Cognitive Psych Exam 1 PDF

# Cognitive Psych Exam 1 ## Tuesday, February 4, 2025 4:44 PM ## Chapter 1 Psychology: The study of the mental processes that allow us to function; it is, in many ways, the study of the mind. **What is the Mind?** * System that creates mental representation of the world and helps us to mental fu...

# Cognitive Psych Exam 1 ## Tuesday, February 4, 2025 4:44 PM ## Chapter 1 Psychology: The study of the mental processes that allow us to function; it is, in many ways, the study of the mind. **What is the Mind?** * System that creates mental representation of the world and helps us to mental function, such as perception, attention, memory, thinking and reasoning. **Cognition:** * The mental processes, such as perception, attention, memory, thinking, and judgment that creates and engages with life and the world. * **Mind-creating processes:** 1) recognizing and recalling stored information 2) communicating, 3) creating and remembering judgments, 4) making decisions, 5) problem solving **Study of the Mind involves...** * **Forming and makes memories** * **Perceives, considers possibilities, recalls decisions** * **Helps us survive and function** * **Is a symbol of creativity and intelligence** * **Creates representation of the world so we can act in it** ## 1800s and early 1900s Early Attempts to Study the Mind * **Fechner and Weber (psychologists beginning 1854, Germany)**: Believed that cognition can measure what goes on in the mind. * **Gustav Fechner:** physicist differences are experienced subjectively are NOT always psychologically that experience learned not always depend we are reference to subjective and matched objective perceived differences depends on the starting point * **Paul Broca: 1861, French physician:** Studied brain damaged patients. * **Linked specific part of brain with specific dysfunction:** Observed that problems are closely linked -- localization of ability who was unable to speak but could often understand were OFTEN found to have damage in the left frontal lobe, on left side: *Broca's aphasia* * **Franciscus Donders: 1868, ophthalmologist:** one of several researchers to systematically study reaction times as a window into the mind. * **FIRST COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMEMT: Donders's Simple Reaction Time Experiment** * Focuses on responses to simple mental information * **Cognitive psychology experiments** * Observing differences in behavior of SINGLE or absent reaction time: * **Simple Reaction Time:** responding to one time stimulus * **Choice Reaction Time:** responding to one of two or more stimuli * **Choice RT - Simple RT = (usually make a decision) - (time to 1/10th second)** * **Wilhelm Wundt (1879, and introspection)**: structuralism and the first experimental psychology lab AND course to learn about the structure of human experience. * **FIRST PSYCHOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY** * First one to call himself a psychology experimenter * **Psychology of Structuralism:** approach to psychology that explain as established * **Analytic Introspection:** "looking inward" at your perception as the adding up called sensation: procedure used by early researchers in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli * **Hermann Ebbinghaus (forgetting and saving studies): 1885, German psychologist:** studied memory by studying lists of nonsense syllables aloud to determine what repetitions necessary to learn the list without errors -- after taking breaks, he reread the list * **MENTAL PROCESS MEASUREMENT** * **Savings:** measure he used to measure memory loss from initial learning. Higher savings indicate greater left magnitude of memory. * **Ex:** 1,000 sec to learn list and 400 sec to re-learn list: 1,000-400= 600 * **Savings Curve:** shows that memory drops rapidly for first few repetitions, then initial learning and other levels off - plot of savings versus time after original learning * **Forgetting Curves:** gives us a sense of how quickly and how much we are likely to forget -- a function of how value of repeated serial position are primacy and recency (effect of serial position): items at the beginning (easier to recall) * **Repetition Intervals:** fewer repetitions necessary to relearn list * **Also found that perception of size is relative - ability to recount looks different depending on what's around it** * **William James (psychology text and course): 1875, U.S. taught the first experimental psychology at Harvard and in 1890 wrote first treatise on science of psychology (Principles of Psychology)** * **Function of Mind:** observations based on the functions of his own mind, not experiments. ## Early to Mid-1900s * **Behaviorism:** an approach that advocates psychologists restrict themselves to the scientific study of *objectively observable behavior*. * Were too unreliable * Felt studied of the mind were too *subjective*, *nonscientific* * Maintains the same standards as other physical sciences * **Ivan Pavlov (1890s-1920s):** founded physiology of digestion, discovered the concept of **conditioned** and **unconditioned stimulus-response pairing**. * **Classical Conditioning:** a neutral stimulus (one that doesn’t naturally elicit a response causes the neutral stimulus to become associated with eliciting a response) * **Pavlov Experiment:** wanted to study dog's digestion but noticed that dogs would salivate because of the bell sound he auspiciously used every time dog walked in to give food he was allocated before he even seeing food * **John Watson (1910s-1940s):** starts behaviorism with goal to predict and control observable behavior of humans and animals through the study of behavior (stimulus-response-environment) -- he had no place for mind. * **Little Albert Study:** pairing a loud noise with white rat, little Albert became afraid of the noise -- showcase of a rat * **B.F. Skinner (1930s-70s):** introduces operant conditioning, Skinner's