quizzes

Question 1

What is the faculty of the brain by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action

Answer 1

memory

Question 2

What is a temporary store. Some things from it end up becoming long term memories.

Answer 2

Short term memory

Question 3

What holds things you are actively thinking about

Answer 3

Short term memory

Question 4

what is Stuff you pull out of the filing cabinet of long term memory for use

Answer 4

working memory

Question 5

What is Like a sketch pad(for vision) or a bit of recording tape(for hearing) that can be overwritten with new things. It is rewritten every few seconds by new perceptions
Processes info gathered through the five senses

Answer 5

Sensory Memory

Question 6

what is stored forever. However we might have trouble with retrieving it

Answer 6

Long Term memories

Question 7

what consists of facts and events that can be explicitly stored and consciously recalled or “declared.

Answer 7

explicit long term memory or declarative memory

Question 8

what is a type of long-term memory involving the capacity to recall words, concepts, or numbers, which is essential for the use and understanding of language. General knowledge of the world & Facts

Answer 8

Semantic Memory

Question 9

what is the memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at particular times and places; for example, the party on one’s 7th birthday. Where someone parked their car

Answer 9

Episodic Memory

Question 10

what is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. ex what an iphone looks like

Answer 10

Implicit long term memory or implicit knowledge

Question 11

what is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Ex. how to tie a shoe. Can do but might not be able to explain

Answer 11

Procedural Knowlegde

Question 12

what is systems(a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network) capable of cognition(the manipulation of representations)

Answer 12

Cognitive systems

Question 13

what Turns desires to act into physical changes in the environment

Answer 13

Actions

Question 14

what Transforms things in the environment into internal representation

Answer 14

Perception

Question 15

what is the manipulation of representations

Answer 15

Cognition

Question 16

what is distributed cognition

Answer 16

when a group makes up the system, not just one entity has all the information

Question 17

What is disembodied software

Answer 17

a cognitive system that it is unimportant where the body is, the mind is working within a software

Question 18

what is changing memory with the purpose of preparing a system for better action in the future

Answer 18

Learning

Question 19

what is Doing something over and over and learning how to do it better. It uses reinforcement and punishment to hone the skill.
Play is theorized to be a form of practice for the future(chasing, fighting, caretaking, manipulating objects, etc.)

Answer 19

Practice

Question 20

what is Things that you practice so much that they become automatic, with you being able to perform them with little to no thought. Examples of this is walking, driving, breathing, tying shoes and motor skills

Answer 20

Automization

Question 21

what type of learning Learning that happens by observing another individual do something
E.g. copying michael jackson dance moves on youtube
Must of cultural learning is observational bt some is explicitly taught
Some have tried to get robots to do this

Answer 21

Observational Learning

Question 22

what is it called when When a behavioral response is amplified by repeated exposure to a stimulus
Ex. at first you can barely hear a vibrating phone in your pocket but eventually you become very sensitive to it

Answer 22

Sensitization

Question 23

what is The diminution of a behavioral response with repeated stimulation
Ex. the first time you hear a loud noise you might jump but afterwards you stop jumping(if it happens again)
When you see things again and again you don’t react as strongly to it
(also known as desensitization)

Answer 23

Habitutation

Question 24

what is A time sensitive learning in an animal that is insensitive to behavioral outcomes
E.g. a goose learning who its mother is happens 13-16 hours after hatching
You can’t change it once it’s there. Imprinting lasts forever

Answer 24

Imprinting

Question 25

What is it called When somebody tells you something
E.g. how to start a web browser or that orcas are mammals
It can be read or heard aloud
We can get facts by figuring them out but this is better described as reasoning or interference

Answer 25

Testimonial Learning

Question 26

what is A combination of observational, testimony & practice.
We learn from others and can teach each other
E.g. learning how to cook

Answer 26

Mentorship

Question 27

What is Changing behavior according to reward and punishment

Answer 27

Operant Conditioning

Question 28

(Strongest)
Someone smiles at you when you hold the door for them
Adds the smile and makes you more likely to hold the door in the future

Answer 28

Positive Reinforcement

Question 29

A baby screams and then stops when you give it candy
Takes away the screaming baby for the adult and makes the adult more likely to give candy in the future
PR from the baby’s perspective

Answer 29

Negative Reinforcement

Question 30

You get burned by touching the hood of a car
Adds the burn(positive) and makes you less likely to touch the hood in the future(punishment)

Answer 30

Positive Punishment

Question 31

Your parents cut off your allowance due to you lying
Removes your allowance(negative) and makes you less likely to lie in the future(punishment)

Answer 31

Negative Punishment

Question 32

What is Learning to associate two previously unrelated stimuli

Answer 32

Classical Conditioning

Question 33

what appears to be important for transforming short term memories into long term memories(If it’s damaged you lose the ability to generate more)

Answer 33

Hippocampus

Question 34

what appears to happen in the cerebellum, the basal ganglia and the motor cortex

Answer 34

Procedural Memory

Question 35

What is it called When environments change very slowly then the species has an opportunity to evolve to accommodate that change. If it happens too quickly then it’s not possible(has to last longer than a few generations)

Answer 35

Genetic Learning

Question 36

What is Figuring it out for yourself, perhaps influenced by the baldwin effect
When environments change very rapidly there is less cultural transmission

Answer 36

Individual Learning

Question 37

What is A character or trait change occurring in an organism as a result of its interaction with its environment becomes gradually assimilated into its developmental genetic or epigenetic repertoire.

Answer 37

The baldwin Effect

Question 38

what type of learning is it when The culture itself learns over time
Happens when environments change relatively quickly.

Answer 38

Cultural Learning

Question 39

what is the process by which agents interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world
From a cognitive science perspective, it means turning information from one form into new, meaningful representations. Overriding memory of an object as we perceive it
We perceive things through our sensory modalities then turn those into representations of the objects themselves in our brain

Answer 39

Perception

Question 40

what is the technique used by bats, dolphins and other animals to determine the location of objects(spatial information) using reflected sound(echo). This allows the animals to move around in pitch darkness, so they can navigate, hunt, identify friends and enemies, and avoid obstacles
Also known as biosonar

Answer 40

Echolocation

Question 41

What is Audition

Answer 41

the process of creating perceptions from sound.

Question 42

what is called the pinna and is made of rigid cartilage covered by skin. Sound funnels through the pinna into the external auditory canal, a short tube that ends at the eardrum (tympanic membrane).

Answer 42

the outer ear

Question 43

what is done by examining the differences between the sounds in the two ears, somewhat like how depth is done with binocular vision

Answer 43

localization

Question 44

How does audition work?

Answer 44

Acoustical energy(sound waves) vibrate the eardrums(in air) or bones(underwater or through your own body)(as when you hear your voice)

Question 45

what is olfaction

Answer 45

The process of creating the perception of smell.

Question 46

what It occurs when an odor binds to a receptor within the nose, transmitting a signal through the olfactory system
Detection of chemicals

Answer 46

Olfaction

Question 47

Why do animals use smell for communication

Answer 47

Territory
Fertility
Ant pheromone traces
(food this way)

Question 48

what is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue.

Answer 48

Gustation (taste)

Question 49

what in taste buds last for a week or two then wear out

Answer 49

Chemical receptors

Question 50

the tounge dectects flavour such as

Answer 50

salty, sour, bitter, sweet and umami(savoury)

Question 51

why is the experience of food complex

Answer 51

lots of factors like temperature

Question 52

what is Perception of objects. Critical for manipulation of objects, particularly in combination with proprioception.
Sensors are in the skin

Answer 52

Haptics (touch)

Question 53

what is a lesser-known sense that helps you understand and feel what’s going on inside your body.

Answer 53

Introspection

Question 54

what are Senses inside your body. Senses in the bowel, stomach, pain receptors, heat receptors, etc.

Answer 54

Atypical Senses

Question 55

what is a sensory system(in the ear) responsible for providing our brain with information about motion, head position, and spatial orientation; it also is involved with motor functions that allow us to keep our balance, stabilize our head and body during movement, and maintain posture

Answer 55

Vestubular system

Question 56

what is it called when you know where your body parts are. The awareness of joint position. Without looking at your feet you know where they are. Sensors for this is in the inner ear and in muscles

Answer 56

Proprioception

Question 57

kinesthia is

Answer 57

How you know how your body parts are moving. Sensors for this is in the inner ear and in muscles

Question 58

what are perception illusions

Answer 58

Perceptions of height is different from width

Question 59

what is Iconic memory updates in a certain amount of time and if the delay between is long enough you can’t take advantage of it

Answer 59

Change blindness

Question 60

what is a difference in what you see and you vestibular system feels(ears)

Answer 60

Motion Sickness

Question 61

what is Extramission Theory(discredited)

Answer 61

(we can’t see in the dark)):
Rays of light emanating from the eye in combination with light in the world allows us to see

Question 62

what is Intromission Theory(what we now believe):

Answer 62

Visual perception is accomplished by rays of light reflected from objects into the eyes
Wavelengths get absorbed and the remaining ones show color. Color is reflected light

Question 63

how does seeing out of the human eye work

Answer 63

Light is reflected into the eye and focused on the retina
Light stimulates the rod and cone receptors
Transduction of light into electricity

Question 64

what is responsible for your peripheral vision. They are the most light sensitive photoreceptor cells in the retina(night vision)

Answer 64

rods

Question 65

how do rods work

Answer 65

100 times more sensitive than cones
Information is received from pooling from many rod cells resulting in a loss of vision acuity
Convergence of information makes peripheral vision sensitive to movement. You see things that your eye can later focus on
Ex. you can see a test but just looking at the center of it but can’t actually read it

Question 66

what is responsible for your central vision. They are parts of your eye capable of color vision and are responsible for high visual acuity.

Answer 66

Cones

Question 67

what are the 3 types of cones

Answer 67

Correspond to short wavelengths(blue)
Medium wavelengths(green)
Long wavelengths(red)

Question 68

can we have a 4th type of cone

Answer 68

Some people have a 4th type(only in certain women)
Not entirely useful since they can’t explain it(don’t have words for it). Tv has 3 while they’re used to seeing 4
Tetrachromats

Question 69

what refers to your ability to discern the shapes and details of the things you see.

Answer 69

visual acuity

Question 70

how many color detectors do mantis shrimp have

Answer 70

11

Question 71

what is depth perception

Answer 71

Size(knowing how big things are)(Contextualize something compared to things around it)

Question 72

what is it called when Things are smaller on the fovea as they get farther

Answer 72

perspective

Question 73

what is occlusion

Answer 73

When one thing is behind another(podium is blocking body so he must be behind, not he has no legs)

Question 74

what is texture, shading and saturation

Answer 74

closer things are more saturated. Texture gradients)(Atmosphere takes away saturation. As things move into the distance they get less saturated and more blue

Question 75

what is focus

Answer 75

If you know you have to focus on something a different way it tells you if it’s closer or further away(the act of focusing tells))

Question 76

explain the concept of multiple images

Answer 76

Including motion and binocular vision) Each eye sees slightly different spatial information and transmits these differences to the brain. The brain then uses the discrepancies between the two eyes to judge distance and depth(Looking at thumb with one eye and then the other. It tends to jump. Holding it further away makes it jump less)(When looking at things further away you can’t tell which ones further away because the sight from both eyes is the same + can’t focus(perceptual infinity))

Question 77

what are visual streams

Answer 77

ventral ‘perceptual’ stream computes a detailed map of the world from visual input, which can then be used for cognitive operations, and the dorsal ‘action’ stream transforms incoming visual information to the requisite egocentric (head-centered) coordinate system for skilled motor planning

Question 78

what is a dorsal stream

Answer 78

Where” pathway; associated with motion, representation of object locations and control of the eyes and arms, especially when visual information is used to guide saccades or reaching

Question 79

what is a ventural stream

Answer 79

“What” pathway; associated with form recognition and object representation. It is also associated with storage of long term memory

Question 80

what are saccades

Answer 80

A quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction. In contrast, in smooth pursuit movements, the eyes move smoothly instead of in jumps.

