Week 2 Flashcards
Computational Representational Theory of Mind
What is the central hypothesis to cognitive science?
Thinking can be understood in terms of representational structures of the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures
What is a mental representation?
A cognitive structure that stores, organizes, and processes info about the world
What are some types of mental representations?
-Visual (ex: what would fit in this mug, what would it look like if I rotated it?)
- Probabilities (what song will come next?)
- Rules (if there is a tornado, seek shelter)
- Auditory (clapping the rhythm of a melody)
- Analogies/relationships (a dog is just a domesticated canine)
What is the Computational Representational Understanding of the Mind (CRUM)?
Idea that thinking is the process of using computational operations on mental representations
What is an example of CRUM?
The number 10 is abstract but can be represented through numerals such as 10. 10+6=16 is a computational operation preformed on that representation
What was the SNARC experiment?
Given numbers from 1-9, people had to press button on either left or right to indicate even or odd, but left handed responses were faster for smaller numbers and vice versa for right handed responses, indicating that smaller numbers are associated with the left side and big with right
What was the Shepard and Metzler study?
Participants were shown a 3D shape and either a mirrored or rotated version of it and had to identify which one was rotated. People took longer to identify rotation the more rotated it was, suggested that they mentally rotate a visual image instead of using facts
What does information do for your brain?
Reduces uncertainty
What is a bit?
Standard unit for how much info is needed to distinguish between two equally likely outcomes
What’s the equation for a bit?
X options take B bits
2^B=X, B=log2(X)
How does calculating a bit work?
Each element is representing through binary numbers and the # of dimensions that makes up the object determines the amount of binaries being used to represent one element. The 2 is for the binary 0 and 1, and the exponent represents how many binaries represent one unit
Do less probably options or more probably options carry more information?
Less probably options (knowing a word contains Z narrows it down much more than if it had A)
More surprising = more info
What is information theory?
Greater number of options = more info to encode
Less probably options = more info than probable options
How many options dow e need to make absolute judgements?
7 options precisely
How many items can people hold in their working (short term) memory?
7
How does working memory carry information?
It holds items, not total information, which allows the brain to chunk info and make it easier to remember more things at once
What Is chunking?
Recoding multiple info pieces into one item
How to chess players remember the organization of pieces on a board?
They have encoded 7 famous board positions and use those references to remember positions of boards better
What is said about randomness in the world?
The world is not random
When does a word carry more info than others?
When there are many other options, and when a word is unlikely in its given context
How are words with higher information context spoken?
With more emphasis in some way (ex: speaking slowly)
