PSY2601 Cognitive Psychology Fall 2024 Test 1 Study Guide PDF

PSY2601 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology – Fall 2024 Study Guide for Test 01 (September 17th) Final 1. Define epistemology using Rationalism and Empiricism as contrasting positions within it. 2. How was Stru...

PSY2601 Introduction to Cognitive Psychology – Fall 2024 Study Guide for Test 01 (September 17th) Final 1. Define epistemology using Rationalism and Empiricism as contrasting positions within it. 2. How was Structuralism different from epistemology (whether Rationalism or Empiricism)? 3. Why is “Structuralism” called structuralism? 4. What does the statement “the whole is different from the sum of the parts” mean as a challenge to Structuralism? To which school of thought is it attributed? 5. How is Functionalism different from Structuralism? 6. What is introspection and what problems are there with it? 7. What is Methodological Behaviorism and how does it solve the problems associated with introspection? 8. Describe Classical Conditioning as an S-R and the Law of Effect as examples of the approach espoused by Methodological Behaviorism. 9. How is Radical Behaviorism different from Methodological Behaviorism. 10. In the 1950s there was a “cognitive revolution” within the field of Psychology. What was the “revolt” against? 11. What are the core assumptions of the field of Cognitive Psychology that distinguish it from Behaviorism? 12. What is the difference between a valid and an invalid measure? What is the difference between a reliable and unreliable measure? Describe different ways that a measure can be invalid? Think of some reasons that a measure could be valid but unreliable? How about reliable but invalid? 13. Describe the gaze attentional cueing experiment (that’s the one with the schematic face and the eyeballs pointing in one direction or another). What was concluded? Explain how that conclusion follows form the experiment. 14. What are some common neural measures that are used in Cognitive Psychology? 15. Know the general structure of the brain (the four cortical lobes and the small number of sub-cortical areas that we referred to). 16. What did Phineas Gage’s case tell us about functional neuroanatomy? 17. Explain what Capgras syndrome is and what the explanation of it is? 18. Describe how transmission of signals within a neuron and between neurons is different. Use these terms in your description: axon, action potential, dendrite, synaptic cleft, neuron transmitter 19. Explain the difference between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic connections. You do not need to name specific neurotransmitters or describe the electrochemical process; just describe it in terms of neural signaling. 20. Describe how the orientation of an edge (e.g., vertical versus horizontal) is neurally coded. Use the concept of a tuning curve in your answer. 21. What other types of neural coding are there than rate coding? 22. What do event-related potentials measure? 23. What are the functional specificities of the PPA (parahippocampal place area) and the FFA (fusiform face area)? 24. How is TMS used to test causal claims about the function of different brain areas (e.g., the claim that the FFA “does” face perception) 25. What is the general function that all sensory systems serve? 26. Compare and contrast the rods and cones. How are they distributed differently on the retina? What different functions do they serve? 27. What is a receptive field? 28. Describe how retinal ganglion respond to light in the center versus surround of their receptive fields (i.e., how they code for edges). 29. Describe the tuning function of a V1 cell that codes for a specific orientation. 30. Refering to a bi-stable stimulus like the Necker cube or the face-vase figure-ground stimulus explain the statement “Perception involves not just encoding stimuli but interpreting them.” 31. How is edge assignment different from edge detection? How is edge assignment involved in figure-ground assignment? 32. What are the different principles of organization (e.g., proximity, similarity, etc.) 33. What are size constancy, shape constancy, and lightness constancy? 34. What do perceptual constancies demonstrate about what is represented internally by perceptual systems (i.e., what we perceive)? 35. What is an illusion? In class we talked about illusions being “windows on cognition”, which refers to the idea that studying them can help us understand how the cognitive systems processes information. Explain what this means with some examples.