Question 81

what consists of demons that represent certain neurons. All the primitive things they do collect into more advanced perceptions

Answer 81

Pandemonium model of perception

Question 82

what is Comparing things perceived to images of things. If it matches that’s what it is(this isn’t how it works for animals)

Answer 82

template matching perception

Question 83

what is neural network perception

Answer 83

Pixels are more active if something is in the space. These collect and the thing after it collects that’s chosen is based on what’s more active(if its a 3 then the 3 will have more active pixels than the 4)

Question 84

what is an interdisipline

Answer 84

Bunch of fields coming together to work on a problem

Question 85

what is cognitive science’s historical core

Answer 85

psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics

Question 86

what is cognitive science’s contemporary core

Answer 86

neuroscience (important now but not in the past)

Question 87

what is cognitive science’s secondary influences

Answer 87

education, anthropology (should be apart of cog sci but isnt)

Question 88

what is is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved

Answer 88

Philosophy

Question 89

what is the subject matter of philosophy

Answer 89

usually big questions
Methods: thinking & writing(thought experiments, conceptual analysis, argumentation, theorizing from evidence from other fields and common sense observation

Question 90

what are critiques of Philosphy

Answer 90

Don’t pay enough attention to empirical studies(Assumes something is true when it isn’t)
Sometimes think that the existence of a word implies the existence of it’s intended referent(If it has a word it exists)
Concerned with too many unimportant problems

Question 91

what are the subfeilds of philosophy

Answer 91

Philosophy of the mind, Philosophy of science and philosophy of language

Question 92

in what philosophical subfield are questions like Can machines be conscious. Functionalism vs Identity theory. Which animals feel pain. Qualia

Answer 92

Philosophy of mind

Question 93

in what philosophical subfield are questions like How its done/practiced and how it should be done/practiced. Philosophy of psychology(the science). What mental categories are scientifically legitimate

Answer 93

Philosophy of Science

Question 94

in what philosophical subfield are questions like how do words connect to meanings. How can a word refer to something that does not exist(how can the word unicorn mean anything when there are no unicorns)

Answer 94

Philosophy of language

Question 95

what is the science of mind and behavior. includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, as well as feeling and thought

Answer 95

Psychology

Question 96

what is the subject matter of Psychology

Answer 96

natural minds(things we did not make)
Methods: lab experiments, stat analysis, computer cognitive modeling

Question 97

what is the largest component of Cog Sci

Answer 97

psychology

Question 98

what are some critiques of Pyschology

Answer 98

Not enough model building(You can’t play 20 questions with nature and win)
Dust bowl empiricism(not enough theory, no theoretical psychologists)
Methodologically limited(cognitive science is possible because psychology won’t innovate to embrace methods of other fields)
Underestimates the complexity of language

Question 99

what are the subfields of Psychology

Answer 99

cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction psychology, evolutionary psychology, psycholinguistics and comparative psychology

Question 100

what is cognitive Psychology

Answer 100

Basic research into human internal mental processes

Question 101

what is human-computer interaction physcology

Answer 101

How people psychologically interact with artifacts(ex. User interfaces)

Question 102

what are psycholinguistics

Answer 102

Studying language with experiments(how we use words, how we make language)

Question 103

what is comparative psychology

Answer 103

Animal cognition, sometimes comparing it to humans

Question 104

what is quaila

Answer 104

Individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky.

Question 105

what is the scientific study of language. It involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context, as well as an analysis of the social, cultural, historical, and political factors that influence language

Answer 105

Linguistics

Question 106

what is the subject matter of lingustics

Answer 106

spoken language(+ sign language). Not for computer/animal language, not written language
Methods: sound analysis, grammar creation, corpus analysis

Question 107

what are some critics of lingusitics

Answer 107

Have models that don’t match with how language is generated and don’t respect other research with the mind
Don’t know what’s going on in the other fields

Question 108

what are the subfields of linguistics

Answer 108

Phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic and pragmatics

Question 109

what is phonology

Answer 109

How sounds are organized and used in language

Question 110

what is morphology

Answer 110

How sound and meaning interact in words

Question 111

what is syntax

Answer 111

How sentences may be put together in a
language(ex. SVO vs SOV)

Question 112

what are semantics

Answer 112

Meaning in language(ex. Difference between each and every)

Question 113

what is progmatic

Answer 113

How sentences interact with context to change meaning(Can you pass the salt. Sure(doesn’t pass))

Question 114

what is the study of algorithmic processes and computational machines. As a discipline, it spans a range of topics from theoretical studies of algorithms, computation and information to the practical issues of implementing computing systems in hardware and software

Answer 114

Computer science

Question 115

what is the subject matter of Computer Science

Answer 115

how mental processes can work on machines and how computers can interact with humans
Methods: building and testing computer programs

Question 116

what are some critiques of Computer science

Answer 116

Insufficiently concerned with natural intelligence(ignore research and don’t care if it resembles animals)
Overly optimistic about the future of AI

Question 117

what are the subfields of computer science

Answer 117

AI and Computer human interaction

Question 118

what is AI

Answer 118

Building mental processes with computer programs. Understanding and creating mental systems

Question 119

what is computer human interaction

Answer 119

Designing computer interfaces that people can use

Question 120

what is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, mathematical modeling, and psychology to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits

Answer 120

Neuroscience

Question 121

what is the subject matter of neuroscience

Answer 121

how brain processes information and creates cognitive processes
Methods: neuroimaging, single cell recording, anatomical observation, computer modeling, pharmaceutical effects, genetic analysis

Question 122

what are some critiques of Nueroscience

Answer 122

Underestimate the complexity of language
Learn too far towards nature in nature/nurture
Dismissive of other approaches
Can’t shed light on other processes

Question 123

what is education

Answer 123

the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university

Question 124

what is the subject matter of Education

Answer 124

how people learn and how we can design education to help them do it
Methods: naturalistic observation of case studies, empirical studies

Question 125

what are some critiques of education

Answer 125

Case studies are useless
Too applied and not telling enough about cognitive processes
Controlled studies are poorly done(expensive & hard)
Only deal with one part of cognition

Question 126

what is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, and societies, in both the present and past, including past human species. studies patterns of behaviour, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values

Answer 126

Anthropology

Question 127

what is the subject matter of Anthropology

Answer 127

ocial organisation, human culture, enculturation, shared knowledge, situated cognition
Methods: field work, ethnographic observation and interviewing. Empathis on qualitative study

Question 128

what are some critiques of Anthropology

Answer 128

Tend to be too far on nurture side for nature vs nurture
Research is too qualitative(too ambiguous), too expensive and does not generalize enough to be useful
They are “splitters”(this is all different) rather than “lumpers”(put things together)
Ex. something is true. Not in this culture, not in this culture

Question 129

what is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information

Answer 129

Cognitive science

Question 130

what is the subject matter of Cog Sci

Answer 130

study of minds and thinking especially at the information processing level
Methodological definition: applies methodology from multiple disciplines to multiple problems from the disciplines

Question 131

what can help you pay attention in a boring lecture

Answer 131

doodling

Question 132

why is it better to take notes on paper

Answer 132

People need to process info and summarize(too much can be written on computer)
More distracted by web
You can then cut up your notes and turn them into flashcards

Question 133

why are flashcards helpful

Answer 133

Guessing answer before seeing it helps you remember
Testing memory

Question 134

explain how different learning styles don’t really exsist

Answer 134

If you try to teach someone the shape of a continent via ‘spoken word’, just because someone is an auditory learner does not mean they can learn the shape of a continent by being told… They need to see it because it is a visual thing

Question 135

how much should you study

Answer 135

at least 20 hours a week

Question 136

explain why people can’t multitask

Answer 136

Every time you switch there’s residue from previous task affecting the new one
It feels like you can do it(you get dopamine) but performance drops

Question 137

What are project lists

Answer 137

Project lists are projects that will take you more then 20 minutes so they are added to a list, they are helpful because it makes it easier to organize themselves

Question 138

what can taking a walk do

Answer 138

help you remember what your studying

Question 139

why is time management important

Answer 139

The key to success is structuring time. At the start of every day grab a piece of paper and mark off every 30 minutes
Happier and less stressed if you schedule some free time too

Question 140

where should you study

Answer 140

Study in lots of places to increase retention in multiple environments
If only interested in grades then study in the exam room(not recommended)
Memorizing things just before sleeping helps you remember them better

Question 141

what does cognitive science specailise in

Answer 141

Cognitive science specialises in a certain level of explanation, the cognitive level

Question 142

what are the levels that learning can be done at

Answer 142

These are all the levels that learning can be done at:
Low level = small and detailed
High level = broad & complex
The high level will be 1 and numbers after that will be going lower

Question 143

What is learning at the sociological level and what are some examples

Answer 143

The culture itself is learning
Fijian Food Taboo
When pregnant you can’t eat certain types of foods to reduce food poisoning
The culture itself is learning: people don’t know why they do it they just know they do it
The people who followed this outlived the people who didn’t

Question 144

Why do we need the sociological level

Answer 144

Certain group behavior phenomena like going on strike are difficult to explain with individual psychology

Question 145

what is learning at the psychological level with examples

Answer 145

After eating a certain kind of food people get sick
If you eat french fries then throw up you don’t want to eat french fries anymore
Individual learning

Question 146

Why do we need learning at the psychological level

Answer 146

individual behavior cannot be explained by using sociology

We need it in addition to sociological level because some behaviors are not heavily influenced by their social context
(ex. Baby face recognition(when shown a pattern and a face babies look at the face))

We need it in addition to the cognitive level because we need a place for non-causal, statistical models

Question 147

what is learning at the cognitive level

Answer 147

One theory is that the mind does what it does by firing little information processing rules called productions.
It works on the basis of: “If you are hungry, eat something” or “If the
novel is in front of you, then start reading it”
The way productions work is that if something good or bad happens,
the productions made to get to that state of affairs is made more or
less likely to occur in the future
Cognitive level deals with information, how it is processed etc
Behavior may not be all you need to study a person and the things he does

Question 148

Why do we need learning at the cognitive level

Answer 148

There are certain things that become very hard to explain with just psychology:
- Ex: multiplication (Mental multiplication vs abacus, the kinds of errors/length reflect the way the person was taught to do it)
- (biology level) We also need it because mental states and processes are defined functionally and NOT anatomically (Ex: you and I are both happy to be here but our mental states are diff)

Neurons can be differently built based on order you learned things (ex. Americans learn president first and associate related things to that)

The cognitive level is the information processing level. Cognitive science prefers descriptions of information and how it is represented and changed.