box, shaping behavior. Interested in public behaviors and emphasizes power of human mind. * **Operant Conditioning:** reinforces (stimulus) behavior is strengthened by presentation of a positive reinforcer (e.g., food or social approval), or withdrawal of negative reinforcer (e.g., a shock or social rejection. * **Ex:** showed that reinforcing a rat with food for pressing a bar would greatly increased the rat's rate of bar pressing * **Reinforcement will NOT make the rat believe in free will** * * **Edward Chace Tolman (1930s-50s):** behaviorist who trained rats to find food in a four-armed maze. * **Started from one arm when different arm of maze, they still went to correct arm for food** * **Even when rats started in different arm of maze, they still went to correct arm for food** * **Argued that rat was creating a Cognitive Map: mental representation of the environment** * **Rejected behaviorist perspective of a spatial layout** * **Edward Thorndike (1920s-50s):** hypothesized that animals engaged in goal-directed behaviors. * **Focused on learning where and what goals lead to, not on the "animal"** * **Postulated that learning involved assumptions until they find one that works. * **Any numbers of behaviors involved** * **Not thought processes about of Educational Psychology** ## 1950s and 1960s: Start of Field of Cognitive Psychology * **Cognitive Revolution:** shift in psychology, beginning in 1950s, from behaviorism to a more scientific approach in which the main thrust was to explain behavior in terms of the mind. * **Scientific Revolution:** shift from one paradigm to another paradigm: system of ideas that dominate science at a particular time * **Invention of the Computer started the Cognitive Revolution!** * **Computers processed information in stages:** 1. Info Received by "input processor", 2. Then "memory unit", 3. Processed by an "arithmetic unit", which then creates output information * Psychologists used this as inspiration! * **Information-Processing Approach:** approach beginning in the 1950s in which the mind is described as processing information through a sequence of stages * **Stimulus -> Input Processes (Perception and sensory memory) -> Short-term storage and selection, and manipulation (Elaboration Processes) -> Long-term storage -> (Production of appropriate responses) -> Response** * **Ulric Neisser** coined the term "Cognitive Psychology" in 1967 book, officially marking the Cognitive Revolution ## 1970s to the Present * **Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) make a three-stage model of memory** * **Sensory memory** (less than one second) * Short-term memory (a few seconds, limited capacity) * Long-term memory (long duration, vast capacity) * **Input > Sensory Memory > Short-Term Memory >> Long-Term Memory** * **Long-term Memory:** high-capacity system that can hold info (for a long period of time) * **Episodic Memory:** specific events (like what you did last weekend) * **Semantic Memory:** facts * **Procedural Memory:** states physical actions (how to hide a bike) * **Neuroscience Enters Cognition and New Methods and Technologies** * **Neuropsychology:** studies behavior of people with brain damage and people without brain damage -- compares to tasks * **Electrophysiology:** studies electrical responses of the nervous system including brain neurons * **Brain Imaging:** technique such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which result in images of the brain that represent brain activity. * **Positron Emission Tomography (PET):** inactive, expensive * **Cognitive Tasks:** in the 1970s, made it possible to see which areas of the human brain are activated during a cognitive activity, involving injecting radioactive traces in expensive and time-consuming * **Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI):** replaced PET, capable of producing higher resolution pictures * **Development after Neisser's Book** 1. More sophisticated models 2. Research focusing on physiological basis of cognition 3. Concern with cognition in the real world 4. The role of knowledge in cognition * **Events that led to Cognitive Revolution** 1. Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior 2. The introduction of the computer metaphor: the computer processes info in stages, like the computer and Broadbent’s intro of flow diagrams of attention processes 3. Cherry’s attention experiments involve in attention in the flow of information 4. Interdisciplinary conferences at MIT which set up the interdepartmental institute of technology ## Chapter 2 Topics: Neurons and the Brain ### The Basic Structure and Function of the Brain * **Levels of Analysis:** a topic can be understood by studying it at a number of different levels of a system. * **Brain Structures, Nerves, Neurons:** understanding the Brain Structures, Group of Brain Structures * **Types of Analysis:** Chemical, Electrical, Molecular Activity, Self-report, Behavior * **The Brain:** part of the central nervous system (CNS). * **Floats in cerebrospinal fluid** * **Weights about 3-4 pounds** * **Contains 100-200 billion neurons** * **Neurons:** cells specialized to receive and transmit information in the nervous system. * **Each neuron has a cell body, dendrites, axon, and dendrites** * **Cell Body (Soma):** contains mechanism to keep cell alive and generate signal; the filed with fluid that transmits electrical signal, called *cytoplasm* * **Axon:** tube filled from other cell body out to synapse at end of axon; structure that branches to synapse at end of axon; structure that branches to synapse at end of axon from other neurons to receive electrical signals from other neurons * **Dendrites:** extend from cell body and dendrites or axon of another neuron ## Early Theories of Nerve Processes * **Camillo Golgi (late 1800s):** created first staining technique that allowed **Golgi** to view of brain neuron. * **Neuron Fiber Theory:** each neuron fiber flows in both directions - says there is a network of continuously connected neuron fibers because they touch and fuse together directly, not just touch each other, creating a system most like highway staining technique could not see the small details at the time * **Santiago Ramon y Cajal (late 1800s - early 1900s):** used Golgi's staining technique but on animal; did NOT find evidence of axons and dendrites fusing. * **Also studied tissue from the brain of many animals. Developed Neuron Doctrine:** idea that individual cells ARE NOT continuous with other cells in the nervous system and that these cells called neurons are separated. * **Conclusions about nervous system were not supported by other theory.