The Cognitive Revolution

Question 1

Cognitive psychology

Answer 1

Movement in psychology arguing that observable behaviours are the result of information processing in the mind.

Question 2

Homunculus

Answer 2

Refers to the difficulty of explaining goal-oriented behaviour without making use of an ultimate intelligent control centre.

Question 3

Information feedback

Answer 3

Mechanism in which the current performance level is compared to the desired end-state and the discrepancy is used to bring the performance closer to the desired end-state.

Question 4

Turing test

Answer 4

Test described by Alan Turing, which involves a human interacting with a machine and another human without being able to discriminate the machine from the human.

Question 5

Algorithm

Answer 5

List of instructions that converts a given input, via a fully defined series of intermediate steps, into the desired output.

Question 6

The metaphor of the computer

Answer 6

The computer made it easier to understand how an organism can seem to be goal-directed, without there being a homunculus who sets the goals and checks the progress.
Computers allowed psychologists to simulate human functioning (artificial intelligence).
Psychologists could think of information processing in terms of algorithms that were run on input.

Question 7

Features of cognitive psychology

Answer 7

The acceptance of a separate level of mental representations, to which transformation algorithms apply.
Information processing on the mental representations captured by boxed-and-arrows plots and computational models.
Models designed to lead to predictions that can be verified in experiments making use of performance measures.

Question 8

Mental representation

Answer 8

Information pattern in the mind representing knowledge.

Question 9

Information processing

Answer 9

Encoding mental representations, transforming them by means of algorithms, and integrating them with existing knowledge.

Question 10

Box and arrow plots

Answer 10

Flowchart outlining the different information stores (boxes) and information transformations (arrows) involved in the execution of a particular task with observable input and output.

Question 11

Computational models

Answer 11

Computer program simulating the human information processing assumed to be involved in the execution of a particular task.
Requires more precision about what is going on than with a box-and-arrow plot.

Question 12

Top-down processes

Answer 12

Process by which information from a higher processing stage is fed back to previous stages and influences the processing at these stages.

Question 13

Edwin Smith Papyrus

Answer 13

15ft long medical textbook at least 3,600 years old including 48 case studies of battlefield injuries.
Bought in 1862 by American collector Edwin Smith.
First use of the word brain.

Question 14

Galen

Answer 14

Greek physician, saw injures as ‘windows into the body’.
Established the primacy of the brain for sensation and movement.
Located soul; solid parts, animal spirits; ventricles. The animal spirits travelled to the body via the nerves.

Question 15

Speech problems

Answer 15

German physician Johann Schenk von Grafenberg and his ‘Medical observations on the Human Head’, published 1585.
Brain damage leads to loss of function. Speech, as one discussed. Problem not due to mechanical failure (tongue works); ‘memory of words lost, or could not be retrieved’.

Question 16

The brain instead of the venticles

Answer 16

British anatomist Thomas Willis, and ‘Cerebri Anatome’, 1664.
Number of scholars began to doubt the existence of spirits in the nerves. Instead, hypothesised that fluids flowed within nerves.
Problem - stalling progress. ‘Poking’ grey matter –> no strong response; animal not disturbed. Mess with the white matter or ventricles –> animal screams, often dies.

Question 17

Increased interest in reflexes

Answer 17

Growing interest in the reflex, as a type of response that seemed to escape voluntary control.
Fit with Descartes’ mechanistic view of the body (including brain).

Question 18

Five Big Breakthroughs of the 19th century

Answer 18

1. The discovery of the cerebrospinal axis.
2. The growing impact of the reflex.
3. The localisation of brain functions.
4. The discovery of the nerve cell.
5. The disentangling of the communications between neurons.

Question 19

Equipotentiality theory

Answer 19

All parts of the brain have equal significance and are involved in each task.

Question 20

Localisation theory

Answer 20

Brain processes are localised, meaning that only part of the brain underlies a particular mental function.

Question 21

The discovery of the cerebrospinal axis

Answer 21

The body remains functioning when the cerebral hemispheres are disconnected.
The view – spinal cord and subcortical structures in control of bodily functions is consistent with the finding that some animal species have a spinal cord but no brain, whereas the reverse is never observed.

Question 22

The growing impact of the reflex

Answer 22

Reflex is the base-unit from which all other nervous system mechanisms evolved.
As the stimulus shapes the response, so too does the response shape the stimulus.

Question 23

Localisation of brain functions

Answer 23

First, thought to apply to the complete brain; 19th c., limited to the cerebral hemispheres.
Spinal cord – carries signals to and from brain.
Cerebellum – movement.
Brainstem, medulla, vital for vegetative functioning.
Cortex — perception, memory, will; single organ.
Language production is controlled by the front parts of the brain

Question 24

Holism (anti-localisation)

Answer 24

Karl Lashley
Equipotentiality - any brain area can do any function.
Mass action - brain functions are distributed. Deficits following brain damage depend on extent of damage, not location of damage.

Question 25

Individual neurons instead of continuous network

Answer 25

After his breakthroughs with staining, Golgi discovered that the grey matter comprised a network of branches and globules.
Golgi was convinced that the the network formed a single unit.
Ramon y Cajal, Spanish researcher, argued that the network comprised separate neurons communicating with each other.
Golgi and Ramon y Cajal would share the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1906.

Question 26

Information flow

Answer 26

Dendrites - many dendrites per neuron, collect information from other neurons.
Cell body - one cell body per neuron, normal cell regulation functions, axon hillock sums inputs.
Axon - one axon per neuron, transmit signal, end feet (axon terminals) communicate information to the dendrites of other neurons (synapses).
Axon hillock - “little hill” at the junction of the cell body and the beginning of the axon, gathers information from dendrites, sort of like a “vote counter”.
Synapses - the connection between the axon of one neuron and (usually) the dendrite of another.

Question 27

Localisation studies in the World Wars

Answer 27

German physician, Joachim Bodamer, paper in 1947, describing a soldier who lost the ability to recognise faces - ‘prosopagnosia’; injury was to back of head.

Question 28

Neuropsychology

Answer 28

Branch of psychological research and practice that looks at the relationship between brain and behaviour.
Research traditionally focused on understanding the consequences of brain damage and localising the affected tissue.
Practice aimed at assessing the behavioural and mental consequences of the injury and administering the rehabilitation programme.

Question 29

Dissent among neuropsychologists

Answer 29

Two big challenges - had to wait until death to localise, and damage usually widespread so difficult to pinpoint deficits or damaged areas.