W1 Introduction

Question 1

What behavioural methods does cognitive neuroscience use?

Answer 1

1. eye tracking
2. peripheral physiology
3. reaction times
4. neuroimaging
5. neuropsych case studies

Question 2

How are cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience similar?

Answer 2

1. both study Visual attention, consciousness, reading, language, memory, metacognition, mental imagery
2. cog. psych preceded cog. neuroscience

Question 3

What is convergent evidence?

Answer 3

different sources of evidence that have the same conclusion

1. important for to support hypothesis as single measurement approaches have their own weaknesses and does not indicate causation, leads to support / stronger conclusions

Question 4

If evidence that the FFA is linked to face processing is supported by other studies that found the N170 component in ERP studies, and
BOLD responses in fMRI

what type of evidence is this?

Answer 4

Convergent evidence

Question 5

What might be convergent evidence for that the dorsal part of the brain causes impairment to motion processing? (from TMS)

Answer 5

1. Using an fmri to see whether the dorsal path is more active in motion tasks
2. Case studies testing motion processing on impaired dorsal part of brains

Question 6

What is divergent evidence?

Answer 6

Divergent validity helps to establish construct validity by demonstrating that the construct you are interested in (e.g., anger) is different from other constructs that might be present in your study (e.g., depression).

Question 7

How does divergent evidence help support the hypothesis?

Answer 7

it eliminate alternative explanations for an effect

Question 8

If you want to support that motion is localised to dorsal pathway, and find that reading doesn’t activate the dorsal pathway, and thus rules out alternating perceptual process being implicated in the dorsal pathway

What type of evidence is this?

Answer 8

divergent evidence

Question 9

What are some of the qualities that Brenda Milner demonstrates that contributed to her scientific success?

Answer 9

Curiosity, listening skills, flexibility, human empathy and concern, persistent and methodological testing for patients

Astute observer and listening to her patients = good scientist, receptive to hearing new ideas that might challenge or even falsify her argument

Question 10

How do you think that Milner would score on the Wisconsin Card-sorting task, and why?

Answer 10

The task is about responding to changed, which she would be good at as a highly adaptive person

Question 11

What is subjective cognitive function?

Answer 11

how someone subjectively experiences cognitive function, in everyday life or in a lab task-specific context

Question 12

What is one of the most common measures of subjective cognitive function?

Answer 12

1. The Cognitive failures question (CFQ) = to quantify individual differences
   25 questions of cognitive failures or lapses, bumping into people, forgetting why you went to went to do something, from scale of 0-4

Question 13

What are the brain structural differences in people with lower CFQ questionnaire scores?

Answer 13

1. There is higher activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to make these judgements

(lower activation in ACC responsible for error detection)

Question 14

How does subjective cognitive function relate to objective performance?

Answer 14

1. there’s increased flanker effects under low perceptual load conditions
2. More missed targets in low prevalence visual search
3. Increased work accidents and car crashes and severity

Question 15

What is the Go / No-go task in subjective cognitive function?

Answer 15

Have to make a press a key when they don’t see a key and not press a key when they see a 3

Activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to make these judgements = ACC responsible for error detection

Higher CFQ scores correlate with lower activation in the ACC in response to errors

CFQ scores are correlated with structural brain differences in cognitive control

Question 16

What neuroimaging measures structural differences?

And what does it focus on?

Answer 16

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)

2. measures water molecule diffusion, as water diffusion is restricted to fibre tracks, DTI mainly focuses on the WHITE MATTER (cell axons) of the brain

Question 17

What is the link between white and grey matter and SCF scores?

Answer 17

Grey matter = cell bodies
White matter = cell axons (connections in the brain)

Those with high CFQ scores seem to have lower different brain structures and connections in their white matter, ie. lower connectivity

Question 18

What neural structural differences are related to cognitive failures and why?

Answer 18

1. higher CFQ are associated with LOWER FRONTAL and PARIETAL WHITE MATTER, attentional, sensory integration, spatial awareness
2. Frontal and parietal lobes map onto executive functions related to goals, eg. bumping into people, forgetting appointments, losing things

Question 19

What are the 3 limitations of studying subjective cognitive function?

Answer 19

1. Self presentation biases = want to appear in particular way / not answering honestly
2. Self-reporting biases = those with negative affect might rate their abilities lower than they actually are
3. Metacognitive insight = how much insight does a person actually have about their cognitive functioning? -
   Sometimes need informant data

Question 20

What are reference group biases?

Answer 20

judgements based off comparing themselves to their peer group, eg. being in a group with high cognitive function may result in rating oneself as lower, eg. people compare themselves to their peer group and not the general population

Question 21

What are the 7 advantages of subjective cognitive function?

eg. validity, practicability, cost

Answer 21

1. Aggravate information over a diverse context
2. Better measurement reliability than lab measures
3. Easier to identify how negative beliefs about cognition might affect their performance
4. Easier to identify cognitive insight people have
5. Cheaper and easier to conduct research
6. Face validity of research maps directly onto cognitive control and function in the real world
7. Might be easier for people with executive dysfunction and/or brain impairment to accurately report their cognitive function instead of abstract measures

Question 22

What is the predictive validity of SCF scores?

Answer 22

8. More sensitive to cognitive function than objective cognitive measures, eg. subjective reports can detect mild impairment in older adults before OCM years in advance

Question 23

What is the main limitation of objective cognitive measures?

Answer 23

Objective cognitive measures = measures from objective performance on tasks

Assumptions are still made about general/baseline performance

Question 24

What are the pros and cons of having two societies that have different methodological approaches to research?

1. Australian Society for Experimental Psychology (EPS - behavioural based studies)
2. Australian Cognitive Neuroscience Society - ACNS more likely to hold neuroimaging based studies

Answer 24

Pros - Speciality in technical knowledge with experts with shared knowledge

Cons - Need converging evidence, eg. needing both ERP and behavioural studies that support ideas/theories,

• People usually only go to one and not the other - miss critical knowledge on different methodological approach

There is a division between psychology focusing on individuals/personality and others cognitive/neuroscience that focuses more on people - need to combine both approaches to account for error variance/individual differences