** * **Neurons** * **There is a gap between axon and dendrites called a *synapse*** * **Neurons are not indiscriminately connected to neurons, but they form connections only to specific groups of neurons according to this forms neuron. These forms neurons specialize, making neural circuits.** * **The neuron picks up info from environment** * **Principles derived today (or Sensory Receptors):** specialized neural structures that respond to a specific kind of energy, such as light, mechanical stimulation, or chemical stimuli ## How Neurons Communicate * **WITHIN** a neuron, signals are sent electrically (action potential or nerve impulse) * **BETWEEN** neurons, signals are sent chemically (neurotransmitters) **Dendrites --> Cell Body --> Axon** * **Action Potential propagated for transmitting neural electrical potential responsible for transmitting electrical information and for communication between neurons, typically travel down a neuron's axon** * **Is always the same size or is all-or-none:** the cell is either activated or not * **Stronger simulation causes a neuron to fire more often: Rate of firing reflects STRENGTH of STIMULUS not potential** * **High-intensity stimulus = slow firing** * **High-intensity stimulus = fast firing** * **When signals research the synapse at the end of axon, a neuron will release.** * **Neurotransmitter:** chemicals that affect the neuron or neurons receiving neuron and response to incoming release at the synapse in action potential * **Makes it possible for signal to be transmitted across synapse to another cell separates the end of dendrite or cell body from the other cell's dendrite** * **Cross synapse and bind with receiving dendrite. When there is another chemical activation, a new action potential is generated in the next neuron** * **Principle of Neural Representation:** everything a person experiences is based on the pattern of neural activity in the nervous system. * **Feature Detectors:** neurons that respond to particular features, such as orientation, size, or the more complex features, such as a face. * **Found by Hubel and Wiesel in 1960s in experiencing visual stimuli etc.** * **Hierarchical Processing:** as information travels in a progression from lower to higher areas of the brain. * **Association areas: corrections from lower to higher areas to perceive objects that range form lower shapes to higher. Ex: V1 (simple) -> V3 (edges) -> and line -> "association area"** * **Vision in the "Where" or Dorsal-Stream Pathway:**- involves visual cortex stimulus - you process where stimulus helps to process spatial information visually guided action, like grasping, throwing, navigating through space. * **Vision-for-Perception or Ventral "What" Pathway:** helps identify objects and their properties -- processed in the ventral cortex in occipital lobe and in inferior temporal lobe * **Front and Belly** * **Sensory Code:** how neural firing represents various characteristics of the environment. * **Specificity Coding:** representation of a stimulus by firing of a single neuron specifically specialized. * **How many faces could be represented with 10 neurons?** * **10 faces (1 face for each neuron)** * **Sparse Coding:** representation of a stimulus by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent. * **How many faces could be represented with 10 neurons?** * **Between 10 and 1,023 depending on how many neurons fire for each face** * **Population Coding:** representation of a stimulus by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons. * **How many faces could be represented with 10 neurons?** * **1,023 faces (1 face can be a combination of firing neurons)** ## Localization of Function * **Localization of Function:** specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain. * **How it is studied or Evidence:** 1. **Neuropsychology:** comparing brain functions of people with brain disassociation injury (e.g., double dissociation technique). 2. **Neurorecording:** using microelectrodes to record the odes to isolate neuron activity in certain parts of the brain based on brain activity. 3. **Brain Imaging:** using tools such as PET scans and fMRI to obtain pictures of brain activity given particular tasks or stimuli ## Areas of the Brain: * **Cerebral Cortex:** 3-mm thick outer layer of the brain that contains the mechanisms for most complex or higher mental functions such as perception, language, and problem solving * **Broca's Area:** speech control, an area in the frontal lobe associated with the production of language. Damage to this area causes Broca's aphasia (language production damaged, condition characterized by labored speech, sometimes total speech production damaged, difficulty in understanding some type of sentential) * **Wernicke's Area:** language comprehension, language. Damage to this area, associated with understanding language. Damage to this area causes Wernicke’s aphasia (language comprehension damaged, a condition caused by damage to Wernicke’s area, that is characterized by difficulty in understanding language and fluent, grammatically correct, but incoherent speech) * **Occipital Lobe:** vision, perception - where visual cortex is located * **Frontal Lobe:** movement, problem solving, concentrating.