PSYC 213 Cognition Midterm Review

• Dr. Signy Sheldon teaches PSYC 213.
• The teaching assistants are Audrey-Anne Forget and Christy Au-Yeung.
• This is a cognition midterm review on February 4th, 2025.

Agenda for Review

• Introduction Topics: History, Information Processing View, and Methods
• Perception
• Attention

Midterm Information

• The exam is written in one of two locations: LEACOCK 132 (class location) or Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre at the MNI (3801 Rue University, Montréal, QC H3A 2B4).
• Students with the last name Gee to Z must go to LEACOCK 132.
• Students with the last name A to Gav go to the Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre at the MNI.
• Able to have a pencil, a hydration vehicle, and a translation dictionary on the desk.
• Belongings are allowed only if they are put away and zipped up.
• Scantron version and ID must be written on the scantron.
• The full class time will be given to write the exam.
• ID must be shown to leave the classroom after the exam.
• Cannot leave within the first 30 minutes of the exam.
• Cannot take the exam if arriving 30 minutes after the exam starts.

Introduction

• Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
• Basic Research aims to understand the world and its phenomena.
• Applied Research aims to apply knowledge to solve practical problems in real-world situations.

Methods to Study Cognition

• Cognitive psychology studies behaviour to understand the mind.
• Neuroscience studies the physical brain and connects it to the mind.
• Computational Modelling builds and is modelling the mind-brain connection.

Ancient Philosophers

• Plato theorized that knowledge is the result of prior reasoning and knowledge and that we use logic and a priori knowledge to interpret what we observe via Rationalism.
• Aristotle theorized that knowledge comes from experience, observation, and the formation of associations and all thoughts stem from the formation of associations between what we observe and previous experiences, called Empiricism.

Origins of Experimental Psychology

• Structuralism is a systematic understanding of the mind's structure by identifying basic building blocks to explain how they give rise to more complex cognitive processes.
  • The focus: brain's individual components
  • Notable figure: Wilhelm Wundt
  • Introspection: observation of one's own consciousness
• Functionalism conceptualizes the find as a functional, adaptive tool focusing on how the different structures function together as part of a system, rather than individual areas.
  • The focus: overall function of the brain
  • Notable figure: William James
  • Mental purposes serve to help people adapt to their environment

Behaviorism

• Psychology can be objectively studied through the observation of behaviour.
• Classical Conditioning: Association of an involuntary response to a stimulus.
• Operant Conditioning: Association of a voluntary behaviour with a consequence involving a reward or a punishment.

Cognitive Revolution

• This was a movement in the 1950s that proposed that the mind could be understood as a computational system.
• Motivation for this included the rejection of behaviourism and the rise of computers.
• Cognition became seen as a computation.
  • Sensory information acts as the input.
  • Information processing occurs.
  • Behaviour or decision is the output.

Information Processing View

• The mind and the brain are seen as an information processor, such as a computer.
• Information is processed by a series of processing systems.
• Processing systems change information in systematic ways.
• Information processing in these systems takes time.
• Information-processing capacity is limited.
• Hick's Law: The more information that needs processing, the more time it takes to produce a response.

Limitations to Information Processing

• Choice overload bias: A high number or uncertainty of choices taxes information processes.
• Decision fatigue: The state of mental exhaustion that occurs when someone has to make too many decisions.

Ecological Validity

• Ecological validity refers to the extent to which the experiment subjects' perceptions and responses can be generalized to real-life settings.

Mind-Body Problem

• This problem looks at how mental events are related to physical events in the brain.
  • Dualism: The mind and the brain are separate entities and can include interactionism (where the mind and the body interact to induce events in each other) and Epiphenomenalism (mental thoughts are caused by physical events.)
  • Monism: The mind and the brain are the same. There is only one entity that exists.
    • Idealism describes that all reality is a mental construct, so the mind matters.
    • Materialism suggests that all reality is the result of physical processes, so the brain matters.
    • Neutral monism presents that the fundamental nature of reality is neither purely mental nor physical. Instead, something neutral matters.

Nervous System

• Central Nervous System (CNS): Brain and spinal cord that control conscious and voluntary actions.
• Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): Outside the brain and spinal cord (body) that control motor and involuntary actions.
  • Somatic Nervous System controls voluntary control of muscles and senses.
  • Autonomic Nervous System controls involuntary bodily functions.
    • These result in Sympathetic Nervous System arousal or the fight or flight response and a Parasympathetic Nervous System that calms.

Functional Specialization/Localization

• The concept that certain cognitive functions reside in certain areas of the cerebral cortex.
• E.g. Fusiform Face Area (FFA) and the Greebles Study

Split-Brain Patients

• These are patients (typically epileptic) who have had their corpus callosum severed, disconnecting the two hemispheres of the cortex.
  • The right hemisphere controls spatial processing.
  • The left hemisphere controls language.
  • In general, interhemispheric communication is necessary.