Ex. cognitive scientists have theorized that individual memories have “activation levels” that determine how easily they can be retrieved from memory

Another way to say this is that Cognitive scientists like to describe the workings of the mind at a level so detailed that one could get a computer program to execute the task in the same way (processes, algorithms…)
(note its computer program not computer, programs are instructions while computers are hardware with nothing to do with minds

Question 149

what is learning at the biological level

Answer 149

Synapses are the spaces between neurons where learning happens. Synapses get more efficient with repeated use(Hebb theory)

Neurons that fire together wire together. This is how associations are learned(Hebb theory)

Question 150

Why do we need learning at the biological level

Answer 150

We need it in addition to the cognitive level because sometimes the biological structure influences behavior in ways that the information processing perspective can’t explain
Ex. number/color synesthesia (the number 2 might be green, the number 1 might be red(connection that wasn’t supposed to be true))

We need it in addition to the chemical level because certain brain structures appear to be used for particular things(ex. The hippocampus and short term memory)

Question 151

what is learning at the chemical level

Answer 151

Synaptic changes in taste receptors to tolerate bitter foods(habituation). Children often vomit when eating bitter foods that adults enjoy(happens in part to synaptic changes

Question 152

why do we need learning at the chemical level

Answer 152

We need it in addition to the biological level because chemicals can affect behavior(ex. Drug effects)

We need it in addition to the physical level because the physical level doesn’t tell us much about human behavior

Question 153

what is learning at the physcial level

Answer 153

Bottom of all fields. Smallest most detailed field there is. Bottom of science

Not a good level of description for learning

Some people believe that quantum effects are directly related to consciousness but most cognitive scientists don’t take the position seriously

Question 154

how do we know a level is legitimate

Answer 154

If we can successfully make casual predictions using the ontology of that level

Ontology: set of things said to exist
Ex. two kinds of people in the world
Ex. periodic table is an ontology of atoms

Question 155

why are scholars dismissive of feilds above them

Answer 155

They believe the regularities found at high levels will be deductible from the low level regularities
One form of reductionism (explanations of higher fields will be replaced by and explanation from the fields below them)
“Why study anything else when physics can explain everything”
This is not endorsed because everything is made of stuff physics talks about but can’t be explained with how quarks and muons interact

Question 156

what is a proximate explanation in cognitive science

Answer 156

Food: We eat because it satisfies our hunger and it tastes good
Sex: It gives us pleasure

Question 157

what is an ultimate explanation in cognitive science

Answer 157

Food: We eat to stay alive
Sex: We need to procreate and carry on our genes
Jealousy: to help protect us from losing partners/mates

Question 158

what is the difference between proximate and ultimate explanations

Answer 158

Proximate explanations focus on things that occur during the life of an individual. Ultimate explanations focus on things that occur in populations over many generations

Question 159

what is functionalism

Answer 159

Holds that mental states and processes are determined by their functional properties(ex what they do) rather than physical anatomy properties
People, animals, computer programs, distributed cognitive systems
The play hamlet doesn’t have a height but it exists
Opposite of functionalism is called identity theory

Question 160

what is structural description

Answer 160

A set of symbols that can be arranged in certain ways
includes computer code, human natural language etc.
Can be in grammatical ways(ways that make sense) or ungrammatical ways

Question 161

what is functional description

Answer 161

a complex code by which agents can communicate information
excludes things non humans do(bird calls)(not complex enough)

Question 162

what is natural language

Answer 162

created by cultures of humans(not invented by someone in particular)

Question 163

What is computer language

Answer 163

Artificial language for communication with computers, typically lacking in ambiguity

I saw pat with a telescope.
Did you see him standing with it or did you see him while using it

Human writes code which computer reads. It follows the human’s instructions

Question 164

what is human language

Answer 164

It has a structure but that structure is implicit(you understand the grammar unconsciously but can’t articulate it

Question 165

what is IPA

Answer 165

International phonetic alphabet
A list of all sounds that humans make in language including ones we don’t use in english

“a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language”

Question 166

what is semantics

Answer 166

Relationship of languages to meaning

Some english verbs have manner
Rolled, slid, limped(all motion from one place to another)

Question 167

what is morphology

Answer 167

morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Question 168

what are the rules for using affixes

Answer 168

Ant can only be used with words of latin origin
You can’t use it if its blocked(already used with something else)
Cooker can’t exist due to the existence of cook

Question 169

what is syntax

Answer 169

The set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order

Intransitive((of a verb or a sense or use of a verb) not taking a direct object, e.g. look in look at the sky)

Patty jumped what? Doesn’t make sense

Patty jumped
Patty jumped over the pig

Transitive((of a verb or a sense or use of a verb) able to take a direct object (expressed or implied), e.g. saw in he saw the donkey)

Patty hit what?

*Patty hit (ungrammatical to say)
Patty hit the button

Requiring complements

Patty put what where?

*Patty put
*Patty put the book
Patty put the book back

Question 170

explain animal communication

Answer 170

Also called “zoosemiotics”
Works through gesture, expression, gaze following, vocalisation, olfactory communication and electric coloration

Function: dominance, courtship, ownership, food alert, alarm, metacommunication

Question 171

whats an example of animal communication

Answer 171

Bees have a waggle dance to show where food is as an angle to the sun (sees it, flies back, dances location)
When trapping a bee in a dark box for 30 minutes and then letting it back into the hive without seeing the sun, it accounts for the rotation of the earth(evolved to know passage of time and how to adjust)

Question 172

what is logic

Answer 172

Logic is a formal, normative system of reasoning. Symbolic logic specifies ways that sentences can be represented ambiguously
For all x if cat(x) then mammal(x)
But typical logic is limited in its semantics

Question 173

can animals talk

Answer 173

Chomsky says that getting non humans to speak is like teaching bees to build beaver dams
Speaking is as much of a human evolutionary trait as building dams is to beavers
Linguists agree animals do not have a language. What they do is too primitive compared to english that it does not deserve a word

Question 174

what is mentalese

Answer 174

a hypothetical mental system, resembling language, in which concepts can be pictured and combined without the use of words

Question 175

what is intrabrain communication

Answer 175

Theory that our minds use “mentalese” or a language of thought
The fact that you can have trouble sometimes expressing what you want to say supports this view
How could you know what you wanted to say if the internal language were the natural language
This is controversial

Question 176

explain single celled organisms

Answer 176

Behavior maps directly from detectors on cell membrane to action
There is no represented goal
Our patellar reflex is like this
Doctor hitting leg and you kick
Brain is not involved
Action comes from spinal cord

Question 177

where is what we do stored

Answer 177

How your mind remembers how to do math, hit a ball and buy tickets is all stored in the basal ganglia

Question 178

explain the habit system

Answer 178

Habitual actions
Not sensitive to reward
Ex. driving home when you needed to see the doctor
Habits are built through repetition
Or conditioning
Not goal based
Some are instincts
40% of what we do is habit
They add up:
A $6 bubble tea a day is over $2k a year

Question 179

explain cognitive control

Answer 179

The process by which goals or plans influence behaviour

There are three main faculties: attention, working memory and goal management

Subcategories: willpower, goals, will, rationalisation
Weakness of will
Didn’t have enough will to overcome another part of the brain
Rationalisation
Coming up with reasons for why you did something after you already did it
We don’t know why we did it and when asked we make a plausible answer

Suppresses older brain areas
“I ate more than I wanted to”

Lizards don’t have this
Peaks in humans in the 20s, older people are worse at ignoring distractions

Also impaired by:
Sleep deprivation, older age, stress and intoxication

Question 180

explain reflex and automatic action

Answer 180

Some actions can be done automatically, that is without cognitive control
Walking, chewing
Other actions can be done automatically because they are learned
Tying shoes, driving
It’s easier to multitask with these

Question 181

explain will power

Answer 181

Many of the frontal areas have inhibitory connections to other areas
Related to willpower
Doing something not fun now for a reward later
People with more willpower
Are happier, healthier, make more money, live longer and get better grades

Question 182

explain the reward system

Answer 182

Tries to get you to do things that make you feel better and avoid things that make you feel worse
Helps form habits, trying to optimize good feelings
Has the wanting system and the liking system
Compare the compulsion to check your phone vs a genuine expectation of pleasure to talk to someone(wanting vs liking)

Question 183

explain liking

Answer 183

Liking / Pleasure: Opioid system(and some others)
Opiod drug gives you pleasure and short circuits the brain
Hugging someone makes brain give pleasure normally

Question 184

explain wanting

Answer 184

Wanting / Compulsion / Motivation system: Dopamine system
Not always pleasurable
Think of picking a scab or addictive behaviors
You keep eating after you stop enjoying it
Different from cortical wanting
Which is goal driven
Immediate urge to eat vs urge to graduate

Question 185

what is the mind wandering system

Answer 185

Default mode network
Makes you think of things irrelevant to your current environment
Good things such as long term goals
Bad things such as anxious thoughts
Activation trade off with cognitive system

Question 186

how do you change your habits

Answer 186

Habits are triggered by a perceived situation
H: Humans you’re around
A: Activity
B: Bearings(where you are)
I: Internal states(ex. hunger)
T: Time of day

It’s easier to change habits when your life changes(ex. Going to university, breaking up or moving) because triggers change

Use willpower until habits are set

Question 187

explain checking your phone

Answer 187

Suppose youre studying for a test and you have your phone next to you. The material is a little boring
Your phone rings. You try to ignore it but anxiety builds up. You can only relieve the anxiety by checking your phone
Or your phone is on silent but you keep wondering what’s going on and that’s distracting. You want to attend to something more interesting

Question 188

explain interuption

Answer 188

Interruptions from other goals and concerns(call doctor, bored and want to check phone)
->(down arrow) top down processing
What am I doing now
^ bottom up processing
Interruptions from the world(fire, phone chime, hear name

Question 189

explain concentration

Answer 189

Over time, more and more people will respond to phone notifications immediately upon getting them
This is terrible for productivity
If you can avoid them you’ll have a serious competitive advantage

Question 190

what is the distraction cycle

Answer 190

Boredom drived more frequent task switching
> Rapid, unpredictable Rewards
> You get more easily bored

Your mind is optimizing something that is not productivity

Question 191

what is information foraging

Answer 191

We are hungry for information
We stay at one “information source” until we feel we aren’t getting much information from it
We can feel this in a conversation
Beware of “infinite scrolling” apps
Boredom and anxiety drive us to new sources
Boredom without current source
Anxiety about what we’re missing out on in another source
Smartphones allow many sources all in one place, with low cost to switch to a new one

Question 192

how would you improve cognitive control in the moment

Answer 192

Turn off notifications. Not just sound
“May I slow down your progress towards your goals so I can make money”

Hide apps that alert you but putting them deep in folders on page 2

Power off your phone when you want to do deep work

Question 193

how to improve cognitive control in general

Answer 193

Meditation(maybe)
Exercise
Especially cognitive exercise(tennis not running)
Knowledge of how your mind works
Get enough sleep
Installing the right values
Practicing willpower use
Self-forgiveness
The six second rule(made up by teacher, if you need to do something start it in at least 6 seconds)
Makes you do it before your mind talks you into doing something else

Question 194

explain ambitions

Answer 194

Generally ambitious people are
Better educated
Make more money
Have more prestige

Extrinsic ambition(money, looking good, fame)
Diminishing happiness

Intrinsic ambition(community, self acceptance, health)
Increased happiness

Not living up to your standards can lead to misery

Question 195

how to improve habits

Answer 195

Alter habits by altering exposure to triggers

Better: Replace with new habits for the same triggers (like… when you’re grumpy take a walk)

Question 196

how would you use implementation intentions

Answer 196

Suppose you eat a doughnut everyday at 2
Ask yourself why you crave a doughnut
The answer will help you come up with a satisfying replacement habit

○ Tired: nap, walk, or coffee
○ Bored: go talk to someone
○ Hungry: healthful snack
○ Grouchy: take a walk

Question 197

how would you start good habits

Answer 197

More effective when you start when there is a major life change (breakup, moving, new semester) or a special date (birthday, new years resolution)

Works better with a repeating specific cue
“I will exercise every morning before breakfast”
Is better than “sometime every day”

Break it into small pieces that grow over time
“Today i’ll just put on my sneakers”

