Quiz 1 Flashcards
cognitive psychology
a branch of psychology focused on cognition
cognition
mental processes –> perception, thinking, language, memory, learning, and more
mental chronometry
how long a cognitive process takes
- Donders
reaction time experience (RT)
the time between presentation of the stimulus (object) and the person’s response
- simple task
- choice task
- Donders
simple task for RT
light appear, push button
choice task for RT
if the light is on the left, push “J”; if the light is on the right, push “K”
how long does it take to make a choice
time to respond to choice task - simple task = time to make a choice
- 1/10th of a second to make a decision
unconscious inference
some perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about the environment
- Helmholtz
Donders
mental chronometry; reaction time experiment (RT)
Helmholtz
perception and unconscious inference
Ebbinghaus
memory, Savings (Forgetting) Curve
Savings (Forgetting) Curve
- Read the list of syllables to memorize it perfectly
- After different time intervals (hours or days), he measured his ability to recite syllables back
- Savings (Forgetting) Curve
Shorter intervals → more savings - Not linear
- We forget the most information right after
- Forgetting slows down with time (E.g., lost more going 19 to 1 hour than 6 to 31 days)
Watson
behaviorism, Little Albert Experiment
behaviorism
study only observable behavior
Skinner
operant conditioning
main points of behaviorism
- Popular movement
- Opposed introspection
- Measuring observable behavior
- Examined how pairing one stimulus affects behavior (Watson)
- How behavior is changed by rewards/punishments (Skinner)
- Supports only nurture perspective— experience shapes you
behaviorism’s decline
- language acquisition
- animal conditioning fails
- cognitive maps vs. simple operant conditioning
language acquisition and behaviorism’s decline
- Skinner (1957): Verbal Behaviour → children learn language with operant conditioning and imitation; they are rewarded for correct speech
- Chomsky (1959): Review of Verbal Behaviour → children say things they never heard and things that are incorrect— so not just imitation and rewards
- “Language Acquisition Device” → inborn biological program
Behaviorism’s decline and animal conditioning fails
- IQ Zoo → animals trained by conditioning
- Animals played basketball, tic-tac-toe
- Yet instincts were still present; the importance of instinctual responses
- It is easy to train “peck” to get food and “flap” wings to avoid danger but not vice versa
- But this should not be the case if the only thing that matters is rewards
Behaviorism’s decline and cognitive maps vs. simple operant conditioning
- Tolman (1938) → rats’ ability to find food is a cognitive map rather than conditioning
- Trained to find food on the right, but when rat is placed in another position, still found food
- Should not be the case if only the operant conditioning is at play
cognitive revolution process
- behaviorism (1920s)
- cognitive revolution (1950s-1960s)
- dichotic listening - Cherry (1953)
- first attention model - Broadbent (1958)
cognitive revolution (1950s-1960s)
- Gradual change from behaviorism ideals
- Explain behavior in terms of the mind and make inferences about the cognitive activity
- Study of the mind
Models of Cognitive Processes - Early computers → computers have stages of pressing and limited storage, so the most like the mind
dichotic listening - Cherry (1953)
- If different information is presented to different ears (sides), people can selectively attend to one bit of information and not to another
- We can infer that we have an attention “filter”
first attention model - Broadbent (1958)
- Filter → takes in all the info and only allows info you are attending to
- Detector → processing the information
- Input → Filter → Detector → Memory
how to study cognitive processes now
- done indirectly
- Observe objective responses
- Create and update models to predict outcomes (e.g., model of memory)
- Design experiments based on prior knowledge
Develop new hypotheses - *standardized scales (agreed upon, tested way to measure)
- *operational definitions (clear, measurable)
Cognitive science is interdisciplinary → psychology, computer science, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, education
development
changes in structure or function over time
- structure
- ability
structure, development
knowledge base
function, development
ability
individual differences
variations of intellectual abilities and skills (e.g., reading skills)
- between different children
- within the same child in different tasks
value of cognitive immaturity
Early forms of development can play a role in helping children adapt to the environment
- ex. egocentrism
egocentrism
inability to take perspectives other than their own
