Themes, Methods, Brain Flashcards
Cognitive psychology
Study of intelligent behav
Mind-Body problem
Mind seen as connected to a soul, which isn’t physical. How do they relate when they’re different forms?
How many neurons and connections are in the brain?
86 billion neurons
Each w/ 7000 connections
How does the brain behave within multiple contexts?
Brain functions within body, which provides it w/ sensory info and ability to move
Body is embedded within an enviro/society, which determines what the inputs/outputs of the body are
Local society of person is embedded in larger structures of the world, which determines broader context of which ppl may receive info and act
Dualism
Mind and body are made of different properties
(Solution to Mind-Body problem)
Types of Monism
Physicalism / Materialism: Only kind of reality is physical (Mental states explained thru brain processes)
Idealism: Only kind of reality is mental (Brain is mental construct)
Neutral monism: Mind and body are same element that isn’t physical/mental
Wilhelm Wundt
Structuralism
Introspection
Investigated elements of immediate experience w/ analytic introspection to understand mind
Introspection: Practitioners trained to consider/describe own internal conscious exp in terms of fundamental “elements” of consciousness
Problems with introspection
Data can inly be seen by one individual and can’t be verified by others
- Not good for replication
We can only access mental activity that’s available to our conscious awareness
Think-aloud protocol
Similar to introspection
Asks participants to report their thought processes as they perform a task
Cortical blindness
Blindsight
Can respond to visual stimuli but damage in stage of processing leading to conscious perception
Can identify where visual stimuli is but claim they saw nothing due to cortical damage
Both report blindness
Both show why introspection not reliable
William James
Functionalism
Study of purpose of thought rather than elements
Focused more on thought experiments
- Interested in prediction and control through direct observation
4 key principles of the scientific method
Empiricism: We can observe something and learn from it
Determinism: Things have a cause
Testability: Be able to create theory and test it
Parsimony: Go w: simplest until empiricism proves there’s something more complicated
John Watson
Behaviorism
Concerned w/ behaviour as a set of stimuli and responses
Brain processes unimportant, only input/output important
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Involuntary behav paired with stimulus, eventually leading to that behav being triggered by the stimulus
- Ivan Pavlov
Reinforcement of certain behave through rewards and punishments
- B. F. Skinner
E. C. Tolman
Latent learning
Showed flaw in behaviourist approach
- Cognition is flexible enough to generate new behavs that haven’t been observed or performed
Latent learning: Learning w/out conditioning (no rewards/punishments)
Noam Chomsky
Poverty of stimulus argument
Didn’t believe language is result of stimulus and response
Children can speak by 2 yrs old w/out lots of input to learn language
Children tend to say things they’ve never heard before (“I goed to the park”)
Alan Turing
Algorithm
Proposed Turing Machine: Goal was to carry out what human mind can do using algorithms
Set of operations that produces the input/output mapping of a function
Newell and Simon
Logic Theorist
First “thinking machine” that could show proofs better than humans
Source of idea where psychologists could propose models to explain unobservable mental functions, then make predictions and test them using computers to see if you get same output as humans
Representationalism
Computation
Biological perspective
Embodied cognition
Describes how unobservable mind can act on real world
Assumes mind is an info processor
Info is represented as patters of activity between neurons in a way similar to brain (Interconnected neurons determine thought)
Study of cognition as we interact w/ world (How mind and body interact w/ world)
Aboutness
(Representationalism)
Aboutness of mental processes - Representations that stand for what the processes are about in real world
- Perceptions and thoughts represent objects and situations in real world but aren’t physical
Marr
(Computation)
If computers process info and info processing is what characterizes minds, then maybe mind is computational
- Goal is to find function that allows progression from input to output
Symbol systems (Newell and Simon)
(Computation)
Representational (Stand for something in real world)
Computational (Can be manipulated according to rules)
Newell and Simon were first to suggest that mind is a symbol system
Connectionism
(Biological perspective)
Alternate theory of computing
Info is carried in connected neuron-like units
- Info represented by patterns of activation spread across units instead of by symbols
Grounding problem
Embodied cognition
(Embodiment)
Problem with symbol systems
- How can the symbol be linked to the physical object?
Info is given by perceptual, motor and emotional activity by the body in the real world (no need for representations)
Case studies
Correlational studies
Experiments
Computer simulations
One individual (w/ condition) studied intensely
How 2 variables go together when variable can’t be manipulated (Can’t use causation)
Manipulate independent and dependent variables (Can use causation)
Program what you think is going on into computer and see if you get same outcome as human
Most common dependent variables by cognitive psychologists
Accuracy
Reaction time
Confounding variables
Variables that influence dependent variable but weren’t manipulated by experimenter
Can involuntary responses (e.g. emotional) affect cognitive processes (like decision making)?
Yes
Encephalization quotients (EQ)
Measure of actual brain size relative to body size
Correlated w/ intelligence
Functional localization
Certain cognitive functions reside in specific regions of the cerebral cortex
Electroencephalography (EEG)
Measures electrical activity of brain
Good temporal resolution
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Measures indirect brain activity through ratio of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood
Often used in subtraction method: Measure brain activity when engaging in studied task and compare to when doing diff task or no task
Better spatial resolution than EEG
Poor temporal resolution
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Uses brief magnetic pulses that disrupt electrical activity of brain
- To test what effect disrupting specific portions of cortex has on behav
High spatial and temporal resolution
3 layers of artificial neural networks (ANNs)
Input: What you want to know something about (like sensory info)
Hidden layer: Internal computation of input
Output: Best guess of what you want to know
Each node in single layer as activation level
Training set
Error or loss
Backpropagation
(Artificial neural network)
Dataset used to train neural network
Diff between observed output and correct output - Used to tell how wrong ANN is
Technique for gradually changing weights of neural network to reduce error