Have a community

Question 198

how do you improve your reward system

Answer 198

Punishment doesn’t work very well if you’re the one punishing yourself. Doesn’t last

Reward works better: save something you love for when you’re done the thing you want to do more of
“Hearthstone”

Temptation bundling
“Only watch tv on treadmill”

Make it harder to do tempting things
“20 seconds of food is enough”

Changing environment is easier than willpowe

Question 199

what is language development

Answer 199

U shaped grammar curve
Went, goed, went
Kids memorize the words(went) then learns the rules(goed) then learns the exceptions(went)
Gets worse at grammar when learning the rules and gets better after using it and learning the exceptions
Universal grammar theory

Question 200

What is universal grammar theory

Answer 200

a language as a child
Ex. subject omission switch
In spanish you can omit the subject of a sentence but in english you cannot

Question 201

What are the critical stages of development

Answer 201

During this time children learn 2-4 words every day to their productive vocabulary and twice that for understanding
That’s understanding one word every one to two hours awake for years
They are learning words that they don’t hear that day
How is this possible? Recall understanding a joke you heard years ago

Question 202

What are jean Piagets developmental stages

Answer 202

Sensorimotor (birth - 2)
Preoperational (2 - 7)
Concrete Operational(7 - 11)
Formal Operational(11 - death)

Question 203

what is the sensorimotor stage

Answer 203

Simple reflex action to symbolic processing
Progress is seen on 3 fronts
Adapting to and exploring the environment
Focus on international behavior
Understanding objects
Object permanence
Using symbols
For example waving and gesturing

Question 204

what is the Preoperational stage

Answer 204

Use of symbols to represent objects and events
Characterized by:
egocentrism(difficulty in seeing world from others point of view)
centration(narrowly focused thought)(only one part of a problem, no conservation of liquid) focuses on one thing

Question 205

what is the concrete operational stage

Answer 205

Mental operations to solve problems and reasoning: e.g. induction

Problems thinking abstractly and hypothetically

Question 206

what is the formal operational stage

Answer 206

Can apply mental operations to abstract entities

Abstract and hypothetical thinking

Question 207

piagets lasting contributions

Answer 207

The study of cognitive development at all

Constructivism: that children are active participants in their own development

Counter intuitive discoveries, puzzles that other scientists needed to solve

Question 208

what are some problems with piagets theory

Answer 208

Underestimate infants, overestimates adolescents

Bague on processes and change mechanics
Does not account for variability(stages are not that clear cut)
Underestimate social and cultural influences

Question 209

Lev Vygotsky

Answer 209

Focus on social and cultural
Intersubjectivity: shared understanding among participants of an activity
Guided participation: Cognitive growth results from children’s involvement in structured activities with others who are more skilled
Zone of proximal development: the difference between what a child can do alone from with help

Scaffolding: teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learner’s needs
Private speech: comments not directed to others but intended to help children regulate on their own
Inner speech: thought, internalized private speech, serving the same function

Question 210

How do we study babies

Answer 210

Puppet show, parent is blindfolded
Make the baby bored then make the bottle move on its own
Some don’t react because they don’t know its impossible
Distinguishing one primate from another where they would look the same to the eyes of an adult
Babies start off with too many synapses. The brain then specialises based on what it needs(so we lose stuff like primate face recognition)

Question 211

explain self control

Answer 211

The marshmallow test. Kids either got a marshmellow now or could wait a bit and get two
The kids who could pass it and get two were the ones good at distracting themselves
They turned out to be more successful in the future
Related to discounting the future?(present bias)

Question 212

explain information processing perspective

Answer 212

Children improve in the following ways:
Better strategies
Increased working memory
Better inhibitory and executive function
Increases automatic processing
Increases speed of processing

Question 213

what are the core knowledge theories

Answer 213

At birth, infants possess specialized learning mechanisms for certain types (domains) of knowledge
Allows for rapid acquisition of knowledge in specific domains (e.g., knowledge of objects)
Ex: objects follow continuous paths through space (object continuity); two objects cannot occupy the same space (object solidity)
Specialized learning mechanisms are present for domains that have evolutionary significance/importance
Ex: knowledge of objects; knowledge of people (infer mental states); knowledge of plants and animals (avoid predators, etc)
Things not evolutionary significant like calculus don’t have a specialised learning mechanism so it’s harder to learn

Question 214

CKT for objects

Answer 214

4.5 month olds have object permanence
Objects can’t move in continuous paths
Objects can’t move through other objects

Question 215

CKT for living things

Answer 215

12-5 month old can tell the difference between animate and inanimate objects
Movement
Growth
But don’t consider plants to be alive until 7 or 8 years of age
Internal parts
Inheritance
Illness
Healing

Question 216

CKT for people

Answer 216

Naive psychology (the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased)
Theory of mind at 2-5 years old
False belief at 3-5 years old (believing that things aren’t true)

Question 217

what is evolution

Answer 217

Occurs whenever these three things exist:
Generation of diversity
Makes everything in the group not the same
Mutation
Dna copies into offspring. Sometimes there’s a copy error where the dna is not the same(most mutations are deadly)
Crossover
Sexually reproducing genetic combination of both parents
Adds more diversity than mutation
Selective reproduction
Things don’t reproduce at the same rate
Survival and reproduction of the fittest
Fittest: being able to thrive in the environment
(differential reproduction)
Transmitted change
Offspring gets taught aspects
Genetic
Taught
Imitated

Question 218

Karl slims simulated evolution

Answer 218

Evolved digital creatures to perform tasks like getting control of a cube
Evolution was coming up with things that the programmers never intended
One creature beat up the opponent to keep them away from the cube
Computers always surprise programmers
No entities came up with the ways to get closer to the cubes

The programmers set it up so the three conditions were met

Question 219

explain biological evolution

Answer 219

Natural selection
Competitions in species
Sexual selection
Choosing who to mate with
Artificial selection
Ex. breeding
Plant breeding, dog breeding
Humans are the selective force

Selects which entities get to reproduce and which ones don’t

Peacocks have bright colors because it shows they can survive even with bright colors(means they have good genes and they get mates)

Life started from one organism

Life could start up again completely separate but it would be devoured by the life that already exists

Question 220

explain moth evolution

Answer 220

Blends in with the lichen on trees

“Typica” variation(lighter) flourished in england originally

In the industrial revolution the “Carbonaria” variation flourished because they were darker and the trees were covered in soot(making them darker)

When england cleaned up the “typica” moth made a comeback

Question 221

explain the beak of a finch

Answer 221

People kept track of every finch on an island. The birds couldn’t leave the island since it was so far away from other land. The finch beaks changed according to seasons(due to different foods)

Question 222

explain bacteria evolution

Answer 222

People but bacteria on a mega plate with the edges having no antibiotics and more antibiotics as you go to the middle.

They had a layer of agar bacteria could move in and one with the amounts of antibiotics(was split into 9 sections, 0, 1, 10, 100, 1k, 100, 10, 1, 0) number is the multiple of antibiotics.

First the bacteria spread in the area up to the point where they can no longer survive
Then mutants appeared that’s resistant to the antibiotics and it goes through the area getting the food.
They kept stopping and then evolving to get past each spot getting fast each time.

By the process of accumulating successive mutations bacteria which are normally sensitive to an antibiotic can evolve resistance to extremely high concentrations in a short period of time

Question 223

what is evolutionary psych

Answer 223

How evolution in human history has made us what we are today
Explaining psychological traits we have as evolutionary adaptations
Problem is some things can’t be explained this way. Bones are white but there’s no evolutionary advantage. The thing they’re made out of just happens to be white. However most things evolved for a reason
Adaptationism: assumes that a feature of a species is there for an evolutionary reason. theorizing about evolutionary causes for phenotypes (an observable type of an organism, and it can refer to anything from a common trait, such as height or hair color, to presence or absence of a disease)

Evolutionary psychology generated hypotheses but these must be tested
Many people will believe and evolutionary theory without evidence

It gets a bad reputation

Question 224

what are the different kinds of genetic influence

Answer 224

Different ways that genes can affect you

Predetermination
Mostly independent of environment(ex. Eye color(can’t be affected by things you do))
Some traits are useless
Male nipples
Nipples formed is determined. They are only useful for females, but for males it only has a minor nutritive cost (isn’t going away since it costs barely any energy)
Vestigial organs(ex. appendix)
Overridable
Ex. bitter foods and drinks such as coffee
Baldwin effect
We evolved to learn something easily(ex. language)
Cartical and neural recycling
We like the taste of aspartame which has no nutritional value. Aspartame tricks us into thinking its sugar
Cultural feedback loops
Less hair leads to fewer pests. Clothes and fire allows it to happen

Question 225

what is exaptation

Answer 225

Things evolve for one purpose and get used for another

Evolution can only change things that are already there

Ear Bones came from lizard jaw bones

Fins exapted into paws which exapted into hands

Question 226

explain neoteny in humans

Answer 226

Juveniles look alot like adults
The less something changes over its growth the more neotenous it is
Butterflies are not neotenous. Caterpillars look completely different

Small jaw
Upright posture
Big head
Less developmental change
Less aggression

Sexual and natural selection
More violent people get killed
Because we live in groups it’s not very advantageous to be violent
We domesticated ourselves

Question 227

explain biological evolution

Answer 227

The silver fox experiment
A person chose foxes to breed that were more friendly and did not attack a glove when showed it.
New foxes had new colors in pelts
Foxes started barking and vocalizing
Answering to names
Ears became floppy

Its theorized that melanin and the fight or flight response is connected so tame animals tend to be black and white.

Created foxes that looked and behaved like dogs

Genes can be genetically connected
Things changing because other things change

Question 228

how does mate selection work

Answer 228

Evolution predicts males are more attracted to healthy women who can bear children and women should be more attracted to men who provide resources to help offspring

Men like a low waist to hip ratio(.7) which produces smarted children and healthier women (hourglass figure)

In poor countries if you’re thin it probably means you’re not getting enough food

(e.g. playboy models over decades)

What is considered beautiful from evolutionary advantage

Question 229

explain how evolution effects our taste in food

Answer 229

Fat, salt, protein and sugar were important nutrients that were rare for most of evolutionary history. Now we have an abundance of these

In the modern world things that taste good aren’t always healthy but in the past they were

Question 230

selfish genes and kin selection

Answer 230

Your genes are trying to propagate themselves
Married people show modest correlations(.2) for
Breadth of nose
Length of earlobe
Wrist measurements
Distance between eyes
Lung volume
Middle finger correlates a whole .61
Similarity predicts marital success

Question 231

explain evolution of cognition

Answer 231

What we know from our ancestor’s bodies comes from fossils but there are two problems with this.
Behavior is not (directly) fossilized
Thus we rely on scant artifacts, but even those appear relatively recently
Fossils are very rare
It is thought one bone in a billion gets fossilized
That means that out of the population of canada(34 million) six of the human bones around today will be fossilized
Bones not skeletons
Fossils are also very hard to find since they’re buried underneath the ground

Question 232

How long have humans been around

Answer 232

The oldest fossils of fully formed humans are only 50k-100k years old. That’s only 2500-5000 generations spanning 20 years
If language is instinct like chomsky says it is it would probably have to have been evolving for longer than humans have been around
The group before humans(human-like but not humans) australopithecines had hands evolved for manipulation. We don’t know that they didn’t use tools
Only stone and metal tools last but most modern hunter gatherer societies of today have more biodegradable tools than stone ones

Question 233

what are the definitions of ancestors

Answer 233

1 ) People who came before us(includes those who didn’t reproduce)
2 ) The actual people who gave birth to the people living today (definition in a more biological sense)

Question 234

what is the standard time table

Answer 234

We differentiated from something 100k to 200k years ago
We differentiated from chimps much longer ago

Apes and humans evolved from a common ancestors but humans did not evolve from apes

Specialisation happens when a population grows and gets separated so they can’t inbreed anymore

Things are considered the same species if they can mate and produce offspring and those offspring can mate and produce offspring

We know our ancestors due to a mitochondrial eve which is the most distantly historical figure that is the ancestors of all humans. Mitochondria are weird, they have their own DNA. They were probably once a parasite
In the mothers egg cell the mitochondria replicates itself. Fathers have no part
We can follow mitochondrial DNA back to ancestors

Question 235

what is evidence of evolution

Answer 235

Proof of evolution you can find on your own body
If you put your thumb and pinky together then move your hand up a vane appears. Serves no purpose for humans but its left over due to an evolutionary past
Goosebumps. Gives insulation to help things keep warm
Tailbone. We have a small tailbone left over from our ancestors tails

Question 236

what are some fossil records

Answer 236

The oldest human fossils are around 100k years old from africa
Carbon dating
Chemical analysis of carbon to determine how old the substance is. The more recent it is the more accurate it is.

