mind structures or organizes experiences.
- How an individual actively and creatively arranges stimuli received from the environment.
Encoding
- Getting information into our memory system through automatic or effortful processing.
- Selective attention
Storing
- The process of placing newly acquired information into memory, which is modified in the brain for easier storage.
- False memory
Using
- The process of applying information from the memory in other experiences.
How is the mind an information processor?
- Making sense of the information, aiming to understand mental representations.
- Mental life is all about information- both internal and external sources (thoughts, emotions, etc.)
- Can be abnormal.
-used language borrowed from computer technology
Normal facial recognition systems
- Cognitive appraisal
- Emotional Appraisal
Claude Shannon
- Demonstrated that the nature and processing of “information” itself could be studied and analyzed without consideration of the actual content of a message.
- You convey any information through 0s and 1s alongside rules to interpret different patterns, observing whether different people interpret it differently.
Cognitive Appraisal
Compared to a template (this person looks like my dad, knows this as if he was my dad, and he has a beard because it has been a while since I have seen him).
Cognition partners with….
-cognitive neuroscience
-clinical neuropsychology
Emotional Appraisal
Emotional response in their presence
Capgras Syndrome
Patients can recognize loved ones, but patients think that they are imposters.
Emotional Appraisal is absent/dysfunctional (they can recognize the face, but don’t get emotional warmth from the person, which leads to confusion.
Linked with amygdala and prefrontal cortex damage (additionally w/ damage to the right side of the temporal lobe)
How does researching cognition work?
-scientific method
-data collection can be done in forms of performance (e.g. accuracy) & response time (e.g. speed)
Brain organization
- Structural
- Functional
Structural Organization
The brain has physically distinct structures
Functional Organization
Different brain regions do different things
Phineas Gage
Had the weapon go through his eye socket, altered personality
Hind Brain
Top of the spinal cord (brain stem)
Key life functions (breathing, walking, balance, posture)
Includes: Cerebellum, pons, medulla
Cerebellum
Largest region of the hind brain, involved in coordinating complete thoughts
Damage to this area could result in problems in spatial reasoning, discriminating sounds, integrating the input received from various sensory systems
Midbrain
Coordinating precise eye movement
Relaying auditory information from ears to forebrain
Regulating pain experiences
Forebrain
Includes the cortex, four lobes, subcortical structures
Cortex: Outer surface of the forebrain
Subcortical Parts of Forebrain
Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Limbic System, Amygdala, Hippocampus
Thalamus
sensory relay station
Hypothalamus
controls behaviours that serve specific biological needs
Limbic system
emotion, fight or flight behaviours
Amygdala
emotional processing (fear)
Hippocampus
learning and memory
Left and right hemispheres
Connected via several commissures (bundles of axons), including the corpus callosum
Corpus Callosum
ensures both sides of the brain can communicate and send signals to each other
Split-brain
occurs when the corpus callosum is severed
the left and the right brain no longer interact, this can give us an idea of what takes place more on each side
KEY Fissures
Longitudinal fissure: running from the front of the brain to the back, and separating the left cerebral hemisphere from the right
Central fissure: divides frontal lobes on each side of the brain from the parietal lobes
Lateral fissure: divides frontal lobes from temporal lobes
Ways of studying the brain
Neuropsychology
Neuroimaging
Electrical Recordings
Manipulation of brain function
Neuropsychology
studying the behavioural impact of brain damage
damage can be natural (stroke) or unnatrual (hit in the head/surgery).
need to identify overlapping regions
e.g. regions identified this way:
Broca’s area
Wernicke’s area
Broca’s Area
Broken words, unable to speak with actual words
Wernicke’s Area
Broken sentences, can produce full words but meaningless sentences
Neuroimaging
Structural and Functional
Structural Neuroimaging
Computerized axial tomography (CT) scans
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans-
CT scans
basically x-rays to get full 3D image of the brain, radioactive exposure
MRI scans
measures water content throughout the brain to show what it looks like
Functional neuroimaging
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans
PET scans
Ingest radioactive isotope through glucose, they are able to trace where there is more activity
PRO: quick
fMRI scans
Better type of imaging, but takes longer and is more expensive, measures where the brains oxygen is going, when it gets deoxygenated. Blood flow, good way to track where activity is occuring.