Research Methods

• Behavioral Measurements: Behavioral responses to stimulus; including Behavioral experiments that measure voluntary responses and psychophysiological measurements to measure involuntary responses.
• Behavioral Neuroscience Methods: Involuntary responses from PNS through animal models.
• Cognitive Neuroscience Methods: Patient cases and the use of neuroimaging tools.

Neuroimaging Techniques

• Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the electrical activity produced by the active brain through Event Related Potentials (ERP).
  • EEG has good temporal resolution, and bad spatial resolution.
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a technique that uses a magnetic field, along with computer-generated radio waves, to create detailed images of the organ and tissues in the body.
  • Structural MRI images of anatomical structure.
  • Functional MRI images of metabolic activity.
  • MRI has good spatial resolution but a bad temporal resolution.
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive method that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain.
  • Used in the treatment of severe depression.
  • Can infer causality.

Perception

• Sensation: Conversion of the physical properties of our environment or body into neural code (by the peripheral nervous system).
  • Transduction
• Perception: Processing and interpretation of the sensory information into a form that is useful for behavioural decisions/actions.
  • Perception is based on knowledge, context, situation, and state (cognitive, emotional, motivation).
  • E.g. approach motivation effect.

Interoceptive Sensation

• Proprioception: Sense of where our limbs are in space.
• Nociception: Sense of pain due to body damage.
• Equilibrioception: Sense of balance.

Synaesthesia

• Neurological condition where senses automatically trigger the experience of another sense.
  • Synaesthesia is genetic, more common in women, and specific pairings tend to be stable in an individual.
  • Synaesthesia suggests that brain is organized as talking circuits.
  • There are individual differences in how one experiences the world from the individual
  • This also suggests that there is cross-talk between processing regions.

Competing Perceptual Information

• Multi-sensory illusion.
• McGurk Effect involves the integration of sensory information with cross-talk where visual input is dominant over auditory input.

Visual System - Early System

• Eye: sensation and the transduction of light into neural code occurs.
• Retina: Thin layer of tissue. It is made up of multiple layers of receptors.
  • Photoreceptors: rods, cones
  • Bipolar cells
  • Ganglion cells: where input of photoreceptors converge.

Visual System- Early Processing

• Blindspot! -> but its ok... perceptual filling in (later visual processes make up for the missing information)

Visual System- Early to Late Processing

• Thalamus (Lateral Geniculate Nucleus)
  • The optic nerve of each eye transmits information to both hemisphere.
  • Contralateral representation

Visual System- Late Processing

• Specialized regions that process specific visual attributes or features that include Edge, Angles, Color, and Light.

Visual System

• Ventral Pathway -> Temporal lobe
  • Focuses on "What" _ Perception
• Dorsal Pathway -> Parietal lobe
  • Focuses on "Where"
  • Action

Visual System- Summary

• Early processing
  • Eye containing the Cornea, Iris, Pupil, and Lens and Retina containing Rods, cones, Bipolar cells, Ganglion cells, and millions of photoreceptors to hundreds of ganglion cells.
  • Optic nerve
  • Optic chiasm -Crossing over to the other side of the brain.
• Late processing
  • Thalamus and the lateral geniculate nucleus are the way station.
  • Primary visual cortex focuses on Specific visual attributes.
  • Finally, visual association areas include the Parietal lobe for dorsal pathway and the Ventral lobe for the ventral pathway.

Disorders of the Visual System

• Akinetopsia has implications for the difficulty of perceiving motion as it involves blindness.
• Optic Ataxia is a result of difficulty in reaching for objects and movements.
• Blindsight produces Cortical blindness involving no explicit perception of objects but unconscious (implicit) perception.
• Visual Agnosia results in difficulty in recognizing daily objects. It impacts the Lateral Occipital Cortex (LOC)
• Prosopagnosia is the difficulty in recognizing individual faces.
  • Results from damage in the Fusiform Face Area (FFA).
• Apperceptive agnosia: perceiving objects
• Associative agnosia: meaning to objects

Gustatory System

• Taste buds have chemoreceptors.
• Involves the Thalamus.
• The Primary gustatory cortex is located on the Lateral sulcus substructure on the frontal lobe.
• Involves the PFC and other reward regions.

Olfactory System

• Nostrils and throat.
• Specialized brain structure filtering and relaying olfactory signals is called the Olfactory bulb.
• The Olfactory epithelium contains the location of chemical sensory receptors.
• Causes direct connection to memory and emotion regions.

Somatosensory System

• Mechanoreceptors respond to different kinds of physical stimuli which includes touch and pressure.
• The Spine sends signals to the Somatosensory cortex.
• Involves the Cortical homunculus which is a spatially organized map of the human body that represents the density of sensory receptors in different body parts.

Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Processing: Visual System

• Bottom up approach
  • The information is sent from eyes to primary visual cortex.
  • Doesn't require specific knowledge of stimulus.
• Top down approach
  • Information must be sent from final stages of visual pathway processing back to visual cortex.
  • There must be knowledge or expectations for perception.

Gestalt Organizational Principles

• Gestalt organizational principles involve the concepts of Proximity, Similarity, Figure & Ground, Good Contour Continuance, and Closure.
• Figure and ground assignment also uses and is influenced by knowledge and experience through the principle of experience.

Constructivist vs Direct Perception

• Constructivist
  • Behaviours and actions are inferred based on the model of environment with the reliance of mental models and top-down processes. Support for this lies in the perception of illusions.
  • In depth, includes depth cues and where the world is lit from above.
• Direct - where Behaviours and actions are inferred directly based on sensory stimuli.
  • All information is available in the sensory environment with the reliance on bottom up processes through things like Ambient optical array.
    • Uses cues like Topographical breakage, Scatter reflection, and Texture gradient.

Constructivist View

• Perception is influenced by prior knowledge and context such as Emotional, motivational, cognitive state.
• This is Evidenced by approach motivation effect where desirable objects are perceived differently. Visually: closer, larger and by the relative time of the objects as desirable events pass quickly.

Theories of Visual Object Recognition

• Template matching involves matching long term memories to a template. However, this cannot explain shift in perspective, new object identification, and category classification.
• Prototype theory involves the average representation of an object concept in which the individual has flexible object identification.

Attention

• Arousal focuses on how alert the individual is during a given task.
• Bottom-up attention is the function of Stimuli and engages the Temporoparietal junction along with the ventral frontal cortex.
• Top-down attention is the engagement of Intraparietal sulcus and frontal eye fields.
• Divided attention allows focus across different tasks at the same time.

Types of Top-Down Attention

• Top-down attention - includes:
  • Selective attention in which Four theories present and can focus individuals attention.
  • Sustained attention that allows attention to be held on a single stimulus.
  • Divided attention that can be shifted across multiple tasks.

Selective Attention- Theories

• The original concept of the Early Selection Filter theorizes that attention gets cut off before stimulus can fully engage an individual.
• The Attenuator theorizes that attention involves a series of inputs filtered across relative attenuation but some stimuli may be weaker.
• The Late selection theory involves a series of feedback loops that can allow stimuli to enter conscious state for response.
• The Load theory focuses on a central and multiple capacities in which people can attend various tasks in various stimuli.

Selective Attention

• It arises as a result of Limited information processing resources: Evidence for this includes inattentional blindness, change blindness and Flicker technique paradigm.

Bottom-Up Attention

• Arises as a result of Attentional capture related to Surprise.
  • Bottom-up cues in the environment get Automatically processed
  • Seeing a mouse scurry in the corner of a room or hearing The sound of a car crashing or sirens. It is about surprise or an error of our expectations.
  • A prediction error to pay attention this is surprising thing and not the user's' current task

Types of Attention

• Top-down attention includes Selective attention in which there are the Early Selection Filter, an Attenuator, Late selection, and the Load strategy.
• Multiple or central capacity
• Bottom-up attention focused on attentional capture to pull focus to a stimulus. -This then interacts with Arousal to determine attentional level .

Measuring Attention

• Posner cueing task

1. Fixation display: Fixate on the center a screen
2. Cue Display: A 'space' cue directs attention to an area
3. Target Display: Detect the target, reaction time is measured

• • Pre-activating/spatial attention focus on specific stimulus is measured by the Posner task.
• *Inhibition of return effects behavior by measuring individual preference..

Posner Cuing Task

• SOA, or stimuli onset asynchrony, is the time between the cue and target.
• Short time interval (SOA) is less than 200 ms, while a long time interval (SOA) is more 300 ms.
• Different results for short and long SOAs.

Visual Search Tasks

• Assess feature-based attention.
• Feature Search requires an individual toSearch for an object that differs from the distractors based on one feature.
• This often utilizes Bottom-up attention and has Automatic processing.
• Conjunction Search is when an individual must perform a Search for an object that differs from distractors across many features, Top-down attention, and a Voluntary commitment to attention.

Embodied Theories of Attention

• These focus on Eye movements related to the detection of visual attentional goals.
• There is Overt visual attention which is driven by attending to something with the current eye movements.
• Covert visual attention occurs where an individual is attending to something without eye movements.

Spatial Neglect

• Consists of Damage to the right hemisphere in the ventral parietal cortex which results in Deficits in spatial attention and egocentric representations in the contralateral field of view. -Deficits may occur across sensory modalities.