Most living things have no record at all. It is estimated that 1 in 10 species gets fossilized. Most creatures don’t die in sediment which means most aren’t pushed into the ground and turned into fossils

95% of fossils are from marine creatures in shallow parts of the water(sinks into the sediment)

Question 237

Why is it difficult to find fossils

Answer 237

People need to walk across large pieces of land looking for bones. It order to be turned into a fossil someone would have had to be rapidly buried and then have the earth bring them back to the surface.

Question 238

what is pinkers vison theory

Answer 238

Because we evolved to use vision as a primary sense it gave our brain a lot of machinery that then could be used for other things
Relying on vision is important because it is inherently 3D unlike olfaction
Olfactory animals, such as dogs, keep their heads close to the ground most of the time
Olfaction is a “two dimensional flatland viewed from a one dimensional peephole”
3D thinking requires more brain power

Birds have good vision and are smart but brains can’t get big because they have to fly

Question 239

what is the group living theory

Answer 239

Human beings differ from other primates mostly in terms of their social environments
We evolved smart brains to convey important information
Keep track of everyone else and maintain social connections
Results in a social cognition arms race(who can maintain the most social connections)

Question 240

What is the hunting theory

Answer 240

In general carnivores are more intelligent than herbivores.
It takes more brains for a wolf to hunt a rabbit than for a rabbit to hunt a lettuce head. Mental map size
Meat is nutritious. Relying on meat allowed brains to trust that nutrition will be in the environment allowing brains to grow bigger
Big kills encourage socialization. Meat from a wild bull can feed 1000 people. Make a deal with your neighbors so they’ll share with you when they get lucky

Question 241

explain the hand/walking upright theory

Answer 241

Walking upright allowed us to exapt our hands for different functions, which could make good use of more intelligence.
Hands allow us to carry things which allow us create complex objects with parts from different geographical locations
Requires imagination, planning, working memory
These things work in a positive feedback loop(product of a reaction leads to an increase in that reaction)(aka they keep making each other get better)
However there is no evidence of artifacts from the million and a half years of bipedality
(there’s twelve theories on why humans became bipedal)

Upright posture put pressure on pelvis to be small(which lead to a bunch of deaths for child births but it was apparently worth it in the eyes of evolution)
To maintain the intelligence arms race evolution discovered a different strategy of altriciousness
Instead of being hardwired with things to survive children were given the ability to learn what to do
This means more nurturing parents which increases socialisation
Allows humans to live anywhere

Question 242

what is culminative cultural theory

Answer 242

Builds on what came before in a positive way

Many cultures don’t know why their customs work
Naskapi caribou hunters would heat shoulder bones in fire and then read them to see where to hunt next(basically fortune telling). This of course doesn’t actually work but it adds a level of randomness. Caribou would usually try to stay away from humans but they can’t predict the bs fortune telling randomizer
In some cases like this its important people don’t understand or they may stop using it

If you put a smart person in a new place they don’t survive. They only do it if they follow the native’s instructions

People get stuff from their culture they don’t figure it out for themselves

Question 243

what is some evidence for CCE

Answer 243

Overimitation: when learning new skills chimps drop irrelevant factors, human children do not
Chile peppers: people like them because they are antimicrobial but they are naturally adversive(so it would have had to come about because of cce)
Prestige vs dominance: other animals only have dominance. People will imitate people they respect
Killer whales and elephants are the only other animals that live long past reproductive ages. They also teach their young

Question 244

why do we have morality

Answer 244

They evolved to help us take care of the other people in our groups. But not so many people outside our groups.

Question 245

How do we know morality is evolved

Answer 245

In general evolved and well learned behaviors work faster than deliberate ones
When you force people to play a prisoner’s dilemma game quickly, they are more likely to cooperate with the other prisoner
Both prisoners have an options to cooperate with their other partner and not say anything to the police or to sell out their partner for a reduced sentence
When its slower and they have more time to think they sell out their partner overriding their morality

Question 246

explain expanding circle

Answer 246

Self interest: I care about myself and my family
All animals have instincts for gene-preservation(with exceptions)
Friendship: I care for historical cooperation partners
Shared with chimps
Sharing food used to be a life and death matter for us
Tribalism: I care about us, but not them
Tragedy of the commons
individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action
Evolved morals in humans took care of this
Anthropological survey shows that ethnocentrism is universal
I care about all people or creatures that can have positive experiences
The tragedy of common sense morality
Requires abstract reasoning and values
The circle expands over time

Question 247

what is the foot bridge trolley explanation

Answer 247

Greene’s experiment reveals that there are two competing systems for our moral considerations:
The first is some kind of rational utilitarian calculus which makes switch cases permissible
The second is an emotional reaction caused by a dislike of “getting our hands dirty”
Utilitarianism vs deontology

Flicking a switch is more distant than hurting someone with a knife
We didn’t evolve to handle it since switches used to not exist

Drone operators called deaths caused by them bug splats

Hitmen vs doing it yourself

Question 248

what is Heidts moral foundation theory

Answer 248

Our moral senses are defined on a line between two things
Care / harm
Helping and hurting
Liberty / oppression
Letting someone do something they want to do and oppressing them
Authority / subversion
Doing something someone tells you to do and undermining authority
Fairness / cheating
Loyalty / betrayal
You bond with other people
Sanctity / degradation
Idea that the universe has a higher level and you should not violate that(tends to be in religion)
Mnemonic: CLAFLS

Question 249

what is disgust

Answer 249

People who disgust us we judge more harshly for purity related moral infractions
Such as keeping your cubicle clean
Vs not tipping a server
Police are more likely to arrest obese people for purity related crimes, such as drugs, prostitution and lewdness

Question 250

what is moral dumbfounding

Answer 250

occurs when a person makes a moral judgment in a particular situation, admits to being unable to adequately defend that judgment or decision with reasons and arguments, but still remains obstinately and steadfastly committed to that initial judgment
A man buys a ready-to-cook chicken, brings it home, has sexual intercourse with it and then eats it
Did he do something morally wrong?
Most people say yes but can’t really explain why

Question 251

Explain politics and morals

Answer 251

Right wing people tend to have all six moral foundations fairly strong
Left wing people tend to only have care/harm and fairness/oppression strong
Libertarians tend to have liberty / oppression strong
This is mostly genetic which means your politics is mostly genetic

Question 252

explain animal morality

Answer 252

Pillars of morality: reciprocity(fairness) and empathy(compassion)
Prosociality
Empathy and condolence
Fairness, reciprocity, friendship in chimps
Chimos will kiss and embrace after a fight
Capuchin monkey refused food if another monkey got better food(fairness)

Question 253

what is artificial language

Answer 253

Created by individuals or small teams(ex. Sci fi languages, conlangs

Question 254

What is anchoring

Answer 254

Using something as a base to compare something else to

Question 255

What are some examples of anchoring

Answer 255

Restaurants will put a very expensive item on the menu to make the others look reasonable
What is a good life in ottawa? What about the congo?
Comparing movie stars and saying one is ugly using other movie stars as an anchor when in reality they are usually all above average

Question 256

what is the contrast effect/context effect

Answer 256

the tendency to mentally upgrade or downgrade an object when comparing it to a contrasting object
If men look at pictures of beautiful women they will rate their wife as being less attractive.

Question 257

what is distinction bias

Answer 257

things will appear more different when viewed simultaneously
If you are observing two things at the same time you will focus more on the differences when evaluating
over-examine and over-value the differences between things. Ex eating a apple. Being given a choice between two apples and picking the fresher one and responding no when asked if you would have been content eating the other one when you would have been fine without a choice

Question 258

what is the bandwagon effect

Answer 258

Believing something is true because everyone else around you believes the same thing.
This is why cults try to keep you from talking to other people outside the cult. They keep you in a perpetual bandwagon effect

Question 259

what is herd instinct

Answer 259

believing what everyone else does to avoid social conflict
Ex. someone being vegan because their boyfriend is

Question 260

Hostile media effect

Answer 260

When you watch the news you tend to think they are hostile to your political views

When showing people on both sides of the political spectrum the same news they both said it was going against them

Question 261

Endowment effect/loss aversion

Answer 261

People will demand more to give up an object than they were willing to pay to get it
Once you own an object you find it more valuable
Stores have generous return policies. (why dont you buy it you can always return it later). People end up not bringing it back
People will pay more or put in more effort to avoid losing something than they would to gain an equivalent good

Question 262

explain temporal discounting

Answer 262

We value things in the future less than things now
$100 now or how much a year from now? 400? That’s more than interest
Asking for favors
Agreeing to stuff in the future
Wow in 6 months im completely free. Six months passes and you wonder why you agreed to it. Think about if you want to do something in the next two days
When people are in a chaotic environment(you don’t know what the futures going to hold) the temporal discounting is increased

Question 263

what is the moral credential effect

Answer 263

Thinking of yourself as having acted morally in the past can make you allow yourself to behave badly
People will compensate to reach an equilibrium in many cases
Also called self licensing or moral licensing
People who wrote an essay against racism were less likely to give money to a panhandler afterwards

Question 264

what is risk compensation

Answer 264

People will put themselves more at risk if they feel safer
Seatbelts
Drivers are safer but deaths are passed onto others
Bike helmets
People bike more dangerously when wearing one
Dietary supplements make people eat more poorly and exercise less
Football helmets cause more concussions because people play more rough. Ex. using head as a battering ram

Question 265

what is confirmation bias

Answer 265

You accept, seek out and remember things that support your views.
You also interpret things in a way that support your views

Seeing confirmation bias everywhere is also confirmation bias

Question 266

what is negativity bias

Answer 266

People pay more attention to negative information
Perhaps because it has been more important in our evolutionary history
People remember dangerous things more
Seeing dangerous things in more normal things
You see a shadow and think its a person but it’s actually a garbage bag

Question 267

What is omission effect

Answer 267

We think that doing harm is worse than not doing something that has an equal amount of harm
People think killing someone is worse than letting them die

Question 268

outcome bias

Answer 268

Judging a decision based on what ended up happening rather than on the information available at the decision making time
Is it right to punish a drunk driver who kills someone more than a drunk driver who got lucky

Question 269

what is planning fallacy

Answer 269

We underestimate how long it will take us to complete tasks in the future
Makes it easy for us to overbook ourselves
Unexpected things happen. Since we don’t know what they will be we don’t expect them to happen

Question 270

what is wishful thinking

Answer 270

Believing something because you want it to be true
Innocence of someone you care about

Question 271

what is availabity heuristics

Answer 271

Assuming that things that are most easily brought to memory are more common or probable
A problem with this is that emotional and vivid things are more easily brought to memory
When the news shows you only murders you tend to think that murders are more common than they are
People thought crime rate was going up when it was going down
Don’t understand what the world is like from the news

Question 272

what is base rate neglect

Answer 272

If presented with related base rate information (ex. general information on prevalence) and specific information (ex. information pertaining only to a specific case), people tend to ignore the base rate in favor of the individuating information, rather than correctly integrating the two

If a test for a disease is 90% accurate and somebody gets a positive result what is the probability that they have the disease.