Electrical Recordings- Communication between neurons is chemical
Neurons communicate with one another via neurotransmitters
Electrical Recordings- Communication within a neuron is electrical
“Input: end of a neuron receives neurotransmitters; “output” end releases neurotransmitters.
An electrical impulse conveys the signal from the input end to the output end.
Electrical Recordings- EEG
Electroencephalogram
EEG
Recording of the electrical communication within neurons.
Used to study: broad rhythms (eg. sleep stages), and event-related potentials (ERPs)
Relying on signals occurring at the same time
EEG comparison
strength: temporally locating neural activity (when?)
weakness: spatially locating neural activity (where?)
Therefore, you can locate when, not where. There is a general sense of where it is occurring. Relying on many neurons.
fMRI comparison
strength: spatially locating neural activity (where?)
weakness: temporally locating neural activity (when?)
How to overcome limitations
combine techniques
Other techniques
Chemical effects on neurotransmitters (eg. drugs)
Electrical stimulation (eg. TMS, tCDS)
Gene manipulation (eg. CRISPR)
TMS- transcranial magnetic stimulation
temporarily disrupt brain activity using focal magnetic pulses targeted over different areas of the scalp
correlation does not equal causation, we can use TMS to find cause
Specific parts of the brain, shooting positive or negative impulses, you can cause peoples fingers to move using the motor control, or interrupt spatial
tCDS- transcranial direct current stimulation
Increases or decreases the likelihood of neuronal firing
Cerebral Cortex
largest portion of the human brain
thin layer of tissue covering the cerebrum (i.e. forebrain)
regions of the cerebral cortex:
- motor areas
- sensory areas
- association areas
Motor Area
More cortical coverage reflects greater motor precision
Primary sensory projection areas
arrival points in the motor cortex for signals from the sensory
Primary motor projection areas
departure points in the motor cortex for signals that control muscle movement
Contralateral control
Left side of the brain controls right side of body visa versa
Sensory Areas
areas in the cortex that receive and process the information obtained from the sense organs (somatosensory, primary audio cortex, primary visual cortex)
cortical space assigned based on acuity
contralateral organization
Somatosensory area
skin sensations
Primary auditory cortex
auditory sensations
Primary visual cortex
visual sensations
Association areas
approximately 75% of the cerebral cortex, with specialized sibregions, damage to which can result in apraxia, agnosia, unilateral neglect syndrome, and aphasia
Apraxia
difficulty with coordination
Agnosia
problems of identifying
Unilateral neglect syndrome
neglect half of sensory world
Aphasia
problems with language
Brain composition
neurons and glia
Neurons
transmit signal via action potentials (within a neuron) and neurotransmitters (between neurons)
Parts of the neuron
dendrites, cell body, axon
Dendrites
detect incoming signals from other neurons
Cell body
contains the nucleus and cellular machinery
Axon
transmits signals to other neurons
Glia
guide development of nervous system
repair damage in the nervous system
control nutrient flow to neurons
electrical insulation
Synapse
neurotransmitters change the postsynaptic membrane
Action potential
if there is sufficient ionic flow to surpass the cell’s threshold, an action potential is produced.
All-or-none Law
an action potential is always of the same magnitude.
signal frequency can differ depending on the stimulus
How do neurons represent different information?
specific neurons can, in some cases, represent specific stimuli.
“pattern coding” or distributed representation
most of the information is encoded by the firing rates of the neurons
Why is vision important
vision is the dominant sense in humans
more brain area is devoted to vision than the other senses
when vision vs. anything else, vision usually wins
Photoreceptors
rods and cones
Rods
- low levels of light
- low acuity
- no colour sensitivity
- periphery only
Cones
- high levels of light
- high acuity
- high colour sensitivity
- mostly fovea
Visual system
- Photoreceptors
- Bipolar cells
- Ganglion cells
- Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus
- Area V1 of the occipital lobe.
Signal convergence in the fovea
there are a lot of photoreceptors, low signal convergence, therefore clear vision on what we are focusing on.
Signal convergence in the peripheries
there is a lot of signal convergence occurring, represented by the same photoreceptor, which leads to the blurriness of what we are not focusing on.
Lateral Inhibition
when cells are stimulated, they inhibit the activity of neighbouring cells (reduces the likelihood of neighbouring cells to be activated)- leading to edge enhancement
you have a set of neurons that are extremely excited and weakly inhibited and a set of neurons that are weakly excited and excitedly inhibited.
