Week 1 Flashcards
Desirable difficulties
Need to engage in material fully to understand it = deeper learning
Introspectionism
Introspection, ‘qualities’ of mental experience
- Think about your thinking (feelings)
- Importance of intentionality and volition (conscious thought)
- Must look within / introspect because we can’t experience others’ thoughts
- Must be trained to report experiences without interpretation
Introspectionism issues
- Can’t tell us about unconscious events
- Introspection is hard to scientifically prove or quantify
Introspectionism - scientists
Wundt and Titchener (his student), William James
Psychophysics
- gave credibility to mechanism
- Looks for regular and measurable relation btwn thinking and environment
- “Just noticeable differences”
Psychophysics - scientists
Ernst Weber; the amount of physical energy necessary to produce a change in sensation is proportional to the original level of physical energy
Gustav Fechner; physical energy and the psych experience are related by a logarithmic function
Kant-ian logic
- determine underlying causes that lead to observed effects
- morality = rationality = universal (all are fundamentally rational)
Behaviourism
- Only looks at observables
- “Subjective experience is unverifiable = unreliable”
Stimulus -> response
- lots of reward/punishment
Behaviourism issues
We must consider both stimuli AND a subjects knowledge and understanding of the stimulus (personal interpretation)
= subjective
Behaviourism - scientists
BF Skinner, John Watson
Cognitive psych revolution
Moving away from behaviourism
Tolman rat mazes
= cognitive maps
= internal thought is necessary
Chomsky grammar rules
= innate mechanisms and rules
Kant’s transcendental method
= Start with observable effects then look for the underlying causes
= Sometimes called “inference to best explanation”
= Visible effects from an invisible cause
= Then hypothesize and test what the mental processes were
Computer metaphor for the mind
Input
cogpsych and memory
+ storage
Output
The computer model of the mind
Environmental energy
–> information
Psychological processes
–> coding, representation
Memory
–> storage and retrieval
Storage capacity
- Donald Broadbent used compsci to theorise how ppl focus their information when working in complex environments
Tenets of cog psych
knowledge is…
- acquired (perception, attention,
categorization) - retained (memory encoding and retrieval)
- used (decision making, judgement, inference)
NOT just a copy of sensory input
Brodmann brain areas
- based on cytoarchitectural organization of neurons
- used nissl and golgi stains
= brain is specialized
MRI vs. fMRI
MRI
- structural image
fMRI
- functional
- must pay attention to tasks done during scan (task analysis)
fMRI
- best for spatial localization, bad for temporal (has to wait for blood)
- functional
- magnetize hemoglobin iron, see where blood recruited
- coloured parts are lit up because of SUBTRACTION when you compare different types of tasks (look at brain differences)
EEG (electroencephalography)
- sticker cap
- good for temporal, bad for spatial
- looks at patterns in brain waves
ERP (event-related potentials)
- good for temporal, bad for spatial
- subtraction used
PET scan
- bad temporally, good spatially
- old MRI where radioactive contrast is injected
CAT scan
- good for structural, bad for functional
Single-cell recordings
- not really used for humans
- sometimes used during brain surgery
- used for sensation more than cognition
MEG
- Good spatially AND temporally
- Electrical current across scalp = magnetic field around you head
- Only for brain close to scalp
ECT (electroconvulsive therapy)
Used for depression
TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation)
- Temporary lesion in a certain part of your brain
SPECT & EROS
- Shine light through your skull non-invasively
Necker cube
- Line drawing of a cube that might be facing up or down based on how you perceive it
= Perception based on assumptions
Perception _____ sensation
Perception =/= sensation!!!
- Retinal image is 2D (sensation)
- We go beyond the information given (perception)
- Given info often incomplete / confusing / ambiguous
3 visual perception tasks
- Form (what)
- Depth (where)
- Motion (doing what)
Different neuron receptive fields
Different types of neurons might look at…
- line orientation
- edge detection
- centre-surround
- direction of movement
Parallel processing
- Visual systems and pathways are specialized
- Different types of processing occur simultaneously, helping to deal with all the demands of processing
The binding problem
The binding problem: have to bind dorsal/ventral/different brain areas info back together
Use:
1. Spatial position
2. Rhythm of neural cycles (signifies what’s moving together)
Patient HM
- Got surgery to control his epilepsy
- Couldn’t form new memories after the surgery, but could remember those from before
- Didn’t remember that his fav uncle died = kept hearing it for the “first time” = couldn’t process his grief
- He didn’t know who he was (had no sense of self) as he didn’t have the memory to know his successes or transgressions, personality or actions, intelligence or honesty
Clinical neuropsychology
Studies brain injuries compared to healthy brains using neuroimaging techniques
Cognitive neuroscience
Studies mental functioning through studying the brain and nervous system