Most people would think that its 90% but they are ignoring the % of people with the disease. There’s far more false positives than people with the disease

Ex. if the disease is in 2% of people and everyone gets tested

Question 273

what is belief bias

Answer 273

Tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion

You are biased to believe the answer is rational if you agree with the conclusion

If rain is wet then my roof is wet
My roof is wet
Therefore rain is wet

Rain is not wet due to the roof being wet. That’s not a rational argument

Question 274

what is conjunction fallacy

Answer 274

What is more common, a person wearing birkenstocks or a hippie wearing birkenstocks.
The hippie group has to be smaller since the other group includes it but people think its bigger
The belief that the conjunction of two things together is more common that either one of them

Question 275

what is the gamblers fallacy

Answer 275

When flipping a coin over and over if you get a bunch of heads in a row you think you’re due for a tails. Ignores that each flip is independant. In reality all combinations are the same probability.

Hot hand effect: believe that things will repeat(ex. Sports wins)

Question 276

what is Pareidolia, clustering illusion, illusion correlation

Answer 276

Pareidolia is the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music

The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable “streaks” or “clusters” arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random. Peoples ideas of random are too random

illusory correlation is the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists

Question 277

what are Primacy and recency effects

Answer 277

We remember the beginnings and endings of things better than the individual parts
If there’s 10 presentations you tend to remember the first one and the last one

Question 278

what is the just world phenomenon

Answer 278

tendency to believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve
If you think the world is ultimately a just place you will have a tendency to look at reasons to blame victims of inexplicable injuries

Question 279

what is actor observer bias

Answer 279

tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes

The tendency to explain the behavior of others in terms of stable traits
And to explain one’s own actions in terms of reactions to the situation

Question 280

Explain sleep and Dream

Answer 280

Dreaming can occur in REM and non-REM(NREM) states
75% of our sleep is NREM
NREM dreams tend to be dull, short and undreamlike
REM sleep is characterized by rapid eye movement, muscle atonia(not being able to move, temporary paralysis of your body) and often dreaming

Question 281

Explains disorders

Answer 281

Muscle atonia is caused by a part of the brain called the pors
If you disable the pons in rats they engage in stalking like behavior during REM
REM sleep disorder(physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams with vocal sounds and sudden, often violent arm and leg movements during REM sleep)
Sleepwalking

Question 282

explain dream and waking states

Answer 282

People who have no dream imagery(visual anoneria) tend to also have a waking deficit in imaging memories(visual irreminiscence)

Question 283

how to record dreams

Answer 283

Ask people what their dreams tend to be like(worst)
Ask people to keep a dream diary
Ask people every morning to report their dreams
Wake people during sleep at many points during the night and get reports(scientifically best way)

Question 284

what are dreams like

Answer 284

Scene shifts are common
Tend to be narrative
Tend to be experienced in “first-person”
Dream emotion tend to match content
Dreams can be bizzare but they are not often bizarre in terms of emotion matching content
Scary dreams feel scary
You don’t go on a murderous rampage in a happy dream
They are always animated(not a slide show)
Dreams are rarely bizarre , but when they are we often don’t notice it until we are awake
Selection bias: bizarre dreams are easier to remember and are more often talked about

Question 285

what are dreams not like

Answer 285

Films, visual images, recent social situations and pre-sleep behavior are rarely incorporated into dreams.
Recent episodic memories, even salient(most noticeable or important) ones, are rarely incorporated into dreams

Question 286

explain interference from the world

Answer 286

Things happening in the world can influence your dreams
Dreaming you need to urinate due to your actual need to urinate
Dreaming of teeth falling out due to dental irritation

Question 287

how can you effect dreams

Answer 287

Pre sleep attention to a specific concern
This is called dream incubation

Question 288

what is TST and support for TST

Answer 288

Threat simulation Theory
Attempts to answer the question of why we dream

Created by philosopher Antti Revonsuo
A major function of dreams is to practice dealing with threats that were common in our ancestral environment

Support for TST
Animals dreams are highest in kids and decrease with age(so not cultural since cultural would increase with age)
Negative emotions appear twice as often as positive ones
The only kind of recurring dream with any frequency is being threatened by animals, people, monsters or natural disasters, and the response was watching, running or hiding.
Westerners dream of things we rarely experience
Ancestral threats are over represented
People react appropriately to dream threats 94% of the time

Question 289

explain play and phobia

Answer 289

Ancient survival behaviors are also over-represented in play and in phobias
Animals play appropriately for what they need to do(squeaky toys)

Question 290

explain the dreaming brain

Answer 290

The brain stem is very active, sending information forward
The DLPFC(involved with executive function) is deactivated perhaps explaining our reduced reasoning during dreams, not noticing what’s weird, uninhibited behavior and our difficulty in remembering dreams

Question 291

what is dream recall

Answer 291

We typically forget dreams
Correlates with visuospatial skill and individual differences in working memory
Animals and infants cannot report dreams
People assert that there was much more to their dream than they can report
It’s probably good we don’t remember dreams since it allows us to practice things without remembering the repercussions.

Question 292

what is NREM aka non rem sleep

Answer 292

NREM sleep can be described as the stages of sleep that show greatly decreased brain activity. There are four different stages of NREM sleep. The brain shows dulled or limited senses of perception, though the thought process has been shown to be logical and perseverative. Episodic movements of the body occur during these stages, though they are involuntary movements. Dreams tend to be boring

Question 293

explain the AIM model of conscious states

Answer 293

Used to determine the different states of the brain over the course of the day and night

Activation
How busy your brain is
Based level of brain activation
Sometimes neurons fire more often(leading to higher activation)
When you’re awake or in REM sleep you have high activation
Lower activation in NREM
Information flow
Whether the information you get is internal or external(External: things in the world, Internal: things in memory, from yourself)
Sensory input vs internal fictive input
Awake is high external while REM sleep is high internal
Model of information processing
Very complicated, don’t need to know
Aminergic-Cholinergic Neuromodulation

Question 294

explain lucid dreaming

Answer 294

When you know you’re dreaming and can control your actions and sometimes other dream content
You can only control your eyes in the real world
Could be a reactivation of the DLPFC, which allows you to see dream content for what it is, and control yourself
Training yourself to lucid dream: dream diaries(recognizing what dreams are like), reality checks(looking back at things and seeing if they’ve changed), tech(tech tends to not work in dreams(ex. Car breaking down))
Evidence that supports these is bad though

Lucid dreaming tends to make you exhausted

Question 295

explain sleep paralysis

Answer 295

You feel awake
You might feel chest pressure
You can’t move
It’s a carry over of muscle atonia from sleep to waking(not being able to move)
You have hallucinations, often of the presence of a malevolent creature
You feel abject terror

Sleep paralysis is a universal constant but the nature of the creature changes based on the culture(one might see a demon while another culture sees aliens)

When people start believing in a type of alien that alien starts showing up in sleep paralysis

Question 296

do we only use 10% of our brain

Answer 296

We actually use all of our brains
If any part of your brain gets damaged you will suffer deficits
Evolution would not “waste” energy building vast parts of your brain you don’t use
Brains use 20% of our body’s energy(2% of mass)

Why do we believe it
Availability cascade - once an idea gets repeated enough times people think its true
Wishful thinking - people like to believe in the paranormal
People want to make money off you - this product will raise your brain power

What is true
People can lose whole hemispheres and still function relatively normally(the brain has redundancies)
If we removed 70% of your neurons randomly we don’t know how bad off you would be

Question 297

does listening to Mozart make babies smarter

Answer 297

Listening to mozart as a baby doesn’t make you smart
We believe it because we hope it’s true
The effect is small, short term and only based on arousal
You can get the same effect from hearing a scary passage from a stephen king book

Question 298

are Psycic powers real

Answer 298

Unfortunately they’re not
Recommended: Susan blackmores book, adventures of a parapsychologist
She tried to prove it existed and now doesn’t believe it
There are several cognitive biases that make us believe it is real
Confirmation bias
You don’t notice things when it doesn’t happen(all the times you call someone) but notice when it does happen(two people call at the same time)
Neglect of negative results
Only the studies that work get published even if its 1/20 of the time(random chance that it actually worked
Wishful thinking

Question 299

are IQ tests biased

Answer 299

If they were biased they would underpredict later success for certain groups and overpredict for others. This does not happen
Huge panels of scientists with widely varying viewpoints all concluded that they were not biased
Item analysis is used to identify bad test questions

Question 300

does child abuse lead to psychological disorders

Answer 300

It is weakly correlated (0.09, close to 0)
A conflict ridden home is much more likely to cause anxiety, depression, eating disorders, etc.

Question 301

Is artificial intelligence a failure

Answer 301

Moving goal posts, mysterians(want to have some secrets about subjects)
“Almost implemented”
Our economy would probably collapse without the findings of AI researchers

Question 302

Does the full moon make people act different

Answer 302

Confirmation bias
The bankrupt gravity explanation
A mosquito on you has more gravitational pull than the moon
The fact that you’re mostly water has nothing to do with it
People don’t think this is true for a new moon even though it has the same gravity
You are more likely to notice aggressive behavior on a full moon

Question 303

Explain happiness in cognitive science

Answer 303

Money and happiness
Money correlates with happiness until you’re making around 105k$ a year(in our society), then it levels off
Life events don’t affect happiness that much
Winners of lotteries and people who become paraplegic have happiness changes that only last a few months
Things that do affect us: getting divorced, getting fired
Much of your happiness(roughly 60%) is genetic (but still changeable)
There are two kinds of happiness
Pleasure, day to day
Life satisfaction

Question 304

why do we believe synthetic happiness is inferior to natural happiness

Answer 304

synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted
Being happy about the outcome you did not want
Natural happiness is the happiness from getting the outcome we wanted

Question 305

how does the science of myths work

Answer 305

Generation of a theory
A theory is an explanation that typically suggests the existence of theoretical entities that cannot be tested directly
Theories make predictions about the world
These predictions become “hypotheses” that can be tested with experiments and quasi-experiments
Experiments have control over participants and conditions. They manipulate something
Quasi-experiments are observations in the real world. Most political science lessons are learned from quasi-experiments

Question 306

what are the results and stats from myths

Answer 306

Hypotheses are falsifiable
Falsifiable: describe a situation when the theory doesn’t apply
If it isn’t falsifiable it can’t make good predictions
Significant means probably not due to chance
< 0.05 is the typical threshold or the “alpha level”
This means 1/20 experiments will turn out finding significance just by chance
We can’t look at a large group of numbers and know if they are different, that’s why we need statistics

Question 307

explain science as a culture

Answer 307

Replicability(good experiments are thorough and clear enough that someone could run the study themselves to get results)
Science’s self-correcting nature
Publishing makes it public
Other scientists will try to disprove your theory. This is good
Science as a epistemology
No other knowledge-generating enterprise(ex. religion) has a rigorous, self-correcting mechanism

Question 308

what is Pascal Boyer’s Counterontology theory

Answer 308

We have subsystems for understanding different things in the world: contagion, persons, living things, tools, physical objects. These form “ontologies”

We find things that belong to one category but have one(or close to one) thing from another fascinating
A ghost or a god is a person with no body
A zombie is a person with no mind
A crying statue is an object with one biological property
Studies show that people find these one-violation concepts the most plausible

The more violations, the less plausible

(this is why religions have gods, ghosts, statues, etc.)