Edge enhancement
an image processing filter that enhances the edge contrast of an image to improve its apparent sharpness
e.g. colour gradient- lighter on one side, darker on the other, but is actually a uniform colour
How does activity in the nervous system represent the stimulus?
single-cell recordings provide insight
receptive fields and firing rate
their firing rate depends on the stimulus
Center-surround
if light in area, it will activate, depends on where in the receptive field
Convergence
responsive properties determines how a single neuron can respond differently to different locations.
Receptive fields
can be specialized for one or combos of
- orientation (edge detectors)
- angles
- motions and direction (“movement detectors”)
- corners
the less similar a stimulus is to the cell’s preferred stimulus, the less often the cell fires
Jennifer Aniston
highly specialized neurons fired when seeing her face due to watching FRIENDS
advantages of parallel processing in the visual system
- speed and efficiency
- mutual influence among multiple systems
mutual influence among multiple systems
resolves contradictory demands
ie. having expectations: you have experience reading it, so when you take your glasses off you can still read it, but if it is a slide you have not seen, you will be unable to read it without glasses.
MT
processes motion
Faulty MT
causes Akinetopsia
Akinetopsia
could be caused by stroke, neurodegeneration, injury, etc.
it is debilitating- motion is gone
creates basically snapshots, is not smooth motion, there is glitching
ex. pouring coffee and watching traffic
Parallel processing
what and where system
what system
ventral- inferotemporal cortex
aids in identification of visual objects
damage can cause visual agnosia
where system
dorsal- posterior parietal cortex
aids in perception of an objects location
damage can cause difficulties reaching for objects
The binding problem
the task of reuniting elements of a stimulus that were addressed by different systems in different brain regions- how are they coordinated
Solving the binding problem
spatial position, neural synchrony, and attention
spatial position
overlay map of “which forms are where” with a map of “which colours are where,” “which motions are where,” etc.
these things are happening at the same time, so they must be connected
neural synchrony
attributes are registered as belonging to the same object if the neurons detecting these attributes fire in synchrony
if neurons are firing at the same exact time, it is very rare that independent events are causing this, the activity must be related
Form perception
binding leads us to come across ambiguous information
perception of a stimulus is beyond the information given:
- reversible/ambiguous figures
- figure/ground organization
- your brain can only acknowledge one of these perspectives at a time
Gestalt psychologists
the perceptual whole is often different than the sum of its parts
most stimuli are somehow ambiguous
majority is obstructed, but we are able to see that there are still mangos, we are able to separate the background and foreground easily, always interpreting our visual world and filling in information.
Gestalt principles
help us organize the world: our ability to interpret ambiguous scenes is governed by a few basic principles (similarity, proximity, continuation, closure, and simplicity)
Similarity
We tend to group the dots into columns rather than rows, grouping the dots of similar colour
Proximity
We tend to perceive groups, linking dots that are close together
Continuity
We tend to see a continuous green bar rather tthan two similar rectangles, our brain completes it even though obstructed.
Closure
We tend to perceive an intact triangle, reflecting our bias toward perceiving closed figures rather than incomplete ones.
Simplicity
We tend to interpret a form in the simplest way possible. Two rectangles rather than a single 12-sided irregular polygon
Organization and features
perception involves multiple activities going on in parallel: information gathering and interpretation
Perceptual constancies
we perceive constant object properties (sizes, shapes, etc.) even though sensory information about these attributes changes when viewing circumstances change
Types of perceptual constancies
brightness constancy
size constancy
shape constancy
Unconscious inference
human vision is incomplete and that details are inferred by the unconscious mind to create a complete picture.
these are calculated/processes/inferred unconsciously
Constancy is partly influenced by…
relationships within the retinal image
distance cues
illusions
solid evidence that perception involves at least some interpretation, because illusions are misinterpretations.
depth perception
perception of distance depends on various distance cues
distance cues
- binocular disparity
- monocular cues
- motion cues
binocular disparity
the difference between each eye’s view of a stimulus
monocular cues
depth cues that depend only on what each eye sees by itself
types of monocular cues
- lens adjustment
- pictorial cues (interposition)
- linear perspective
- texture gradients
- motion parallax
- optic flow
redundancy
different cues may suggest the same thing, but each cue’s importance depends on the circumstance
e.g. binocular disparity is only helpful when distance is short