- The focus on self can be beneficial → memory is better for events related to self (ex. more adjectives are remembered when they were considered to refer to self compared to other people)
6 truths of cognitive development
1) occurs in the context of dynamic and reciprocal relationship between biology and the environment (nature and nurture)
2) occurs within a social context
3) includes both stability and plasticity
4) involves changes in how info is represented
5) children develop intentional control over behaviors and cognition
6) involves changes in both domain-general and domain-specific abilities
nature
heredity (nativism); argues that abilities are innate
nurture
environment (empiricism); argues that experiences drive change
second truth of cognitive development
- cultural influences on cognition
- sociocultural perspective –> learning guided (scaffolded) by adults
stability
the ability to maintain cognitive functions (e.g., memory for procedures/traits)
plasticity
changes in behavior and cognition over time with experience (e.g., language learning)
representation
mental coding of information
strategies (fifth truth of cognitive development)
deliberate, goal-directed mental operations aimed at solving a problem
domain-general abilities
one set of factors affects different cognition aspects (e.g., one memory unit storing various information)
domain-specific abilities
brain functions that are modular, where certain areas are for specific tasks (e.g., separate mechanisms store visual and verbal info)
neither domain-general nor domain-specific abilities completely describe cognition if considered alone
- Domain-general can’t explain the variations seen in developing different kinds of cognition
- Domain-specific in the extreme is too inflexible
Champagne & Mashoodh (2009)
- Low vs. high serotonin and stressful events on risk of depression (20 years)
- Little stress, no different in risk of depression in low vs. high
- A lot of stress, low serotonin gets higher risk of depression
- DNA as a library
- DNA expression as reading (by RNA polymerase)
- Environment influences reading
- Epigenetic → “in addition to genetic”
- DNA methylation as extra furniture reduces access
- Maternal care and GR gene (responsible for stress response)
- Low care → more methylation → GR silenced → prolonged stress response
- But, methylation levels can be altered pharmacologically in adulthood (in both directions)
- Generational transfer
- Low maternal care → estrogen receptor methylation → offspring’s low maternal care
developmental research designs
- longitudinal studies
- cross-sectional studies
- sequential studies
- meta analysis
longitudinal studies
- Test the same participants at multiple time points across time
- Expensive, time-consuming, people leave (attrition)
- Examine change over time
- Continuity → gradual changes (Lang)
- Discontinuity → quick changes (Theory of Mind)
cross-sectional studies
- Test different groups at the same time
- Less expensive, less time-consuming
- Cannot examine change over time; each group has different people
- May contain cohort effects
- Differences between groups due to the environment (e.g., culture) rather than age
- Example: study of stress with three different groups of 9th graders, 10th graders, and 11th graders
sequential studies
- Longitudinal and cross-sectional combined
- Multiple groups of people at multiple time points
- Expensive, time-consuming
- Flexibility in data collection/direction
- Avoids cohort effects
meta analysis
- Analysis of multiple studies on the same topic, question, and variables
- Allows seeing whether the findings are replicated across studies
evolutionary biology
- How and why a particular mechanism developed (e.g., perspective-taking)
- How → natural selection over evolutionary time
- Why → important for survival, adaptive value
- Not all aspects of life are present because they are adaptive (e.g., some are neutral)
- Not everything that was adaptive is still adaptive (e.g., sugar)
adaptation
changes in structure or function providing survival value
deferred
changes that prepare for both immediate and later environments (e.g., social relations)
ontogenetic
changes relevant only in the immediate environment (E.g., umbilical cord)
neonatal imitation
newborns match the facial expressions of the adults, proposed to show social learning
- adaptive value: prelinguistic communication (high levels of imitation –> more interactions at 3 months)
adaptations
- Develop
- Can be both domain-specific (e.g., face recognition) and domain-general (e.g., executive function
- Specialized solutions come with limits, thus imply constraints on learning
- Not bad things, help us learn and narrow down, they are starting points
- E.g., an assumption that one object cannot pass another
- E.g., probabilistic cognitive mechanisms
probabilistic cognitive mechanisms
solutions evolved to solve recurrent problems ancestors faced