Cognitive Psychology Overview

The main focus of Cognitive Psychology is to understand mental processes and mental operations.

Cognitive Neuroscience aims to understand the underlying substrate and mechanisms of mental processes and representations.

A mental representation refers to anything that has meaning to an individual, such as the concept of a 'tree'.

<p>Mental processes involve the processing of incoming information, resulting in a mental representation of that information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Cognitive Neuroscience utilizes single cell electrophysiology, neuropsychology, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and imaging techniques.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Posner's Letter-matching task is used to study mental representations and operations in Cognitive Psychology.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The visual system processes incoming light, allowing an individual to recognize and see a tree as a mental representation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Meanings are central to mental representations, as they are what individuals associate with different concepts and objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The response is 'same' for both vowels or both consonants and 'different' for letters from different categories.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Posner argued that different latencies reflect the degree of processing required for the task.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>As the stimulus onset asynchrony increases, the difference in reaction times for physical-identity and phonetic-identity conditions diminishes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Yes, the findings suggest that representations are transformed as shown by changes in reaction times.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Subjects memorize a set of letters and then determine whether a probe letter belongs to that set.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Posner's methods allow for the subdivision of mental operations based on the types of processing represented in tasks.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It indicates a shift towards a more abstract mental representation as processing time increases.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The two key types are stimulus identity representations and phonetic representations.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The four different mental operations are not explicitly listed in the content provided.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It suggests that the target letter must be compared with the memory set sequentially rather than in parallel.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Animal research, neurology, and brain imaging are mentioned as experimental techniques.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>In humans, they are occasionally used to treat epilepsy of the medial temporal lobe, while in animals, they are extensively used in visual and auditory tasks.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The morality of using animals for research purposes has been debated for centuries.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Members of Congress receive more letters about the morality of animal research than on any other issue.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They might refuse medication developed through animal research if seriously ill.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It is suggested that animal research may be less strictly regulated than animal usage for food production in the UK.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The superego represents the moral standards and ideals that influence behavior, and in agitated depression, it becomes overbearing, disrupting the balance of the mind.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Lobotomy aimed to free the mind from the overbearing superego by severing connections in the brain, but it should only be performed on patients with enough intelligence to manage behavior post-surgery.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The challenge is that naturally occurring brain lesions are never identical, making it hard to generalize findings.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Functional neurosurgery involves altering brain activity through methods like ablation or stimulation to improve patient function, with applications in movement disorders and psychiatric disorders.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Group studies help identify regions of lesion overlap, which facilitates functional analysis of specific brain areas.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The main inference is that a lesion causes a cognitive deficit, but this is criticized because cognitive tasks involve multiple subtasks, and a lesion might not affect all of them equally.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Optogenetics involves using light to manipulate neuronal activity for experimental study.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Single dissociation occurs when one patient group is impaired in one task but not another, while double dissociation involves two patient groups where each shows impairment in different tasks.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>TMS uses low-level currents to induce action potentials under the anodes, influencing neuronal activity noninvasively.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Chronic pain, epilepsy, brain tumors, and various psychiatric disorders can be treated using functional neurosurgery methods.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>fMRI measures changes in blood flow and volume that are induced by neuronal activity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An overbearing superego can lead to conditions like agitated depression by creating excessive moral or ethical pressure on the individual.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Combining fMRI and TMS allows researchers to demonstrate the role of specific brain regions, such as the visual cortex in tactile perception.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Intelligence is crucial because it determines whether patients can control their behavior when the moral authority of the superego is removed after the procedure.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Activation of these areas suggests that visual cortex regions are involved in processing tactile information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Studying brain damage helps identify specific areas crucial for various cognitive functions and behaviors.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The visual cortex is crucial for accurate tactile orientation judgments; performance declines with TMS applied over that area.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>TMS can temporarily activate or inactivate specific areas of the cortex, allowing researchers to infer the functions associated with those regions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>fMRI measures changes in blood flow and oxygen levels in active brain areas, which are linked to neuronal activity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Structural MRI provides images of brain anatomy, while functional MRI assesses brain activity by measuring blood flow changes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Double dissociations demonstrate that two cognitive functions can operate independently, evidenced by specific brain damage affecting one function but not the other.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>One challenge is that brain damage varies among patients, complicating the ability to generalize findings across different individuals.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It has revolutionized our understanding of brain function localization, providing clearer insights into how different areas correlate with specific cognitive processes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Temporal resolution refers to the precision of timing in measuring brain activity, while spatial resolution indicates the ability to pinpoint where activity occurs in the brain.</p> Signup and view all the answers