Question 309

what is person permanence

Answer 309

Our belief that people still exist when we can no longer perceive them
It seems that this does not shut off immediately when someone dies, leading to beliefs that their minds still exist
Studies show that people, even self-described atheists, associate mental states with the dead
Tends to last for 3 months after someone dies

Learned or innate
If something was learned we would predict it gets stronger during enculturation(over time)
The opposite happens with associating mental states with the dead
Kindergarteners were more likely to do this than older children
This suggests that there is an innate component

Question 310

explain the old brain and the new brain

Answer 310

The old brain is intuitive. We are aware of its outputs, not its processing.
People’s implicit reasoning about the supernatural can be at odds with what they say they believe

Question 311

why are Dead bodies are naturally counter ontological

Answer 311

We are fascinated with corpses because they bring up intuitions from different systems that are contradictory. Religion comes in to fill the gaps
Our contagion system makes us fear it
Our theory of mind makes us think the person is still around, and we might feel love
Our biological system tells us it is dead and cannot move
As a result all religions have prescriptions of what to do with corpses

Whereas things like gods have to be invented, corpses are universally compelling

Question 312

explain dual funerals

Answer 312

According to anthropologist Pascal Boyer, these are common
The body is buried and then some time later it is disinterred and something else is done
Boyer says this is to make sense of our changing intuitions about the status of the dead person
The first ritual is to remove the body, even though we believe the person still exists
The second is to mark the change of our acceptance of the person being gone, and only existing in our memories

Question 313

explain Theory: Religion encourages prosocial behavior

Answer 313

Explains why religion exists

Imagine how a monkey’s reputation could be hurt in a pack. Without language, your reputation can only be hurt in the mind of those who directly see you
With language, a reputation can spread and affect someone for years
One theory says that humans evolved to have beliefs in supernatural agents(such as gods) to keep us behaving even when nobody’s watching
This requires group selection which is very controversial
The idea that a group of creatures will survive and continue instead of just one
The group of people working together will outlive the one badass in the apocalypse

Question 314

evidence of the theory that religion encourages prosocial behaviour

Answer 314

People are more prosocial when primed with supernatural concepts
People think gods have “strategic” knowledge. Gossip is theorized to have a similar function and it also focuses on strategic knowledge
Strategic knowledge: the gods only care about things that will keep society together
It cares about lying to people, not how many pieces of pasta you ate today

A book that describes this theory in detail is Jonathan Haidt’s book, The righteous mind

Question 315

what are Origins of religious beliefs, and ritual and mental illnesses

Answer 315

In traditional societies, schizotypals and epileptics are often perceived to be blessed and set the societies religious tone

All of these correlate with religiosity
Mania
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (ODC)
Schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder
Temporal lobe epilepsy

Question 316

explain OCD

Answer 316

Characterized by compulsive rituals: cleaning, entering and leaving spaces, hoarding and numbers(counting).
Affects about 2% of people
Hyperreligiosity is a major feature of OCD
Orthodox religions are replete with food and body cleansing, repetition of mantras, numerology and portal rituals
Failing to engage in the ritual causes a feeling of dread in OCD patients
Participants of religious rituals and OCD patients alike do not know the mechanism that connects the ritual to future events
People with OCD are attracted to religions, particularly ritualistic ones such as catholicism

Question 317

explain schizophrenia

Answer 317

People interpret reality abnormally
Affects 3% of people
Features hallucinations
People who experience delusions tend to have more religious beliefs
People with schizophrenia are treated as being blessed so hallucinations are accepted as divine truth
Amped up pattern detection
Sees patterns that aren’t there (why is nobody sitting in this spot)

Question 318

why are people religous

Answer 318

As with all things psychological, religiosity is about 50% genetic and 50% environmental
More specifically
47% genetic
11% family upbringing
42% non family environment

We create or call upon religious ideas when we encounter something out of the ordinary
Unfortunately human beings constantly see patterns in truly random processes
Termite collapse
If termites eat someone’s house people say if was because of something they did when it was really just random
Karma
the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect)

Question 319

What are some key definitions of consciousness

Answer 319

Awake- Not asleep
Conscious of something- Awareness of an oncoming car, We are aware of much less than we think
Consciousness of self- Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” , Awareness that you’re a living being
Even if everything you’re looking at is an illusion something must be getting fooled
Awareness of what is doing the action or having the experience

Can be conscious of something and of self while dreaming

Question 320

what is creature consciousness vs mental state consciousness

Answer 320

Creature consciousness
Some creature or kinds of creatures have the ability to have mental state consciousness

Mental state consciousness
Whether a particular mental state / thought is conscious or not

Question 321

what is atomization

Answer 321

As we get better at things we lose our consciousness of them. Ex. driving, tying shoes
Making yourself conscious of them will mess up performance
Perhaps babies are more conscious than us because they are habituated to nothing

Question 322

Why isn’t consciousness the main event

Answer 322

Consciousness is not the main event
Much of what the brain/mind does is not available to consciousness or does not require consciousness
It is like an iceberg. Only a small part of the mind is able to reflect on or control
AI has the ability to do all kinds of stuff without consciousness
We just don’t know enough about it to know
Another possibility is the rest of the brain is conscious but not available to us

Question 323

Explain intuition

Answer 323

When we perceive, decide or believe something without having a notion about how the idea came about
Can be caused by automatization
We have genetic and learned intuitions
We cannot tell the difference between genetic and learned intuitions

If your intuition is about something your ancestors had to do it’s probably right. Unknown if its not(ex. Buying insurance)

Question 324

Why might consciousness related to free will

Answer 324

Some people believe it some don’t

People knew when others would click a button before they made the conscious decision to do it

Question 325

What us qualia

Answer 325

The qualities of consciousness. What it’s like to see, hear, taste, etc.
Example of a quale: what the experience of seeing red is like or what feeling pain is like
There is a debate in philosophy whether qualia is reducible to physical processes and states

Question 326

What are some consciousness disorders

Answer 326

Blindsight: able to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see
Can’t see but they can technically “see” (don’t know where a cup is but they reach out to the right spot when going to grab it)
The opposite of blindsight can also happen
Hemisphere neglect(damage to the brain causing deficit of awareness of one side of space)
Can’t see one hemisphere from eye, smaller vision range
Note your vision doesn’t become black, it becomes nothing(what do you see after the range of your vision?)
Severed corpus callosum(split brain)
The parts of the brain are separate
You can show them different images and ask to pick up other images relating to them and the left side of the brain will make up something of why they picked up something(but that explanation isn’t actually why)
Why the shovel: to clean out the chicken coop(in reality it was because of the snow covered cabin)
Thought alienation
Believing that the thoughts in your head are not your own

Question 327

explain the Chinese room

Answer 327

A book says what to respond with when given a chinese sentence. The guy appears to know chinese but he really doesn’t
Conclusion: programming a digital computer may make it appear to understand language but could not produce real understanding
This however could be complete garbage since the book would have to be giant(the size of the moon?)

Question 328

Explain zombies

Answer 328

In, philosophy, a zombie is a being that is like a human but has no conscious experience
Behavioral Zombie: behaves just like a human
Ex. chinese room
Neurological zombie
A behavioral zombie, the brain states of which are indistinguishable from a human
If zombies are possible then perhaps some form of dualism is correct

Question 329

Explain dualism

Answer 329

the theory that the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain – are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing
The belief that there is some sort of mental substance that is not physical

Question 330

what are higher order thought theories

Answer 330

consciousness consists in perceptions or thoughts about first-order mental states
They claim that things are conscious when involved with abstract or high level thought.
They have problems with
Qualia

Question 331

what is Baars’ global workspace model

Answer 331

Consciousness highlights certain parts of memory that are viewable by other processes
Similar to blackboard architecture in AI
Bunch of parts of the brain doing something and a giant blackboard(the global workspace) parts of the brain can write on

Question 332

what is Dennett’s multiple draft models

Answer 332

There’s a bunch of processes trying to understand things in different ways
Its red shiny and not rotten
I can pick it up, throw it
It’s not yours, if you take it it’s stealing
How hungry am I, do I want to eat it
Parts of the brain looking through different lenses. They can compete for control over the parts of your mind
There is no set point at which something becomes conscious

Question 333

what is the law of false memory

Answer 333

False memory is when people mistake suggestions by an interviewer(scientists, policemen or therapist, for example) as actual memories

Lost in the mall scenario
When telling a child about their past people would put in a random event like being lost in the mall and the child would believe it actually happened
Bugs bunny at disney world scenario
People believed they met bugs bunny at disney world even though he’s not owned by disney

There are lots of people in jail because of implanted memories of childhood abuse by well intentioned therapists

Question 334

what is case based reasoning

Answer 334

Artificial intelligence paradigm that reasons about what to do by retrieving similar cases from memory
Paradigm: a typical example or pattern of something
Lawyers need to find similar cases to the ones they’re working on
These can be retrieved by using a case, keywords or principles as a query
CBR has also been successful for help desks(stack overflow)

Question 335

explain medicine and AI

Answer 335

Some of the earlier AI programs were made to diagnose patients. They are expert systems(AIs intended to mimic the behavior of human experts)

People have to make the AI wait a bit before giving the answer because people didn’t think it was right(due to it responding too quickly)

Used for:
Diagnosis
Medical information retrieval
Image recognition and interpretation

Many are not used because it doesn’t fit into the medical establishment. Most fun part of the doctors job is to diagnose

Question 336

what is human computer interaction

Answer 336

Usefulness
How effective is the computer/software at what it’s supposed to do
Usability
How easy is the software to use
Learnability
How easy is it to learn how to use the software

Question 337

explain the politics metaphor

Answer 337

George lakoff has a popular theory that we think about abstract concepts as metaphors with more basic, usually bodily concepts
His book describes conservatives using a “strict father” metaphor of government and liberals using a “nurturant parent” metaphor

Question 338

what is consumer behavior in economic

Answer 338

Classical period: view that economics are allied with psychology
Neoclassical period: view that humans were rational(homo economicus)(rational man assumption)
Psychology and cognitive science influence shows the flaws in the homo economicus assumption
People don’t always do stuff in their best interest because they don’t know what they’re going to habituate to.

Question 339

explain AI playing Chess

Answer 339

Part of a tradition of game playing AIs

Playing chess as an AI is really easy since it’s a limited environment
“They make a lot of counterintuitive, even absurd looking moves that on closer inspection turn out to be outrageously creative”
Helps generate new ideas for pro players
Allows pro players to study the game more deeply
An AI beat a chess master

Question 340

what were aaron from the computer science centers contributions

Answer 340

Taught how to paint
People ended up saying cool robot instead of actually paying attention to what it was doing
The creator didn’t actually publish it before he died so people can’t use his findings

Robots are very limited right now since they either need to be plugged in or they need a ton of batteries
(boston dynamics does some cool stuff)
(also robot soccer)

Question 341

explain visual analytics and virtual reality

Answer 341

Visual Analytics
Using computer visualisation to help analysts understand data
Visualising data that you don’t understand

Virtual Reality
When waking forward in the game people think they’re waking in a straight line in real life. In reality though the camera is shifting slightly to make them walk in a circle

Question 342

explain music and humanity

Answer 342

Music is found in all cultures
Music generation requires training
Involves many aspects of cognition, especially perception, creativity and emotion

Music can be connected to anything in cog sci
Connection between higher pitch when talking to babies + music(higher pitch)
Higher pitch leads to better learning

Question 343

how is music used in culture

Answer 343

Social bonding
Emotion regulation
Mother-infant interaction
Healing(Helps regulate dopamine)
Religion
Aesthetic experiences(it’s fun)

Question 344

Did we evolve to have music

Answer 344

Two views:
No its a spandrel
Spandrel: something that came about but serves no evolutionary purpose
Yes we evolved to have it

Question 345

Explain why music isnt evolved

Answer 345

In terms of survival and reproduction music is useless
Byproduct of other things
Motor control
Sensitivity to speech or calls: cries, laughs, sighs
Auditory cheesecake
The cheesecake isn’t necessary for survival but the parts are
Supernormal stimulus
Steven pinker’s view

Question 346

explain why music is evolved and the evidence against it

Answer 346

Ancient (found ivory pipes from 42000 BC)

Cross cultural
Triggers emotions

Evidence against:
Music does not predict mating success
Looking at 10k twins, no effect of music on:
Number of partners
Age of first intercourse
Number of offspring

Question 347

what is darwins sexual selection theory

Answer 347

Music is like a peacock’s tail
It is used to attract mates along with dancing
It is a signal of intelligence, health, etc.
Bird songs are used in courtship

Question 348

what is dunbars social bonding theory

Answer 348

Social bonding replaced grooming
Used to form alliances
Synchronized movement releases endorphins
Listening releases opioids
And serotonin and dopamine

Question 349

what is coalition signaling theory

Answer 349

Theorized by hagen and bryant
Evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals
Mated birds sing together to protect territory
Coyotes howl at periphery
Only in packs, never alone

Question 350

what is the relationship between music and language

Answer 350

All brains react the same way to a violation in syntax(measured through a cap on the scalp). The way it reacts is called a P600
P600 is also found for chord violations
Suggests that P600 is not language specific

Question 351

explain high and low pitches

Answer 351

Why are pitches considered to be high or low?
Frequencies / wavelengths
Why is upward motion associated with goodness?
Sounds beautiful
Extract it from our daily life. Being in the clouds
In other languages(when asked to describe the pitches where we say high and low)
Kpelle: light and heavy
Suya: young and old
Bashi: weak and strong
Manza: small and large
Farsi: thin and thick

Question 352

explain emtion in 2D

Answer 352

Music can completely change the tone of something

Low notes and minor key:
Imperial march
Corrupt government, suspense, a little scary

Imperial march in major key
Happy

Sad music:
Lower pitches
Dissonance
Slow tempo
Minor key
Sad speech is also in the minor key

Question 353

how is music memory dissociable

Answer 353

A cellist lost memory following encephalitis
Lost memory in many things but not of music

Question 354

explaining turning speech into song

Answer 354

After a bunch of repetitions the speech sounds like music
As you listen to something multiple times you fully understand the meaning and no longer pay attention to it
You then notice other parts of it(like the beat)
You pay attention to details of language you would not otherwise pay attention to

Question 355

explain hearing lyrics when there are none

Answer 355

People can hear lyrics in a giant cluster of notes
Your brain is only able to recognize the vocals once you know what the vocals and lyrics are
If you don’t know the song you won’t hear the lyrics until you listen to it once normally
You can also hear sin waves as speech

Question 356

how does music affect video perception

Answer 356

Same footage, different music
Changes the entire meaning
Ex. star wars with love music

Question 357

explain compelling experiences

Answer 357

Draw our attention
Hold our attention(movie)
Make us desire to repeat the experience(music)
Make us have positive associations with the experience(it doesn’t have to be positive though)
We feel they are important(news)
We have a desire to understand them
If they are facts or explanations we are more likely to believe them for non-rational reasons

Question 358

explain the compellingness theory

Answer 358

A great deal of what we find compelling can be explained with the following
We are interested in social status and our place in it
We are compelled to believe things we particularly hope or fear are true
We are attracted to patterns
We are drawn to achieve goals, solve puzzles and resolve contradictions
Our biological natures and psychological biases introduce a host of constraints on what we find compelling

Question 359

what are some examples of compelling experiences

Answer 359

Arts and compelling natural configurations
Static arts(ex. Sculptures and painting)
narrative arts(ex. Novels, films and storytelling)
Music
Dance
Sunsets
attractive people
etc.
Theories
Astrology
Conspiracy theories
Urban legends
Religions
Alien abductions
Postmodernism
Sports and games
Football
Role playing games
Tetris
Cheerleading
Riddles
Quotes
Jokes
News

Question 360

how are we wired to think socially

Answer 360

It helped our ancestors
An understanding of the social atmosphere gives someone a competitive advantage
We find anything dealing with people and social relationships compelling
Drama in narrative
Making and losing allies and friends
Sexual relationships
Favors
Secrets
Competing agendas
Our mind treats things in fiction the same was as in real life

Question 361

explain a narrative

Answer 361

All stories have characters and conflict
We even tries to explain science this way(describes water as a character with a goal when going down a mountain)
Our stories even make inanimate objects into people

Question 362

explain gossip

Answer 362

Secrets
What makes gossip juicy
Losing status is juicier than gaining status
People changing in the social hierarchy
If a teacher gains status then the hierarchy won’t change and its not juicy. If he loses status he gets closer to the students and it becomes juicy
With university and high school students the story of the high school student doing well gets repeated since they get closer to the university students

Question 363

explain the news

Answer 363

“Stories”
Tend to be about people or things affecting people

Question 364

explain conspiracy theories

Answer 364

We have an overactive social explanation detector
Conspiracy theories are always about people and their secrets
All the aspects of a juicy story:
Always malevolent beings
Inside information
Revealed the truth

Question 365

explain sports

Answer 365

People in conflict
ingroup/outgroup
People will favor their ingroup because it feels like they are representing you
Animals play fight to resolve conflicts and attract mates

Question 366

explain alien abduction, bad science and religion

Answer 366

“Greys” are humanoid, secretive and their abduction stories often involve sex and violence
Note that the most bad science(pseudoscience) involves people, at least indirectly
Aliens, astrology, crystal healing, etc.
Religions overwhelmingly personify gods and spirits with desires, personalities and beliefs(to be like people. People where there are no people)

Minds constantly see things in terms of people

Question 367

explain hope and fear

Answer 367

Fear
Negativity bias: attend and believe negative information
We are more likely to believe dangerous generalisations
Hope
We are happy when we believe something beneficial
Confirmation bias, wishful thinking
There are at least 15 “positive illusions”
We especially want to feel good about ourselves
Illusory superiority, positive outcome or valence effect, optimism bias, planning bias, choice supportive bias, etc.
Aren’t I trying to explain everything?
The anti sweet spot. A lot of fear or a lot of hope work but in the middle is dull or dead

Question 368

explain hope and fear in the plastic arts

Answer 368

Landscapes
Looking from high up feels good since it helped our ancestors
Animals, water, high up
The people who liked them survived so now we like them
Horrific images, rubberneckers
Beautiful people
People who are beautiful tend to have healthier kids

When looking at ink your mind cannot help but see that ink as a person

We feel it’s important = we feel we’re going to learn something

Fail videos we look at so we don’t make the same mistake in the future

Question 369

what are some hope and fear stories

Answer 369

Urban legends
More likely to be spread if cautionary tales
Bad science
We are incredibly easy to scare(ex. Vaccines causing disease)
We are suckers for hope(quark remedies)
It’s easier to start believing than to stop believing
Anti vaxxers
Religion
Hope for an afterlife
Threats of divine punishment
Cognitive dissonance and proselytizing
Proselytizing: the action of attempting to convert someone from one religion, belief, or opinion to another
Gives you a sense of stress then provides a method for relieving that stress
When religions are proven wrong then they try to recruit more people
When your point of view is threatened you get people around you to believe it to fight back
Conspiracy theories are frightening
Hidden agendas make it especially pernicious
Pernicious: having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way
Any disconfirming evidence is taken to be further evidence of a cover up
See counter evidence as supporting the theory which makes stopping them difficult
Confirmation bias: believe things that support and ignore things that don’t

Question 370

explain patterns

Answer 370

We are intrinsically rewarded for finding regularity in our world
Seeing how the world works helps survival
Textures, tempo, prediction, order
We are hyper sensitive pattern detectors. We have a ton of biases due to this
We will see a repetition as a greater pattern when it’s not
Clustering illusion, pareidolia, illusory correlation
Left right symmetry because it indicates the presence of living things in the natural world

Question 371

explain things that are easy to understand

Answer 371

Things that are easy to understand require less processing. Such things are perceived as more clear, pleasant, loud, longer, recent, less risky, attractive and truthful
Exposure effect
people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them
False fame effect
participants falsely identify previously studied (old) non famous names as famous. Apparently, participants are misled by the familiar sound of old non famous names

Just changing a font color to something easier to read makes it more believable

Question 372

explain patterns in plastic arts

Answer 372

Matching colors
Complexity

Things that are a little complex are more compelling. There is a sweet spot

Too complex has no meaning(tv static)
Too simple is boring(white canvas)

Question 373

what are pattern fractals

Answer 373

Repetitions of a pattern you saw at higher levels in lower levers

Question 374

what are pattern narratives

Answer 374

Reincorporation of symbols(symbolism)
Haiku that are more familiar and easy to understand are more liked
Titles of books have gotten shorter

Question 375

what are pattern quotations

Answer 375

We like rhyme
“If it bleeds it leads”

“Why can’t we all just get along”
This is the version of the quote that gets repeated while the actual full quote is a giant paragraph
More believable because its more concise

Question 376

what is pattern repetition

Answer 376

Availability cascade
once an idea gets repeated enough times people think its true
Alien abduction, religious beliefs
Music
Hearing a song again and again makes you like it
Same instruments in a piece
Musical motifs
Verses and choruses
Familiarity with genres

Question 377

what is incongruity resolving puzzles and contradictions

Answer 377

We are altricious not precocious
We are born knowing very little and have to learn over time(in contrast to birds)
Thin cortex predicts intelligence
Knowing less in the beginning
They better remember the world around them
Looking paradigm is based on the compellingness of congruity and puzzles
infants looked at patterned images longer than uniform images
Related to dopamine release
Patterns -> opioids
Incongruities -> dopamine(interest)

Question 378

what is incongruity the sweet spot

Answer 378

Too much pattern bores us because we understand it too well
Too much incongruity bores us because we think it’s incomprehensible
The sweet spot is tantalizing, hinting at hidden patterns we can find
Education
Even science fiction and fantasy can’t get too weird. Most of the stories take place in areas very similar to earth

Question 379

what is incongruity plastic arts

Answer 379

Putting walls in a room makes people enter the room because they don’t know what’s behind the wall
When you can’t see around the corner you’re more drawn in
Parks, streets
Monument valley(game)

Question 380

what is incongruity dance and supernormal stimuli

Answer 380

If you increase the intensity of a stimuli the organism will have an increased response

Ballet is an exaggeration of graceful movement

Question 381

what is incongruity narrative

Answer 381

Mysteries eventually reveal(gives pleasure), absurdism and magic shows do not
Star wars vs oz
Star was is potentially explicable
Oz is inexplicable wonderfulness
Hellraiser is inexplicable awfulness

Question 382

what is incongrutiy sports and quotes

Answer 382

We don’t want a game that’s predictable.We prefer closer scores
Benign violation
We find something funny when it appears to violate our understanding but it turns out it’s okay(nothing scary or hurtful)
We love quotations with apparent contradictions
Less is more
Art is the lie that reveals the truth